Chapter 48

Chapter 48

Song had not worn formal clothes this regularly since leaving Tianxia and was not sure she cared for it.

While formality was a demonstration of respect for the interlocutor, the facts of the matter remained that Song Ren had a lot to do and only so many hours in her day to do it. Consequently, the time spent getting in and out of her layered chang’ao felt like she was being stolen from – and while in need. If she could at least be read reports during it would be something, but frustratingly the process required too much of her attention.

That and it would be indiscreet to discuss the investigation when she was being helped into her clothes by a Black House maid. Servants gossiped, and Tristan was convinced that Imani Langa had bribed some of the staff to keep an ear out for her.

Still, getting in and out of formal clothes was not the worst waste of time her time today. Song watched with a blank face as Lord Rector Evander Palliades stepped to the edge of the balustrade and raised a hand, cheers and applause exploding at the sight of him. She herself stayed half-hidden among the curtains, eyes scanning the crowd and finding only a spread of magnates and nobles with a few contracts peppered in.

None that, at first glance, could be used to get to the Lord Rector up her in his heavily guarded private suite. That an officer of the Watch was being used as a bodyguard for Evander Palliades while the man attended the theatre made that rabid Yellow Earth contractor’s words ring unpleasantly of truth: she was undeniably being loaned to the local yiwu kingpin by her superiors.

That her rental came with fine seats overlooking the stage and luxurious refreshments somehow made it worse.

Lord Rector Evander kept his speech to the assembled influential below short, telling them that the cowardly attack on his life had missed and that the Asphodel Rectorate would not be waylaid from its triumphant rise into a new age of prosperity by such petty distractions. It was somewhat on the nose, Song thought, but hit the right notes for the listening audience. Some of them shouted approval at his words.

Her eyes flicked to his hands on the brass railing, noting how the man’s index and middle finger were tapping out a rhythm. He practiced that speech, Song thought. Enough that he’d decided on a specific cadence for delivering it. Reluctantly, she must approve of the assiduity on display. A lesser man would have read off a sheet.

Soon he was finished, his last words followed by another wave of cheers and applause. Though this was Evander Palliades’ first public appearance down in Tratheke since the assassination attempt the speech was, she thought, almost too well received. Either the botched assassination had made snubbing the Lord Rector unpopular – if not dangerous – or... The brown-haired man stepped away from the balustrade with a sigh, then snorted when he saw the look on her face.

“We will pay the clappers an additional fee, I think,” he said. “They certainly put their back into it.”

“You arranged for cheers,” Song half-accused.

“Men will clap at most anything if there are enough of their fellows already doing it,” Evander Palliades said. “If only to avoid being the only ones not clapping.”

“It will not truly make you more popular,” she pointed out.

He cocked an eyebrow.

“Will it not?” the Lord Rector replied. “Even if they noticed, what will they remember most – the suspicion, or the room full of cheers following my speech? It will not change the minds of those who have made it, but the weathervanes will go where they believe the wind blows.”

Song’s lips thinned, but she did not contradict him. Unpleasant as it was to admit, that sort of trick did work on crowds. Elections in Mazu were replete with their like, and it was said that in Wendi powerful trade cartels sent their ship crews to disrupt the speeches of candidates they opposed. It was a false equivalence to compare a sword in the hand of a tyrant and a sword in the hand of free man, but the hand wielding it did not make the sword itself more virtuous.

Tricks were tricks, and truth was the first victim of hypocrisy ennobled.

The Lord Rector invited her to sit, but before she could answer there was a knock at the door. Song put a hand on her pistol, for she would be dutiful regardless of her opinion of the assignment, but it was only the refreshments that had been sent for. Watered wine for Evander Palliades, and water for her – though by suspicious happenstance a pot of Sanxing green tea and two cups were also brought in.

She hid a grimace, aware that over the span of the next two hours it was likely her nose would win over her pride and she’d have a cup. Evander’s subtle smirk at the sight was set aside, as a debate over whether it was attractive or irritating would see her lose whatever the answer. She sat down on the lushly cushioned black seat, sipping at her water.

“You don’t very much want to be here, do you?”

Song kept her face calm, carefully setting down her cup on the low table between her seats. Only then did she turn her gaze on the bespectacled Lord Rector, who expression was one of faint amusement.

“I have personally been assigned this duty by Brigadier Chilaca,” she replied.

A thoroughly frustrating conversation, that. While he did not outright dismiss the findings she and Tristan had dug up in the northwestern ward, the heavyset Aztlan had been largely indifferent to the notion of a brewing noble coup. In his eyes, Song suspected, weakness in the reign of House Palliades merely strengthened the Watch’s bargaining position.

In the end he’d told her that he would be passing the report along to the senior Krypteia officer on the island, appending a personal note that time might be a factor, and that she was to cease being involved in the matter.

And while Song knew objectively that the brigadier had acted correctly, that he was following the proper protocols and had arguably treated her thin-on-proof report more seriously than many in his position might have, it was all a thorn in her throat. It was not the place of the Watch to intervene in Asphodelian affairs beyond what was required to maintain its own interests, so refraining from warning House Palliades about the coup was the proper course of action.

Yet she could not help but feel that this inaction was a mistake, that they were missing something, and in the end that Brigadier Chilaca had merely humored her awhile before sending her out here as a pawn in a greater game. It was hard not to resent that at least a little, though Song tried.

“And here I thought it a Malani affectation, to lie while speaking truths,” Lord Rector Evander drawled. “I take no offense, Captain Song. I am not unaware that seeing to my protection is not why you came to Asphodel, or that you were victim to a diplomat pulling rank.”

She cocked an eyebrow at that.

“A diplomat who pulled rank,” Song mildly said, “at your personal request.”

He smiled wanly.

“If I am to be robbed by the Watch, I might as well get them to contribute to my survival while the robbery is ongoing,” Evander Palliades said. “I’ll confess to some puzzlement you took the black in the first place: your contract, Captain Song, would make you a wildly wealthy and influential woman at the court of any great ruler.”

“You do not know the details of my contract,” she replied.

Nor would he ever.

“No,” he easily conceded, “but I know what my friends in Tianxia were able to gather about the Ren, which is not nothing.”

Her jaw clenched.

“I am a woman of the Watch,” Song Ren flatly said. “My past is of no import.”

Evander Palliades brushed back his curls, staring at her, then shook his head and took a sip of his watered wine.

“Neither of us believe that,” he said. “And you will find I can understand better than most what it feels like, the crushing weight of the legacy one must live up to.”

“You are a hereditary ruler,” she bit out. “I am from the single most despised bloodline in the Ten Republics. It is not the same.”

The last words came out a hiss, and she shut her mouth so quickly when she realized what she had said that her teeth clacked together painfully. Only Evander did not look bothered by her disrespect in the slightest – he seemed almost pleased.

“No,” he agreed. “Unlike you, I do not get to leave. I will sit a throne atop a house of glass until I die or a stone is thrown strongly enough to bring it down under me.”

She scoffed.

“You can leave,” Song flatly said. “Abdicate, take what wealth you can carry and live a life without a crown. To remain is a choice, not some divine punishment.”

“You could change your name,” Evander Palliades retorted smilingly. “Find a patron in Izcalli or Sacromonte, spend the rest of your life rich and respected.”

There is nowhere the curse will not reach me, Song thought. And I will not simply leave my sisters to rot from the inside like curdled milk. Only she owed this man none of these words and it would have felt almost obscene to share them with him. Already the strange joy in his mien at their talk was leaving her feeling naked, as if it were all too intimate. Gods but how lonely he must be, to be so candid with a woman he barely knew. She needed to pull back, not encourage him.

No matter how satisfying it would be to put him in his place, to let him realize the sheer extent of his misguided arrogance.

“This conversation can lead nowhere, Your Excellency,” she said. “It is best ended, with my apologies for speaking out of turn.”

He hummed, leaning back into his seat and reaching for his cup again. Watered down as it looked, he’d be able to drink the entire goblet and have his wits entirely unaffected. It was an admirable habit, which she resented. She did not feel much like approving of him, at the moment.

Silence had spread below them as they spoke, leaving Song to hope their talk had not been too loud, and it shamed her some to realize she had missed the beginning of the play. Painted panels of a magnificent golden city were being covered by streaks of blue cloth carried by children, which after a beat she grasped represented rising water. In front of the city being lost to the sea, a young man was addressing the gods in a lamenting monologue.

“With how expensive the seats are, you’d think they would change the city panels from year to year,” Lord Rector Evander noted. “They barely touch them up.”

Song shot him a disapproving look. It should be beneath even a despot to speak at the theater. The man had the gall to grin back.

“It is the Oduromaia,” Evander said. “I have seen it so many times I am in danger of falling asleep. Kindly protect me from peril, Captain Song.”

She glared at him, then sighed. It was not as if her duties would have allowed her to watch the play anyhow. She was meant to keep an eye out for dangerous contracts in the crowd.

“I take it that the ‘Oduromaia’ is the tale of Oduromai King’s journey to Asphodel?” she said.

“One such tale, certainly,” Evander Palliades said. “Though it claims the same title as what was once a spoken epic, I believe the text turned into play dates back to... late Century of Accord or early Dominion. During the early reigns of House Lissenos.”

The much-loved predecessors of the Palliades, who had ruled over Asphodel for over a hundred years.

“So shortly after the Ataxia,” she said.

His eyes lit up.

“Exactly,” he said, growing enthusiastic. “There was need to knit back Asphodel after those years of war, and the Lissenos went about it cleverly: they paid for tales and songs and plays, all harkening back to a common founding from which all Asphodelians drew common root.”

He paused.

“Though, of course, said works all implied Lissenos descent from King Oduromai so their part of the root must be recognized to be a little better than the others.”

“You are skeptical of the claim, I take it,” Song said, reluctantly amused.

He was impugning his own descent, practically speaking, as the Palliades claim to the throne came from their relation to the Lissenos.

“They were originally a minor noble house from Ikarios that took refuge in Asphodel during the Century of Steel,” he said, rolling his eyes. “They are as related to Oduromai as I am to Viterico the Great.”

Tempted as Song was to agree and add that kings must constantly change the past to justify the present, Evander was well read enough he might notice she was quoting the Feichu Tian. Which, given its contents, might be taken as impolitic of her.

Strong arguments in favor of royal decapitation were advanced within those pages.

“At least they were not Raseni,” she teased.

He cleared his throat.

“Actually, given that Rasen occupied Ikarios during the century preceding their exile, the odds are that they had a little...”

“No,” she said, almost grinning.

“All aristoi try to avoid talking about that,” Lord Rector Evander noted. “Everyone measures the strength of their claim by relation to House Lissenos, these days, so it would be a losing game for all involved.”

Far below Prince Oduromai bemoaned the treachery of the hollows and devils that laid low the hall of his father, announcing his intent to find the most beautiful island in Vesper to replace it, and Song reached for the pot to pour herself a cup of Sanxing green as Evander Palliades idly told her that in older version of the play some of the devils responsible for the destruction had been named – and sounded suspiciously like the houses of the Six, which the Sacromontans had taken offense to.

It was a waste of time still, she thought, but it need not be unpleasant. There was worse company to keep.

--

Though it was now his second time visiting, Tristan still found it genuinely impressive that Hage had gotten his hands on even a hole-in-the-wall shop inside the Collegium. He’d heard those went for literal bags of gold.

The new Chimerical still sold coffee, but as it was effectively a large and deep broom closet squeezed in between two eateries it only had one table and Hage had to stay upright inside his glorified stand to make room for his brewing apparatuses – even though most had stayed behind in Allazei, by the looks of it. So had many of the bags of bean varieties, which made it all the more amusing that an entire shelf of that limited space had been turned into a cushioned bed for a lazing Mephistofeline.

The cat’s monumental girth squished a little past the edge of said shelf, predictably. He also hissed at anyone who lingered too long to chat with Hage, but inexplicably this had charmed the locals. Someone had woven him a little crown of flowers, which he sat on, and there was a plate with bits of roasted chicken on it he occasionally deigned to nibble at.

“One serving of your cheapest bean water, good sir,” Tristan ordered, sliding a single copper across the counter.

The devil stared down at him through those owlish eyebrows.

“I will have you dragged away by the lictors,” Hage threatened.

Though not, the thief noted, without first pocketing the copper. Tristan theatrically sighed.

“Fine,” he said. “I will have to settle for all the information you have on the basileia called the ‘Brass Chariot’, then.”

He’d made that request when first finding the Chimerical yesterday, surprised to learn that as it was part of the test he would not even have to pay for the information. There was no one else in line, or even out in the street – he’d come during early morning work hours – but Hage still swept the environs with a look. Purely for show, given that the old devil’s hearing was sharp enough no one should be able to approach without him being aware.

“Second-raters,” Hage told him. “Their main business is smuggling, but they have a few protection rackets and front businesses.”

The thief frowned.

“What do they smuggle?”

“Mostly legal merchandise, in truth,” Hage said. “Only they get it into Tratheke without paying the rector’s tariffs and sell it marginally cheaper than it would be otherwise for a thin slice of profit. If they went for the real moneymakers, larger players would step on them. It is unconfirmed, but rumor has it other basileias sometimes hire them to transport goods through their routes.”

Tristan hummed thoughtfully.

“Trade Assembly connections?” he asked.

“Not the way you mean it,” Hage replied. “They make most of their coin at the expense of Assembly revenue so the merchants want them dead, but they’ve friends in the workshops and warehouses.”

So they had ties to the employees of the Trade Assembly, not the wealthy magnates themselves. As far as Tristan was concerned that was for the better. Coteries followed power and money, neither of which Tristan Abrascal could outbid even a single merchant magnate over.

“Much obliged,” he said. “I’ve another inquiry for you, though it is nothing urgent.”

“Oh?” Hage replied, grabbing a cloth to clean an already perfectly clean cup.

“Does the Watch have anything on a Lord Locke and Lady Keys?” Tristan asked. “Guests of the Lord Rector, supposedly. They were snooping around the assassination attempt, though I do not believe it was the assassin they were after.”

Hage stilled, and not as a man would. In that way only devils could, for devils need neither breathe nor soothe aching muscles: when their kind stilled, it was stone or the cast of night. Immediate, absolute.

“Repeat the names,” Hage ordered.

“Lord Locke,” he said. “Lady Keys.”

“Describe them to me.”

He did, the rotund and mustachioed little man and the tall and thin bespectacled woman. He even added how Lady Keys had grabbed him by the neck and tossed him down a window with strength unusual for a woman a skinny – though not, it must be said, impossible. Hage set down the cloth, then the cup.

“The Krypteia had no word of them being on Asphodel,” he finally said.

“They are a known quantity, then?” Tristan asked.

“I will look into the matter personally,” Hage said. “You, and the Thirteenth at large, are to avoid them as much as physically possible.”

He let out a low whistle.

“That bad?”

“Tristan,” Hage said, and his tone was grave enough the thief straightened. “You are not, under any circumstances, to make those two angry. Keep them smiling, keep them laughing. Always.”

Slowly he nodded.

“Above my pay grade, I understand.”

The devil stared at him, then jerked his chin to the side.

“Get going, I have paying customers on their way.”

Tristan snorted, and waved a goodbye a Mephistofeline – who summarily ignored him, as Tristan had lost any influence over the distribution of foodstuffs and thus become a stranger not worth remembering. There was nothing more fickle than a cat, save perhaps Fortuna.

Tristan took his time on the way back, still getting his bearings around the city. He’d gotten clothes in Asphodelian linens – even paid for them, at Song’s insistence – so he did not draw much attention anymore, at least until he talked. There was not all that much difference in appearance between Trebian islanders and Lierganen from the continent, at least not those from Sacromonte, but he had yet to unlearn his City accent. Hage had given him exercises, though, so he had hopes.

The Collegium was too rich for his blood, and too much of a tribe. Even though most who worked within the gargantuan cube of glass could not have afforded a Collegium house even if they save up for it their entire life, there was a cachet to spending your day there that set them apart from the rest of Tratheke. Not the kind of company one could slide into without first learning their little terms and customs, so Tristan instead let his feet take him to the southwest ward.

The southeastern ward had a large swath of noble mansions and properties, but its southwestern neighbor was the living heart of the city. It was where the workshops and the merchant warehouses were, and those well-paying jobs had sprouted shops and eateries and a dozen industries to cater to those earning the wages. There were a few of what Sacromonte would call guildhouses, the seats of trade consortiums, but they were surprisingly few and discreet.

Asphodel did not like to sell land to merchants, and it showed.

The hum on the street was about Lord Rector Evander’s surprise appearance at a playhouse in the northwestern ward the previous afternoon, proving rumors he had been disfigured to be a lie. There were also rumors the man now had a mistress, for a woman had been glimpsed up in his private lodge. Considering Song must have been the woman in question, Tristan had to swallow a shit-eating grin when he heard the rumor.

She was going to lose her mind at the implication she was some king’s mistress, and it was going to be beautiful. He couldn’t wait to tell her.

Overall, sentiment towards the Lord Rector was rather favorable. Even the mistress rumor got the wink-wink treatment about him being a young man with a young man’s needs, and everyone scorned the attempt to kill what they considered a fine enough ruler. Speculation was rife about who had done it, though in the southwestern ward when foreigners weren’t blamed the suspicion leaned more to the Council of Ministers than the Trade Assembly.

The ministers, being largely high nobles from the eastern and western regions of Asphodel, were unpopular with the people of Tratheke – who saw themselves as the heart of the Rectorate and believed the rest of the island to resent this obvious truth.

It was halfway through the afternoon, while debating grabbing a bite, that he first caught sight of them.

None of them were wearing back, which was how he almost missed them. He was saved by Captain Tozi Poloko’s absurd haircut, which stood out enough he gave her a second look and caught sight of the entire Nineteenth moving down the street in local clothes. Blades out in the open, but pistols hidden from sight so as not to out themselves as blackcloaks under the local laws.

He was tucked in behind a curtain of beads by a trinket stand, so he wasn’t in their angle of sight. The odds were good that for one he would be the one with the drop on Cressida. Too pleased at that notion to let the opportunity go, Tristan began to trail behind them. Though the four of them moved briskly the streets of the ward were thick with people so he was able to stay in sight of them without drawing attention.

Where were they going? It must be part of the investigation into the contracted killer, as they were moving the opposite direction from the way back to Black House.

It was when they dipped into side streets that Tristan’s curiosity was truly stoked. Cressida alone would have been too risky to follow into there, but the others were louder and not as wary. Taking pains to never be in their line of sight, tracking them by footsteps and the sounds of voices, he followed in their wake. A few minutes later, near a dead end, chatter rose sharply before ending entirely.

Tristan pressed himself against a wall, pricking his ear and catching what he was certain was the sound of a door opening. He waited it out, several minutes in case Cressida was keeping a lookout, and only then risked a glance. The alley past the corner was a run-down hole, with most of the edifices there stripped for parts, but there was a small cluster of standing buildings at the end. One of them had a lantern lit inside, by the glow behind the shutter.

Tristan slid back out of sight before anyone could see him. Well now, would you look at that. It looked like the Nineteenth Brigade had decided to obtain a safehouse out in the city, and he now knew exactly where it was.

You never knew when that sort of thing might end up useful.

--

Obtaining access to the private palace archives had been as simple as asking the Lord Rector, or rather as simple as Song asking the Lord Rector.

Maryam would admit she was not the most experienced in matters of romance, but when a boy invited you to the theater before plying you with drinks and talk about books you liked one did not usually call that a ‘bodyguard assignment’. Though, maybe if the drinks and talk went very well. Much as she believed that Song could use a little unwinding, the man involved meant the whole thing smelled like trouble and thus Maryam refrained from teasing her friend over it. Once you made a joke of something, it became easier to consider.

Yet for now they reaped the benefits of the association, as not only had Maryam been allowed access to the archives but she had effectively been given the run of the place – with for only restriction the inability to take books out. Captain Wen came along, as much to supervise as because the only thing the corpulent man enjoyed as much as good meal was a rare book.

They found out, together, that the private archives of the rector’s palace were a prison.

Maryam was not being dramatic, they were quite literally a repurposed gaol. Six large pentagonal chambers connected to a larger central enclosure, each of the pentagons having once carried three cells and a guard post. The central enclosure, at the heart of which stood a squat and heavy tower containing the only way in and out of the archives – a lift leading to a room below – was surrounded by small alcoves that could be used for work.

A few of the dozen archivists were glaring at her from their cover, perhaps under the impression they were being subtle. They’d not enjoyed Maryam being granted rights over their little kingdom even before seeing the color of her skin. After? Some of them refused to so much as look in her direction, and she had heard hollow muttered more than once.

The senior archivist, a frigidly polite older woman whose tendency to turn her up her nose really should be paired with better care to pluck the hair inside her nostrils, offered the most cursory of welcomes before saddling Maryam with the youngest of the archivists as a gofer and attendant. While she was going to need the help navigating these stacks, many of which were filled with books in Cycladic, there was the slight trouble that in this case ‘youngest’ meant a nine-year-old girl in brown robes too large for her. Maryam could not recall being around a girl of nine since she herself had been one of those.

“If you’re a blackcloak,” Roxane gravely asked, “then why aren’t you wearing a black cloak?”

Maryam might have been irritated by the question, if not by the painful earnestness on her face. The messy auburn bob and slightly too long sleeves only added to the effect.

“What is it,” she quietly asked, “that happened to you in Tariac, Wen?”

“I set on fire some who deserved it,” the large man replied. “And a lot more who didn’t.”

“Do you regret it?” Maryam asked.

His eyes behind the spectacles were sharp as a fang.

“Never,” Wen said. “It was badly done, but it needed doing.”

He pushed himself up.

“But you don’t have to make my mistakes,” he said. “Come on, Khaimov. Let’s go have a chat with Lady Eumelia that gets us what you actually want.”

Maryam stared at him for a long moment, then nodded. She did not thank him as she rose, but part of her suspected he wouldn’t have wanted it anyway.

--

Their patrons insisted the farewell banquet was about fostering ties between the brigades before the parting of ways, but Tristan was fairly sure it was really about having a believable excuse to empty the Black House cellars. The teachers, holed up at their table in the corner, were laughing increasingly loudly as the wine bottles emptied almost faster than the staff could take them away.

The students, by unspoken accord, pretended not to hear any of it.

Besides, excuse or not the kitchen had been asked for a feast and duly delivered. Tristan was pleased to find he had been pandered to: the cooks had put out a plate of dimpled flatbread and a traditional Sacromontan ternasco. The kind of juicy lamb you had to rob a wealthy man for, or at least a reputable inn. Salvador, the quiet fellow from the Eleventh also from the City, made it known with his eyes from across the table that if Tristan hogged said ternasco there would be violence.

The thief surrendered one of the fatty pieces in appeasement.

By the pleased sounds half the table was making, the two of them were not the only ones who’d been given a taste of home. The Izcalli – Tupoc, Captain Tozi and Izel, all clustered on the right side of the table – looked like they were about to come to blows over who got the larger share of the tamales plate. Tupoc discreetly tried to steal one of the two dipping sauce pots accompanying them only to be hollered at in dismay, only reluctantly relinquishing it.

The Malani rationed out some pleasant-smelling stew like they were on a long sea voyage, having it traveling in a circle as they eyed each other like hawks over portion sizes, while the Tianxi took turns eating from their rice-and-chicken dish – each trying to grab the single largest piece they could while maintaining plausible deniability. Song, he amusedly noted, was not getting the better of it.

Acceptable Losses kept stealing the bits she staked out and that Qianfan fellow was merciless in following through.

Meanwhile Cressida Barboza and Alejandra Torrero, demonstrating the curse of being born in some hick town out in Old Liergan, ignored perfectly good ternasco to instead squabble over spicy sausages. Tristan knew better – you should never eat sausage when you did not know where the butcher lived. That was a recipe for getting a bite of a sawdust-and-trotters Murk special.

To his surprise the two Someshwari at the table were the most civil, each taking a small portion from a pot of rice paired with spicy vegetable curry and stir-fried vegetables with coconut. That the Imperial Someshwar was to be the only corner of the table to avoid civil war was slightly ironic, and Angharad even complimented Kiran Agrawal on his restraint in taking only the one portion of a home dish. He snorted.

“That is not from my home,” he drily replied. “It is a Ramayan dish, best served to dogs and merchants.”

“They got the thoran right, though, which is rare,” Bait noted from his right. “There’s probably a Ramayan in the kitchen staff.”

It was easy to forget, Tristan thought, that the Imperial Someshwar was large as any other two great powers put together and bore at least thrice as many people. Even the Second Empire had never managed to conquer more than the outskirts of that land, and not for lack of trying. The famous azirvada, the Glare trees whose wood and leaves filled the air with light, had been deeply coveted by Liergan.

Once the initial frenzy passed and bellies filled, hands reached for the wines and liquor and conversation began to flow just as freely as the drink. All talk he was relatively well placed to listen in on, being sat near the middle of the rectangular banquet table. It was more than decent seating: Tristan had, in a stroke of genius, waited until Cressida Barboza sat down to claim his own seat and so been able to put two equally terrifying women between them – Maryam and Angharad.

To his left was Song, who had sat down there purely to deny Imani any seat remotely close to Angharad’s. The Malani showed not a hint of frustration on her face from her place to Song’s own left, but Tristan could almost smell it on her.

Arguably the downside of his position was that facing him was Acceptable Losses, squeezed in between a Thando Fenya pointedly ignoring him and a largely silent Expendable who seemed under the impression that if he stopped moving whenever Song glanced in his direction he would turn invisible. Manners had forced the wolf eyed Malani to take off his wide-brimmed hat but he kept his eyes cast down on his plate as if he were still wearing it.

“- in a few days, once Prefect Nestor receives word from the latest patrol,” Captain Imani was telling Song. “While we could go off haring after the last sighting in the hills, it seems to me a wiser course to get the freshest word before heading out.”

“We would likely lose just as long wandering around the hills looking for a trail to follow,” Qianfan added.

Like all the other brigades, the Eleventh had kept together – the four of them forming a half-circle around the left end of the table. Theirs, Tristan thought not for the first time, was an unusual brigade. While Imani Langa was captain, neither her signifier nor Thando Fenya seemed to defer to her all that much. Fenya in particular often seemed off handling his own affairs – he was currently speaking to Acceptable Losses in perfect Cathayan instead of paying attention to this conversation, for example.

Salvador, the quiet Sacromontan that Tristan smelled coterie on, was the one that followed her closest. Yet from the way Imani never quite let him out of her line of sight, he might just be the one she trusted the least.

“Have you any notion of where you might end up in Tratheke Valley?” Song asked.

“West,” Qianfan said.

Imani’s glance at him was slightly irked.

“That seems likely, given that most previous sightings of unnatural events were broadly northwest of the capital,” she said. “Well short of Stheno’s Peak, mind you.”

It clicked into a place moment later why Song had asked that, beyond making conversation: with Angharad soon to journey to Cleon Eirenos’ mansion out in the wilds, they would not be able to run interference between the two of them if the Eleventh passed near that manse. Not that Imani would be able to openly contact Angharad out there, given that the latter was keeping her black cloak quiet while rubbing elbows with the nobles.

That left contacting her secretly, of course. He’d not put those details together, good on Song to have remained sharp.

“- Tristan. Tristan.”

The thief turned to find both Maryam and Angharad look at him, cocking an eyebrow.

“You were the one to first find the false window,” Maryam said. “At the teahouse.”

“I was,” he confirmed. “Wearing black, anyway.”

“Was there any visible Gloam phenomenon inside the room when you looked?” Alejandra Torrero asked from across the table.

He shook his head.

“It was pitch black, but not that kind of black,” he said.

Torrero’s scowl eased up, if only a moment.

“See, Khaimov?” she said. “A Sign powerful enough to open a way out of the half-layer would have left some aftermath.”

“Unless it was traced by a signifier of great skill,” Maryam rebutted. “One with minimal leakage.”

“Come off it,” Alejandra snorted. “If they had someone that powerful and skilled running around Tratheke the Guild would have taken notice.”

Tristan cleared his throat.

“The assassin had a contract,” he reminded them. “They cannot have been a signifier, unless my understanding of the incompatibility there is incorrect.”

“A rare instance of you not being wrong, Abrascal,” Tupoc noted from the seat to Alejandra’s right. “But they are arguing about whether the object used by the assassin ran on aether or Gloam.”

His brow rose.

“A Gloam-cursed object,” he slowly said. “You mean like evil eye amulets? I thought talismans and the like were witch tricks.”

That got him a dirty look from both Maryam and Alejandra, which saw him raise his hands in preemptive defense. Tupoc naturally put on the most disappointed look of them all, as if Tristan had personally let him down.

“Not cursed amulets, you gullible baboso,” Alejandra sneered. “Proper Signs appended to a compatible object.”

“Spent on use, like blackpowder in a grenade,” Maryam told him.

“Any tool capable of holding so strong a Sign would be worth a fortune,” the dark-haired Lierganen told her, pursuing victory.

“And that harpoon in the layer came cheap, you think?” Maryam replied, unimpressed.

He glanced past Maryam to find that Angharad’s eyes were faintly glazed over and her pleasant smile a little bland. Been going a while, then. The twitch of his lips that earned caught her attention and she looked faintly guilty for a beat before straightening in her seat. She turned to her right, towards Cressida and Izel, leaning in to say something that caught the Izcalli’s attention.

Tristan himself took the first opportunity for a strategic retreat that presented itself, seeing no upside to stepping in between Maryam and Torrero at odds – much less with Tupoc just waiting to throw darts. He ended up rising to ask one of the servants for a jug of water, as he had no intention of partaking in the drinks and stayed up to have a better look at the lay of the table.

Song joined him, keeping an eye on Imani as she did.

“Surprisingly cordial,” he said. “Even Tupoc has mostly behaved.”

“His brigade is frustrated because of the delays,” Song told him. “They’ve had difficulty getting proof of being on a Watch contract from the rector’s office and they need those papers before setting off from Tratheke.”

Else they would be arrested for wandering through the territories of half a dozen nobles while hunting their dragon.

“He’s easing off so they can actually have fun,” Tristan put together. “That’s more bend than I expected him to have, I’ll admit.”

“He has always been more measured in his actions than he seems,” Song grunted. “The Leopard Society trained him well in that regard, for all that the affiliation wins him no regard with other Izcalli.”

“Izel’s quite pleasant with him,” Tristan noted.

“He’s pleasant with everyone,” Song said. “Which is odd, for an Izcalli highborn. They tend to be...”

“Warmongering pricks?” he lightly said.

“Among other things,” she snorted. “I wonder if it has to do with...”

She touched her throat, which had him cocking an eyebrow.

“His being corregido? I don’t see why it would.”

“It is different for Izcalli,” Song told him. “They made it political.”

He blinked at her.

“It seems, if anything, an intensely private matter,” Tristan hazarded.

“It used to be only men inherited titles in Izcalli,” Song told him. “But a few centuries back the kingdom was saddled with Prince Coaxoch as sole heir to the Grasshopper King and he was...”

“Incompetent?”

“Raving mad,” she replied. “He tried to make a donkey a Sunflower Lord, famously. More worrying to the nobility, he was open about his intentions to purge the military nobles and spend the treasury on temples and pleasure pyramids.”

“But he had a sister,” Tristan guessed.

“Princess Atzi, a woman with a distinguished military record and wealthy relatives,” Song said. “Yet she could not legally inherit, at least not until she cloistered herself with a conclave of candle-priests in the capital. She emerged to the unanimous announcement of the clergy that she had a man’s soul and was thus eligible as heir. Coaxoch was dead by week’s end.”

Tristan blinked at her.

“That’s one way to do it,” he said. “I’m guessing nowadays all you need is a good bribe to get the same treatment.”

“It has been going on long enough that the terms originally for a man’s soul and a woman’s are effectively divorced from gender in common parlance,” Song said. “They mean something closer to active and passive, and it is an open secret that a payment to the priests is all one needs to have a child determined as spiritually fit or unfit to inherit.”

The thief cocked his head to the side, eyeing Izel Coyac as he chatted animatedly with Angharad.

“But in Izcalli being corregido would still have the implication of claiming right to inherit,” he said.

“The dangers inherent to that situation might well be why a man of such reportedly high birth is wearing the black,” Song noted.

They were interrupted by the servant arriving with the requested jug, Tristan taking it from a surprise young woman and heading back to the table along with Song. By the time they did, what had been a conversation between Izel and Angharad grew to engulf the entire right side of the table.

“Flower wars were once meant to lessen the ravages of war,” Izel was saying. “To codify war, fence the violence within a time and place with precise terms of engagement.”

“What it used to be hardly matters,” Kiran Agrawal flatly replied. “In the times we all live in, it is a glorified excuse for raiding that defies all civilized rules of warfare.”

“Civilized warfare,” Maryam drawled. “Now there’s a concept. Come off it, Agrawal, the wheels always come off when a side feels like they’re losing.”

“If the stated purpose of flower wars is no longer respected, use of their name should no longer be allowed,” Angharad opined. “Let raiding be known for what it is.”

“Should Malani privateers be called pirates instead, then?” Captain Tozi politely asked her. “If we are to indulge in forceful honesties, let us not make exceptions.”

Angharad, he noted, did not quite seem to know what to answer to that.

“Peace, Tozi,” Izel sighed. “My words were not an endorsement of the modern practice, Kiran. It has been warped, likely beyond repair, and the raiding of our neighbors is a senseless and deplorable crime.”

A laugh from the other side of the table.

“Fine words, coming from a Coyac,” Tupoc idly said. “How many hundreds of serfs did your father bring back from Sordon to work in mines and fields?

“One was too many,” Izel bluntly replied.

“Spoken,” Tupoc Xical said, “by a man raised in the light of candles, fed on bread come of servile wheat fields, clothed in robes of cotton picked by their hands and whose tutors were paid with foreign treasures. What is left of you, without the flowers? Not much that I can see.”

Tupoc had spoken the way he always spoke: a bullfighter, twirling his cape to draw the eye before he sank barbs into flesh. Tristan could see it in those pale eyes, the expectation of the twitch and roar. That the other man would lower his horns and charge, that the familiar old game would play out down in the sand. Only Izel looked into Tupoc’s eyes as well, and whatever it was he found there caused in him no anger.

That look on Izel Coyac’s face, the thief thought, looked terribly like grief.

“You were Leopard Society,” he said.

Something like unease flickered on Tupoc Xical’s face, but it passed.

“No such society exists,” Tupoc grinned, a slice of ivory and mockery. “Careful, Coyac, you’ll say too much where the foreigners might hear. What would your father think?”

“I do not care,” Izel said, and pushed back his seat to rise to his feet.

The grin turned expecting, almost eager – he leaned forward a bit and angled his chin to make the punch easier. Only the other Izcalli instead did something that wiped the smile right off his face.

He bowed.

Low, deep. Starkly enough it could not be mistaken for anything else. He straightened only after a long moment of utter silence had passed.

“I’m sorry,” Izel said.

“Pardon?” Tupoc mildly said.

The Izcalli’s perfectly even face looked like a ceramic mask, a solid thing only cousin to a man’s face.

“I am sorry,” Izel Coyac repeated, “for what we did to you, Tupoc Xical. For all that was stolen.”

“Soft-handed noble,” Tupoc smiled. “Nothing was stolen. I was given a gift.”

“We stole that too,” Izel gently said. “The ability to understand that what was done to you is evil. Fundamentally, inexcusably. That all who hold a stake in the rule of Izcalli have failed a thousand thousand children like you, and still do. That we ordered you snatched up in the night, raised to kill and die nameless, so that we might keep repeating the same old mistakes instead of learning.”

And it should have sounded pretentious, Tristan thought, or sanctimonious. A man raising himself up by apologizing. It would have, if not for the devastating weight of that sincerity. Izel meant every word, the thief thought, meant them completely. It was so painfully obvious that not even Tupoc was able to laugh him off and gods did he look like he wanted to

“I am sorry,” Izel Coyac said one last time, “that we taught you it was necessary, what they ordered you do to, because it isn’t. We can be better.”

His jaw locked.

“It’s just easier not to be.”

Tristan had seen Tupoc Xical afraid before. For all that the Izcalli was like a great cat, all death and shamelessness, he was not beyond flinching. It was not always all in his hands and when Ocotlan had dropped dead at the table next to him he’d been afraid. Almost fled. But there was a difference, the thief thought, between fear and being rattled. Ocotlan’s death had made him afraid, but it had not rattled him.

He looked rattled now.

Like someone had snatched the fire and the poison right out of him. And as Tupoc swallowed, answer shying from his lip, the Izcalli felt the gazes of all those around him staring at a naked part of who he was – and reacted the only way that came to him in that moment.

He drew his knife, lunging across the table.

Shouting and scuffling ensued, Kiran Agrawal tackling him against the table as drinks and plates flew everywhere and a snarling Tupoc tried to reach for Izel’s throat. Alejandra tried to tear off Agrawal, who elbowed her back, and she raised a hand – Gloam coalesced in swirling streaks around her fingers. Tozi pulled a knife on her without batting an eye, Expendable’s wolfish stare turning on her for it as he snarled, and it all teetered on the brink of violence.

Then Captain Oratile shot her pistol at the ceiling, and everyone stopped.

“Put those fucking knives away,” she shouted. “Xical, leave yours on the table. You’re spending the night in containment.”

“That won’t be necessary, captain,” Izel said. “I lodge no complaint.”

By the wild look in Tupoc’s eyes, Tristan thought, he was thinking about trying for the other man’s throat again – pistols out or no.

“Lodge my fucking ass, boy, you went shopping for that knife,” Captain Oratile curtly said. “Dinner’s over, everyone back to their rooms. If I hear you so much as brushed each other in the halls, I’ll hang you from your feet off the nearest window until the stupid’s done dripping out. You understand me?”

Awkward shuffling. Tupoc obeyed, leaving his knife on the table, while Alejandra and Kiran Agrawal looked as if they still wanted to stick each other with theirs. Captain Oratile snarled.

“I asked, do you understand me?”

Muttered, almost mutinous agreement. The brigades came apart, falling in like wary tribes. Song looked disbelieving, almost stunned, where she was yet seated. It took him a moment to understand why, and he had to swallow a grin that would have earned him a great deal of dirty looks. Song was astonished that for once it was not the Thirteenth who had lost their temper, their brigade instead having come looking reasonable and disciplined.

Well, even a broken clock got lucky twice a day.

The brigades began filing out in separate lines like violent prisoners kept away from each other – the Eleventh first – and Tristan hung back a bit. Watched as the room began to empty and Tupoc was taken aside by Lieutenant Mitra for a quiet talk. The expression of the Fourth’s patron was hard to make out under all that loose hair and Tupoc’s face was empty of emotion.

He was joined at the back by another, but it was not one of the Thirteenth who leaned back against the wall to his left. Cressida Barboza kept a cautious eye on the Fourth, but most of her attention wasn’t on them. Or on Tristan himself, for that matter.

It was on Izel, who looked not triumphant or vindicated but deeply exhausted.

“Didn’t expect that out of him,” Tristan quietly said.

The other Mask let out a long breath.

“He’s one of the nicest men I ever met, Izel Coyac,” Cressida told him. “It’s not put-on either, as far as I can tell.”

She crossed her arms, tense as a string. Looking square ahead.

“And if that doesn’t scare you, Tristan, then you’re a fucking fool.”