Chapter 25

Chapter 25

It was a grim supper.

After the day’s bloody price none were in a chatting mood and Angharad discreetly asked Song to stay close to Zenzele, lest he lose his temper and strike another again. Felis had been acting tastelessly enough that none had made a fuss over the brawl, but if the Malani had to be dragged out of another scrap she suspected sympathy would wane. Isabel, who sat by her side as they dug into their plates of salted pork, biscuits and peas, leaned close.

“Only one victor for Lord Ishaan’s crew,” she murmured. “And there appear to be some recriminations over the results.”

She was right, Angharad saw. Lady Ferranda and Acanthe Phos were arguing, however quietly, while Ishaan Nair attempted to play peacemaker. The others only watched.

“We have our own troubles,” Angharad finally said. “Best to leave them to their own.”

She was the only leader to have brought back a corpse as well as victors, which would make her singularly unsuited to poaching even if she were of such a mind. Which she was not.

“Not so great as that,” Isabel said. “Lord Zenzele is grieving, as is only proper, but who has spoken to you of leaving?”

No one, so far, but they had not been back for long. They would see. It was draining, to have to consider all that. Life had been so much simpler when she was but a duelist on the circuit, her rule of Llanw Hall a distant thing Father still had decades to prepare her for. Her mother had been a lady and a captain, so authority was in her blood, but she did not think is came as naturally to her. Would Mother have always taken charge if she found it out as exhausting as Angharad did? She had her doubts.

Someone staring at her, but when she turned Remund was speaking with Cozme. Strange.

After the meal they lingered at the table a little longer, expectant looks sent her way, but Angharad had no clever plan to dazzle them with. She told them to rest and prepare, receiving only nods in return, and they went their own way. Cozme Aflor, however, sought her out after the others were gone. He made small talk at first but kept pulling at his beard and hardly met Angharad’s eyes. Eventually he came out with the reason he had approached her in the first place.

“Lord Zenzele is not so wounded that he cannot come tomorrow,” he said. “The Watch physician said the cuts on his back required no stitches, only thorough cleaning.”

“Flesh is not what was cut deepest today,” Angharad replied.

The older man smoothed his mustache, which had been entirely pristine.

“I feel for Lord Zenzele, I truly do,” Cozme Aflor said. “Yet his grief cannot see him withdraw from the crew in all but name.”

“He is a victor,” she pointed out.

“So is Lady Isabel,” the older man said, “and if one stays so will the other. What is left of us then?”

Not much, she had to admit. Herself, Song, Yaretzi, Cozme and Remund. They would be the smallest of the crews, if not necessarily the weakest, but size was what concerned Master Cozme. A crew of five was certain to force Remund Cerdan to take a trial, which his protector was trying to avoid by keeping their numbers high – even it meant taking Zenzele Duma back into the maze. It was good and loyal service to House Cerdan, this conversation. Angharad bade herself to keep that in mind, for otherwise she might grow angry.

“I am not certain what it is you wish of me, Master Cozme,” she finally said.

“He respects you, Lady Angharad,” he replied. “You held the cog the longest of us and almost saved her life at the end. If you request that he continue with us tomorrow, he may well listen.”

For the barest of moments, she felt like striking him. What had Cozme Aflor given in these trials, that he had earned of her the right to ask that she wade through a man’s grief to make demands for another’s benefits? Only Cozme was not asking for himself, and that let her swallow the anger. It was not selfishness that drove the request but duty.

“I would not see our crew sunder,” Angharad stiffly said.

Tacit agreement. She, too, could see how victors remaining behind could be the beginning of the end for their band. For the remainder the temptation would grow to seek refuge with Lord Ishaan instead of remaining on a sinking ship.

“I make no promises,” Angharad said.

“Nor would I ask one,” Master Cozme hurried to say.

He looked relieved. Perhaps he had reason to be. Dimly left with the sense that she was doing another’s dirty work, Angharad walked away from the man and sought out Zenzele. The Malani was alone, sitting in his ‘room’ with the curtain open, for though Song was close and keeping an eye on him she had not gone to speak with him. At a glance, Zenzele Duma looked fine. He had bandages wrapped around his torso but his back was straight and he seemed in no great discomfort. His hair was too short to have the capacity to be disheveled and even his hat – brimmed, pinned and feathered as was the current fashion in Malan – was set at a jaunty angle.

It was the eyes that gave him away.

Red-rimmed and raw, like a wound had been drawn around two pits of bleakness. Angharad’s steps almost faltered, for what might she possibly say to a man with eyes like these, but she forced herself to keep moving. The glance he flicked her way when she came to stand before him was disinterested.

“May I sit?” Angharad asked.

Zenzele gestured wordlessly. She lowered herself onto the stone, leaning back against the partition between his stable stall-turned-room and what she suspected had been Inyoni’s. Twice she almost began to speak before biting down on the words. They felt fake, hollow. The kind she would have raged to hear in the days fresh after the massacre of her family. It was him that broke the silence.

“You told us,” Zenzele said, “that you are the last of your house.”

“Save for my uncle in the Watch,” Angharad quietly agreed.

Not that it meant anything. Uncle Osian had renounced any claim to Llanw Hall by becoming a blackcloak, just as she would. There was no longer a claim left to press, anyhow: House Tredegar had been struck from the rolls of nobility. The land would become the possession of the High Queen, who would grant it to another family at her pleasure.

“How did it happen?”

Her fingers clenched.

“They came in the night,” she said. “Steel and powder, before they put our very hall to the torch.”

Her cousins had been but boys, but sometimes she hoped they had been put to the sword. Better the steel than being barred inside their rooms, burning alive as so many of the servants had. Not until her dying day would she forget the sound of those screams on the wind.

“And you fled,” Zenzele said.

“My father had a riverboat stashed away,” Angharad murmured. “He died distracting them long enough for me to reach it.”

Had Father known what would find her on that dark river, rowing alone on a trail of ink? Sometimes she thought he might have. He had been a learned man, keeping to old ways. Unknowing of her mind, the Malani breathed out deeply.

“My mother has four other children,” he abruptly said. “I am the thirdborn, which means marrying for advantage.”

The same fate Uncle Osian had gone to the Watch to avoid. It was considered imprudent to marry the secondborn out of the family, but any child beyond that number was fated for the marriage market. Angharad would likely have wed a thirdborn daughter before she reached twenty, arranging in the marriage contract for a son of that family to stand in for their daughter when she decided to conceive an heir for House Tredegar.

“Mother never really gave a shit beyond ensuring I would be a decent prospect,” Zenzele confessed. “I used to think I had disappointed her, but looking back she simply never really saw me as a Duma. I was born to marry out.”

He shook his head.

“Sometimes I think she didn’t even notice when I left to attend the isikole,” he said. “It was Aunt Inyoni who saw me off, rode with me on the wagon.”

He trailed off.

“Is it there you met Ayanda?” she asked, prompting him to continue.

A spasm of grief. Best that wound be lanced now, lest what lay within fester.

“Under the red roof there are no titles,” he quoted. “For four years it didn’t matter that she wasn’t nobly born, only that she was lovely and funny and so fucking clever. It felt like a dream she even wanted to be with me.”

“Then the four years ended,” Angharad said.

“And out in Malan, nothing else matters,” Zenzele bitterly said. “I had not even taken off my traveling cloak before Mother told me I was betrothed.”

She winced.

“Arafa Sandile,” he said. “Only two years older than me. Pretty, they said. But even if she had looked like a seal I would have been promised to her, because the Sandile silver mines are prettier to my mother than any girl could ever hope to be.”

Even Angharad had heard of House Sandile. In southern Malan they were a byword for extravagance, the main line having once thrown a feast on a ship being carried through the countryside by elephants imported from the Imperial Someshwar. It had been the talk of the Isles for years afterwards. No wonder Zenzele had run after breaking his betrothal: the Sandile had deep enough pockets to bury him neck deep in swordmasters after such a slight to their honor. Zenzele chuckled.

“That’s about the face Aunt Inyoni made when I told her I was going to run,” he said. “She said I wouldn’t make it ten miles out, much less as far as a port. Then she said she couldn’t just let me get myself killed.”

His face tightened.

“She was more a mother to me than the woman who spat me out into the world,” he said. “Then and now. And how did I repay it?”Visit no(v)eLb(i)n.com for the best novel reading experience

Angharad knew that rage in the man’s eyes, the urge to strike something stoked all the higher by the way there was nothing around worthy of being struck. The first time an assassin had come for her, it had been as much a relief as a thing of dread. Finally she had been able to hurt someone for what had been done to her, someone deserving of her hatred.

“Sleeping God, but when we set out it felt like an adventure,” he hatefully said. “Terrifying, we were leaving it all behind, but I was with Ayanda and the only family I cared to claim. Aunt Inyoni’s friends in the Watch were interested in our contracts, enough to recommend us, and all we needed was to win some trials and we would be forever beyond anyone’s reach.”

His jaw clenched.

“I thought I could get it all,” Zenzele said. “Instead I killed them both.”

Angharad could have told him that he was not to blame, that both the dead had made choices and he had not decided for them, but she knew it would mean nothing. It had not to her when she heard the same truths, for they held the ring of platitude.

“When a shot is fired,” she said, “who is to blame – the bullet, the powder, the flint that struck the spark?”

His eyes moved to her.

“Blame the finger that pulled the trigger, Zenzele Duma,” Angharad said. “You did not run away on a whim, you were made to.”

To marry for the good one one’s family was duty, but to be treated by cattle by the head one one’s house – not even consulted during the negotiations, never meeting the other party before the betrothal – was undeniably a wrong. A nobleborn child had responsibilities to their house, but that house also had responsibilities to them and the Duma had failed Zenzele before he them. It did not make running admirable, but it was enough for Angharad not to look down on the man for it.

“So I should take my revenge on them, is that it?” the Malani snorted. “Make myself a kinslayer, maybe wipe out House Sandile?”

Angharad Tredegar did not laugh, did not so much as twitch a smile. There was no jest here.

“One day,” she said, voice soft, “I will find out who it was that murdered my family, who ended my house.”

That man’s name, the owner of all her grief.

“And when I do, Zenzele,” she continued. “I will kill them all. Every last one of them.”

“It does not look like a shrine,” Song noted. “There are no marks and symbols, only bare stone and brass.”

“Perhaps we are meant to push the spokes of the wheel,” Remund Cerdan suggested. “To raise the gates like a portcullis.”

“Could be,” Angharad mused. “Though that would be a great weight and we might not be enough.”

“No, we will be.”

She glanced back, seeing Yaretzi bush past Isabel with a grim look on her face.

“I have seen this before,” the Izcalli said. “Some of my people’s candles are locked the same way.”

“You know how to open it?” Angharad asked.

“If I am right,” Yaretzi agreed.

The dark-haired woman made her way to the edge of the hall, kneeling by the threshold to the wheelroom to rap a knuckle against the brass floor. The sound, to Angharad’s surprise, was hollow. As if there were nothing under a small layer of brass. Yaretzi repeated the same gesture until her hand was near the center of the space between the two spokes, where at last the sound turned solid.

“As I thought,” the Izcalli said, rising to her feet. “It is weight-locked. Enough of us will need to stand on the platform to lower the hidden part and trigger the mechanism.”

“And then what?” Master Cozme asked.

There Yaretzi grimaced.

“I am uncertain,” she admitted. “I have never seen one with more than a single gate. It should open the doors, but beyond that I cannot say.”

“Sounds fun,” Lord Zenzele carelessly said. “Let’s give it a whirl.”

Angharad glance at him warningly but did not speak otherwise. For all that the Malani was being reckless the plain truth was that activating the device was the only way through this room.

“There might be some danger falling upon us before the doors open,” Isabel said. “It would be best for us to split with such an eventuality in mind.”

The Pereduri noblewoman thought that sensible enough. They separated accordingly: Isabel with her, Cozme with Remund, and after Zenzele insisted on standing alone Song and Yaretzi. When Isabel joined her at the center of the space some mechanical part clicked beneath their feet, the floor descending by the barest of fractions, and then they watched as the others spread around the wheel by climbing over spokes. The very moment Zenzele took his place, a last click resounded across the small room and they all felt something shifting beneath their feet.

A long moment passed.

“Perhaps we are to push after all,” Lord Remund drawled.

He went to place his hand against the spoke before him, but before he could there was a sudden shiver beneath their feet. Angharad glimpsed ahead and-

“Brace yourselves,” she shouted.

Half of them were still knocked down when the wheel abruptly began spinning. She caught Isabel by the waist, bringing her close and trying not to wonder at how even in this nightmare of an island the infanzona’s hair still smelled of lavender, then held them both in place by snatching at the top of the spoke with her other hand. Cozme cursed virulently as he smacked into the brass and Zenzele let out a whooping laugh as he held on for dear life. All the lanterns save Yaretzi’s went flying, smashing against stone or brass.

And the wheel kept spinning, faster and faster.

Isabel would have slipped her gasp had the dark-haired beauty not begun clinging to the spoke on her own, the two of them struggling to keep upright as the air howled against their faces and the sole burning light above whipped them with shadows.

“The gate,” Song shouted. “The gate is opening.”

Angharad risked a glance and saw that the Tianxi was right: one of the gates was slowly rising, as if being dragged up an inch at a time. Were they meant to jump out when it opened up enough? It would be difficult, she thought, but hardly impossible. They held one for another ten breaths, the gate opening up just enough for a man to be able to get through on their knees, and Angharad pushed herself up. Hopefully the others would not argue the need to jump, for speaking would be difficult.

“We-”

Before she could finish the sentence, she turned weightless. Or so it felt for the barest fraction of a moment, before she realized that the wheel had just abruptly changed directions. Shouting as she was thrown back against a curtain of brass – ancestors, that was going to bruise - and Isabel’s back smacked her in the face a heartbeat later, she heard other shouts.

Two of which abruptly cut off.

No, she thought, rising to her feet as she pushed off the infanzona. It was as she feared: Song and Yaretzi were missing while the once-open gate had slammed shut. It is no gate mechanism, she thought, it is a trap. One meant to separate us.

“Seek each other out on the other side,” Angharad shouted. “We must not remain-”

Unlike the last, the gate that opened this time did so in a heartbeat and Zenzele threw himself in the opening with a wild laugh before wheel even changed directions to force his hand. They were all better prepared for the turnabout this time, all staying on their feet save Remund – who Cozme caught by the arm and held in place. The third gate opened, the pair tossed through it, and for the first time Angharad got a glimpse of what lay past it. Some kind of stony slope. They both went tumbling down.

Now there were only the two of them left.

“Ready yourself,” she told Isabel. “Better to jump than be thrown.”

She had not closely looked at the infanzona before but now that she did, she saw the terror writ there. Isabel’s fair face had gone pale, her eyes wild and she was worrying her lip so hard it looked fit to bleed.

“Please,” Isabel said. “Together. I do not know if-”

How striking her teary gaze was Angharad thought, a little dazed. She tended to prefer women of harder character, but perhaps on occasion being needed would not be so – no, not the time.

“Together,” she agreed.

They barely had three heartbeats to ready themselves before the fourth gate began to open. The timing seemed to be shorter every time, as if the machine fed on its own momentum. Angharad glimpsed ahead twice to gauge the timing, a trick she was becoming increasingly fond of, and almost winced when she saw herself hit the bottom of the gate with her front teeth on the first attempt. It was a good thing she did not feel what she saw, as she could do without intimate knowledge of what it felt like to shatter half her mouth.

When they leapt, Isabel trembling in her arms, it was straight into the dark.

Blinded by the sudden change in lighting Angharad blinked even as the ground gave beneath her feet – it was a slope, like she had seen in the others – but after two steps her boots slid against wetness and Isabel screamed in fear. They tumbled forward, Angharad’s belly flopping on shallow water while her chin raked against the stone below it, and she felt Isabel’s fingers slide through hers.

“No,” the infanzona shouted. “Angharad, you-”

She was interrupted by a loud thump, smacking into something. For a heartbeat Angharad believed her dead, the thought like a burn, but then she heard Isabel shouting as she bounced off into water. Distant water, as if they were being separated. Without a lantern to see Angharad was blind, but even as she fell her fingers groped ahead and she found rising stone – there had been a fork just beyond the gate, she realized, and they were falling down different sides of it. Heart pounding with fear for the infanzona, she tried to hurry her way down. The water was shallow but it helped her slide faster, her clothes drenched and hair turning slick.

She went down a canal for what felt like an eternity until she fell into a pool.

It was deep enough she had to swim up and when she broke the surface she saw there was finally light again, coming from glass orbs hung on the ceiling. Making for the shore, she got out onto a stone floor before taking a better look around. This looked to be a cavern, though one with two large pools – both being fed by small canals, one of which she had come through. There were half a dozen openings in the wall ahead, none of them looking carved and all rather narrow. Angharad waited a little longer to see if Isabel was to come down the other canal, but after a few minutes of dripping onto the floor to no sign of the infanzona she reluctantly got moving.

A few glimpses told her there were no traps no matter the opening, so she took the rightmost and headed in.

The lights were dimmer in here, small glass orbs burning dirty yellow, but she could still see just fine. Twice she faced forks and took a right, the second time leading her to a precipice. The tunnel ended abruptly in a deep black abyss facing wall of rock, faint wind like a breath rising from below. She shuddered, about ready to double back when she saw a flicker of movement ahead. She had not noticed, but on the other side of the precipice there was an opening in the rock with light flickering – almost like an eye. She saw a pool through it, and another precipice someone was standing by. Their hair was long and dark.

“Isabel,” she shouted, and it echoed endlessly in the abyss.

The silhouette across did not react, hesitating a little longer before moving out of sight. There was no telling if it was truly the infanzona, Angharad reminded herself. Where spirits held dominion the wise did not trust their eyes.

She returned to the tunnels, intent on pushing forward since it was unlikely there was a way across the abyss. Everywhere seemed the same, bare stone coated in flickering light, and after a while it felt as if she had no idea where she’d come from. Angharad began scratching the walls with her sword under the orbs, but she had begun too late and it only prevented her from going in circles. After long enough that her clothes had gone from wet to damp, the Pereduri finally stumbled onto the end of the tunnels. It was a striking enough sight it gave her pause, impatient as she was.

It was as if someone had raised a hall entirely out of cloudy, silvery crystals.

They shone with light from somewhere unseen, each perfectly smooth surface reflecting itself as a house of mirrors. It was strikingly beautiful, Angharad thought, enough that she was distracted from immediately noticing the entrances. There were three of them, going into a hall that must be sprawling for she saw no end to it, but one was closed by a solid slab of crystal. She approached for a closer look, eyes widening when she saw that someone had darkened the threshold of the entrance around the slab with what must have been an open flame. Two letters: S and Y. Yaretzi, she recalled, had kept her lantern from breaking when the spin changed directions.

Angharad breathed in deeply, comforted at the thought that at least two of her comrades had made it this far. That it might be only two was an upsetting prospect, but there might well be other entrances to this place. There had been four doors, after all. At the very least there could be no doubt that this hall must be her path, or as to what its true nature was despite its beauty. Angharad straightened her back, then offered a low bow.

“I implore the attention of the honored elder who dwells in this temple,” she said.

The air shivered, but this was subtler a spirit than the kind she had encountered in the maze until now. There was no great manifestation, no eye-catching totem to command attention. Only traces of silver light facing her in the slab of crystal, suggesting the shape of a face.

“Robber. Or. Supplicant.”

Angharad hid her pained wince by lowering her head. It was as if the words were made of the sound of crystal cracking, just a little too high and sharp to be anything but daggers to the ear.

“I would be a supplicant to your temple, honored elder,” Angharad said. “If you would tell me of the terms of your test and the wager therein.”

“Wager. Lantern.”

Not unexpected. She waited for the terms.

“Win. By. Reaching. End. Hall.”

A pause.

“Or. Take. A. Life.”

Painful as it was to the ear, she sought clarifications. The prize would be crossing the temple unhindered for she and any companion. To die within the hall, however, was to surrender your soul to the spirit. It remained vague about whose life might be taken within its test, however, simply calling them ‘opponents’. She had her suspicions, especially when it was made plain that to take another’s life would see you led to the end of the hall safely. It means to keep us in its hall of mirrors until we grow desperate enough to kill our own, Angharad thought. The Watch had implied nothing lived out here save for ravenous spirits, so the only lives for them to take were each other’s.

She had no intention of slaying her companions or allowing them to be slain, but that still meant taking the test.

“I accept your test and terms, honored elder, and would undertake supplication,” Angharad said.

“Good. Luck.”

To ascribe emotion to the spirit would be as trying to read the intonation of a razor blade, but as it spoke Angharad somehow felt as if she was being mocked. And though it was but a glimmer of cold light, she could not shake the impression that she had looked at something living – convulsing, red and wet, like a throat swallowing. A second look told her it was but tiredness working away at her mind, the spirit unchanged. Hiding her unease, the Pereduri headed for the entrance to her right and settled her breathing. Hand on her saber, she took a firm step past the threshold and into the shining hall.

A heartbeat after, a slab of crystal hammered down and closed the entrance.

There would be no going back.