Four twenty-seven. Tristan closed the brass face of the watch.
It was easy, that was the worst part. Tristan had always hated the way some philosophers wept at the difficulty of taking a life. Killing was easy, if you did it right, and often cheap. Death was nothing special: thousands died every day in the most mundane of ways without there being a plot afoot. Gods, a man could die eating soup if they were careless about it. Existence was a candle in the wind and the act of killing was nothing special, often no more complicated or demanding than hammering a nail.
Even those who wrote such words thinking of the moral implications, the scars on the soul... Had there ever been a time where mankind did not make a trade of soldiering? If you lined up men on a field and told them to thrust a spear or to pull a trigger, that they would get paid for it, most would do it. The sacred existence of one’s fellows did not weigh as much as the poets thought, when on the other side of the scales was the need to pay the rent.
No, it wasn’t hard to kill. It was easy, so fucking easy sometimes, and that was what made it dangerous because once you’d hammered in that first nail you started looking around and wonder what else in your life could be held up by judicious application of a hammer blow. And there wasalways something, wasn’t there? A nail. A score to settle, a loose end to tie up.
The Nineteenth Brigade was a little of both.
Tristan had spent days putting together their death, back before he tripped headfirst into his stint as a hostage. Multiple identical deaths, that was the trick he’d figured out. Tozi’s contract told her the most likely reason for her death over the following three hours and in a sense the perception was absolute: indirect means did not fool it, nor could it be gotten around by killing her in her sleep when she was not conscious to perceive.
Trying would wake her, as Tristan’s first attempt had proved.
What wasn’t absolute was that the contract could only warn her about one threat at a time and the details she got about her death were somewhat limited. That was the gap Tristan had realized he could slip through: multiple instances of the same poison. In the water, in the meal, in her gloves. Tozi Poloko’s contract was absolute but it was not precise. It’d warn her of arsenic, but it wouldn’t be able to warn her about all the different arsenics.
Not that Tristan would be caught dead using arsenic, anyway. The infamous inheritance powder could pass for a bad case of cholera, but the entire Nineteenth Brigade developing a sudden mortal bout of that disease right after sharing a supper would perhaps strain credulity a bit when the bodies were found. Hetun venom was a sure and quick killer, but also very expensive, so if he was to kill with an extract he preferred hemlock. Slower than venom but quieter, and easy to obtain on every shore of the Trebian Sea.
The supplies he slipped into the wreck besides the safehouse to check on reflected as much. It had been too risky to bring the entire poison box he bought from Hage, so he had stolen a waxed leather bag and stashed it under a broken plank away from the hole in the roof.
It had been days, however, so despite having been careful he learned while taking stock that there had been some decay.
First, the clay pots. Of the two feng chen pao pots he had obtained from Black House stocks only one was still fit for use, the other’s wick having come loose, and given the delicate composition of the interior he did not dare to try and put it back in. He set the dud aside, then checked on the accompanying matches and found the packet untouched. That part would still work.
There were two small bags, one of cloth and the other leather. The latter he dismissed, but checked on the powder within the former – which was untouched, fortunately, not even humid. He checked the seal on the four vials next: two of a brown and viscous distillate, the third of thick concoction of hemlock slow to dry. The fourth, an oily translucent thing worth its weight in gold, had not developed impurities and thus the six doses were still fine for use.
He slipped on his gloves and reached for the head-sized jug next, opening the cork and wincing at what he saw inside. The emulsion had creamed. He had to sacrifice one of his three lighting sticks – slender lengths of wood treated to catch fire easily - to blend it back together by energetic stirring, and even then the result was not as even as it should be. Still, it should be fit for purpose.
After that were left only the knick-knacks: fine string on a spool, a small paintbrush, a wooden bowl, a pot of adhesive salve and a small iron container full of a particular medicinal balm. All were still in usable state.
He had the necessary tools for the desired outcome.
Tristan began by opening the vial of hemlock concoction, coating his knife in it before sliding it back in the sheath to keep. Now came the last and trickiest part of the preparation.
First he poured the hemlock vial in the small wooden bowl, then he emptied the small leather bag on the floor and in doing so upended about three dozen sharp iron caltrops. Furrowing his brow in concentration, Tristan began methodically dipping their points in the hemlock before putting them back away. His gloves were not so thick a fumble might not get through and prick him with poison, those particular caltrops having been made with piercing boots in mind.
When he was done he put away the bag of poisoned caltrops into the greater sack, emptied the last of the concoction in the corner of the room and set the bowl down face against the floor. Taking the gloves off, he checked Vanesa’s watch.
Four thirty-nine. Seconds slipping through his fingers like grains of sand.
Tristan took to the roof of the ruin and crossed to the safehouse’s, boots silent on the tiles. It had taken him several evenings to make his way into the Nineteenth’s hideaway, and make was the correct word. He could not use the chimney to get inside again when they were sure to be near its mouth, but when he first walked the house he had noticed that they used only one of the two rooms on the second level as a bedroom. Despite there being four of them, the second bore only a chamber pot.
Why? Because part of the roof had caved in and let the rain through, even though it was not visible from the outside because the tiles still held. So all Tristan needed to do to have a way inside the house was to pry enough of those tiles loose he would be able to remove them and slip in when the time came. The only part of any difficulty in that process had been making sure that the tiles he pried loose stayed in place, else the Nineteenth would know there was a path in and prepare accordingly.
The thief knelt on the roof and quietly removed a single tile, looking into the room below and finding it empty. A promising start.
As was the absolute racket he could hear being made on the first floor. His lips thinned, for that made things almost suspicious easy – the sound of a hammer on brass was loud enough even a drunken bear could have snuck into that house. He still forced himself to be patient, waiting until he was certain nobody was on the second floor, then he finished removing the tiles. After that came the first defensive measure.
Gloves still on, he spread the caltrops along the edge of the roof. Where someone trying to climb it might grip, blindly because of the angles involved.
Ten heartbeats later he was inside the chamber pot room, having landed with cat’s grace. He pricked his ear for any alarm, but there was none. He could hear Captain Tozi and Izel shouting about something, interrupted occasionally by someone hammering into brass.
The door was open so Tristan slipped into the hall. The door to the other room was open as well, and his brow rose at what he saw. Whatever they were doing with the machinery below, it had seen them move all their affairs here - packs, rations and even the two water barrels. Near everything they might put on or imbibe just... served up to him, just like that. It was almost hatefully easy to plant their deaths.
First the ending, two of the three vials remaining emptied while the last was tucked away safely inside his uniform. The small iron container of balm joined it. Then he set the powder bag over the door, held up with the string that was kept in place by the adhesive paste. The clay pot went on the floor by the door, the lightstick besides it and the matches he kept on him. He took the jug and paintbrush, approaching the stairs careful not to make the wooden floor creak.
The oil was spread liberally, until the jug was empty, and he made sure it covered the entire area with the paintbrush before putting both jug and brush away in the hall. Everything was ready now, he thought, and though he itched to check his watch instead he stayed near the top of stairs with his hand on his loaded pistol. Crouched, cold-eyed, to eavesdrop on the brigade below.
Now all that he needed was a lever to make them move as he wished, and he suspected he was about to have it handed to him by the very obstacle he had crafted this method around.
“- we will need to burn the entire stock,” Izel Coyac was saying, tone stern. “The remnant was fed with the deaths of half the priesthood of the street gods in this city, never mind the one-shrine deities. If we skimp on the fuel I cannot guarantee-"
“Tozi, just let him burn the damn culm,” Kiran Agrawal groused. “We’re going to be swimming in Library gold soon anyway, now’s not the time to get cheap.”
“If the compass works,” Cressida noted.
She sounded further away from the others, perhaps near the shutters.
“It will work,” Izel said. “The remnant god was capable of finding multiple individuals across the city even through the local aether conditions. A shard of it and Abrascal’s hair will make at least as effective a wayfinder as the roseless compass I dissected back on Tolomontera.”
Tristan breathed out. Disappointment, however faint? He truly was getting soft. Izel Coyac had taken a risk on his behalf, once, but that was no promise to forever stick his neck out. That he’d been right about the risks of leaving the Nineteenth unattended, that Song had been wrong, left a sickly feeling of satisfaction in his stomach.
He’d heard enough. Fool, Tristan told himself, hand reaching for Vanesa’s watch. Fool. And he was losing focus: they were not moving, how could this be remedied? He looked back, finding a silent Fortuna staring back from the end of the hallway, and gritted his teeth. Tristan had no need of reminders.
He had chosen his road.
“Stop.”
Tristan froze when he heard Tozi Poloko’s stern voice. Despite the shiver of fear, it was not him she was addressing.
“What is it, captain?” Kiran asked.
“Someone’s in here,” Tozi said. “My death just changed to hemlock.”
Ah. Quicker than expected, but that would do. It was too late to change his mind now. The deeds were done. They would settle their debts tonight, one and all, and have no one to blame but themselves. How had Ilaria put it again?
Watch the dice roll and tumble
To yield of glee and grumbles
And if every god we do condemn
Why never the hand that threw them?
--
Maryam would have to begin the ritual early, that much was increasingly clear.
Last night it had begun at six thirty-six of the evening and mirroring this would empower her the most, but the signifier could feel the patience of her hosts was being stretched to a breaking point. Honesty compelled her to admit that she could understand why. She was, after all, making an Izvoric shrine of the Lord Rector’s restricted archives and the process could not be called anything but messy. It must be particularly galling to someone used to the clean, almost simple ways of the Orthodoxy.
From Maryam’s readings into those practices, the common thread that held despite all the schisms and squabbles of the Orthodoxy was the ‘pale threshold’. A line of pale stone or some other material painted white marking the transition between the rest of the world and the temple grounds, an implicit invocation of the power of the Glare.
A handful of unified practices like that were, in her opinion, why the Orthodoxy had endured the fall of the Second Empire and continued to thrive in its successor states. You could walk into any temple from Old Liergan to the Desolation and be able to expect some level of uniformity in the services and comforts provided by the priests within.
The Izvoric had never been so unified, much less the Triglau as a whole. While the three peoples making up the Triglau kept to largely the same gods regarding shared overarching domains like fertility, death and seasons everything beyond that was up for grabs. It was said every city-state in the highlands had its own war god, and the Izvoric lowlands had not been that different.
Volcesta’s own land god, the Hornhead, did not have a single temple outside the city and received more worship from the season festivals than his temple. Not that temples back home were the same sprawling affairs as here in Aurager. To the Triglau as a whole, but the Izvoric most of all, the hallowed was found out in the wilds. In places where men and gods could glimpse at the truth of each other, where the worlds seen and unseen bent to touch.
Yet there were some ways to mark sacred grounds, if only to warn travelers off entering sacred groves and be devoured by the guardians within. It would not be enough to turn the private archives of House Palliades into a true Izvoric consecrated land, but it would... lean the world the right way, so to speak. Or so Maryam hoped.
“Is that one all right, Maryam?”
Roxane peered up with those big brown eyes, looking worried, and Maryam fought the urge to ruffle her hair. While the robes the girl of nine wore were still too large, someone had since their last encounter found the decency to rustle up a few pins to stick the folded sleeves into place. The signifier knelt, looking down at the chalk outline claiming to be a snake. It was, she conceded, broadly the right shape.
“Is that a tongue?” she asked.
Roxane nodded happily.
“It’s forked, see!”
“I do,” Maryam lied. “Well done. I need to touch up a few things here, but why don’t you add a few bees by the lectern over there?”
Roxane happily toddled off, the signifier waiting until she was out of sight to wipe the ‘snake’ and draw another one with her own piece of chalk. Roxane could do the bees well enough, but the snakes had her getting ‘inventive’ and that was best avoided. Maryam was going to double-check all the work anyway but it would be less trouble to keep her on bee duty for the rest.
They were nearly done anyhow, the blue-eyed woman thought. Painting the pattern in her mind’s eye, she saw only one more spot needed to close the circle of snakes going around the edge of the central enclosure of the private archives. None of the six pentagonal adjoining chambers would be of use to her tonight, all the efforts concentrated around the squat tower in the heart of the archives, the very same that sat right over the only lift in or out.
A circle of snakes for the underworld, within it a circle of bees for the land of the living and in the middle of it all the Threefold Crowns – Spring, Summer and Autumn. The empty space at the heart of the three was left without name or prayer, for Mother Winter made her own seat and to invite her in was to grant her greater claim yet. Maryam finished up the last snake and rose, dusting off her hands.
Waiting for her mere feet away, hands folded behind his back and his livery as pristine as was physically possible, Majordomo Timon flashed her a polite smile. He had soft cheeks and the look of a man who had never known violence, the majordomo, but he was so well groomed it lent him a sort of severity. Accordign to Roxane since Prefect Nestor’s death his already considerable influence in the palace had risen to new heights.
Nestor’s replacement was not anywhere as seasoned or popular, while Timon had been around the palace so long he was considered as much a part of it as the walls.
“Warrant Officer Khaimov,” he said, sketching a shallow bow.
“Majordomo Timon,” she politely replied. “What might I do for you?”
She kept her nervousness off her face. So far there had been no sign the Lord Rector was aware she was lying through her teeth about this ritual being necessary to ‘purge’ the ‘aether ripples’ caused by the assassin’s entry into the palace, but there was always a risk. Song had tacitly allowed her to go on with this by keeping her mouth shut, but her captain would not lie to shield her from consequences that Maryam had insisted on chasing.
“I come only to inform you that guards will have to be left at the bottom of the lift,” he told her. “Lord Rector Palliades’ attendance to the concert in the great hall is a known matter, we cannot risk the possibility that another assassin will try to slip through.”
Maryam bit down on grimace. Guards meant people might overhear what she was doing up here, but somehow she doubted the majordomo would care for that objection. Her gaze turned to the wooden tower, teeth worrying at her lip. The room at the bottom of the lift was essentially a double of the central enclosure they currently stood in without any of the adjoining chambers attached, decorated as a salon of sorts - though as far as Maryam could tell no one ever used it.
The problem was that sound might carry down to there, and her... punishing the thief might be somewhat loud and afterwards difficult to explain. Purification rituals did not usually sound like brawls to even laymen’s ears. Fortunately, she had a counteroffer in mind.
“Would it be possible for them to seal and guard the outer door instead?” she asked. “It is the only way out, as far as I know.”
The majordomo did not smile.
“It is an additional risk,” he said. “Do you believe their presence would hamper your ritual?”
He had sharp eyes, this white-haired old man. One did not last as long in his post as he had without having a fine nose for lies.
“A more seasoned signifier would not have that problem,” Maryam self-deprecatingly said. “But I fear even a small distraction could... cascade into consequence, so to speak.”
The grimace adorning that second sentence was not feigned in the least. Risk of being caught out aside, Maryam was genuinely concerned what would happen if one of those guards got it into their heads to get involved. Would they become part of the prize fought over, or another contender in the death match? She had no idea and that worried her. The majordomo hummed.
“I am no scholar in matters Akelarre,” Majordomo Timon said, “but the markings you had drawn do not resemble what little I have seen of Signs.”
“They are not,” Maryam confirmed. “They rely on the lore of the Triglau, the people of my birth.”
A curl of distaste to the man’s lips, gone so quick she thought she might have imagined it. She knew better.
“I would not want to put either you or our soldiers at risk,” he conceded. “I can allow keeping the guards outside, though I will double the numbers to twenty lictors and have both sides of the hall barricaded.”
Her brow rose. A surplus of precaution, to her eye, but then it’d hardly been a month since an assassin nearly killed Evander Palliades in his own hallway. Evidently the majordomo was disinclined to allow for even the slim chance of a repeat.
“How long do you expect this ritual to take?”
“If there are no complications, perhaps an hour,” Maryam said.
She paused.
“Should it take more than three, something will have gone catastrophically wrong.”
And she would likely be dead. Hooks would not tire as she did, being half a creature of the aether. Maryam would either win quickly or she would be devoured bite by bite. But win I will. I chose the fight, built the altar, fetched the lamb. The night is mine to lose.
“Then you have your three hours,” Majordomo Timon said. “Pray use them wisely, officer. It is the Lord Rector’s intention to hire a signifier to inspect your work afterwards.”
Maryam woodenly smiled. Well, best hope they would soon be done with the contract and off this island. Any Akelarre journeyman would be able to tell she was full of shit by a casual look at her report.
“Duly noted,” she said, maintain a veneer of confidence. “Was there anything else, majordomo?”
“That will be all, Officer Khaimov,” the old man said. “As you were.”
He bowed again and left. Maryam watched his retreating back, biting at the inside of her cheek. He was not in the wrong here, she forced herself to admit. The Izvorica was abusing trust she had been extended by the throne of Asphodel for her own advantage, and blackcloak or not were she not a cabalist under Song Ren she expected her actions would be watched much more closely.
Even Timon’s distaste for her relying on Craft instead of Signs for her ritual was not without foundation. The manipulation of Gloam – or even Signs, for that matter – was not the sole province of the Watch, and there were such practitioners in every nation across Vesper. The reason that crowns still hired Akelarre guildsmen despite their high rates was that Navigators were reliable.
That their Signs almost never went catastrophically wrong, that they had turned a thousand witch-arts into a genuine discipline. Hedge witches could do things that signifiers could not, sometimes. Even those with little training. But they often drove themselves mad doing it, or everyone around them.
Maryam’s ritual was not one that could easily cost anyone but her, but it was possible. Much of this was, if not exactly made from scratch, then improvised from a base pattern. So she swallowed her anger as he watched him disappear into the tower, for the truth of the matter was that she was the villain of this tale. For what she had done, and for what she was about to do. Her stomach clenched. It was necessary, Maryam reminded herself. She knew the weight of her scales.
“Done!”
She was jolted out of her thoughts by a beaming Roxane, who had somehow managed to get chalk powder all the way up to her shoulder. Maryam pressed a smile onto her face.
“Thank you,” she said, patting the girl’s back. “The last part I need to do myself.”
Roxane pouted.
“I could stay and help,” she offered, then pitched her voice low. “Are you going to defeat an evil spirit? That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”
Maryam snorted.
“I am,” she said.
Roxane sagely nodded, as if her deeply held suspicions had only been confirmed.
“I could tell,” the girl said. “What did it do, anyway?”
Maryam started.
“Do?”
“To become evil,” Roxane elaborated. “Did it kill someone? I bet it killed someone.”
Part of Maryam wondered if she should be worried about how enthusiastic the girl sounded at the prospect. The rest was... her belly clenched again.
“As I said, the Watch supports no one,” Lord Gule frowned.
“Then why does she still have a sword?” Lord Menander said.
And he was pointing at her. Ah. Unfortunate.
“Pardon?” Lord Gule blinked.
“She’s a blackcloak, you fools,” Menander Drakos hissed. “The Thirteenth Brigade.”
The weight of the crowd’s full attention settled on her, more than a few incredulous looks among them. Gule, though, Gule looked betrayed. She felt a twinge of guilt, but not a deep one.
“Is it true?” he asked.
She looked at a room around her, a spread of faces fearful and wroth. There would be no help from anyone here. Angharad straightened and unsheathed the blade they had lent her.
“Warrant Officer Angharad Tredegar, Thirteenth Scholomance Brigade,” she introduced herself.
“A spy,” Gule spat.
She did not flinch, or answer him. Instead her attention turned to the crowd around them.
“Several of you are members of a cult in breach of the Iscariot Accords,” Angharad evenly replied. “You may consider yourself under arrest. Kindly do not resist.”
Some harsh laughter. A pistol was cocked, though she could not see whose. Best to find that out before the mess began. Angharad glimpsed ahead and-
(The pommel of the blade hit the back of her head. She only glimpsed a reflection on the wall before dropping into the black: a man in a wine-red doublet. Cleon.)
Angharad came out of the glimpse already turning, which made a difference.
It took two hits for Cleon Eirenos to drop her unconscious after he became visible again.
--
Song walked down the street like a woman who did not want to be late to her execution: briskly but reluctantly, propriety fighting the urge to pull away from the dead end.
She had put on the black for this because anything else would have been a lie. Her decision tonight would define her career in the Watch, whatever the end, and so she put on her fighting fit. Coat buttoned up, cloak pulled tight. Jian and pistol at her hip, musket slung over her back. Between the weapons and the cloak, none of the few souls out on the streets of the ward dared look at her twice. A rook on a walk with her talons out was not someone for the toughs of Tratheke to trouble.
The dim and distant roar of the great spinning blades at the heart of the Reeking Rows lapped at her ears, the ancient machine sending the stink into the sky instead of letting it spread around the northeastern ward slicing at the air. The noise was louder than usual tonight, for it to be heard out here – the Amber Crescent wasn’t in the Reeking Rows, strictly speaking. The brothel was well shy of the parts the ward that required one to cover their mouth and nose lest they choke.
And she was stalling, she admitted to herself as she adjusted her collar. Move, Ren.
Song turned the corner, stride crisp and clean, and her jaw tightened. Ahead lay the mark of the brothel to which she had summoned, the hanging sign bearing the yellow crescent. The three-story building was still tightly shuttered, but unlike last time there were lights lit behind barely a third of the windows. The front door was closed. A look around revealed again that the street was empty, nary a soul in sight, and so with no one to witness her Song allowed herself a moment of anguish. What she was about to do, what it meant...
Then the moment passed and her grip firmed around the chisel.
Face calm, she opened the door and strode into the dimly lit hall – only to immediately stop. As the last time there was a hired hand lingering there, a heavyset woman with graying hair and a scarred lip holding a cudgel, but facing her was someone the owner of this place would not be able to afford no matter how much he saved up. Despite the heavy brown cloak and having left the distinctive helmet behind, Song had seen the armor of the lictors enough to recognize the glimpse of it she got when the cloaked man pushed off the wall.
“Ren,” he grunted, then jabbed his thumb towards the insides of the brothel. “Follow.”
Song spared a look for the thug, but the woman only looked way and pretended not to have noticed. Unlike last time there was no sign of the Amber Crescent’s owner at the front desk and the lictor led her directly towards one of the rooms on the first floor. The man, who ignored her attempt to catch his eye, wrenched it open. Inside waited not Evander but another lictor, a woman in a similar cloak.
“Apologies,” she said, “but we will have to search you and your weapons will remain here afterwards.”
Song met her gaze flatly.
“You may search me,” she allowed. “My weapons are going nowhere.”
“Then you do not get to meet him,” the first lictor said.
Song flicked a glance at one, then the other. Saw the way the jaw was set, the nerves the woman was barely keeping under wraps. They were taking a risk. What risk she could not know for sure, but she could guess.
“So be it,” Song replied, and turned to walk away.
She didn’t get to take a full step before a hissed wait! had her turning back to face the lictors with an unimpressed look.
“A search will be enough,” the male lictor ‘conceded’ with ill grace.
As she’d thought, they were going beyond instructions. Song approved, truly, and they were right to go so far. She was drawing Evander Palliades into a trap laid by his enemies. That was also half the reason she could not allow herself to be disarmed.
Ai was not to be trusted, not even when Song was doing her bidding.
The door closed and the other lictor patted her down, going through pockets. The woman tried to make idle conversation – a transparent fishing attempt – but eventually grimaced and ceased when Song’s unblinking stare was the only answer received. When she was done, the lictor opened the door and leaned in to whisper to the other. Song read the lips. Her weapons and some coin, that’s all. The man grimaced in displeasure but uncrossed his arm and turned to face Song.
“Upstairs, same room as last time,” he instructed. “I’ll give the signal, he will be there momentarily.”
Ah, cautious of the lictors. They had kept their Lord Rector at a more defensible location nearby instead of bringing him here directly. A healthy precaution, which would be made moot by the fact Song was not the threat to Evander’s life. Not directly, anyhow.
“Is this place empty?” she asked.
“The proprietor had it shut for the night, we paid for the use,” the lictor said.
Her brow rose. That made things simpler for her but stood out as strange.
“Why shut it down?”
Song did not have a watch on her, but it could be no more than quarter past six at the moment. Likely less. This time should be the beginning of brisk business for a brothel. The lictor searched her face, then his stance loosened ever so slightly.
“There’s trouble in the northwestern ward,” he said. “Basileias are fighting each other in the streets, some using guns, and while the matter is in hand we are close enough the owner was wary of violence spilling over the ward’s border.”
Song kept her surprise off her face, nodding in acknowledged before she headed upstairs. Given how half the gangs in Tratheke seemed to be in bed with one of the coups, that was surprising to hear. Neither of the conspiracies being played by the cult would want their helpers to draw attention to them. In a sense, that was reassuring. It likely meant that the violence was related to the business of criminals and not anything more sinister.
She did not look back, heading upstairs. Aside from a smoky lamp out in the hall and a bowl of cheap incense burning, the hall was empty. Song would have remembered the room even if it weren’t the only open door in the hallway. The insides were the same as she remembered: brass walls and a wooden floor, a straw mattress with sheets on and a pair of oil lamps. A single chair next to a small table and hooks for clients to hang their clothes on.
Also an echo of the last time was a pair of clay cups on the table and a bottle of wine with a red seal on it. The same odious vintage as the last time they had visited, when Evander had first tried to kiss her and she’d had neither the wisdom to close the door nor the bravery to open it entirely. She’d sought to have just enough of what she wanted it would cost her nothing, like a child licking the edge of a honeyed spoon and telling themselves it was not the same as taking a mouthful.
“Well, I’ll be damned. You actually did it.”
Song turned, straight sword halfway out of its sheath before the hand caught her wrist. Ai chuckled, a pleased look on her face as their gazes met for a long moment. She wore a padded yellow brigandine tonight, though without the shoulders or round iron plate that would have made it traditional bumianjia. A new development, as was the long dagger at her side. Song, teeth gritted, slid the blade fully back into its sheath.
“Don’t look so sorry,” Ai smirked. “It’s not like that piddly blade would do anything to me anyways.”
Her eyes turned cloudy green for just the barest of moments as she pulled on her contract – though not long enough to begin forming the shell before she released it. Song’s face went blank. Ai was not lying. A sword would do little against her contract. It would take at least three shots to crack that shell, by Song’s reckoning, and with how quickly the contractor moved those three might as well be a hundred.
“Ai,” she curtly said. “Why are you here? I expected you would grab him in the street.”
“The lictors are cautious,” she replied. “Only twenty of them near the Amber Crescent, but there’s another sixty nearby.”
“And if you miss your shot he’ll escape back to them,” Song pleasantly smiled.
Ai clicked her tongue.
“I wouldn’t look so happy about that, Ren,” she said. “If he runs, what use are you to me?”
“I would have upheld my part of the bargain,” Song coldly told her.
Ai looked amused.
“Do I look like some Malani?” she asked. “I’ll snap your neck if you fail me, Song, I don’t care if you find a clever wording to invoke.”
Song swallowed a sharp answer, drawing back. Ai waved her hand, as if to dismiss this entire conversation.
“You didn’t balk, anyway, so no need for that sort of talk,” Ai said. “You sent your letter and the boy king’s on his way, it’s well done. We’ll let him come all the way up, have our talk just the three of us.”
Song stiffened.
“You are staying here?” she asked.
“Oh yes,” Ai smiled. “I wouldn’t miss the look on his yiwu face for anything.”
That, Song thought, was a complication. She had thought the contractor would move to seize the brothel after Evander entered, not stay inside the very room the Lord Rector was headed to. What could she, what must she – Song stepped back, her ankle brushing against the chair. Ah, yes.
“Sadist,” she hissed at Ai, drawing back in disgust.
The Yellow Earth contract seemed about to laugh, until Song’s step back toppled the chair. The noise echoed down the hall, and downstairs there was immediately the sound of a sword drawn. Ai’s eyes turned cloudy, the shell blooming, but Song moved decisively. She strode out into the hall, shouldering past Ai, and went to the head of the stairs. She found the woman lictor from earlier, coming up with a blade in hand.
“It was an accident,” she loudly called out. “I saw a cockroach and tried to step on it, toppled the chair.”
The lictor eyed her warily.
“Are you certain?”
“Very,” Song replied. “As you were, lictor.”
She did not linger, withdrawing back to the room. Ai was leaning against the wall, arms folded, and her eyes were brown again.
“Quick thinking,” Ai said, then smirked. “Except for the part where Asphodel does not have cockroaches.”
Song gave no sign of having known as much already. She picked up the toppled chair and harshly put it back upright, only a hair shy of slamming it down on the floor. That wiped the smile off the contractor’s face.
“I shall remember that,” Song said, “if I must make excuses again.”
Whatever the other Tianxi had been about to reply, she swallowed it: the steps coming up the stairs saw to that. Ai hid herself behind the door, which seemed almost childish. It would be enough, though. The lictors had already searched Song and the floor itself, odds were they wouldn’t sweep a bare room like this one again. Even if they did Ai must feel confident at handling a pair and Evander Palliades without help. Worse, Song did not believe she was wrong.
She put on a face of calm even as Evander’s steps approached. She recognized the sound, of all things. Soft boots, not like those the lictors wore – though those were not far behind, one of them came up as well. The steps stuttered just short of the open door.
“Your Excellency,” the wary man from earlier began, “I beg you-”
“I gave you an hour to set up and search the place,” Evander Palliades replied in an irritated tone. “I’ll not further insult a woman who saved my life not once but twice. One I remind you serves as an officer of the Watch, Victor.”
A moment of silence.
“As you say, Your Excellency,” Victor muttered.
The lictor boots walked away, back towards the stairs. Song heard Evander’s hesitation by hearing nothing at all: he did not move a single step despite the retreating lictor. Song herself sucked in a breath, moving towards the table with the bottle. The sound of her movement had Evander answering in kind, striding down the last of the hall, and even as Song cracked the red seal on the wine he entered the room.
She turned to see Evander Palliades all in green and gray, his polished spectacles gleaming over a hesitant smile. He glanced at the wine and offered a shrug.
“A horrid thing to be nostalgic about,” he said, stepping into the room, “but I confess-”
He was not a trained fighter, so even though he heard Ai move to close the door he did not react quite quickly enough to prevent her grabbing him – covering his mouth, laying a blade against throat. A flicker of fear on that handsome face. It was the heartbeat that followed, the look of utter betrayal, that burned Song like acid. The... disappointment.
“Is he crying?” Ai eagerly asked. “You have to tell me if he’s crying.”
Evander jolted in her arms, but she pressed her knife until the edge cut into the skin. That had him going still as a stone.
“Quiet now, Palliades,” Ai whispered, pressing her knife against his throat. “You’re almost as useful as a corpse so don’t tempt me.”
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way, Song thought with despair. The contractor wasn’t supposed to be here in the room, she was meant to attack the brothel from the outside after Evander came in! You bet this on a guess, Song reminded herself. And despite the recklessness it had not been proved wrong. It was, in fact, being proved truer every second Ai did not slit Evander’s throat. Still, she could not resist the urge to scratch at the scab of an unconfirmed truth.
“You want to use him to force Fort Archelean lictors to open the gates,” she said.
“Clever girl,” Ai chuckled, not bothering to resist the gloat. “And obedient too! That was a pleasant surprise. There might be hope for you yet, Song Ren.”
Her fingers tightened around the head of the bottle. She felt Evander’s brown eyes on her, narrowing. Picking up on the strangeness in the air. Ai, too pleased at getting her way, did not.
“I’m inclined to hold up our bargain,” the Yellow Earth partisan told her. “You may well have handed us the city, Song. Even as we speak the magnates are taking the streets-”
The silver-eyed Tianxi froze.
“Wait, the rising is tonight?”
“Oh yes,” Ai grinned. “Finally we cast the relics into the pit. And you can still be part of the right side, Song, the winning side. I just need a... proof of your commitment.”
Her jaw clenched, her mind spun. Damnation. If the magnates were rebelling tonight, would the cult not ensure the ministers did as well? Angharad and Maryam were up there, and Tristan... All four of us, sawing away at our rope, she’d told him. Was it a fool’s hope, to have bet the way she did? Maybe. But she had done it anyway and it was too late for regrets.
“What do you want?” Song coldly asked.
“Nothing much,” Ai said, gesturing at Song’s jian with her chin. “Just for you to sweep away the sin of fucking a king with a little royal red.”
She paused.
“A finger should be enough. You can even bind it afterwards if you like though, no lie, I’ll make fun of you for being a soft touch.”
Evander breathed in sharply at that, Ai’s grin widening at the sound.
“Yeah, yiwu, she’ll do it,” she said amiably, as if confiding to a friend. “Because the choices before her are simple: either she does her duty as a daughter of the Republics and cuts you, or we bury her entire misbegotten line.”
A glint of sympathy in Evander’s eyes, though soon gone. Understandably. Song sighed, holding up the wine bottle to the lamplight. It shone a lusty red, a hunger for blood.
“You’re wrong,” Song told Ai. “There’s a third choice.”
She threw the bottle at their feet. Ai’s shell was already halfway formed by the time the glass shattered, but she was looking at Song’s hands – at the blade, the pistol, the musket.
She was, thus, taken entirely by surprise when a burst of shrieking Gloam ate through the floor of the room and dropped all three of them into the ambush below.