Chapter 9

Chapter 9

They’d not left the campsite for half an hour before it got worse.

“We agreed to pool our men together, Ferranda,” Augusto Cerdan shouted. “You would go back on your word?”

“I gave no word,” Lady Ferranda Villazur evenly replied, “and go back on nothing. If you assumed, Cerdan, that is on your head alone.”

The eldest of the Cerdan brothers was the one barking the loudest but he was not the one Angharad was wary of. Twice now Remund had tried to catch Cozme Aflor’s eye, to give him a silent order, and only the retainer’s obstinate pretence he had not noticed was preventing that disaster in the making. Isabel had retreated behind her maids, wisely so, but the rest of the infanzones were at each other’s throats: Lady Ferranda and her hired huntsman Sanale standing on one side, the Cerdans and their retainers on the other.

The Cerdan valet, Gascon, had pulled a pistol out of his blue-and-red livery and his impressive moustache bristled with his masters’ anger. Lord Augusto had not drawn his sword, for all the red flush of his face, but his younger brother’s left hand was kept under his cloak and to Angharad’s eye the stance spoke of his holding either a pistol or a knife. Master Cozme, the real fighter of the lot, had pointedly refrained from reaching for a weapon but Lady Ferranda still kept a hand on the grip of the slender sword at her hip. She must be feeling the weight of the numbers arrayed against her.

“Turn on us now and we will remember it, Villazur,” Remund sneered. “It is all of your house that will feel the displeasure of the Cerdan.”

Angharad’s teeth clenched. That, she thought, was a step too far. By the open disgust on Song’s face and the blankness on Brun’s, she was not the only one to think as much. Lady Ferranda’s eyes went cold.

“Watch your tongue, you viperous brat,” she said. “If you threaten my kin again, I swear by the Manes there will be blood.”

Remund smiled, triumph in his eyes.

“See, I told you she was against us,” the Cerdan announced to all. “For all we know she was the one who killed that Tianxi peasant. What if she comes back to attack us in the night? We can’t afford to let her loose.”

Angharad had been reluctant to step in, for the affairs of the infanzones were theirs to settle, but when Remund’s claim was answered by the sound of Ferranda Villazur unsheathing her rapier she knew the time for such courtesy was past. She cleared her throat, shoulders tensing.

“You have made a grave accusation, Lord Remund,” Angharad stated. “Kindly either prove or withdraw it.”

The infanzon’s dark eyes swept the crowd, but as he did his face reddened. The Cerdan had made few friends and none now cared to back the youngest’s wild accusation. Remund tugged at his blue doublet’s high collar, nervousness seeping into his eyes as it sunk in he might be short of defenders.

“You are here at our sufferance, Tredegar,” he began. “You-”

Brun took a measured step closer to Angharad’s side, hand on his hatchet. The sight of it had Remund trailing off.

“I would like to hear your proof as well, Lord Remund,” Brun said.

The weight of Song’s silver eyes burned against the side of Angharad’s face for a long moment, before the Tianxi idly took a step closer to them both. She did not reach for her musket but the implication was clear.

“My brother spoke in anger and shamed himself,” Augusto Cerdan suddenly cut in. “He never meant to impugn Lady Ferranda’s reputation.”

Remund’s face twisted in fury, as much turned on his now-smiling brother as Angharad herself. She met his gaze, unimpressed. Though it was true that the company assembled at the beginning of the trial had ended, and so the oath not to do violence on one another as well, Lady Ferranda had given them no reason to bare steel.

“Do you withdraw your accusation, Remund?” the fair-haired Villazur bit out.

Movement to the side as Isabel strode past her maids, shaking her head.

“Of course he does, Ferranda, do not be silly,” Isabel said. “You know how men’s tempers are, he was only angered you would leave us so. I’m sure he is most sorry.”

A pause.

“Naturally,” Remund said, after a beat. “It is as Isabel says.”

And so, Angharad noted, he was spared from having to recant and apologize with his own words. Cleverly done, if Isabel’s intent was to spare him further humiliation, but the Pereduri’s lips thinned. One’s honour should not be left in another’s hands. The ploy reminded her all too much of the tales Mother had told her of the High Queen’s court, of courtiers confessing to the misdeeds of their izinduna patrons so that those hallowed personages’ honour would not be stained. It was a base sort of cleverness, one she had not expected of Isabel. She is only trying to keep the peace, Angharad decided. That is a laudable thing.

“Then we have nothing else to say to each other,” Lady Ferranda stiffly replied, sheathing her blade. “It is best we part ways swiftly.”

“If you prefer,” Augusto Cerdan shrugged. “A shame Remund’s manners were so poor as to drive you away.”

Angharad’s jaw clenched. Was there anything in all of Vesper that would have the brothers cease pricking one another? Ferranda bad curt goodbyes to her fellow infanzones, even to Isabel, and ignored their attendants entirely. She grew warmer only when coming over towards the others, kindly bidding farewell to Song and Brun before turning to Angharad herself.

“Your help was most appreciated, my lady,” Ferranda said, laying hand on her heart and bowing slightly.

Angharad was not familiar with the gesture but mimicked it easily enough.

“It was nothing,” she replied.

“It was not,” Ferranda firmly said, “and I will not forget it. I hope we may meet again come the Trial of Ruins and share a road for a time.”

“I look forward to it,” Angharad said, meaning every word, but cocked her heat to the side. “I mean no slight, but are you quite certain you two should set out alone?”

“I have long prepared for these trials, my lady,” the other woman said. “Believe me when I say I am certain indeed.”

“Then I will not wish you luck you ill need,” Angharad smiled, “but may the God’s blessing go with you.”

Ferranda looked startled.

“You are a Universalist?”

“As are most Pereduri,” Angharad agreed. “The Redeemers never made many converts among us.”

The faiths might have the same source and believe in the same Sleeping God, but the hardline beliefs of the Redeemers had always made her uncomfortable. Their insistence that Vesper was the test of the God and he gave neither blessing nor succour, that devils and hollows were inherent instruments of evil, struck her as wretched. The Universalist creed, that the Sleeping God had divided himself into all save devils and all would return to him when he woke to be judged for their deeds, felt like a kinder and deeper truth.

Not that a Sacromontan would know much of either creed. Their city was in the old heartlands of the Second Empire, the cradle of the Orthodoxy. The Lierganen had spread their faith far and wide, converting most of the known world, but since Malan had been only a distant province of the empire it had been spared the imposition of the imperial creed. Not that the Orthodoxy was so orthodox, these days. Tianxia and the Someshwar both claimed to be the seat of the faith since the fall of Tarteso, occasionally going to war over it.

“I should have guessed from the lack of haughty sermons,” Ferranda snorted, but her amusement soon faded.

It was replaced by a flicker of hesitation before the blonde’s expression firmed.

“A word of warning,” she spoke in a whisper. “Isabel has already lost what she came to this island for, and will now look to other prizes.”

“I do not understand,” Angharad frowned.

“You are not a choice she ever intends to make,” Lady Ferranda said, not unkindly.

Without further ceremony, the other woman offered her a nod and decisively broke away. Angharad was left trying not to gape, as much from her flirtation with Isabel having been caught on to as by how out of the black the warning was. And unnecessary. She hardly expected marriage out of a liaison that had yet to even begin and had not even found it in her to daydream of being joined in the Watch by the lovely infanzona. Isabel did not seem well-suited to such a life. No, their affair – should it bloom - would end with the trials and remain only a fond memory. It was kind of Lady Ferranda to try to protect her feelings, but she had no undue expectations to be wounded by. Angharad was still wrestling with the suddenness of it all when Song and Brun joined her.

“A very polite woman,” Brun said, glancing at the departing pair.

He sounded approving. Lady Ferranda and her hired man were heading east, Angharad saw, towards the road that supposedly led all the way to the mountains and the second trial awaiting within them. The Trial of Ruins, it was called. The Cerdans had several times implied it was some sort of maze.

“And clever,” Song mused. “She waited until everyone else was gone to part ways with us.”

Angharad glanced at her.

“You believe she wants others to think she is still with our group,” she slowly said.

“A lone pair would be vulnerable,” Song said. “But less so if no one knows they went off on their own.”

Vulnerable to who, Angharad could have asked, but she knew the answer. She simply did not want to consider it.

“Then you suspect, as she must, that the murderer did not act alone,” she murmured. “That there are those among us who would hunt other trial-takers.”

“I suspect the same,” Brun frankly said. “And while I have no proof, it occurs to me that Tupoc Xical was pleased our great company parted ways on such poor terms.”

“He also went hard after that man Tristan,” Song noted. “Not without grounds, but it did feed the fires just when they were beginning to cool.”

Angharad grimaced. She was not unaware she had acted poorly there, also casting the blame on the apprentice physician. It was only sensible that when an oath-breaking killing was had one should look at where honour had proved loosest, but she could admit to herself that was not the sole reason she’d spoken. It had been so deeply embarrassing, to find the man she’d thought a kind soul standing over a beaten woman with a debt collector’s weapon in hand. It’d felt like he had taken advantage of her, back on the ship, and wounded pride had moved her lips. Her father had always admonished her over lessons of law, saying that justice could spring only from clear mind and cold heart.

Would that she had listened to him, instead of laughing that she would find a wife to run Llanw Hall’s estate for her just as Mother had found a husband. She could not quite shake the Sacromontan’s sharp retort. You are attempting to do me violence right now, he had said, and had he been wrong? Angharad had not bared a blade but an accusation before the others was almost as dangerous. It gnawed at her, that while respecting the letter of her oath she might well have violated the spirit. And for wounded pride, of all things. She had felt guilty enough to accept when Isabel brought up the notion of keeping the physician in the fold.

“I added to the flames myself,” Angharad admitted. “It was ill-done, and I do not know if I owe him apology but there should be some redress.”

Another debt to mark, one of the many she seemed to be accruing these days. Like a drunken vagrant, she racked up accounts wherever she drifted to. What she would not give to be home again, where it had all made sense and her life had been a well-lit road ahead of her instead of the darkened trail she was now stumbling down.

“I would not say he’s earned so much,” Song said, “but that is your decision to make.”

Angharad sighed, forcing herself to set aside the pointless thoughts.

“Tupoc is dangerous,” she finally agreed. “He recruited fighters for a reason, and though I do not know whether he would hunt others outright I do not believe he would balk at violence should he meet us.”

“They went east, towards the woods,” Brun said. “Of all the groups we should be the least likely to run into his.”

It was an effort not to cough in embarrassment, but Angharad was not a girl and she had played this game before. Being smitten would only keep her on the backfoot for so long.

“You should have sent for me, then,” she lightly replied. “Should it not be my duty to help you put it on?”

Isabel’s green eyes glittered with amusement, but small fingers pinched Angharad’s side through her coat.

“Bold,” the infanzona half-heartedly chided.

“If that is your request,” Angharad drawled back, “I will endeavour to deliver.”

Isabel’s lips quirked.

“I had thought to offer you a walk with me tonight,” she said, “but I begin to think I would be courting danger.”

Angharad met her eyes, offering a roguish smile.

“Somehow I don’t think you’d mind a taste of... danger.”

Isabel’s cheeks pinkened, eyes widening, and she shyly looked away. It had been so very worth it to learn that smile after Thalente Cindi used it to get her into bed, Angharad mused and not for the first time either. Father had once caught her practicing it in the mirror, which had been mortifying, but not as much as the way he’d then given her advice about perfecting it. Surprisingly good advice, too, which had led her to suspect Mother might not have been as much the pursuer in that courtship as she’d always claimed. The sudden realization that she would never again speak with her father, that never again would she see Mother kiss his neck in affection as they talked of this and that, hit her like a shot in the belly.

She swallowed thickly, Isabel turning to shoot her a concerned glance at the sound. Angharad forced calm upon herself, setting aside the grief. She could not let the past catch up to her, lest it swallow her whole. Forward, ever forward until she took her revenge and at last she could allow herself to weep.

“Are you quite all right?” Isabel softly asked.

“I... miss my home,” Angharad finally replied, keeping to a truth exact. “It would be difficult to return.”

Isabel found her hand and squeezed it comfortingly.

“Difficulty does not last forever,” the infanzona said, then her voice became cadenced. “All things come and go, all that was will be: a closed circle is without end.”

Orthodoxy words, but kind ones. She took what little comfort there was to find within them, gaze returning to Remund Cerdan as he finished the last of his work. He’d climbed up, needing to draw the circles of light with his fingers, and was now a single one away from reaching the top of the aqueduct. His valet Gascon was holding up a lantern from below, its lights revealing a sight that had Angharad going utterly still. Remund’s skin was pale as milk, and for a disgusted heartbeat she thought the man had hollowed, turned into a darkling, but it was not so. His movements were oddly stiff and she realized that his skin was no longer skin at all: it was as if it’d turned into ivory. Even his eyes had gone pale. The noblewoman shivered in discomfort at the sight.

“It is not pretty,” Isabel quietly agreed. “The Tiller-of-Rectitude has twisted tastes, for all that his boons are powerful.”

“Is he a Mane?” Angharad asked in a whisper.

Isabel chuckled.

“No, nothing so impressive,” the dark-haired beauty replied. “He is a temple god, though, revered enough to have his built in the Old Alcazar. It was a coup for Remund to attract his attention.”

The work now finished, said Cerdan climbed atop the High Road and disappeared into the dark, perhaps hoping he had not been seen. His older brother directed the servants to begin bringing up the bags, Gascon and the Ruesta handmaids taking turns to bring up clothes. They covered their hands with washcloths to avoid being burned, the clumsiness it entailed slowing down the work even further. Angharad and Isabel reluctantly parted ways when her time came, the infanzona pulling on fitted leather gloves to help her on her way up. Up there she began to chat with Remund, one of her maids at her side to take up the bags the other one brought up.

With about half the work done, Brun was sent up with his own affairs and Song pulled from guard duty for the same at Isabel’s own suggestion. A courtesy, Angharad decided, meant, meant to soothe away the resentment the high-handed manners of the Cerdan had brought. Angharad went to keep Master Cozme company, less than interested in watching Augusto Cerdan pettily ensure that his own bags were brought up by the servants before his brother’s, and found him sitting on a stone as he kept an eye on the plains around them.

The lantern’s cast only went so far, but out here the lights of firmament lent an eye in a way they had not out in the woods. The cold light of cycling stars, those great Antediluvian wonders, shone like handfuls of diamonds sown in a sea of dark. Yet for all their beauty it was the crescent bite of the southern moons, slices of Glare bled out by faults in the machineries of firmament, that navigators set their courses by. Unlike the stars, they did not move with the passing of years – though unseen ebb and flows dictated the strength of their light.

“Almost done?” Cozme idly asked.

She glanced back.

“Still more than a third of the bags left,” Angharad said. “Mostly supplies. Lady Isabel’s bags were brought up first.”

Unsurprisingly, given that Lord Augusto had been deciding the order. He was still down there with the dark-haired maid and his valet, enjoying the exercise of authority.

“Of course they were,” Cozme Aflor sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “At least with Mistress Song up there we have-”

A shout interrupted him, both their gazes immediately drawn by the sound. Song was gesturing wildly, pointing to their left. Cozme was on his feet in a heartbeat, pistol drawn, and Angharad reached for her saber – yet there was nothing there. Was had the Tianxi seen?

“What in the Manes is she shouting about?” Cozme muttered, picking up his lantern.

Fiddling with the shutter to open it wider, he let out a curse when it jammed and began pulling at it. Song shouted again.

“-RUN!”

The shutter suddenly jerked open, light leaping forward and revealing a dazed lupine three feet away where there’d been thin air a heartbeat earlier. Angharad’s arm moved even as her mind froze, slicing through the lemure’s eyes. The creature whimpered, just before Cozme fired behind her and she turned just long enough to see another lupine’s brains splatter the grass. It was then she finally caught sight of them: strands of shadow on the green, slithering unseen towards them. She barely began to count before ceasing in blind dread: there were dozens, maybe even a hundred, converging from all sides. The Pereduri seized her panic before it could seize her, ripping the lantern out of Cozme’s hands.

He cursed, but she was already throwing it behind them. As the light whirled it ripped away the veil hiding the lupines behind them, dazing them for a moment as it had the others.

“Run,” she hissed, and they did.

She broke into a sprint, hacking blindly when something snapped at her heels, and saw Cozme’s wide-brimmed hat fly off when he turned to cut at burning yellow eyes. They were soon at the lantern she’d thrown, howls erupting behind them as the pack emerged from nothingness and ahead she saw one of Isabel’s maids going up the rings of solid light, the valet right behind her, screaming as she burned her hands in her hurry. The distraction cost her, Angharad’s foot slipping on the grass, but Cozme caught her arm and kept her standing. A shot sounded from the top of the aqueduct, the lantern behind them exploding in a ball of pale fire whose blooming light had the lemures yelping in pain.

They did not waste Song’s gift, running the last of the way hard enough their legs burned. Angharad almost slipped into the mud when she reached the ground by the last of the bags, supplies she knew they would have to abandon. Already Lord Augusto was climbing up his brother’s rings, shouting for his valet to hurry, and there was just enough room for another to begin going after him. Angharad and Cozme traded a look for a heartbeat, then she gestured for him to go. She would have slipped out there, if not for his help. That debt at least she could repay. She turned to face the onslaught, blade in hand, and breathed out slowly.

The light of abandoned lanterns laid out a ghostly ring for her, the darkness beyond just thin enough that when whatever greater power had veiled the lupines released its hold she saw the horde entire. A dozen slowly circling around her, eyeing the black ichor still staining her blade, and twice as many spreading around. She saw it then, the monster behind it all. She would have thought it a hill on the horizon, if it had not moved. Large as a carriage, the wolf-like lemure leaned heavily on its too-large front legs, the great maw seton its eyeless face filled with teeth like razor blades. The horror, though, did not lay there: it was covered in bulbous cysts and open wounds, trailing from all of them a foul black pus that the lupines came close to lick as if it were to them mother’s milk.

Shadow shivered down their fur when they did, melding them with the dark, and Angharad retched at the sight. Her disgust was forced aside when fear stole its place, her wandering gaze enough to incite the lemures to attack. The yellow-eyed monsters charged a dozen all at once, bone stingers rattling up a storm as they ran. Shots rang from above, downing two while the other balls missed, but Angharad kept her eyes on the enemy. Going still, she glimpsed ahead.

(It leapt up, tearing out her throat as another hamstrung her and the rest barrelled into her corpse)

Crouching down without missing a beat, she let the lupine fall into the mud as she carved through the muzzle of the one to her left. Pivoting on herself to rise back to her full height, she stole another glimpse.

(Claws into her back, snapping at her heels from behind, a mass like a tide tipping her over.)

Precision in all things, she told herself. So the wasp kills the lion. Measured movement, using her pivot to stumble back so the lupine clawing at her back instead stumbled into the one crawling out of the mud to bite at her heels. Hands high, shifting the weight so she could steal her footing back in time to slash at the muzzle of the first lupine in the tide. It was chaos after that, too fast and brutal for glimpsing. Claws tore at her side, through coat and shirt, and she smashed a skull with her saber’s pommel and hacked into another enemy’s flank. Another few shots from above, and another from closer: Cozme had reloaded while climbing.

And just as suddenly as it had come the tide withdrew, lupine corpses strewn all over the ring of light as the survivors fled back to the safety of the dark. Angharad, panting, felt the foul mixture of blood, sweat and ichor slide down her skin. Already another pack was gathering, and larger.

“Climb,” Isabel called out. “Before it is too late.”

Not eager for another melee she was unlikely to survive, the Pereduri moved towards the rings. She could tell immediately, though, that it wouldn’t be enough. Gascon was near the summit, but the valet had dropped the cloth that covered his hands and his fingers were covered with black burns, his eyes red with tears. Lord Augusto had half-climbed with him but couldn’t go ahead, not when the rings could not support the weight of two men, and though Angharad could squeeze close to Cozme it would leave her a mere handful of feet above the ground. The lupines would drag her down in moments. Song shot her musket again, blowing up a lantern in a burst of pale flame to scatter the gathering pack.

Only two left.

“A rope,” Angharad shouted. “Thrown down a rope, we’ll climb up the side.”

“Then they’ll stop shooting to cover us, you fool,” Augusto shouted.

But Brun, the God bless him, listened to her instead of the Cerdan. Within moments he was dangling a rope off the edge, and though it would need a leap to catch it Angharad would not miss. She glimpsed, saw herself falling short, and adjusted the angle. She had as many chances as she would need.

Song shot again, another lantern buying them precious time.

“Shit,” Cozme swore, looking back. “The large one is coming. Can the rope handle both of us?”

If that creature came, Cozme wouldn’t be high enough for safety either.

“Isabel,” Angharad screamed. “You and your maids, help Brun.”

Four people on the rope, would it be enough? They would have to risk it.

“It should,” Angharad said with certainty she did not feel. “I’ll go first, try to catch you.”

Another shot, the last lantern went and she breathed out. The light faded and the pack thundered against the ground, racing forward. Time to- there was a scream, above, and Angharad’s breath caught as she watched Augusto Cerdan twist the knife he had rammed into his valet’s back, throwing the weeping older man down. With a shout of triumph the infanzon climbed up to safety, Cozme close behind. Angharad looked back for a heartbeat, seeing a lupine’s jaw close around Gascon’s face, and felt something well up in her. She followed behind Cozme, the ring of lights winking out behind her, and though one of the lemures leapt up just in time to almost catch her boot she got away in time.

Few even tried to reach her, the pack falling on Gascon like ravenous hounds and tearing him apart.

Taking Song’s hand and letting herself be pulled up atop the aqueduct, Angharad let out a shaky breath. But she was not done, not yet. She wiped her blade clean on the side of her trousers and sheathed it, then turned her eyes on the knot of worried-looking infanzones. Even as the pack howled below them, prowling at the feet of the arches like hungry dogs, Angharad strode forward. Cozme caught the look on her face and moved in her way, but she sidestepped him and struck as hard as she could: her palm caught Augusto Cerdan on the cheek, hard enough he fell to the ground. She heard the cock of a pistol being pointed at her back but ignored him as everyone began to shout, unsheathing her saber.

As fury and fear warred over the eldest Cerdan’s face, she tossed the empty scabbard at his feet.

“Have you gone mad?” he began. “I’ll-”

“Augusto Cerdan,” she cut through with icy calm, “I name you a disgrace in the eyes of all who see, a coward without honour. Pick up this sheath and duel me once peril passes, or let your heart serve in its stead.”

The challenge was delivered in clean, crisp Antigua and laid out the two choices that lay before the craven traitor. He could either let her execute him for his deeds, here and now, or pick up the scabbard and accept a duel when they reached safety. Cozme still had a pistol pointed at her back, but Angharad did not flinch as she met the traitor infanzon’s dark eyes. She could not see behind her, where the honour of the others might have fallen, but the demands of her own were beyond dispute. A long moment passed, all their lives resting on the Sleeping God’s breath as the lupines howled all around, until finally Augusto Cerdan moved.

He picked up the sheath and the slower of his two deaths with it.