Chapter 45

Chapter 45

Four, Tristan counted as the blade went through Augusto Cerdan’s throat.

Though he allowed himself a moment to bask in the satisfaction of yet another Cerdan put in the ground, some precautions were in order. Clearing his throat, he leaned in to politely ask Shalini to shoot Augusto in the head twice more just to be sure. The gunslinger snorted but shot the possibly dead infanzon in the head and heart a heartbeat later. By simple hand, not using her contract, as the unnecessarily flashy spinning of her pistols proved.

Tredegar gave them a mildly disapproving look, but Tristan was unwilling to take a risk with a Red Maw contract. With reason: a heartbeat later, Augusto’s corpse began shriveling up.

It shook and warped and ate itself from the inside, until the cadaver was little more than brown leather with a massive stomach wound going through it. When it finally stopped moving, cracking open like a clay left to dry in the Glare for too long, a hush fell over their group.

“I take back the snort,” Shalini finally said. “Well done, man.”

Tristan tipped his tricorn back. It was not every day he got to arrange the desecration of an infanzon’s corpse and come off better for it. Tredegar cleared her throat, looking embarrassed. Like some slip of a girl at her first dance instead of the whirlwind of death that had casually torn through a man and coldly executed another on a technicality. The thief doubted he would ever get used to that gap.

“Yes, indeed,” Angharad said. “I had thought him dead.”

Fair be fair, she had stabbed him to death. And she was owed some courtesy for scratching another name off his list without bringing any suspicion onto him.

“I expect any of us would have been, in his place,” Tristan said. “But Lord Augusto contracted with a god of the Old Night, and these are made of sterner stuff.”

The gods that had ruled Vesper before Morn’s Arrival might have been toppled from their thrones but even their remnants were fearsome things.

“Eh,” Fortuna sniffed disdainfully, leaning on his shoulder. “We could walk that off too, I’m pretty sure. Ask the girl to shoot you too.”

The Lady of Long Odds went ignored, as was her due. By the flicker of gratitude on Tredegar’s face she seemed to believe he was being polite instead of truthful, which was mildly amusing as for once he had been entirely forthright with her.

“The hollows with Lord Augusto spoke of a hidden passage out of Cantica hidden nearby, one of them even finding it,” the thief continued. “If you give me a moment to look we should be able to leave this town behind at last.”

“That would be lovely,” Lord Zenzele croaked out.

He’d been helped out of the alley by Ferranda, who looked rather worried at the state of him. Not without reason, given his gut wound and missing eye, but Tristan gave him decent odds of surviving now. Had they been out in the wilds the Malani would have been good as a corpse, but now the Watch was here. The bleeding alone shouldn’t kill Zenzele and with a proper physician taking care of him the Malani should be able to avoid infection, the complication most likely to send him for another spin of the Circle.

It took Tristan a little under a minute to find the hidden passage out Cantica. It was nothing more than a shallow gap under the palisade, just large enough to squeeze through if you were willing to eat some dirt, but it would serve well enough. Earlier it had been concealed by a rock and an angle in the dirt – someone had raised a slight slope on the side to make it less obvious to the eye – but the fleeing slave hadn’t bothered to put those back after she messed them up going through.

After calling out his find to the others, Tristan allowed the tension in his shoulders to loosen. With the passage found there would be no talk of riding out the Watch assault in the gaol, and so no need to explain Cozme Aflor’s corpse. The thief honestly believed he would have been able to talk himself out of that grave, but it would be best never to step in it if he could.

Though the tallest among them – Zenzele and Angharad – looked somewhat queasy at the prospect of having to go through that narrow a gap, no one argued against leaving Cantica. It yet remained a risk they might get caught between the Watch sweep and some fleeing cultists, or worse some feet-dragging devils. They set up a rearguard to cover themselves and began crossing, Tristan the first through. Dragging his belly through the dirt, the thief emerged into faded yellow grass.

He made room for Ferranda Villazur, dusting himself off as he got onto his feet. There was no sign of the hollow girl from earlier, but then if she had any wits at all she’d still be running. Song had mentioned something about the Watch encircling the town, but unless the garrison in Three Pines was much larger than the supplies on the Bluebell had implied the encirclement would not be airtight. She had a shot at making it through.

Fishing his tricorn out of the bag he’d put it in for the crossing, the thief patted the worst of the dust off it and put it back on. Much better.

“You do know that hat is a decade out of fashion, yes?” Lady Ferranda amusedly said.

The infanzona looked bruised and tired, but like him the relief at escaping Cantica was lending her a second breath.

“The current fashion involves feathers, Villazur,” Tristan disdainfully replied. “If I were meant to be a bird, I would have been born one.”

The infanzona traced the Circle on her left shoulder, lips twitching.

“That’s heresy,” she informed him. “Palingenesism, to be exact. Only Someshwari cults argue the Circle can spin us into animals.”

“Well, they must have the right of it,” the thief easily said, “for how would you explain the Cerdan if not a past life as some manner of pig?”

She choked, and was still laughing when Song emerged from the gap and asked what they were speaking about.

“The heresy inherent to the porcine condition,” he told the Tianxi.

“I am impressed that you would admit to being pig-headed,” Song replied without batting an eye, “but it is hardly heresy, Tristan. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“Harsh,” Ferranda appreciated.

And now the nobility was conspiring with foreigners to take advantage of good, honest Sacromontan folk. Typical. Instead of allowing himself to be further tarred and feathered, the thief – as honest a profession as any in the City – suggested they start a makeshift camp if they were to remain out here until the Watch was finished with Cantica. There was no telling how long it would take, after all.

Song pointed out a pit meant for burning trash that he’d missed a dozen feet to their left and Ferranda volunteered to get a fire started. She recruited him as labor, seeming surprised when he admitted he knew little of how to use a flint and tinder. It wasn’t his fault, the thief thought with irritation, that his lessons about lighting fires had been strictly about arson – an exercise that usually required more elaborate tools than sharp rocks and kindling.

There was still some leftover trash in the pit, mostly animal bones and pottery shards, but luckily there were some logs left as well. It was enough for the infanzona to get a fire going while he served as a glorified windbreak for her efforts, though they might need to venture out for firewood if the flames were kept going for long.

The rest trickled in one after another, the only trouble coming with Zenzele. He needed help on both sides, Tredegar pushing him from one and Shalini dragging him up from the other. The tricky part was doing that without ripping his wounds open further, but they seemed to manage decently enough. Though the seven of them kept their weapons close, as they settled around the somewhat stinking fire they unbent some.

The battle was not finished, the shots and shouts from inside Cantica made that much clear, but their part in it was. Even if there were still devils or cultists around, they were much mor likely to be hiding than looking for a fight. Wary as they still were, the heat of the fire and the relative safety greased the wheels enough for conversation to start. Mostly about what had taken place since they parted ways.

That led to an unpleasant surprise.

“Lan ran for the south when the cultists came out of the woods,” Ferranda said. “One of them winged her with a musket shot, and though Lady Angharad tried to help her back up-”

“I was too late,” Tredegar sadly said. “The bullet caught her in the face. Death was instant.”

Tristan’s jaw clenched and he ignored Maryam’s searching gaze. Lan had not been a friend and barely a companion, there was no need for pity. He was surprised, that was all. The thief had honestly thought Lan would make it to the end, clever and careful as she was. And she almost had, but almost never counted. If she had not run, then... well, there was no telling. Perhaps the cultists would have fired at the others instead, killed Song or Ferranda.

Instead Lan had made herself the standout target and paid for it. All it took was one mistake.

“Now that we know the Watch has encircled the town, I wonder if the cultists were not fleeing blackcloaks,” Song said, looking into the flames. “They were quite intent on following us into the town, desperate almost.”

“I imagine we will be able to ask the rooks if we survive the night,” Shalini sighed, then quirked an eyebrow at them. “And what were you lot up to? You are missing two.”

“The Watch’s shelling of Cantica effectively announced the end of the Trial of Weeds, and thus any possible justification for maintaining the truce,” Zenzele Duma calmly said. “I sought justice for Ayanda against the last remaining architect of her death.”

That got everyone talking, the Malani lord withstanding the storm of worry and cheering and disapproval with remarkable aplomb for a man who must be barely staying conscious. Maryam was praised for doubling back and helping him after Tupoc made his escape – ignoring her insistence that she was avoiding the same cultists they ended up fleeing – and with that skein laid out the conversation turned to Tristan’s part.

“I ran after Cozme, but he’s quick and my leg is wounded,” the thief said. “I had to stop when I encountered two devils headed for the front gate, and after that I headed to the gaol to wait this all out. The other two caught up to me there.”

“I have not seen Cozme Aflor since he ran off,” Zenzele mildly said. “He might well be dead.”

Tristan carefully did not smile at the lordling, who was beginning to grow on him. Malani, he thought, were rather reliable when you had them in your debt. Zenzele Duma would now consider them square for the thief having seen to his wounds earlier, but that was fine by him. Those two sentences had been more than fair payment for the service.

It didn’t matter if they weren’t entirely believed, as between he and Zenzele they had enough people invested in their telling of it being true that there would be no argument. Song’s silver gaze lingered on them both, but she had no horse in this race so why bother? The sole danger came when he glimpsed doubt in Tredegar’s gaze – more directed at Zenzele than himself, interestingly enough. Whatever her suspicions, they never passed her lips.

It looked like Tristan might just have got away with it.

--

They all saw it when the ambush was sprung south of Cantica.

The night broke as a thunderous volley lit up the woods along the dirt road, screams resounding all the way to their fire. Though they tensed, several bringing up weapons, no one came their way. The shots were irregular after that, as if the blackcloaks had been freed to fire at will, but large pillars of pale light rose from the depths of the woods. Glare lanterns, and not small ones. The fighting went on for a few minutes more but not much longer than that.

It must have been a massacre.

Angharad could not much muster much sympathy for cultists and devils, though she felt a pang of worry at the thought that some slaves might have been caught up in the slaughter. Hopefully most would have stayed inside Cantica, where the watchmen would see to their safety as they swept through the town. That part of the battle must be close to done as well, for it had been some time since a shot had last sounded within the palisade. What parts of it were not aflame, anyhow.

Angharad wondered if Tristan even realized his careless gesture had turned half the town into Yong’s funeral pyre.

They had been encamped around the fire for barely more than an hour when finally they saw movement. A party that must have come through the front gate was approaching at a brisk pace. A dozen men, which had them all reaching for arms until Song made out the black cloaks. Even more reassuring, two of the watchmen seemed to be carrying a stretcher. Their company got on their feet as the blackcloaks approached nonetheless, a tall woman with the Someshwari look to her approaching ahead of the rest.

“Sergeant Hina,” she brusquely introduced herself. “We were sent to fetch you and pick up your wounded, but first I need names and a headcount.”

That much was easily provided while Zenzele was helped into the stretcher under Ferranda’s watchful eye. The sergeant, openly tired and her cheek touched with ash, squinted down at a paper in her hand that might be the Bluebell manifest and sighed.

“Were there any other survivors?” Angharad asked.

She suspected not, given how very exactly Zenzele had spoken about Cozme Aflor. The only thing that had stilled her tongue was that she could honestly think of no reason for the other noble to want the man dead.

“Tupoc Xical,” the sergeant replied. “He joined in the scrap with the Saint around the town square and made enough of an impression the cabal sent in by Commander Artal is personally debriefing him. No others were found.”

Tupoc. Of course the smug Izcalli was still alive. What, Angharad indignantly thought, was it going to take to kill that man? Zenzele’s face was cold even as he lay down on the stretcher, but he did not seem truly angry. Perhaps he had expected it, for deep down the Pereduri suspected none of them had truly thought Tupoc would die in the chaos.

Chaos was where he thrived most.

“Now I’ve a few items to cross off my list,” Sergeant Hina said. “Ferranda Villazur, your attention.”

Lady Ferranda tore her gaze away from Zenzele, looking surprised.

“You have it.”

The sergeant cleared her throat, and when she spoke it was in the voice of someone reciting something by rote.

“Given the casualty rates this year and your performance during the trials, Captain Mateo has been instructed to make you two offers,” the older Someshwari said. “One of them is going back to Sacromonte on the next ship out.”

Ferranda’s lips thinned. She had already expressed having no intention of returning to her house and responsibilities.

“And the other?”

“Seven at most.”

“You should have tried to grab Zenzele and Shalini then,” he mused.

Ferranda would not be recommended, although he had some suspicions about the offer she was about to be made by this Captain Mateo. Maryam wiggled her hand in a hedging gesture.

“It was a favor done to us to be allowed to take the trials at all,” she said. “If not for putting ourselves in danger we might not have been allowed.”

The thief hummed with understanding.

“So taking too many of the spares would be pushing it,” he said.

The first reason he could think of for the Watch drawing candidates through something like the Dominion would be so they could bulk up the number of ‘free candidates’, meaning that sucking up too many people was likely to be frowned upon by their superiors. Maryam nodded. They sat there in comfortable silence for a moment, the crackling flames keeping them warm.

“Why me?” he asked.

Her brow rose.

“I thought you were joking about the flattery,” Maryam said.

He met her eyes.

“Why me?” he simply asked again.

She snorted.

“I was thinking of trying Ishaan and Shalini, at first,” she said. “Song could tell she has contract troubles, it might have been an angle to rope them in. Only when I was thinking about how to go about it, this rat walked up to me.”

His lips quirked.

“Your disguise needed work,” Tristan said.

“You had me curious,” Maryam said. “Even more after we talked near the docks. And I knew with the map in my head I could join up with the Ramayan crew at any time, so I could afford to hold back and watch until my curiosity was sated.”

“And then you stuck with us when the groups split,” he said.

She softly laughed.

“It’s easy with you, Tristan, even when you make it hard,” the blue-eyed woman said. “You have no idea how rare a thing that is for me.”

He swallowed, faintly embarrassed.

“Me as well,” he admitted. “I have not-”

It was so artless a confession he did not even have the words for it.

“It won’t be easy, even if Tredegar signs up,” Maryam suddenly said, eyes serious. “The tests in Scholomance, they make us compete against other cabals. Most of them will be larger, better trained. And the school itself...”

She grimaced.

“There’s a hundred rumors about why they closed it, back at the Rookery, but the one that everyone seems to believe is that the casualty rates were unsustainable.”

And unsustainable was no small word when spoken by the lips of the Watch, an institution so large that should all its free companies be counted it might be said to have a larger army than some great powers. Mountains of bodies, it meant. Seas.

“That will be tricky to navigate,” Tristan mused. “I wonder what makes it so deadly? They would not purposefully be wasteful, I feel.”

Maryam’s eyes brightened.

“You’ll still come?”

The rat leaned forward, gently touching her hand. The one where two fingers were missing down to the phalange, spent to save his life from his own cleverness.

“I was always going to agree, Maryam,” he gently said. “You paid upfront.”

Softly, almost hesitantly, she clasped his hand back. It had been years since someone simply held his hand like that. Had it been as long for her, he wondered? Looking at the faint wonder on her face, he thought it might have.

And that he did not want to take back his hand scared him more than anything else on this island had.

--

They did not step past the edge of the woods, but they went far enough that the light of the fire seemed on a distant shore.

Song had well weathered the Dominion of Lost Things, Angharad thought. Her collared coat was barely scuffed, her pinned hat singed at the edge but no more. She was hardly even bruised, and the most unkempt part of her was that her long braid was starting to come undone. That was a rare thing: this island, it had swallowed so many of them and even those it spat out had not come out the same.

Angharad thought of the grief in Zenzele’s eyes, of bent-back Shalini bearing Ishaan’s weight and Ferranda leaving all of the Villazur behind. None of them were the same person that had stepped onto the Bluebell, were they? Something inside them had been cut or ripped or burned, and now who they were would walk with that wound until they died.

It was not all tragedy. Tristan and Maryam had been strangers a week ago and now they were joined at the hip, eyes never straying too far from each other. They talked like they’d known each other for years, with that same rare fondness Mother had reserved for comrades she had shed blood with. And Angharad herself, she...

Looking at pale stars above, at the shivering night and the fire that felt like some faraway land, Angharad felt like a stranger still. Peredur was yet home, however forbidden to her. But she had been lost, fleeing across Vesper port by port, and she no longer felt that. She no longer woke smelling smoke, hearing screams on the wind, and though the deaths would never leave her they were no longer the fullness of her shadow.

She had changed. They all had, save for Song Ren.

Song who was the same woman she had been on the deck of the Bluebell that first evening, speaking a cryptic warning that went unheeded. Had she ever really lost her cool, even when they almost parted ways over the matter with Isabel? There had been anger, yes, but controlled. The Tianxi had been mistress of herself still. Song had walked through lines and ruins and weeds without a mark, without a loss. Silver as untarnished as that of her eyes.

The Tianxi was looking into the woods, at whatever secrets the dark might hide, when she finally broke the silence.

“You were added late to the Bluebell’s manifest.”

“My uncle’s work,” Angharad said. “A man I thought half a stranger but might be that a great deal more.”

“It caught my attention, the shared last names,” Song admitted. “But only so much. It was when the redcloaks cordoned off an entire dock to catch you and nearly got into a shooting match with the Bluebell that I truly became curious.”

“I have an enemy,” Angharad simply said.

There was a cold look on the other woman’s face as she gazed into the dark.

“I do not have that luxury, myself,” Song Ren said. “To cram all the evils inside one man so I might pull a trigger on him and end it in a stroke. I trying to fill a pit, Angharad, that gets deeper with every breath I take. We broke a ninth of the Heavens and my brothers they think they can just-”

She breathed in, sharply, then breathed out.

“It is not an enemy I face,” Song said, voice becalmed. “But I understand what it is, to seek the Watch as a means and not an end. In that we are the same. You hesitate because to join a covenant is not something that is easily taken back.”

“I had thought to enroll for seven years,” Angharad admitted.

“Spend seven years as a footsoldier in a free company or a guard in some Garrison fortress and you will be no closer to your ambitions,” the silver-eyed woman told her. “You will be able to set some coin aside and make a few petty contacts, but nothing more. Seven-year contracts are not held in high esteem.”

“But the Circles are,” Angharad said.

“Call them covenants,” Song said. “Only outsiders call them Circles. The Watch is as a nation of its own, you will learn, with its own tongue and customs.”

“Covenants, then,” Angharad dismissed. “I might know little of the Watch’s workings, but I do know this: to join a covenant is not sworn in sevens. It is until death.”

“Or retirement,” Song said. “That is a right usually awarded only to those who have served for decades, but it can be earned earlier by great deeds. And we will have the opportunity for these. The Watch opened Scholomance again for a reason, Angharad. They are preparing for something.”

The noblewoman frowned.

“For what?”

“I do not know,” Song admitted. “But what I do know is that as a Skiritai, you would become part of a covenant between the finest killers in all of Vesper. One that will be inclined to do you favors even after retirement.”

“I cannot afford to spend five years in a school, Song,” Angharad quietly said. “To let the world pass me by. My house deserves better than that.”

“The tests the Watch will send our cabal on, they are not some schoolyard brawl,” she said. “We will be sent out in the world on genuine contracts. Able to raise our names, to make allies and earn funds.”

And it was tempting, put that way. Yet it was taking a chance. That Song was right and she would be able to earn retirement, that she would win enough to justify the spending of years, that... so many things. Perhaps too many of them. But then Angharad had been taking chances ever since she first began running towards the Bluebell, hadn’t she?

There was no perfect answer. Insisting on one had seen the Guardia kick in her door and seize the last of her possessions in Sacromonte. The temptation was still there to refuse, to look for a path that would give her everything she wanted and cost her nothing, but Angharad had learned not to trust that voice.

Last time it had left with nothing but a saber and the clothes on her back.

The fire looked so far away, she thought, but home was further away still. And she would need to cross more than water and darkness to return, for though putting on a black cloak would stay her enemy’s hand they would remain out there. Waiting, plotting.

How much was she willing to pay, to go back home? How much was she willing to leave behind?

At least this much, Angharad Tredegar learned.

“All right,” she murmured. “I’ll do it.”

And somewhere, the Fisher laughed.