Chapter 36

Chapter 36

They broke for an early lunch near the bottom of the stairs.

It felt morbid to Angharad, having a meal looking down at what might become a grave for some of those eating, but she supposed it would have been even worse to stop halfway through the Toll Road and dine overthe grave. They split into small groups for their meals of hard bread, cold pork and whatever tepid water they had left in their skins. Talk was quiet, as if the spirits below might be roused by too loud a conversation, and to the noblewoman it all felt like the breath before the storm.

Only a different storm came calling.

That Song would sit by her side for the meal was half-expected by now – but only half, it would have been arrogance to go further than that – but it had not been Isabel’s habit to do so unless the meal was communal. When the infanzona elegantly sat herself a step lower than them, it came as a surprise. Angharad made herself refrain from noticing how Isabel had unbuttoned her doublet and so her respective heights allowed her a ... plunging view.

Twice Song looked at Angharad. For a fever dream moment she thought that the other woman was trying to catch her looking, but the mounting incredulousness on the Tianxi’s face finally told her otherwise. Isabel’s idle talk about Izcalli fashions was interrupted by Song’s sharp voice.

“Ruesta, it would be best for you to eat elsewhere.”

“Are you so ardently in favor of asymmetrical skirts?” Isabel replied, cocking an eyebrow. “I had thought better of you.”

Song looked Angharad’s way, as if prompting her to speak, and something of the gesture irked her. She was not a trained parrot, to speak when spurred so that courtiers could laugh. And she had told Isabel, for better or worse, that their slate was clean.

“It is only a meal, Song,” Angharad said.

“It is a mistake,” Song flatly replied. “One you ought to know better than to commit.”

And there the Pereduri was able to muster some steel at last. It was the most foundational of rights of a noble to decide who was allowed to sit at their table. Song was Republican, would not know better, but an unintentional insult was still that.

“I can decide,” Angharad evenly said, “who I eat with.”

And without a vote first, she almost added, but bit down on it. It was unworthy of her and the forbearance that Song had shown her on this isle. The Tianxi’s eyes narrowed nonetheless. Isabel, ever the peacemaker, attempted to cool the flames.

“I know we have not been on the best of terms, Song,” she said. “But I would make amends. I-”

“You are,” the Tianxi rudely interrupted, “every bedside story for Tianxi children made flesh. A useless, grasping thing that draws breath only by taking from those with skill, will or decency. Yiwu in the truest, most fundamental sense of the word.”

“That,” Angharad said, “was uncalled for.”

Song turned her silver gaze on her and what the noblewoman saw there gave her pause. She had never seen the Tianxi disappointedbefore, and it felt like a knife in the belly. Guilt was swift. Rudeness was not to be tolerated, but it was true that this was not Llanw Hall’s table. Had she not been forcing a guest on Song, herself breaching manners?

“I can also choose who I eat with, Angharad,” Song said, popping the last of her bread in her mouth.

She swallowed, then rose to her feet.

“And did.”

Song took up her pack and walked away. Angharad froze, her first instinct to follow but her mind arguing otherwise. Isabel’s eyes found hers and for a searing moment she wondered if this had all been some scheme. If the infanzona’s contract had moved them both somehow, made them-

“You should go,” the infanzona advised. “I did not mean to come between you two, Angharad.”

She then faintly grimaced, looking discreetly around them.

“And people are already noticing,” Isabel said. “It needs to be passed off as trivial.”

It had not even occurred to Angharad that eyes would be on them, but now that it did she felt a flush of humiliation. It felt not unlike being slapped in public, though it might well be her own palm responsible for the sting on her cheek. She nodded, rising to her feet. Song had hardly gone far, only a few steps away as she checked her munitions and belted her sword properly. The Tianxi did not acknowledge her standing there, so Angharad waited awkwardly for a time before finally clearing her throat.

“You should finish your meal,” Song said. “There will not be another opportunity for hours.”

Angharad could not apologize, for she had not done anything wrong. It would have been slighting her own honor to make apologies for nothing.

“I did not properly grasp,” she finally said, “the depths of your dislike for Lady Isabel. That is my failing.”

Father had taught her that. If you cannot apologize, instead acknowledge a mistake of your making. It will carry much the same meaning and represent a concession besides. She could almost hear his voice, the sound of their boots on the gravel as they strolled around the gardens, and Angharad ached with the loss of it. She would never hear his voice again. Any of their voices.

“My dislike,” Song bit out. “Circle and Gods.”

The Tianxi glared up, but she pitched her voice low.

“You heard the same thing I did, Angharad,” Song said. “How her contract works. Why would ever allow her in your presence again, to dig her hooks into your mind?”

“She has admitted her wrongdoings and apologized,” Angharad replied. “I cut ties over it, calling our score even.”

“So now she’s making a new score,” Song sighed. “Since you have a blank slate.”

The noblewoman shuffled uncomfortably.

“How do you know she is not using her contract on you?” Song asked.

“I do not,” Angharad said. “But the same is true of everyone I have had dealings with. She has demonstrated her contract to me, and though I cannot swear I would be able to tell were it used on me it can only achieve so much.”

“The filter is not the most dangerous part,” Song said.

She paused at Angharad’s open confusion.

“That is what her contract is,” Song said. “A perception filter that lets you see the good and dims the bad.”

The Pereduri frowned.

“And how would you know that?”

The slightest pause.

“Because I’ve almost entirely deciphered her contract,” Song Ren evenly replied.

For a moment Angharad thought she had misheard, for what she had just been told was absurd. Decipher another’s contract? Only a god and their contractor could ever know such terms, and it was not as if the pact was some scroll in a library that... Yet Song’s face remained deadly serious, and so Angharad swallowed. She could either call the Tianxi a liar or take her at her word, and Song had never once lied to her.

“They would kill you for that,” she hoarsely said.

She did not put a name to ‘they’, for there were too many to count.

“It is not as rare or potent an ability as you think,” Song told her. “There was a contractor at the Old Fort who could do something similar – though by sniffing out the gods.”

“The High Queen’s court employs such bloodhounds by the dozen,” Angharad dismissed. “But you speak of deciphering terms, Song.”

Of being able to read some of the most precious, dangerous secrets in all of Vesper simply by being in the same room.

“And I told you that my pact is not as potent as you think,” Song replied. “Deciphering is not an exaggeration – why do you think I learned so many languages?”

Oh, Angharad thought, and then suddenly it occurred to her that Song might be able to see her own contract. No, she told me she cannot read Gwynt, the Pereduri remembered. And surely her contract with the Fisher must be written in the old tongue? She swallowed, knowing that she would only get an answer if she asked.

“Can you- did you...”

“I have the loosest sense of what your contract can achieve,” Song said. “But it is very difficult to look at, as if I were reading with my eyes open underwater.”

A heartbeat of hesitation.

“I have been advised not to look too closely,” the Tianxi admitted. “That your gods is... temperamental.”

The Fisher was not, at least in the way the other woman must have meant it. The Fisher was not a thing given to fits of rage, to passing tantrums. The rage in him was old and deep, carved into the bone and unchanging.

“I have known kinder storms,” Angharad quietly said, for she would not say more.

She sighed, resisting the urge to fiddle with her braids. Mother had always slapped her hands when she did, called it an unfortunate habit.

“I would ask that you keep your knowledge of my contract secret,” she stiffly asked.

It was walking very close to the lines of honor to request such a thing, but it must be done if she was to ever return to the Kingdom of Malan.

“I am not a gossip,” Song said. “Principles aside, to run my mouth in such a way would likely get me killed. Though as I will not speak of your pact, I would ask you extend me the same courtesy.”

Angharad shallowly nodded, suspecting she had not quite hid her relief from the silver gaze.

“Given what I have told you,” Song continued, “I would repeat what I said earlier: the most dangerous part of Ruesta’s contract is not the filter. That is the habit it induces.”

She paused, looking for words.

“Once you grow used to seeing the good in someone, your mind follows down that road habitually,” the Tianxi said. “She does need to use her contract constantly, because she has taught everyone around her to assume the best of her actions. Her blank slate is favorable.”

Angharad frowned.

“What you describe,” she said, “sounds not unlike trust.”

Keeping faith and doing good deeds resulting in a worthy reputation was not sinister, it was the very nature of civilization. Song looked irritated.

“Not earned trust,” she said. “Fostered.”

Then it was simply giving the benefit of the doubt which Angharad saw nothing all that sinister in either, but she could see saying as much would only further trouble Song. That a contract had been involved complicated things, but to use one’s reputation was not an evil act. The act of using the contract on another without their knowledge was where the breach of honor lay, and that part Isabel had addressed.

“I hear your concerns,” Angharad said. “And I would not be comfortable serving as shield to one intending to use their contract on others.”

“But,” Song said.

“She has sworn not do so, save by accident,” the Pereduri said. “And then to reveal her contract publicly once sanctuary is reached.”

Song looked at her for a very long time, silver eyes hooded. What went on behind them she could only guess at, for the other woman’s face was calm as a pond on a windless day.

“If you hear my concerns, then act on them,” Song finally said. “Do not speak to Isabel Ruesta alone.”

It chafed, for someone to try to dictate to her like this, but Angharad swallowed her dislike. It was a request not made high-handed but out of concern for her safety. She could bend her neck that much, so the dark-skinned noble nodded in concession.

“And once we reach the next sanctuary, please cut ties properly,” Song said. “She will have no need of your protection, having that of the blackcloaks, and should face the consequences of her actions without an intercessor.”

Angharad grimaced. A steeper term but not, she thought, one unreasonable to ask. I have no intention of staying long in sanctuary anyhow, she reminded herself. And tempting as the thought was to let Isabel make a private apology now that she knew the contract had little to do with her attraction – a filter could not make something out of nothing – she could not in good conscience linger at sanctuary for that purpose alone. It would be highly frivolous.

“We will part ways at the sanctuary,” she conceded. “And I had no intention of intervening when she is to recover her honor, but should you want me to take an oath I-”

“No need for that,” Song said, shaking her head. “Your word is enough.”

How easily that answer came was almost enough to make Angharad feel guilty for what she had done. Namely, cutting out the mention of time from the promise. It was cracking a door slightly open, nothing more. So she told herself. There was still some stiffness between them after that, not every wrinkle smoothed, but Song stood by her side when everyone gathered to take the last steps down together. It would be different now, Angharad thought.

Thing always were when you realized you could lose something you had taken for granted.

—

The stone marker stood tall as a man and about as broad.

It was bare of carvings and adornment, nothing more than a roughly hewn slab of granite standing sentinel as the entrance of the bridge. Angharad could hear the roiling current of the river below, see white foam and sharp rocks bathed in golden light from above. Ferranda had told them that to fail a test was for a tenth of the bridge to fall below and Angharad saw only death in those waters. If we lose twice in a row, we are finished. It would be too broad a gap to cross, even with ropes.

As the survivors – all fourteen of them – stood before the marker, there was a heartbeat of hesitation. Who was to be the first of those not yet crowned victors? Song had removed herself from that list, and quite boldly, so the eyes went to those that remained: Lan, Brun, Yaretzi, Cozme Aflor and Lady Ferranda. Angharad hid her surprise at who took the initiative.

“I shall take the vanguard, then,” Cozme Aflor said, rolling his shoulders. “Wish me luck.”

Courage, Angharad thought, from one she had not expected to have such a virtue. Yet he must be a coward at heart, for why else would he have returned to Augusto Cerdan’s side? If the mangled infanzon was worried at the notion of losing his protector, it did not show. Augusto’s face was a study of nonchalance.

“Try not to die,” Tupoc casually replied. “It would be inconvenient to have to pull out all the stops as early as the second test.”

“You’re all heart, Xical,” the man snorted, stroking his moustache.

He stepped forward onto the bridge, and the air shivered. They could see all that followed clearly, for though all had put away their lanterns – the few real ones, but also the iron things the Watch had gifted them – the golden light of the machine above made it look like a strange summer day.

The stone cracked, a creature ripping itself free of the cracks. It was a centipede, a filthy horror all crawling legs and large as a man’s torso. The legs got larger as they went up and ended in a head of twisted curved mandibles – it looked like a skull atop a ribcage, though all of it carapaced sordidness.

Cozme, to his honor, did not flinch.

“God of the land, I greet you,” the older man said.

“Pick a weapon,” the spirit said, its voice like plunging your hand in a pit of maggots. “Wield and face it: slay my puppet to win passage.”

The older man remained silent for a time, then sighed.

“Knife,” he said.

Not a respectable weapon, but then Cozme had proved to be anything but.

“Agreed,” the spirit laughed.

Cozme Aflor loosened his sword belt, dropping it on the stone floor, then his pistol and powder followed. It was the long knife strapped to his side he drew, the shine of fine Someshwari steel catching the golden light from above. Yet Angharad’s eye was on the spirit instead, who was shaking and twisting as it vomited a river of filth. Bile and mucus full of squirming, foul things shaped themselves into a man inch by inch. Cozme’s height and build were matched, the spirit at last spewing out something like chitin that the puppet took in hand. Threading fingers through the filth, the silhouette shaped the material into a mirror of Cozme’s own knife as if it were clay to be molded.

The older man spat to the side.

“I’ve seen worse in the Murk,” Cozme said. “Try harder.”

“Begin,” the spirit hissed.

Both struck.

Before the second pass had ended, Angharad knew why Cozme had chosen the knife. She had seen him shoot a pistol and in passing use a sword, but he was nowhere as deft a hand with them as he was the sharp length in his hand. It was a brutal bout, more like the tangle of back-alley cats than an honor duel: Cozme struck with his fists as well as his knife, gouged eyes and on the third pass ended up rolling on the floor with the horror trying to choke it out. Even as cuts opened the skin of both, bile and blood spilling in a foul puddle, the mustachioed soldier did not flinch even when the puppet’s features turned into a nest of screeching centipedes.

He cut and gouged and choked, until they were on their feet again and swinging.

The cut that ended the fight was the costliest. Cozme slid under the monster’s guard, striking its chin with his palm and rocking it back as it swung past him – then he closed in, ramming his knife into the puppet’s throat and ripping it open, but the creature pressed against him and stabbed into his back. It struck again and again, wailing away the flesh until Cozme’s knife was all the way through its throat and the head came tumbling down.

It collapsed back into the vileness the spirit had spewed out, drenching the soldier who roared out a curse, but the puppet was done. Cozme ripped out the chitin knife yet stuck in him and threw it over the edge of the bridge.

“Told you,” he panted out.

“Shame how bile got in the wounds,” Tupoc idly noted. “If Tredegar had not gotten our friend Tristan killed, he might have seen to that.”

Angharad ignored the insult and the bickering that followed it, eyes staying on Cozme. He had been stabbed five times, but with his coat she could not tell how deep it had gone. He still seemed able to move his arm, at least. Yet blood loss alone would ensure he was far from at his best. That was a loss, for the purpose of crossing the bridge.

It was a gain for when the time would come for Augusto Cerdan’s end to find him.

The spirit whose blunt test they had beaten did not deign to humor them with a confirmation, instead slithering back into the crack it had emerged from. Yet the bridge did not collapse when they gingerly began to walk, as plain a crowning as they would get. Cozme hung back, Augusto helping him dress his wounds, and Angharad avoided both. In time she would face them both, but until then it was beneath her to loom like some sort of scavenger and pick at the their wounds. She joined the gathering before the second stone marker instead.

“I will take the second,” Brun told everyone.Visit no(v)eLb(i)n.com for the best novel reading experience

Some murmurs of approval.

“Good luck,” Lan sweetly said, smiling very wide.

It was heartening, Angharad thought, to see some fine comradery between Sacromontans after all the backbiting of their infanzones. The pair must have been friends.

This time the spirit was not so unpleasant to behold: when the stone cracked, what emerged was almost human. It looked like a smooth, genderless child whose face was wrinkled with old age. It spoke in a voice sweet as the flowing of water, offering its test.

“I will run around my part of the bridge, screaming,” the spirit said. “You must touch me with a hand to win. You have nine hundred breaths to do so.”

Brun carefully ensured that the spirit would be tangible, then haggled the terms. The strange spirit refused to remove the time limit but conceded that in exchange it would not seize Brun’s soul should he lose, only if he died during the test. It seemed well-bargained to Angharad, but of course it was not so simple as that: within a heartbeat of the test beginning, the spirit turned invisible. It took Brun by surprise, the fair-haired man having clapped his hands over his ears – perhaps in a anticipation of the spirit’s screaming being harmful.

It had been her guess as well.

Angharad was not the one taking the test, so it might be different for her, but as far as she could tell the only harmful thing about the screams was that they were so exaggerated it sounded like the spirit was making sport of them

Still, though the creature was invisible it made noise and the touch of its feet on the floor could barely be made out. Brun had his contract as well, though by the way the Sacromontan began blindly reaching into thin air Angharad suspected his power could not detect the spirit at all. Yet for all the difficulties the man was clever and quick – only he seemed inexplicably clumsy today, as if his limbs had slowed. It was a small thing, but always he seemed to miss the screaming and giggling spirit by inches. Was the creature using some sort of power to slow him?

It was near the end of the time that the test turned dangerous. The spirit began to hide near the edge of the bridge, and it baited Brun near the edge again and again – twice it tried to kick him down into the waters, the second time almost succeeding.

By the time the nine hundredth breath had passed, the spirit had not been caught.

“Missed me,” it laughed, coming back into sight for a moment long enough to grin.

“I’ll take that one,” she said.

No one contested her, as the superficial of her contract were an open secret.

Bargaining was brisk and successful. The spirit opened its mouth, spitting out a fly the size of a bullet, and as it buzzed away Shalini shot the spirit in the eye faster than Angharad could follow. It screamed in anger, turning on her, but she ignored it and shot forward herself. It was a harsh trade: just before Shalini’s fingers closed around the fly, the spirit’s long barbed tongue darted out and ripped into her shoulder. The spirit cursed around its own tongue, lips flapping, but there was no denying the fly was in the Someshwari’s hand.

“We’re done,” she grunted. “Get that goddamn tongue out of me.”

Her lips thinned until they turned bloodless as the spirit did exactly as she had asked, none too gently. The barbs, Angharad saw, did more damage on the way out than they had going in. The wound is still shallow, she thought. It was meant to inflict pain, not cripple. Had Shalini Goel used her contract once or twice, Angharad wondered? That shot had been too quick to be anything but that, but her hand when she had snatched the fly had been barely any slower.

“Oh,” Lan faintly said from behind her. “That can’t be good.”

Angharad followed the Tianxi’s eyes and went still. The spirit they had just beaten had not even returned to its stone yet already the marker ahead of them had cracked open – revealing some sort of cat made of worms.

So had the two markers beyond that one, their spirits coming out.

A spirit shaped like skinless, one-legged man let out a resounding scream and only ceased when the worm-cat leaped at its throat and tried to rip into it. The last spirit, a black horse whose back turned into a spider’s, struck at both with its hooves.

Lord Ishaan had claimed that Shalini’s contract drew attention, Angharad recalled as she watched the spirits begin to tear into each other. Her use of it so close when they were starved must have whipped them into a frenzy.

“Well now,” Tupoc drawled. “That does simply things.”

“No,” Song suddenly said. “Look at the bridge.”

Cracks were spreading, Angharad saw. Every time a spirit tore into another, wounded what they were, the part of the bridge their marker held together began to break.

“We need to run,” she said. “Now.”

Within three steps the first chunk of bridge had fallen.

Angharad glimpsed ahead, taking a hard left when she saw she’d been about to fall into the river as a hole opened in the floor. Ishaan looked about to tip over the edge so she yanked him back, then dragged him along with her. The man tried to thank her but she kept moving. Cracks spread, louder and louder as the bridge began collapsing behind them. It was blind, heedless run forward that Angharad broke only by feverish glimpses forward – never more than half a second, taking hard turns to avoid death.

The cat spirit let out a scream as its head was gobbled down by the horse-spider, its entire chunk of the bridge falling down behind them.

“Go, go, go,” Angharad exhorted the others.

By the time they’d reached the brawling pair, the skinless man was biting into the other’s flesh with too-large square teeth. It turned when Shalini approached, as if drawn by the feel of her, but the other spirit used the distraction to cave in its bare ribs. The bridge ahead of them began to collapse but they were already there, already running and...

Angharad leapt, shouting at the top of her lungs, and the others followed behind.

She landed on her belly, chin hitting the stone painfully, and barely got out of the way before Tupoc landed in a crouch where her legs had been. Angharad hastily rose to her feet, counting the survivors, and as the number rose her hopes did – ten, eleven, twelve. They had all made it, she realized in a moment of pure joy as she watched Lady Ferranda drag Shalini up from the ledge she’d been hanging onto.

“Sleeping God,” she smiled. “We-”

A cracking sound interrupted her, whisking away the joy.

She turned, hand on her sword, as the marked revealed the last spirit. The last test. Her belly clenched in anticipation. It was not as wrong as some of the others, not wicked or warped. The spirit looked almost like a whale that had grown four legs, all pale wet flesh – though it was smaller than any whale known to man, barely the size of a horse. Its breathing was loud, and when it opened its mouth it was to reveal rows on rows of teeth so fine they looked like hair.

“Two must face me and not bleed,” the spirit said. “Until you have wounded me thrice. Any who bleed before then surrender their lantern.”

The voice was slow, lazy, and Angharad blinked away a wave of exhaustion as her veins suddenly cooled. The Fisher was not pleased by the other spirit’s encroachment, she could tell. It would only grow angrier if the spirit persisted, she thought, and so that made her a natural choice for this test.

“I will make one,” Angharad said, stepping forward.

“And I the second.”

Her jaw clenched as Tupoc Xical swaggered up, spear on his shoulder. For all her hatred of the man, he was a skilled fighter. If there was to be a test of martial strength, she would not turn him away. Pushing aside her reluctance, she acknowledged him with a nod. He returned it, along with a smirk that had her considering throttling.

“Let us discuss terms, honored elder,” Angharad said.

The spirit was not interested in trading time for fewer hits, or making assurances too precise about what it might use to pursue them. It only conceded it would not shrink the space of the bridge.

“There will be a trick to hitting it,” Tupoc told her.

“I expect there will be,” Angharad said, and breathed in.

(Angharad Tredegar and Tupoc Xical accepted the terms, beginning the test.

The spirit was quick for its size, charging without batting an eye, but neither its opponents were amateurs. They danced around it as it struck with tail and grasping maw, Tupoc scoring a blow on its side. Only the flesh did not part. The spirit brushed against Angharad a heartbeat later and a spear wound erupted into her side, surrendering her soul. She forced herself to continue, to buy passage for the others. Twice she struck at the spirit, now with nothing to lose – first managing a deep slash into the side that parted no flesh, and then an enraged thrust as the spirit’s forehead.

Which parted flesh like a wide, deep slash.)

Angharad breathed out, shivering for the sudden cold in her veins.

“Do not let it touch you, not even in passing,” she ordered.

“I love it when you give me orders, Tredegar,” Tupoc replied, winking at her.

She ignored that. The spirit’s power was the delay of one wound, Angharad decided. Only while the wound was being delayed, the spirit could give it to one of them instead through contact. A difficult trick to beat if you were unaware of it. Lucky for them, they were not.

The spirit was as quick as it had been in her vision, but not quicker than her.

Cold burned in her veins, keeping exhaustion at bay, and whatever god had blessed Tupoc it seemed no more inclined to let the Izcalli be slowed down. Angharad played the bait, slowing until the spirit charged, and only ran when it had begun to move. The creature slid, trying to turn to catch her, and that was enough od an opening for Tupoc to peck at its back. The Pereduri hazarded a shallow slash as she cut close to the spirit, earning a shallow thrust wound for her trouble, and Tupoc’s pale gaze fell right on it.

The Izcalli figured it out in a heartbeat, not needing a word.

After that, they made sport of their enemy. It moved predictably enough, slowing only to swat with its tail and snapping its mouth whenever they came close, which let Tupoc blind an eye – turning into her shallow slash – and even as the spirit roared in anger Angharad ducked under a tail swing to rise into a smooth pivot. She cut through the side of the tail with a textbook perfect cut, though it only unleashed a pierced hole into the flesh.

It was, however, undeniably a third wound.

The spirit turned on them in a fury.

“You tricked me,” it accused.

“I did not fall prey to your tricks,” Angharad plainly corrected. “Your wrath rings hollow, honored elder.”

She walked right past the spirit, ignoring Tupoc’s delighted laugh, and went to claim the prize promised her: a way out of the nightmare.

—

The end. They’d finally got to the end of the maze, damn the blood-hungry thing.

Sweat pouring down her back, Angharad climbed the wide stairs and found she barely begrudged Tupoc’s presence at her side. He too was a victor twice over. She could return to despising him when he next opened his mouth. The gentle slope ended on flat grounds in the uneven make of nature’s hand, the old cavern floor bereft of so much as a speck of life. There were only two things here: a wall of hanging lanterns and a gate.

There must have been hundreds of the lanterns, thousands – and though many were of the same cheap iron stock the Watch had given them at the Old Fort, not all were. There was brass and bronze, elaborate silver filigree and even an exquisite thing of sculpted glass shaped like a flower. The flames were pale and they burned even though not all lanterns had wick or air. Angharad could not decide which was more unsettling: the unnaturalness of that, or that not all flames burned even. Some were bright, others guttering out. Were there other lanterns gone dark, just out of sight?

Shaking herself out of the musings, the Pereduri moved her eye back to the gate. It had seemed tall from a distance, but from here it was outright colossal. Tall as three dozen men, half as broad, and its curved head ended in a great lion’s head holding a knocker in its mouth. Angharad looked for a hinge or a keyhole, but all the great panes of bronze displayed was elaborate wrought iron patterns of curving snakes and flowers.

“The floor, Tredegar,” Tupoc said. “Unless you intend on gawping all night?”

Angharad duly resumed despising him, as had been foretold. He was not wrong about the floor, however: there were circles of bronze set in it, themselves tracing a greater circle before the gate. Ten circles, to be precise, and that could not be a coincidence. Their slowing gait had allowed the first of the others to catch up, so Lord Zenzele soon let out a sigh as he caught up to her.

“Would it have killed that fat Tianxi to tell us what precisely was needed to open the gate?” he said. “I must confess I am not greatly in the mood for a spot of occult mystery.”

“The Watch did tell us.”

Angharad’s gaze slid to the speaker, who she had not expected to come forward on her own. Lan looked as exhausted as she herself felt, but her eyes were sharp.

“A bold claim,” Zenzele Duma said. “Do elaborate.”

“They gave us one thing before we set out,” the Tianxi said. “You think it’s a coincidence they’re also hanging off the wall here, Malani?”

The blue-lipped woman cleared her throat.

“Lady Tredegar, would you please place your lantern in one of the circles?”

Angharad frowned, but she could see no reason to refuse. Though the blackcloaks had said the lantern touched with their blood was for spirits to find them in the aether – and feed on them should they lose – the golden light of the aetheric machine above would prevent such mischief. She walked to the closest bronze circle even as she went through her pack, lightly setting the lantern down in the middle. She stepped back afterwards, wary, but nothing at all happened. Three heartbeats passed.

“I thought you’d have taunted me by now,” Lan candidly admitted to Zenzele.

“I thought to wait for Ferranda so-”

A flame, pale and bright, suddenly lit up inside Angharad’s lantern.

“That is to say,” Lord Zenzele corrected midstride, “well done, Lan, capital work.”

By now the others had caught up, and the method was laid out other victors began to set down their own lantern. Isabel was the first after Angharad, and the Pereduri kept her eye on the gate as the infanzona’s lantern lit up. No movement at all. They had precisely ten victors out of their survivors, so ten lanterns were set down. Ishaan’s was the last, and it was placed within the circle Angharad idly glimpsed ahead.

/A flame within the iron, the lionhead’s mouth opening, the flames winking out and then nothing./

She swallowed her fear. The mirror-dancer bared her blade even as the bronze lionhead came to life, eyes turning to her. Then then the golden light above, their constant companion, went out like a snuffed candle. The barest instant after, so did the hundreds of lanterns on the wall.

Angharad had not seen nothing, she realized, but the dark.

Shouts of fear and dismay echoed, blades being bared and even a shot fired blindly – or perhaps not so blindly, as the sound of a bullet on metal echoed. Had Shalini snapped a shot? If she had, it did not stop the spirit in the gate for they all heard something massive landing before them.

“Gets your lanterns out,” Angharad shouted. “Your real ones.”

It was a madman’s whirl after that, everyone scattering as the spirit charged – feeling so much larger than it had as a mere head, even were a matching body attached to it. Angharad glimpsed ahead once, twice. She used not her eyes to guide herself, for she saw nothing, but the pain of being mauled should she misstep. She found the spirit, or close enough, and felt wind as is struck at her but came short. Was it blind to the dark as well?

“Here,” she shouted. “It is here.”

A shot flashed through the dark, revealing for a heartbeat the hulking shape of a bronze lion large as a carriage as the bullet went wide. The spirit turned in a moment, striking out, but Angharad threw herself out of the way. Her shoulder landed badly on the stone and she swallowed a hiss as something tore through where she had just been standing.

“I despise cats,” Tupoc noted in the distance, then raised his voice. “Over here, you rusty old thing.”

The spirit roared, leaping his way, and Angharad saw it for some blessed soul had finally gotten a lantern lit. Song, silver eyes steady, had set her lantern on the ground and was already loading her musket. Tupoc, meanwhile, laughed as he danced around swiping claws and – the shots were in such quick succession Angharad almost thought there had only been the one. Instead she saw Shalini drop her fourth pistol with an incredulous look. The Someshwari did not even carry four, Ishaan had his arms raised to make it easier for his companion to snatch his.

The bronze lion roared again, turning, and Angharad saw that enough bullets had landed in his right eye to cave it in. Not that it seemed to slow it down any.

“Powder won’t work,” Lady Ferranda shouted. “Blades out!”

In the flickering lantern light, they went after the spirit. Tupoc and Angharad were quickest and so they led the dance – darting in and out of the bronze lion’s reach. It was slow, the mirror-dancer realized, and did not see well. But it struck with the strength of a dozen men and it was made of fucking bronze. Twice she scored slashes on its face and side, earning only a line, and none of the others did better save for Brun whose hatchet sunk deep enough into the spirit’s head he was not able to wrench it back out. It tossed him away with a swipe of its tail, the Sacromontan falling to the ground with a scream, and others were not far behind.

Ferranda was hit by the spirit’s shoulder as it ran and went flying as if it had been a battering ram, unconscious on impact.

“On me,” Angharad hissed at the monster, striking at its sculpted mane.

From the corner of her eye she saw Lan drag away the infanzona, but it was all spinning out of control. They were losing, could not get past the bronze.

“Your contract,” Lord Zenzele shouted. “Nair, you need to use your contract.”

“Fuck,” Lord Ishaan Nair cursed, closing his eyes.

And a miracle happened: the lion went still.

At least until Ishaan started screaming.

“Kill it,” Shalini screamed. “Kill it now or his brain will melt and-”

Tupoc rammed his spear into the lion’s dented eye, plunging through bronze until the shaft was a third through. He grunted with effort, tanned muscles clenching as he pushed as far as he could into the creature’s head.

The lion stilled and Ishaan stopped screaming.

Had they... had they done it? Another two heartbeats passed and the lion did not move. It must be dead, Angharad thought, though only Song would be able to confirm that – and where was Song? She had not fought, not even fired the musket Angharad had seen her loading. She could not think the Tianxi a coward, so something must have happened. Was she... Gaze sweeping the cavern to the edge of the light, Angharad found no trace of her. It was only beyond that cast that she glimpsed movement. Song had climbed the wall unhooked a lantern.

As Angharad watched a pale, bright flame lit up inside.

“Ren, what are you doing?” Lan called out from below. “Your cursed fool you’ll-”

“No,” Song shouted, “Xical, don’t-”

Angharad’s gaze went to Tupoc, who she found was merely laying a foot on the lion to prepare to rip out his spear. She moved to stop him, trusting in Song, but the Izcalli was quicker. The spear came free, and for a heartbeat nothing at all happened.

Then the bronze lion moved.

It wasn’t dead, Angharad realized with horror. Ishaan’s contract only forced it asleep. The Someshwari had been failing in the contest of minds before Tupoc’s spear went into the skull, which had distracted the spirit enough for the contract to win that contest. Only now the pain of the same spear being ripped out had awoken it. The Izcalli went down, slapped away, and Angharad struck at the lion’s back.

“Ishaan,” she screamed, “you must-”

The lion ignored her, the thin scar she inflicted in its back, and bounded forward. Once, twice and on the third bound its jaw snapped closed.

Ishaan’s head popped like a grape, a mess of red and grey that the lion swallowed whole.

Shalini let out a heartrending sound, like her soul had been ripped out, and stabbed at the spirit with a knife. It bounced off the bronze, too blindly struck. Angharad pursued, shouting to draw the monster’s attention, and after a final wet gulp it deigned to turn towards her. Zenzele dragged Shalini away. Fighting her for every step.

Angharad faced the spirit, breathing out, and knew all she had left was-

The lantern’s arc was perfect, a thing of beauty. The iron box Song had thrown struck the lion on the side of the head, impossibly shattering like glass, and there was a burst of pale light as the flame within flared up. The spirit roared, screamed, but the pale fire spread across its bronze body and blackened the metal. It struggled and twisted, but inch by inch it was devoured by the bright flame until there was nothing left but a blackened husk.

And when at last the pale fire guttered out, in the distance the great bronze gate began to open.

The sound, Angharad found, could not quite drown out Shalini’s sobs.

—

They did not linger.

Shalini took up her friend’s body, after wrapping it so the lack of head would be hidden, and would not hear of being helped.

Beyond the gates lay a hallway, little more than a tunnel sloping upwards. There were no torches here, no light but what they brought with them. Yet Angharad saw that what waited at the end of the hallway was a different kind of darkness from the one behind them – lighter, airier. It was the outside. Sleeping God, Angharad thought, but she was finally going to feel the wind on her face again. She hurried up the stairs, the light of the lanterns trailing behind, until her legs ached and there were no more steps left to climb.

Past the edge of the hall waited a long drop, mere feet of ground before the sheer drop of a cliff. And yet Angharad grinned, for above her twinkled the distant stars of firmament.

They were out, finally out.

Song was the first to join her, musket still at the ready. Together they caught sight of the lights in the distance. Far to the north, past thick woods, where a port was tucked away and waited the ships that would take them away from the Dominion of Lost Things. A cliffside path to their left led that way, snaking down towards the bottom of the mountain and the darkness below. To their right, their west, awaited something better: rest.

A fort jutted out of the mountainside, a tower at its summit burning bright and pale. More tempting still were the yellow lanterns around the fort, the marks of sanctuary. Blackcloaks would await them there, Angharad thought, with beds and food and safety before they ventured into the horrors of the Trial of Weeds.

“Come on,” Song said, brushing their shoulders together. “I could do with a good’s night sleep after this bastard of a day.”

“So could I,” Angharad fervently replied.

She glanced back, seeing the others were catching up.

They felt it before they heard the noise.

The shiver going through the ground, the feeling of something breaking. Then there was that catastrophic, deafening crack as the very earth shook under their feet. Angharad barely stayed on her feet, and caught Song so she would not fall.

“Oh Gods,” the Tianxi breathed out.

Angharad followed the silver gaze, which had come to rest behind them and above their heads. For a heartbeat she understood nothing, and then she saw it too: the crown of the mountain above them had just gone down. The ground shook again, the roar of breaking stone crashing against their ears. The mountain, she realized was crumpling from the inside. Caving in. And as a third great heave threw them both against the ground, the mountain’s crown fell all the way down – disappearing from their side. Angharad stayed there gaping until she was shaken out of it.

“- up, we need to go,” someone shouted, dragging her up.

She followed, struck dumb, and saw it all fall apart.

On the mountainside, chunks of stone began to fall. To roll down the slopes. A landslide, one so large as to defy descriptions.

She did not stay long enough to it swallow up the Watch’s mountainside fort, they were already running towards the woods by then, but she heard it. There could be no doubt.

Sanctuary lay buried under a cairn of stones, and thus began the Trial of Weeds.