Pale Lights

The lamps guttered out one after another. Like a curtain being pulled, dark fell over the private archives.

Maryam stood alone on the roof before the face of three gods and the absence of a fourth. She did not long have to wait for her enemy to arrive – Hooks formed out of the gloom almost eagerly, like a mouse so hungry it would squeeze through the cracks in the wall to claw at the grain. No stolen looks tonight, neither the garb of the Watch or of a home that Hooks had never truly known save through what she took from Maryam.

Instead her enemy wore a simple pale dress, barefoot and without jewelry. Pale skin on pale cloth, and loose hair like raven’s wings. Hooks looked halfway between a corpse and a princess. A brutally fitting reflection of her nature.

“It doesn’t have to end like this,” the enemy said.

A flicker of annoyance. They didn’t understand, any of them, what it really meant for her to abstain from the ritual. To be forever held hostage to another’s will when tracing Signs, only a single harsh tug on her nav away from disaster if tracing anything dangerous. To live with Hooks was to forever keep a knife at her throat. And to come to an agreement with her…

“What else is there?” Maryam scorned. “Am I to let you swallow a third of my soul, to rob me of the Cauldron all because you think your putting on a white dress ought to make me squeamish?”

Maryam had spent her life learning the arts of the Gloam – Craft and Signs, art and tool. Cutting away her own nav and tossing it to Hooks would be renouncing all those years, destroying the very soul-effigy that allowed her to manipulate the Gloam. Never.

She reached inside her pocket and put them on one after another, her rake-rings. One, two, three – all the way to ten, as she never had before. Tonight it was all on the line. She wound her nav around the rings, Hooks watching her without a word, and twitched her fingers. The strings of her soul-effigy pulled taut.

“All I want is to be whole,” Hooks quietly said. “A person entire, no longer a force-fed collection of your scraps.”

“I don’t think you’re evil, Hooks,” she said. “Not anymore. Or even all that malicious, despite how much harm you did to my life.”

Years of thinking something inside her was broken, that she would never be able to signify properly. That she had failed her mother and Captain Totec and everyone who had ever put a scrap of trust in her. It was hard not hate Hooks for that still, even knowing that she’d been unaware of what she was doing. That she had been little more than a seed being watered by every dark and ugly thought Maryam could not admit to herself she was having. Every strain of weakness she knew she could not afford.

Maryam breathed out. Pity was worth less nothing. Pity was the scraps they tossed you when they did not care enough to act, to put their weight on the scales. She would kill Hooks, tonight, but not offer her the disservice of such a hollow thing as pity.

“This isn’t about hate,” she said. “It’s only that you are biting into me and I am biting into you, and at the end there’s only so much of us to go around.”

Her fingers clenched, her nav tensed.

“And if comes down to that, I’d rather have red teeth than nothing.”

“I don’t know how to split off from your nav,” Hooks quietly said. “I tried, when I first woke up, to go my own way into the aether. But there is something at the very root of me that is bound to you, to your soul, and I don’t think I can cut it without breaking whatever lies at the heart of myself.”

Her enemy swallowed, picking at her pale sleeves.

“But if you gave me your nav-”

“A third of my soul,” Maryam evenly said. “My ability to use Signs. And I’d be as a raw wound in the aether until the end of my days.”

A meal for any entity she came across, all the sensitivity with none of the power.

“But you would save me,” Hooks quietly said. “Free me.”

“And when do I get to be free, Hooks?” Maryam bit back. “When do I finally get the strength I broke my back earning, that I scrabbled for in the dirt? Years of my life spent learning what seemed to be one dead end after another. And now that I can finally get what I paid for in sweat and blood I should throw it all away for what?”

She looked Hooks up and down.

“You?”

“For a life,” the other woman replied.

“No,” Maryam replied through clenched teeth. “I choose blood. I choose clawing back what I can of the Cauldron, and maybe it won’t be enough but it was never going to be enough because they’re all dead. Because I’m what’s left.”

Hooks’ blue eyes, so much like her own, faced her unflinching.

“I could win,” she said.

“You won’t,” Maryam said, and meant every word. “Deep down, be both know that.”

They both struck the second the last word passed her lips.

Hook’s hand carved through the air, leaving behind an oily trail of darkness that formed into a flock of birds and Maryam, Maryam kept it simple. She pressed her palm at the enemy and formed as large and fast a Bayonet as she could, the sharp spike of Gloam cutting through Hook’s elaborate working of Craft. Both working collapsed in a heartbeat and with mirrored snarls they tugged at the nav, trying to bring it fully into them like tugging rope, and-

The ringing sound slapped them both down against the ground. Gods, the noise. Like a bell being rung right in their ears. Maryam, knees aching as she forced herself up, realized after a heartbeat it had not been a physical sound or even something going wrong as she fought Hooks. The aether was going mad inside the room, like a storm in a bottle. No, a bottle being shook – the aether around them was battering at the boundary of the temporary shrine she had built. She caught Hook’s considering look and cursed. She could not stop. Her enemy wouldn’t.

It was like slugging it out on a falling bridge.

The fluctuations in the aether were dizzying – a bursting geyser against the walls one moment, still as a grave the next and then convulsing violently. It made signifying difficult and Craft impossible. Neither Maryam nor Hooks were allowed the courtesy of tricks and plans in what ensued, or the slightest bit of elegance. They pulled at the nav that lay between them like children fighting over a piece of string, tugging and shouting and cursing the other.

The rake-rings dug into her fingers like the nails of a crone, just shy of blood spill, but Maryam snarled and tightened her grip. She was tired and Hooks was not, but at the end of the day the entity was… young. Naming her had strengthened her borders, defined her in an intangible sense, but her depths were still shallow. She could not want the win the way Maryam did. She did not have the years of fear and hatred and blame that Maryam could pull on, the bitter determination to go anywhere but back.

It wasn’t like killing a child, Maryam told herself. It didn’t count. The thought loosened her grip for a moment and that was already too much – Hooks let out a cry of triumph and a length of nav sunk into her. The loss was… Maryam could feel it leaving her, what had been loss. Taste it like a scent on the wind even as it was stolen out of her. Pomegranate flowers on the heights, come summer. The tremble of nerves as Captain Totec guided her through her first Sign.

Fury strengthened her grip and she stole it back. The memories burned in her mind, searing bright, and she gulped them down. Some of it was worn down, edges frayed, but it was still hers. She wrapped her nav around her ring-bearing hand, like a thread around a spool, and pulled until Gloam burned at the edge of fingers.

Hooks fought her and Hooks broke: a crack, the ice lake fractured.

Maryam greedily sucked in the power, the secrets. They flickered through her mind, sweet as honey. The art of shaping Gloam into seeds to be sown, of using it to paint like a brush-

Weeping in the dark, cold and alone, hand over mouth. What if the hounds heard? Would they even bother to catch her, or let the beasts run her down like a rabbit?

-Maryam gritted her teeth, eyes pricking with tears. She would take it all, even the bad. It was all hers, down to the last poisonous drop.

“No,” Hooks whispered.

“Yes,” Maryam snarled.

The wound was in the flesh. It was all downhill for Hooks now and they both knew it. She struck again, smashing her fist on the ice, and the fissures spread. She dug in, devouring further secrets, but did not stop there. She plunged deep, to the heart of it. To take something of Hooks’ as the enemy had taken so much from Maryam. She found a kernel, a foundation, and ripped it out to see what lay inside-

It strangled her. Choked the life out of her, slowly but surely.

-and croaked out a laugh.

“My nightmare,” she said. “Even that was you?”

She ripped again.

Not hands but a rope, a cord. Tightening, tightening, tightening.

Again.

It was dark and warm. She was floating even as she died. Began to fade. But something sharp bit into her, sunk into her flesh.

“No,” Maryam whispered.

Devoured her whole, bite by bite. Kept her bound, soul to soul.

“No,” Maryam screamed, stumbling back.

She fell on her knees atop the tower, halfway to retching. Hooks stood across the roof, as terrified as she was.

“You’re,” Maryam began, then swallowed bile. “I killed you. In the womb. Pulling at the cord, strangling you.”

Like she was killing her now, pulling at the nav.

“You’re not some spirit,” she forced out. “You’re my sister.”

--

Angharad woke up tied to a chair, head throbbing.

She was no longer in the concert hall. The room was smaller, the lamps too bright for her eyes, and it took a moment for the silhouettes to come into focus. They were in one of the palace salons, the walls a string of colorful mosaics, and she was not alone. Lord Gule was here, a hard-faced Cleon by his side, and eight more. Lord Arkol. Four traitor lictors. Minister Floros. And in the corner by a table, picking at stolen plates of morsels, a familiar pair. Lord Locke winked at her roguishly, Lady Keys merely pushing up her glasses. What were they doing here?

Fingers were snapped in front of her face, most rudely.

“Eyes here, Tredegar.”

A woman’s voice, Angharad thought. And when she looked up it was at the unusually stern face of Lady Doukas. The groggy part of her noted that the daring neckline was back even on the tailored priestess robes she wore. Angharad spent a moment wondering what she could possibly have told her seamstress when ordering – cult standard, but don’t skimp on the cleavage? One had to admire the commitment.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

“What are the blackcloaks up to?” Lady Doukas demanded. “Speak, and quickly.”

“Lady Doukas,” Angharad croaked out, then frowned.

She coughed, clearing her throat though regrettably there was nothing to do about the coppery taste against her tongue. Cleon’s second blow had not been held back in the slightest.

“Lady Doukas,” she repeated, tone steadier now. “You are found at last. I am pleased to inform you that you are also under arrest.”

A snarl and the noblewoman’s hand reared up for a slap but a click of the tongue stilled her. Doukas turned with a frown and Phaedros Arkol sighed at her, folding the arms against this silver-and-yellow doublet.

“And what will that achieve, Petra?” he asked. “Not a thing, I wager. One does not achieve those pretty silver lines on her arm by fearing a few slaps.”

Oh, Lady Doukas’ first name was Petra. Angharad had never happened to learn it, having barely ever spoken with the other woman.

“If they are even true,” Lord Cleon Eirenos coldly said. “Much else about Angharad Tredegar seems to have been a lie.”

She shot him an offended look.

“I have not lied to you,” Angharad stiffly said. “You were misled, that much is true, but at no point did I ever lie to you.”

“You were a guest in my home, rook,” Lord Cleon hissed, hand falling to his blade. “And you dare pretend you never-”

“Too much garlic on the meatballs, I think,” Lady Keys said.

“Truly? I was going to venture too much lemon, mi corazon,” her husband replied.

Cleon glared angrily at them, as much about the interruption as the implicit indifference to his anger. That had to have been done on purpose, Angharad thought. Not to help her, if anything they seemed amused at her situation, but out of some urge to throw matches at any oil patch in sight.

“Why are they even here?” Cleon bit out at Gule, gesturing at them. “They should be in the storeroom with all the other late hoppers.”

“We are waiting for someone,” Lady Keys informed him. “That simply wouldn’t do, Lord Cleon.”

“I am quite indifferent to what you believe wouldn’t-”

Lord Gule coughed into his fist. Angharad, belatedly, realized that he had been listening to the conversation without his usual horn. Not just the leg, then. The ambassador caught her look of surprise and his lips thinned. He had promised her healing once, even given her a drop of the Golden Ram’s blood – that she had given to Officer Hage shortly before he disappeared. Evidently the cult had fulfilled their promise to Lord Gule of Bezan. The ambassador did not address her before turning to Cleon, gone beyond frost into the pretense she did not exist.

“We have an arrangement with our foreign guests,” Lord Gule told his protege. “We are not to involve ourselves in each other’s business.”

An interested noise drew Angharad’s eye. Minister Floros watched them all from the back wall, leaning back with her armed crossed under her chest and an unreadable expression. Her dress was the richest Angharad had seen all night, exquisite Jahamai velvet patterned in the colors of House Floros. The matching slippers she had worn earlier, however, had been traded for squat leather shoes.

The knife and sword at her hip were also new.

“Oh, do proceed with your coup,” Lord Locke said with an encouraging smile. “A little rough around the edges, but I can feel the enthusiasm! I’m sure you will soon secure the Lord Rector’s throne.”

“They are overthrowing the Lord Rector, darling,” Lady Keys loudly whispered.

“-and go he must, the base tyrant!” Lord Locke immediately pivoted. “Good work fellows, well done.”

Lord Gule sighed. Angharad found it telling that he chose not to address the mockery. He must know they were devils, or at least suspect that drawing a blade on Locke and Keys would be courting disaster.

“Enough time wasted,” he said. “The lifts need our attention. Petra, I leave the interrogation to you. If the Watch intends to move against us, it is imperative we know before they do.”

Lady Doukas acknowledged his words with a nod. Not a particularly deferential one, however. Gule’s earlier words, about the true power in the cult lying with the priesthood and not the heads seemed to be an accurate assessment.

“The lifts are a distraction,” Lord Arkol calmly said. “We need to secure the private archives first. Something went wrong there.”

Lord Gule eyed him skeptically.

“The lifts are the key to the palace, Phaedros,” he said. “And our man says there’s only a single signifier up there, hardly a threat.”

“The troops were supposed to emerge in those archives, Gule,” Lord Arkol said. “They were, instead, shunted two levels below through a significantly more difficult crossing. Whatever that signifier is doing, it needs to end.”

Angharad’s jaw clenched. Maryam, they were talking about Maryam.

“Loyalists still hold most of that sector, they dug in behind barricades,” Lord Gule pointed out. “It would take more than a single squad to dig them out.”

“We had our reinforcements through the layer,” Lord Arkol said. “What are they for, if not scatter Palliades’ last men?”

Lord Gule sighed.

“I’ll send two squads,” he compromised. “We won’t need more if they can get into the archives: she’s a student, not full-fledged Akelarre.”

Part of Angharad, the one that never ceased to consider those around her, noted that Gule seemed uncomfortable facing Phaedros Arkol. As if uncertain where the other man ranked compared to him. The rest of Angharad had her fingers clenching, because those jackals were discussing killing her cabalmate.

“Maryam Khaimov is a blackcloak with connections to several high officers of the Watch,” Angharad said, stretching the bounds of truth.

But Maryam was connected to Angharad and Song, who did have such connections. She had not spoken as to the strength of those ties, only their existence.

“Harming her could have grave consequences,” she added.

A snort.

“She’s a Triglau,” Lord Gule dismissed. “Even if she is someone’s pet savage, that is a minor thing. The rooks know not to overplay their hand, they have been taught that lesson the hard way.”

“She’s not a savage, you traitorous shithead,” Angharad snarled. “May you choke on that lie.”

Gule looked at her as if she was some hysterical creature, like he wasn’t the one who’d just called a woman he had never spoken to in his life a savage.

“The Watch ruined you, I can see that now,” he sighed. “It is a genuine shame.”

Angharad would have snapped his neck if she could. Instead she struggled against the ropes, the tight knot ripping into her skin. Lord Arkol yawned.

“I’ll have a look at this Triglau myself, I think,” he mused. “Lady Apollonia, would you care to accompany me?”

The tone was light, teasing. Angharad narrowed her eyes. But not flirtatious. It was as if Phaedros Arkol was making sport of the very woman he intended to make Lady Rector of Asphodel, though she could not find where the jest lay.

“I would hear what the blackcloak has to say,” Apollonia Floros declined.

“Suit yourself,” Lord Arkol shrugged. “I’ll send some escorts to you from our reinforcement should you change your mind.”

The older men made to leave, Cleon lingering to shoot her one last hateful look.

“They are lying to you,” Angharad told him. “It is not the Odyssean they worship. You are being tricked.”

His jaw clenched.

“It must be the season for it, then, Lady Tredegar,” he said.

He followed his patron out without sparing her another glance. Angharad grit her teeth. The hate was not entirely unwarranted, but it was blinding him. Not that she was able to keep her mind on that for long, as Lady Petra Doukas soon demanded her full attention.

Angharad almost expected her to pull out some torturer’s kit, or at least smash a bottle and threaten her with the glass, but the dark-haired cultist instead came uncomfortably close. The Pereduri scowled at her, working on the knot with her wrist. It was looking like she’d have to dislocate it to get it out, and even then it would be tricky. She did not have much practice getting out of bindings, in truth. Perhaps something to ask Tristan about should they both live through the night.

“This won’t hurt,” Lady Doukas smiled, laying a finger on her forehead.

It took a second for Angharad to understand what she was up to. She was a priestess of the almost-Odyssean, and thus preparing to call on its power to… well, do something. Angharad felt her blood cool.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” she said.

“Oh, but I will,” Lady Doukas said.

There was a ripple in the air, like a sword whistling past your ear, and Angharad felt something seep into her. Inhaled smoke, filling the inside of head with a burning haze.

She met Doukas’ dark eyes.

“I warned you,” she said.

It came like a flood. A broken levee, the sea suddenly snapping up men who had thought themselves safe from the storm. A voice ripped through her, filling her veins with salt, but it was not a voice. It was a handhold slipping through your fingers, it was an oath broken in the dark, it was crabs scuttling through rotting guts.

“Carrion,” the Fisher mocked.

Petra Doukas withdrew her finger from Angharad’s forehead like it’d been burned, rocking back as she coughed and choked. She spat something out, after a heartbeat.

Saltwater, she knew without even having to look.

“Odyssean preserve me,” Lady Doukas gasped, “what was…”

She shivered, flinching away from Angharad. Whose eyes had moved from the priestess to a sight that made her shiver: across the room Locke and Keys were observing her with unblinking eyes. Heads cocked to the side a little too sharply, mirroring each other.

“Well now,” Lord Locke mused, sniffing at the air. “Someone’s been quite the naughty girl.”

“My my, Lady Tredegar,” Lady Keys said, pushing back her glasses with an impressed look. “I genuinely didn’t think you had it in you, child.”

Her lips thinned. Best to ignore them, there was nothing to gain from engaging. Lady Doukas had mostly calmed, anyhow, though she was still panting and wide-eyed. Two of the traitor lictors were with her, quietly talking, and one unsheathed his blade before glaring at Angharad.

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“Put that back in the sheath, soldier.”

The flat, matter-of-fact tone ripped through the room. Apollonia Floros pushed off the wall, and under her stern look the traitor faltered. He still looked at Doukas for instructions, who turned a sneer on the minister.

“They do not answer to you, Floros,” she said. “Not yet.”

Minister Floros eyed her, visibly unimpressed.

“It’s not that I don’t believe you’re hiding cleverness under the hedonism, Petra,” she said. “It’s just that there’s not nearly as much of it to hide as you think.”

She turned green eyes on the lictors.

“By the end of the week, you will be either dead or sworn to me,” she said. “And I’ve no use at all for disobedient hounds.”

She leaned in.

“Make your choice.”

They looked at Lady Doukas again, who nodded through gritted teeth.

“Take a walk, clear your head,” Minister Floros told the priestess. “I’ll talk with our friend here.”

The lictors made to move and follow her, but she dismissed them with irritation. Lady Doukas, face red with anger, stormed out of the room. She tried to slam the door, Angharad noted, but it was too heavy. It took a solid ten seconds to hit the threshold, though it did so quite loudly. Apollonia Floros came to stand before the prisoner, ramrod straight and with a soldier’s stern bearing.

“Warrant Officer Tredegar,” she said. “I expect you know who I am, though we have never spoken.”

“I do,” Angharad agreed.

Floros hummed.

“I was not aware of the coup,” she said. “Save as an abstract intention in some of my allies. I did not, in fact, intend to seize the palace like this.”

“But you did intend to seize it, one day,” Angharad said.

The minister inclined her head in agreement, not even pretending otherwise. Angharad could respect that, if not the oathbreaking.

“Evander’s shipyard will make us the plaything and battlefield of the great powers,” Minister Floros said. “I’ll not suffer the first and bloodiest battles of the next Succession War to be fought on Asphodel’s soil.”

“The Watch does not involve itself in matters of succession,” Angharad said, though she did not hide her disapproval.

A flicker of amusement passed through Apollonia Floros’ green eyes, like light playing on emeralds.

“How rare it is, these days, for someone to give me such a look of censure.”

She lightly moved to the side, leaning her back against the wall again and looking forward as Angharad did – as if the two of them were comrades, instead of a figurehead and a prisoner. Ah. Perhaps in a distant way they were birds of a feather.

“But then I know what those silver stripes mean,” she said. “I expect you understand what death is better than the fools who put together this madness.”

Angharad’s brow rose.

“You accepted the coup’s backing,” she noted.

“Better to be on the tiger’s back than in its larder,” Apollonia Floros said. “But these fucking children seem to have missed that if I wanted to wage and win a civil war to seize the throne I already would have.”

Her jaw was set with what was, Angharad thought, genuine fury.

“None of them ever fought in a war,” she said. “Not even Cordyles, for all that he pretends playing at the pirate means he knows death.”

“And you have?” Angharad challenged.

“I was once merely third in line to inherit House Floros,” the older woman said. “When I was thirteen I ran off to a mercenary company just in time to serve as a raider for King Raul in what everyone figured would be a short tussle with the Izcalli.”

It took a moment for Angharad to place the name.

“King Raul of Sordan,” she said.

The king who had fought the Kingdom of Izcalli and lost in the Sordan War.

“He paid us with Malani gold,” Minister Floros said, “but the coin was good. Two years I spent in the raiding fleet, then another three on the ground. I was at the Battle of Narba, in the second of the three armies Doghead Coyac broke that day.”

The older woman looked at the wall on the other side of the room, but her eyes were far away.

“When dark fell, there were so many corpses on the field that they looked like hills,” she said. “I will not turn Asphodel into such a butcher’s yard for a throne.”

Her jaw clenched.

“Another year and Evander’s closest allies would have turned on him,” she said. “Either over ties to Tianxia or for fear of the wealth flooding Palliades coffers. Another year and it could have been done bloodless.”

Floros looked like she wanted to spit.

“Instead now it is to be war, and with his death on my head half the nobles will stand against me,” she said. “The worst of all worlds, and my backers appear to be just as bad as the rest of the tale.”

She shot Angharad a look.

“You claim this cult of the Odyssean broke the Iscariot Accords,” she said.

“Breaks,” Angharad corrected. “On at least two counts: human sacrifice and purchase of theistic murder.”

She pitched her voice high enough that the lictors would be able to hear, but none seemed moved by the accusation. Zealots, or thinking her a liar.

“To clarify,” Apollonia Floros said, “would culpability apply only to direct members of the cult or also those who benefitted from their actions?”

She frowned, reaching for her too-distant Mandate lessons.

“Culpability spreads through knowing complicity, as I recall,” she finally said. “Though I caution you I am not a legal scholar.”

“I am aware,” Minister Floros said. “Evander might have thought himself subtle, but I have people in the palace still. I saw that contract the moment your Obscure Committee sent it back stamped.”

Angharad’s surprise did not go unnoticed. There had never been so much as a hint that Floros might be obstructing them.

“What did I have to fear of such an investigation?” Lady Floros shrugged. “I keep to Oduromai and Ageleion, not some strange mystery cult.”

She snorted.

“Though should I become Lady Rector, it seems I may have to add a third god to my prayers,” the minister said. “The Odyssean, you said?”

“A scheme,” Angharad said. “The cult seeks to free the Hated One, the-”

“Do not speak that name,” Lady Floros harshly cut in, lowering her voice. “You are certain?”

“The evidence strongly speaks to it,” Angharad said.

“Malani,” the minister sighed at her phrasing, shaking her head. “I should have known Gule was up to his neck in this. The man was never one to take no for an answer.”

“He approached you before,” Angharad hazarded.

“Offered me arms and men to seize the throne,” she idly said. “Twice. For small concessions, of course. As if I were fool enough to accept.”

She waved dismissively, as if scorning the idea of alliance with Malan.

“If we are to be under a great power’s thumb, let it be Sacromonte. The Six are too busy squabbling to meddle much in our affairs.”

That seemed, in truth, a fair assessment. Sacromonte’s delegation to Asphodel had been a nonentity in all the scheming the Thirteenth had unearthed in the capital. Tristan’s opinion was that the Six had not agreed on a policy yet so the diplomats could not risk venturing one of their own.

“You need not be implicated in this,” Angharad told her. “If you-”

“Too late for that now,” she replied. “Evander cannot let me live after tonight, or allow my house to stand. He would be a fool to. My side has been chosen for me.”

She grimaced.

“No, I must remain on the tiger’s back,” Minister Floros said. “Though who is that beast’s head remains to be seen. Not Gule, I think, despite his attempts to make it otherwise. He gives orders to the lictors, but not the priests – and everyone listens to the priests.”

She sighed.

“I expect I will find out soon,” she said. “This supposed Ecclesiast will come to me with a bill for handing over the throne before this is done, so I expect they are in the palace.”

Apollonia’s eyes dipped down and to the side, Angharad taking a moment to grasp what she was looking at. Her wrists, held together by the knot.

“I have seen such stripes with my own eyes once before,” the minister idly said.

The Pereduri’s brow rose.

“Have you?”

“When I first left Asphodel in the mercenary company that took King Raul’s gold,” Apollonia Floros quietly said, “we came across a fat-bellied merchantman a few days away from the port of Concordia. It flew a Malani flag and it was an open secret that Malan funded Sordon, but our privateering terms did not exclude Malani ships.”

Angharad wrinkled her nose in distaste. She would not go as far as condemning this, for Malan had privateers of its own and they were not known for their scrupulousness, but it was nothing to boast of. To the minister’s honor, she was in no way smiling.

“We caught up to her, shot ahead to make her pull the sails and prepared for boarding,” the minister said. “Only the deck was clear of men and guns, when we went over – save for two. And old man and a boy of sixteen. The old man barefoot and long-haired, barely any teeth left. They sat alone by the prow.”

The older woman shook her head.

“We had near forty raiders with good steel and kills to their name,” she said. “We boarded, of course.”

She breathed out.

“I don’t think I’ll ever forget how it looked, those two mirror-dancers killing their way through a crew like they were… washing dishes. Just a chore that’d wet their hands.”

Apollonia Floros’s gaze returned to that distant place she had been staring at earlier, far from here and now.

“After ten deaths the raiders broke,” she said. “But they followed them back onto the ship, going down deck by deck and killing everyone.”

She paused.

“It was the old man that found me inside the barrel I’d hid in,” she said, unashamed at the admittance of cowardice. “For a moment I saw death in those eyes, Tredegar, death dealt as nonchalantly as biting into an apple, but then he held his hand. He asked in thick Antigua – how old are you?”

Floros shook her head, as if disbelieving even after all those years.

“Thirteen, I said. And without another word he walked away. By the time I had the courage to get out, I was alone on a ship of corpses save for another two deckhands. Brothers, eleven and thirteen.”

Her smile was rueful.

“Killing children was beneath them, you see.”

It had not been much of a mercy. Three deckhands left alone on a boat full of corpses they were too few to sail? Leviathan bait, even out in waters as peaceful as the Trebian Sea. No, this was the mercy of words exact. Pereduri to the bone. It was impressive, that Apollonia Floros has survived to tell her this tale, but not so much that Angharad would be distracted from the point of it all.

“Why tell me this?” she asked.

The door facing them opened. Lady Doukas stomped back into the room, the color gone from her cheeks. Apollonia Floros eyed the cultist with some disdain, then took a step closer and leaned towards Angharad’s ear.

“The only way to keep the madness from spreading beyond Tratheke is to kill the Ecclesiast, and I cannot,” she whispered. “But a mirror-dancer might.”

A heartbeat later she withdrew, patting herself down. Her sleeve covering her side. Angharad knew why: a handle had been pressed into her grasp, when Floros leaned over. The minister had handed her a knife.

“What did you learn, Your Excellency, to seem so pleased?” Lady Doukas mocked.

Apollonia Floros barely spared her a glance, stalking towards the door as if angry. She only paused at the threshold, gesturing at the traitor lictors.

“Two of you with me,” she ordered. “We live or die by the lifts, whatever Phaedros Arkol might say.”

She walked into the hall without checking if anyone was obeying. Heartbeats later, three of the four lictors in the room obeyed – there was a shuffle as they decided between them on who would go, Lady Doukas looking on with increasing anger. That made it two gifts Minister Floros had handed her: a way out of her bonds and a thinning of the guard.

Angharad, though, Angharad considered something else. Who is the beast’s head remains to be seen. Whatever Phaedros Arkol might say. Apollonia Floros did not know who the Ecclesiastes was, but then the minister was not of the Thirteenth Brigade. She has not hunted the cult the way Angharad’s cabal had.

And knowing what she did, details began to add up.

When Lord Arkol had told Petra Doukas to stop, she had obeyed. As if he were of higher standing than she, when she clearly thought little of Ambassador Gule who was one of the five heads. Petra Doukas was a priestess, so who might stand above her but another priest?

The sickle being used for everything had been found at the border of Arkol lands. Arkol household troops had followed the Fourth Brigade through their hunt of the Ladonite dragon, as if to ensure they did not find anything they shouldn’t. Phaedros Arkol’s closest friend was Lord Cordyles, a man even now attacking the Lordsport with his ships.

Phaedros Arkol owned the largest grain fields outside of Tratheke Valley. He would have the entire island by the throat, were the valley ruined by the rising of a great spirit.

The man had been at Cleon’s manor, that night when Lord Gule recruited her. And yet he had been back in the capital in time for the ceremony beneath the capital, never returning to his holdings out west. Everywhere the cult was found, Phaedros Arkol was close. The Ecclesiast was a noble, the Thirteenth had learned. A man, and from by his tastes from a wealthy house.

Ancestors, the Arkol heraldry was a pair of sickles and their ancestral lands were days away from a hidden temple to the Hated One.

Angharad breathed out, calmed herself. She had a target now, a head to collect. Whether Apollonia Floros meant to make use of her to solidify her hold on the coup was meaningless – the Watch did not take sides in such matters.

But it was blackcloak’s work to kill the Ecclesiast, and Angharad Tredegar had put on the cloak.

First, she must get Maryam out of the archives. Second, the two of them could put an end to the madness by putting the Ecclesiast’s head on a spike – because even if this was all reading into nothing, even if Angharad had guessed all wrong, there was no way that Lord Arkol could be ignorant of the inner workings of the cult. Not when their very founding had taken place in his backyard.

So she straightened, watching as Lady Doukas approached, and took in her surroundings. Two lictors, the priestess and a smirking Locke and Keys. She had only a knife and still could not move without a limp. Most people would die attempting to get out, she knew. Angharad doubted she would fare all differently, gambling it all on a chance.

But Angharad had more than one chance, so she met Petra Doukas’ eyes straight and glimpsed.

--

Song hit the ground at an angle, a wheeze slapped out of her lungs by the floor. Pain, but manageable. She had kept her spine and head out of the way so it was only with a dull throb that she rose into a kneel. Musket in hand, cocked, and she blinked.

Took it all in.

Evander belly-down on the ground, cheek carved into by Ai’s knife and bleeding into the dust. Otherwise unharmed, breathing. Ai had landed on her feet, stance wide, and the shell covered her entire front from head to toe. The painted hungry ghost mask leered back but through the eyeholes Song could see her gaze was on something to the left.

Alejandra Torrero, black-clad and face curdled from pulling on the Gloam, dismissing the last of the Sign that had torn through the floor. By her stood Tupoc Xical, grinning, his segmented spear tipped in candlesteel already being thrust at Ai.

As many to the right: Captain Wen Duan, aiming a blunderbuss thick as her arm with the same vaguely irritated look as always. Expendable, golden eyes gleaming beneath the rim of his hat, bringing up a spear of his own. Bait was not in the room. A cloud of dust and rotten wood had been kicked up by the impact.

Song breathed out and chaos broke loose, too quick for even her eyes to catch it all.

The blunderbuss thundered, spraying salt shot and iron balls as Wen’s thick arms took the kickback with barely any give. Some of the spray smashed into her leg, almost tripping her, but it failed to break through the shell. Before Wen could even lower his gun Ai was gone, leaving behind a mangled wall where the rest of the shot had hit brass.

The Yellow Earth contractor blurred, half a heartbeat later reaching for Alejandra’s throat, but when the tip of Tupoc’s spear sliced into her shoulder shell like it was butter she backpedaled in a panic. And panic she should, because if her shell was forced to drop by something going all the way through then she was a corpse. First weakness, Song counted as she rose to her feet with her musket at the ready: candlesteel.

Blink.

Ai was across the room, grabbing Expendable by the collar and bending her knees to toss him at Tupoc like a sack of flour – Song chose her moment, eyes unblinking through the spray of dust caused by Ai’s dash. She watched dark-skinned Velaphi fly, biting down on a scream of rage as he wrestled down his contract, and just when his body stood between Ai’s sight and Song she pulled the trigger.

Velaphi hit a table with a shout, splintering it. Song’s bullet hit Ai in the throat in the fraction of a moment before, just below the chin of the leering mask. Regular munition, as salt would help little: the contract had made it clear the shell was not manifest aether but a part of Ai’s body transmuted. The shot did not go through.

But there was a crack.

“Tupoc, get the Lord Rector out,” she shouted, tossing away her musket.

She drew her pistol.

Blink.

Xical, for all his flaws, held up his part of the bargain. He was already moving towards Evander, but then so was Ai – who looked disinclined to keep him prisoner if the alternative was losing him. Damn her for having forced Song to put him directly in the line of fire. The Watch had been meant to ambush her while she came in, not draw blades with Evander in killing distance. Thank the Gods that the Fourth had understood her code – cockroach, an insect with a shell, then striking the floor of the room to tell them which to burn through.

Song aimed her pistol but the angle was off, forcing her to hold the shit, and Wen drew a gleaming butterfly sword with his right hand. Ai was forced to hurriedly drop back to the floor because a shrieking, spinning arrow of Gloam tore through where she would have been had she not stopped. And Ai could not afford to be hit by Gloam, because her shell was not manifested aether: it was entirely material, and that meant Gloam would poison it.

Second weakness, Song counted as she aimed: Signs.

Tupoc grabbed a terrified Evander by the back of his doublet, dragging him up, and even as Ai pivoted so she could fully look at them through the eyeholes Song took half a step to the right so she would be just outside that arc.

“Alejandra,” Tupoc called out, “try the Ba-”

Song caught the movement from the corner of her eye, the musket rising as Expendable shot at the woman who’d thrown him clear across the room. And in that moment, when Ai twitched at the sound, she pulled the trigger as well. Ai moved out of Velaphi’s shot, letting it pass over her shoulder. Song’s bullet hit her in the throat, less than an inch away from the first.

The crack was louder this time. White patterns like spiderwebs spread across the impact. One more, Song thought feverishly. All I need is one more.

“Enough,” Ai snarled, voice distorted.

So, naturally, Captain Wen finished aiming a pistol with his left hand and shot her in the forehead. That was the final straw for the Yellow Earth contractor, who instead of going for Evander a third time rammed straight past Song – toppling her as she did, barely even trying, and smashed right through the door without batting an eye. No, no, no. Song ran after her, reloading her pistol as she moved.

From the hall she saw a lictor’s head get smashed into the wall hard enough it burst to pulp, but as she aimed at Ai the contractor blurred. Song pursued, lungs burning and wrist trembling. If she got out… As she turned the corner of the entrance she was forced to duck back, the tough from earlier tossed at her – with the handle of her cudgel rammed into her eye. She tackled aside the dying woman, stumbling into the antechamber and aiming at the front door just as Ai burst through it.

A clear shot at the back of her head, Song thought. An expanse of black hair with not a whit of shell in the way. She aimed, pulled and –

“Fuck,” Song snarled as Ai slammed the door behind her and the wood ate the shot.

Moments later she was there, kicking it open, but Ai was out in the street and Song stopped to cough. The air was thick, pungent.

And a pale, heavy mist was thickening in the street ahead.

In the distance Ai shouted something in what sounded like Cathayan, a man’s voice replying. Wen Duna elbowed her out of the way, joining her on the threshold.

“She has reinforcements,” Captain Wen noted.

“It’s worse than that,” Song said. “Prick your ear - what do you hear?”

Wen cocked his head to the side.

“Nothing,” he said, then his face turned grim. “Shit.”

He had been quick to catch on. Song was also hearing nothing, which was an issue because tonight the Antediluvian device with the spinning blades was being particularly loud.

Meaning the Yellow Earth had shut it down and the pale mist rolling down the street was about to turn this entire district into a blind shooting alley.

--

In a picaresca, the clever rogue whose adventures were the heart of the story often tossed out a line or two about how the harsh streets of Sacromonte had taught them to fight at disadvantage. Sometimes, when a hack got their hands on a printing press, it was a whole speech. Tristan had read two different takes on such an address.

It was how you knew those books were not the work of any rat.

Fight at a disadvantage? Gods, what pretentious idiocy. You didn’t fight on bad odds, you ran. You hid. Even on good odds it was better not to fight, because no matter if you won getting hurt still took you off the street for a time, ate at your savings – assuming you could afford a sawbones that wouldn’t make a mess of things. Wound cost coin, cost time, and all it took was a little ill luck for you to be stuck with a limp or a bad eye for the rest of your life.

The fundamental assumption behind there being some worth to heroically overcoming odds in a fight was that the victory would yield something, that it would be respected. It was a noble’s way of seeing the world, assuming that your blood and toil would mean something to others – that anything besides a wall could ever have your back. Rats knew better. Or they should, at least.

But tonight was a night for follies, so Tristan opened his bout with the Nineteenth Brigade by striking a match.

The wick caught and fire snaked down into the pottery shell known as a feng chen pao – a ‘wind and dust bomb’, to translate from Cathayan. Tristan waited for the telltale sign of the Tianxi munition having caught fully, a twitch against his hand, then tossed the clay pot at the stairwell wall. There was a shout of alarm from below – Izel – and thick white smoke billowed out in a storm. A woman’s voice shouted for someone to put out the still-burning powder charge and Tristan backed away from the head of the stairs even as smoke charged out and someone fired blindly into the mess.

“-need him alive,” Captain Tozi snarled.

Ten seconds, at most, before they moved up the stairs. Tristan counted down, ears pricked, as he pulled out a lighting stick. Little more than dry wood treated to catch flame easy at the end. He pressed himself against the threshold of the bedroom, a second match pressed against the side of the lighting stick. Ready for a scratch. Whoever it was that came up, they took pains to be quiet. Tristan did not, in fact, hear them.

Until they slipped on the oil-slick stairs anyway.

A shout, the voice deep enough this out to be Kiran Agrawal, and Tristan waited until he heard the knock of limb on wood. And a flat sound, palms hitting the floor with bare flesh. One.

There was shuffling and shouting in the stairs, someone helping Kiran back up as he shouted about the stairs being slippery. Tozi would realize that oil was mixed with hemlock given enough time, so best to give her something else to think about. Tristan waited another second to be certain, then struck the match – the trail caught on the lighting stick, burning bright, and without a word Tristan tossed it across the hall.

It landed right in the oiled-up steps the Nineteenth was climbing.

Screams ensued, the sudden flame bright enough that even through the smoke Tristan could make out Kiran Agrawal dropping his spear as he stumbled down the stairs, falling into someone, and Tozi Poloko desperately stamping down at the ground. He’d not put enough oil for that to last long, sadly, though the fumes it emitted would be slightly poisonous if inhaled.

“-round,” Cressida Barboza said. “Bottle him in. We don’t need the compass we just need him stuck in here until he’s out of tricks.”

Ah, Cressida. You ought to know by now that the great sin of viciousness is that it’s so very predictable. She meant toflank him through the hole in the roof, the same he had come in through. Would she fall for the trap? Half and half odds. Either way, he had more pressing than her to manage – he checked on the bag above the door, the salve keeping it glued to the wood and the string he’d arranged. He’d get one with that, if he was lucky. For the last, well…

Tristan glanced down at his sheathed. The concentration of hemlock in the coating he’d dipped it in earlier was quite violent. It needed to be, for a simple cut to be able to kill someone.

He pressed himself against the wall, to the left of the door, and kept his knife in one hand while the other held the end of the string.

The first sound came not from those creeping up the stairs but from outside, through the roof. A shout of pain. Cressida had found the caltrops, it seemed, and the hard way at that. Two dosed, he counted. Tristan kept his breath low and focused, pricked his ear. He caught a slice of a whisper, out in the hall, and resisted the urge to pull the string. Not yet. Movement below caught his eye.

The tip of Kiran’s spear was feeling out the length of the threshold, looking for a string trap. Clever, if not quite clever enough. It withdrew and the thief breathed in shallowly.

“Now,” Tozi ordered.

Forcing down his fear, he waited a full second before pulling the string. Tozi rushed in first, Izel close behind her, and it was when the latter crossed that the bag finished opening, spilling out a cloud of powdered hemlock.

“Poison,” Captain Tozi shouted, throwing herself to the floor.

Tristan watched, eyes calm, as Izel waited a second too long. Shouted in dismay, and in doing so sucked in a streak of powder. Three. Now all that was left was- a blur of movement, Kiran Agrawal tearing through the doorway with cold fury on his face. Tristan caught a glimpse of light on steel, the spear blurring as the shaft caught him in the ribs and he wheezed in pain. So quick. The thief backpedaled, but making room was even worse.

The spear tip cut into the side of his leg to a hiss of pain, and Tristan knew the fight was lost. Had been from the start, for the man was a Skiritai. But Tozi was still on the floor, covering herself with a black cloak to keep the powder off her as she crawled away, and that was a target. The thief palmed his knife and threw it.

It bounced off the floor, short, because Kiran Agrawal saw fit to interrupt the throw with a smack to the arm. But, Manes smiling on him, the sound of metal on wood had Tozi moving to cover her face with her hands – and in doing, so, she cut herself against the blade.

And that’s four, Tristan counted, just before Kiran’s spear hammered against his shoulder and smashed him down onto the floor.

He went down and did not fight further, but the Someshwari had a rage in him – Tristan took a blow to the back, to the ribs, and then one to the head that had him seeing stars. Someone kicked him over, and as he flopped onto his back with a gasp of pain. He was held down while others shed clothes, and by the time he could focus again it was to the sight of Cressida coming into the room with a cold look and a leather bag slung over her shoulder. She had a bandage wrapped around her left hand/

A startlingly half-naked Tozi held a blade to his throat while Izel tied his wrists, the thief letting out a small laugh at how it had all gone down.

“Keep that up, Abrascal,” Kiran growled. “See if I won’t beat that smile off your face.”

Dear Kiran, he now saw, had burns all over his right forearm. Bad ones, too. He must have been holding onto the stairs when they caught fire.

“That’s not secure,” Cressida told the others, dropping her back. “His legs too.”

“I could break them,” Kiran offered with an eager look.

Tozi spat to the side.

“Enough,” she said. “If you break whatever interests the Library then we’re all in the deeps. Cressida, what do you have?”

Cressida Barboza opened her back, revealing rows and rows of vials and bundled herbs. As was only to be expected, since she was a student of Hage in matters of poison.

“There is no antidote for hemlock,” Cressida briskly said. “Which will be why he chose it. But it’s only a middling contact poison and it often kills by stopping your breath.”

The Mask took out a bottle of small black balls, then another of pills.

“Three-herb pills for the lungs, charcoal pellets to dilute the poison,” she said, then paused. “It might not be a bad idea to induce vomiting in all of us first, then take them.”

“Then we will,” Tozi croaked out.

Kiran, who while Tristan stared in a daze had moved to one of the water barrels, paused with his burned hand held above it.

“Captain?”

The Izcalli walked over, snatched up a cup from the set next to the other barrel and filled it before bringing it most of the way to her lips. She paused at the last moment.

“You’re fine,” she said, emptying the cup back in the barrel. “Still hemlock but my contract did not refresh.”

Tristan cocked his head to the side. Oh, that was new. Tozi tested the other barrel to the same result, then turned to level a smirk on him.

“It was clever, using the same poison,” she told him. “Song must be a very fine sniffer to have gotten you this far. But even if the death is the same cause, my contract thrums every time the precise manner of it changes – like drinking poisoned water, for example.”

Tristan closed his eyes, sighed. Ah. He’d not anticipated that. There were always quirks to contracts, that was true, and they need not be put to the text.

“He would have had to empty half a forest of hemlock, to poison a barrel this size,” Cressida noted absent-mindedly. “There are several liters in there.”

“You won’t get us with your poison, Abrascal,” Kiran bit out as he dipped his burned arm in the water. “And if I felt myself die, I assure you I’d slit your misbegotten throat first.”

“None of that,” Izel coughed out.

He was half-naked too, save for his bindings, and joined Kiran at the barrel to rinse himself. The Someshwari shot him an irritated look.

“Just because you pity-”

“I’ll not see you murder an unarmed prisoner while I can still hold that,” Izel calmly said, tapping at the ornate roundhead mace on his belt. “Poison or no. That is not an argument, I am telling you a fact.”

“Enough,” Tozi cut in. “We don’t have time to bicker – first we deal with the poison, then we send him to the Lordsport.”

Tristan watched, almost drowsy in the corner, as they went through the motions. First they washed themselves thoroughly, free of his powders and extracts, then made themselves vomit in the corner. They rinsed their mouths before taking Cressida’s goods, the charcoal and the Tianxi breathing pills, added to her recommendation of drinking as much as possible. It must have taken more than ten minutes all in all, and only after putting on fresh clothes.

He stayed put the whole time, staring at the wall. He made a point of not studying them, still half in a daze.

“So you found out,” Tozi Poloko said, suddenly standing over him with her arms crossed.

“You weren’t as subtle as you thought,” he replied.

“Neither were you,” Tozi said. “Else you’d not be tied up.”

She leaned forward, frowning down at him.

“Who else knows?”

“Does anyone else know?” he replied with a winning smile.

Grim faces all around.

“I’ve said before-” Izel began.

It was not Kiran that cut him off this time but Tozi.

“You want to change tack now?” she asked incredulously. “When we finally have him?”

“Yes,” Izel flatly replied. “It is our last chance, Tozi.”

That set her off, Tristan noted. Though a head shorter than Izel, she almost loomed above the Tinker when she stalked up to him and jabbed a finger at his chest.

“I’ve had enough of you, Coyac,” she snarled. “At every step you gainsay, like you’re not in just as deep as I am. You think they won’t come for you, if the Library stops protecting your ungrateful hide? That the little p-”

“So we go to the Watch,” Izel interrupted. “Properly, this time.”

“We’re not worth the trouble we bring to the rooks, you idiot,” Tozi said. “We pay our debts to the Ivory Library or we disappear, it’s that simple.”

“Did you really choose to put on the black,” Izel asked, “so we could sell other blackcloaks as specimens?”

Tristan eyed Cressida. Yes, about that long. Izel held up his hands, as it looked like Tozi was about to strike him, but that wasn’t it at all: she was crumpling on him.

“What?” he said, slurring the word as he looked around.

He found Kiran crumpled in a corner, and Cressida slumped over her own bag of poisons.

“What is this?

“That would be the Spinster’s Milk,” Tristan said. “I dumped a vial into each water barrel, you see.”

It was why Kiran had fallen first even though he was larger than Tozi and Cressida: he’d dipped his burned arm in the barrel for quite some time. For the others, Tristan had been forced to ensure different wounds that would need washing on top of washing in general – Spinster’s Milk was a poor contact poison, it needed ingesting. But then he’d chosen to use smoke and fire for that reason as well.

People drank water, after inhaling smoke. That they’d made themselves throw up and cleaned the taste out of their mouths had been an unexpected windfall. Izel took a step towards him but his legs were shaking. He tripped, fell flat on his belly.

“It’s not lethal, you see,” the thief continued. “So Tozi’s contract would not warn her about it, certainly not when she had just ingested a dangerous amount of hemlock.”

Izel stilled, laid out on the floor. A long moment passed, then Tristan allowed the tenseness in his shoulders to loosen.

Now, to get out of these ropes.