Pale Lights

Chapter 58

While Song’s insistence that the matters with the Nineteenth and the Ivory Library were not best resolved with stacked corpses was a mite puzzling, she had made a request for help and Angharad was honorbound to follow through with it.

She was, after all, the only member of the Thirteenth who could do this.

Captain Domingo Santos was a Master of the Akelarre Guild, and as a brigadier’s personal Navigator he ranked his own rooms. Since Captain Domingo might also be a member of the Ivory Library the Thirteenth had an interest in looking through that room, but a Navigator’s private affairs were not something easily pried into. Certainly not without them noticing.

Unless, of course the investigation was done purely through a vision within Angharad’s own mind.

Limping past the man’s room on the way to breakfast, Angharad breathed in and mere heartbeats later breathed out.

She looked down at her hand and the steel prying bar she had brought with her. Apparently forcing the door open was a good way to get both the bar and half her fingers devoured by black mist, so perhaps another approach was required.

And a letter to Tristan, who might have advice on the subject of breaking into somewhere.

--

On the twenty-second day of the Thirteenth’s stay on Asphodel, Song was forced to admit she had run out of excuses to avoid the palace.

It had been three days since the meeting with the Yellow Earth turned into a bout of extortion, and though her black eye was headed nowhere the worst of the other bruising had faded. Hopefully the swift use of a cold compress on her eye meant the swelling would not last for too long, and there were certainly signs in that direction. Yet they were street signs, pointing at a direction and not an arrival, which meant she spent a significant part of her morning sitting in front of a mirror with Angharad’s help.

“It is as hidden as it can be,” said noblewoman informed her.

Song grimaced at the vanity mirror but did not contradict her. There was only so much that concealing face paint could do, and for lack of her own she had been forced to use the kind common on Asphodel – which had so much fat in it she wondered if they crammed an entire pig’s worth into every pot. Adding blush to her cheeks would have helped distract from it, but also sent entirely the wrong message to the Lord Rector.

They had at least added some shadow to her eyes, which Angharad had surprisingly proved only middlingly competent at applying.

“Did a maid perchance apply most your cosmetics, back in Peredur?” Song asked.

“I rarely wore much even on society evenings,” Angharad replied, idly putting Song’s hair in order. “It is considered in poor taste to bear both elaborate cosmetics and the duelist’s strap, as they have contrary implications.”

Song half-turned to look up at Angharad Tredegar, who stood on the upper end of five foot ten with a perfectly proportioned body that somehow managed both curves and muscle. A regular’s uniform that she knew for a fact was untouched somehow looked flatteringly tailored. That she didn’t even have to work for it was, truly, the most insulting part.

“You are enemy to all womankind,” Song informed her.

“I pluck my eyebrows,” Angharad defensively replied.

A beat passed.

“Most of womankind,” Song conceded.

The Pereduri muttered something along the lines of ‘so much for all under Heaven’ under her breath, setting Song’s lips to twitching. She rose and made sure to thank the other woman for her help, regardless of the unfairness dealt unto them by the vagaries of the Circle Perpetual.

“Are you certain you do not want me to accompany you?” Angharad asked for the second time.

She nodded in return, adjusting her formal clothes for the second time.

“It would draw too much attention for us to be seen together,” she said.

Maryam’s comings and goings to the palace had been explained away by Lord Rector Evander’s supposed interest in writing a commonplace on the Izvorica and the Song was well aware of the assumptions regarding her own visits, but for both her and the debutante Angharad Tredegar to be seen together socially was certain to tip off anyone watching that something was afoot.

There was a reason they had been in the same palace room only a handful of times since that first audience with Evander.

“Captain Wen, then,” Angharad tried.

Song cocked an eyebrow.

“Wen Duan cannot be disguised,” she flatly said. “At best he can be differently decorated.”

The other woman coughed into her fist, shuffling, which was Pereduri for agreeing without speaking the words and thus stating them to be the truth. It took a second for Song to catch on as to why Angharad would suggest it at all.

“You believe I need a chaperone,” she said.

“I have been called a whore for lacking one in presence of a man I have no interest in, not even a week ago,” Angharad delicately replied.

“I am not a noblewoman, Angharad,” she said. “My reputation in those circles is of little import.”

“There are other circles that might look ill on your association with Evander Palliades,” the dark-skinned woman flatly replied.

It was an effort not to clench her jaw, which might mar the face paint. The Yellow Earth, yes. Ai had not accused her of fucking a king, at least, but she had implied affections. Arguably that was even more damning. The urges of one’s body were a surface matter, while sentiment was one of the soul.

“They want me to pass information to them,” she said, avoiding mentioning a name. “I cannot obtain said information without heading to the palace.”

Angharad eyed her for a moment, then sighed and let it drop. They both knew the excuse was a weak one, for the Yellow Earth wanted reports as to what Lord Rector’s preparations against the coup were but Evander had yet to even learn of said coup. He would not until Maryam returned, and there were still another five days before that.

A fact that had allowed Song to push back the decision about what she must do for a little longer despite Angharad’s delicate inquiries on the matter. She did not know whether it was noble manners or a natural predisposition to privacy that had the Pereduri unwilling to push the matter, but she was grateful for it whatever the source. It was doing her sleep no favors to gnaw at the decision like a bone, but the thought of actually deciding either way had her sick in the stomach.

Neither Maryam nor Tristan would have let her deliberate for so long without pushing, so Angharad’s patience and discretion were appreciated thrice over.

“I will see you tonight,” Song breathed out, straightening. “Are you still headed to the Collegium?”

Angharad nodded.

“It is good for my reputation to be seen spending coin publicly,” she said.

One of the ways they had settled on to gild back Angharad’s reputation in Tratheke society was a pretense she had come into an inheritance, which could be feigned with brigade funds. The claim would be that much of the gold was still held up in Malan, providing an excuse to avoid truly expensive sprees, but Angharad would still be living it up on the Thirteenth’s coin for a time.

Thankfully, Colonel Cao had taught all Stripe students the right forms to request reimbursement for ‘inevitable expenses in the fulfilling of a contract undertaken on behalf of the Watch’. Song even intended to have it classified as urgent, which would see it forwarded to the nearest commanding officer: Brigadier Chilaca. The man was likely to sign off on a better return than a third of the funds spent she could expect from Stheno’s Peak, as much to keep her sweet as because agreeing would let him get into the diplomatic discretionary fund and skim some of the funds for himself.

As Chunhua Cao had told them: if you couldn’t get around the corruption, you had best find a way to make it work for you.

On practical level, Angharad spending that coin in the Collegium district would both ensure rumors and allow her an excuse to pass and collect messages from the Chimerical while she was in that part of the city. Tristan needed to be informed of the latest developments – the weapons and the workshop, the likely traitors in the Trade Assembly, Maryam’s shipyard trip – as well as kept abreast of the Nineteenth’s actions. His latest reports had him estimating that within two weeks at the utmost he would be done with the Kassa infiltration, which Song was still somewhat surprised to find a relief.

As the hour was running late, she soon parted ways with Angharad and took the carriage to the Collegium. Within moments of emerging from the lift into the palace, however, she knew there would be trouble. Majordomo Timon was not leading her towards the general or even the private archives, whose books were the reason she had come today.

She was instead being led towards one of the private reading rooms, and Song knew exactly who would be waiting for her there. Unsurprisingly, Evander Palliades was already seated at the table inside, besides a pot of Jigong black leaf coincidentally accompanied by two cups. He was freshly shaved, simply dressed – though every part of his clothes, from the collared burgundy shirt under a pale grey doublet to the matching hose flattering his calves, were expensive and perfectly tailored – and his spectacles were polished to a gleam.

"Ah, Captain Song,” he smiled. “I had been expecting you.”

“Had you?” Song drily replied. “I could not tell.”

He had an excuse ready for everything, she found. Why were they not in the archives?

“Among the books you mentioned there are some in both, it is simpler to send for them as necessary,” he smiled, pouring her a cup.

He even poured it correctly, with his right hand on his handle and his left on the lid. Song smelled treachery in the ranks. Maryam, you double-crossing snake. She tried to bring this back on track by reminding him that breaking a cipher could take hours and the Lord Rector of Asphodel must surely have duties more pressing.

“I will be working late tonight instead,” Evander replied, brushing his back his stupid pretty hair. “As this is former rectoral correspondence, I cannot entrust the knowledge therein to any but a member of House Palliades.”

That was both dutiful of him and manipulative, which Song must reluctantly concede was more attractive paired than standalone. She was thus subjected to the indignity of sitting next to the Lord Rector of Asphodel with their elbows almost touching, in a room with flattering soft lighting as traditional Mazu tea treats were trotted out on platters and every book cited in the correspondence was brough to them by servants.

Who then left the room the moment, as if they had been strictly instructed to do so. Song squinted at the Lord Rector, who innocently smiled back. A boy of fifteen, she reminded herself. The body found in the canal. It had been easier to believe the Yellow Earth, she found, before the local sect’s second choked her halfway to death in an empty alley. That did not mean, however, that she disbelieved what she had been told.

There must be enough truth to it had been a lie worth telling.

She forced herself to focus on the work instead, digging into the books that the correspondence quoted and doing her best to ignore the fact that she was essentially reading explicit letters between a Lord Rector and his mistress while brushing elbows with the current man holding that title. It only got worse when she complimented him for the ink, only to learn he had ground it himself earlier. As practice for his recent forays into calligraphy.

She was going to drown Maryam. What was next, dipping the man in honey?

Ferociously looking down at the papers and pushing out all distractions, she methodically set about picking open the cipher. Progress was slow and they took a short break an hour in, but when they returned to the table it was with fresh energy – and an insight, when they realized that every single book quote had an author of noble birth. Meaning a first name and a surname.

Honesty compelled Song to admit that she was not, strictly speaking, the one who broke the cypher. While she honed in on the quotes being the keystone to it all, it was Evander who figured out that the quote itself was the message. The rest of the letter was exactly what it appeared to be, correspondence between Hector Lissenos and his mistress.

It was a transposition cypher, of a sort: the first letter of the name and surname of the author were to be removed from the quote, the remaining text serving as a message. This worked with varying degrees of legibility, and not infrequently there were ‘garbage’ words in the text that they both agreed on must be ignored for the messages to make sense.

The messages revealed, though bare bones, were telling.

“So ‘C. E.’ was a commander of the Watch,” Evander Palliades said, leaning back into his seat as nimble fingers tapped the plush arms of the chair. “Most likely the leading officer for all the blackcloaks of Asphodel.”

“She must have had backing from the Conclave,” Song said, folding her arms to keep them occupied. “No Watch presence on the island ever had the resources to create something like an aether seal, it would require aid from the Rookery.”

“So would building this ‘prison’ they keeping mentioning,” Evander said. “I made inquiries and ‘brackstone’ is not something quarried on Asphodel. That means imports and likely Watch tinkers. I don’t expect your average mason is well versed in the art of imprisoning gods.”

The crux of the correspondence was the Lord Rector and C. E. discussing the building of a prison for the Hated One, as well as the crafting of the aether seal to smother it to death. Inferred from context, the Hated One had been responsible for the worst of the Ataxia and Hector Lissenos was willing to pour gold like water to be rid of it for good. Though the letters were not dated, they appeared to be spread out over several years and the prison’s construction must have lasted at least that long.

“Then the Hated One’s prison is now breached,” Song grimly said. “What else could that sphere of salt my Navigator found be? There is certainly no mention of anything like that harpoon in the correspondence.”

“I would not expect it to have arrived there by accident either,” Evander conceded.

His expression was dark, befitting of someone who had been told a rampant god had begun to escape its prison, but there was a tinge of the personal to it she had not expected.

“You seem more disappointed than worried,” Song ventured.

He turned a weary look on her.

“I must now go begging for the help of the very Watch trying to strongarm me over my shipyard,” Evander said. “My bargaining position has become more of a bargaining rout.”

It was already weaker than you knew, Song thought with a pang of guilt. And besides, while his worries were not unfounded he overestimated how much leverage the Watch could truly exercise there. It would be a taint on the reputation of the order should it get out the rooks had been so busy trying to extort Asphodel they’d let an old god rampage through Tratheke.

“I expect our diplomats are aware that negotiation down the barrel of a gun does not lead to lasting accords,” Song told him.

Not unless you kept the barrel there, and the Watch was in no position for that. The god would either be dealt with or not. Evander glanced at her through his spectacles, then sighed.

“Let us speak no more of it,” he said. “I would prefer not to put you in that position.”

The use of the word position, after some of the letters they had read, was not poor in meanings. Song narrowed her eyes at him, looking for an implication to take offence to, but all those to be found were something of a reach. She let it pass. A moment of silence stretched out between them until he straightened in his chair.

“Still, those letters really were quite explicit,” Evander noted. “I expect they were genuinely lovers, for there would have been other excuses for correspondence.”

Song cleared her throat uncomfortably at the implication of a Watch officer and the Lord Rector of Asphodel having once shared a bed. The hall around them was large, but they sat mere feet apart and she had never felt more aware of how alone they were in here. Not another soul to be found.

“It could have been to discourage looking for the cipher,” she tried. “Raciness might make readers too uncomfortable to delve deeply.”

It was a weak argument, and from the twitch of his lips he knew it just as well as she. His visible amusement caused a flash of irritation.

“Is it true,” she began, unwisely, then shut her mouth.

He cocked his brow.

“Forget I said anything,” Song said.

“I will not,” Evander calmly replied. “I may not answer, but I will not lie. Ask.”

The way the last word had the faintest echo of a command had Song considering walking out, and also squirming in her seat a bit. She did not dislike authority.

“A shoe-shiner,” she said. “Fifteen. Found dead in a canal.”

He cocked his head to the side.

“The Yellow Earth spy,” he said. “What of him?”

Someone, Song thought, sought to make a fool of her. Do not trust too much, she then reminded herself. Which one, another voice softly asked.

“A spy,” she slowly said.

“Caught past two guarded halls with an ear against a door,” Evander said. “I cannot prove he was Yellow Earth, of course, but he was determined enough to chew most of the way through his own tongue.”

He met her eyes squarely through his spectacles.

“He died on the rack,” the Lord Rector bluntly acknowledged, “and while I did not ask about the body they are often disposed of through the canals.”

A good liar, Song thought, would add exactly that kind of detail. Something unflattering so it would not seem like he was trying to duck a bullet. In truth, even if she followed the trails she had been told the odds were she would never learn the whole of the affair. Perfect clarity was the realm of gods of madmen.

It came down, in the end, to trust.

The Yellow Earth had struck her. Threatened her. But wasn’t the Lord Rector, in a way, trying to buy her? No good kings, she prayed. But then Hao Yu had his table, speaking measuredly, and Ai in the alley – had they been good? Bad souls could serve good causes, but then it must be that the reverse was equally true. And it was not causes she was being asked to trust here, was it?

Song abruptly rose to her feet, knees almost hitting the edge of the table.

“I must report this to my superiors,” she evenly said, “and immediately send a letter to Stheno’s Peak, requesting information on this commander. It may well be that the knowledge we sought has been tucked away in a seal Watch vault all this time.”

Evander awkwardly coughed, rising to his feet.

“Of course,” he said. “Though it is later, and service will no doubt be done by the time of your return to Black House. I can have arranged a meal for-”

“No,” Song blurted out, and he looked crestfallen for a heartbeat before it was gone.

But you want to, the voice from earlier said. But you need the door to stay open to get the information, another part of her whispered.

“No tonight,” she said, looking away.

But not before seeing his eyes light up, and that made her feel almost as sick as the knowledge that she was running out of time to delay making her choice.

--

Helping keep Temenos alive had paid off in droves: overnight Tristan had become the man’s savior and thus deeply trusted, currency he wasted no time in spending. For all that this talk of revolutionaries intrigued – and Temenos, while swearing to bring him along to the ‘meet’, had remained frustratingly vague on who these revolutionaries might be – that thread was not the one he had first come to the Kassa workshop to pull.

Having the old man vouch for him opened doors, quite literally in this case. After a week and change of being a traveling man, a mere day after that god nearly taking his head off Tristan finally got to walk through the same door the Brass Chariot had supposedly seen the assassin walk through.

It didn’t lead to the workshop proper, he learned, but to a pair of narrow side rooms. One was full of cleaning supplies, including a fearsomely pungent amount of vinegar jars, while the other was small bedroom with two cots and a lantern. There was a door leading to the workshop but it was in the hall, not in either room.

“We usually keep two watchmen here at night,” Nikias told him. “Old Chloris wants it so there’s always souls right next to the workshop in case someone tries to break in.”

All that’d been needed for the mustachioed man to show him in was expressing a passing curiosity as to what lay behind the door. Nikias had been all too eager to show him, still most comfortable being in the position of the man showing Ferrando how things worked around the workshop. Now that Tristan’s repute was rising, it had been easy to predict he would seize on a opportunity to reinforce that he was an old hand around here should it be dangled as bait in front of him.

“Do we have to take shifts as well?” Tristan asked, feigning concern.

“No, none of that,” Nikias assured him. “The watchmen are old Kassa men from the fleet, sailors that know their way around a fight but are getting long in the tooth.”

Trusted men long in the company’s service, Tristan translated, who answer directly to Chloris and Stavros Kassa. Probably more Stravros, if the talk about the old lady passing the reins to her son were true. Meaning that the assassin who’d almost killed the Lord Rector of Asphodel was involved with the Kassa, because Nikias was implying the watchmen in there rotated. The assassin couldn’t have made a deal with that night’s specific watchmen in advance.

What in the gods were the Kassa up to? Stevros Kassa knew about what was almost certainly the ‘killer’ hunted by the Nineteenth, enough to warn Temenos in advance about it. Meanwhile the family was hosting in their own workshop another assassin, that one a would-be regicide that despite Tianxi origins appeared to be working on behalf of the Council of Ministers.

His best guess was that the Kassa had switched sides and gone over to the Ministers, more specifically the cult of the Golden Ram – who were using some kind of bound lesser god to get rid of any obstacle to their coup. It was true Temenos could have been a real thorn in the sides of the Kassa, if he refused to back their ambitions and mobilized their own workers against them. Either dead or scared, he’d be forced to get on their side.

Yet Tristan couldn’t help but feel as if were missing something, like he was not unveiling the truth so much as fitting the parts of it he’d uncovered like mostly matching puzzle pieces.

“Anyhow, they’re not even using it for that nowadays,” Nikias continued.

“Oh?” Tristan encouraged.

“They kept some guest in there for a few days and left it empty since,” the mustachioed man told him. “The old lady never would have signed off on it, but Stavros does as he likes.”

And just like that his evening plans had taken shape. If she’d merely stayed there a night he would have investigated the watchmen, but if the assassin used it as a safehouse for a few days? Odds were she would have left a stash in there, something to help if she returned from the assassination wounded or in need of fund to get out of the capital.

Tristan eased out of the situation, though he took the time to discreetly check the locks on both doors before letting Nikias lead him away and back to work. The outer lock was quality, a rim lock of local make, but inside would be easier: that was a Gongmin on the door, an old friend returned to beckon him inside. Ah, Tianxi workshop locks. The gift that kept on giving.

He came back after dark with his lockpicks.

That rim lock proved tricky, there was a ward inside to prevent skeleton keys like his own from working. Good metal, intricate craftsmanship: this was not the work of some blacksmith hammering a box together. A dedicated locksmith had built it with an eye to keeping out thieves.

Not Tristan Abrascal’s caliber of thief, of course, but it still took him a little over three minutes before he had it sliding open.

He closed it behind him and crept past the cleaning storage with his hooded lantern in hand. He put his ear to the door of the watchmen room, checking if there was anyone inside, but he heard nothing and there was no sign of light under the door. The Gongmin lock was done in a minute and then he was inside. The room had not changed since he was last there, still bare wood with two cots and an unlit lantern. He lifted the hood off his own, rolling his shoulder.

Now, if he were an assassin, where would he put his supply stash?

Beneath the cots first, but there was no trace of hidden compartment in the wooden floor. He checked corners for dust that’d been moved, but all it taught him was that at some point a large pot had been placed in the left corner. A chamber pot for when the assassin had laid low here, if he had to guess. With the cots back in place he checked the walls, knocking for hollow spots, but he found none.

But standing on the cots he could reach the ceiling, and there he found a trail: above the second bed there was a hollow part in the ceiling. It could have been merely part of the construction, and certainly nothing slid off easily. But one of the planks seemed just a little too well-defined, and when he took his largest pick and put his whole weight behind pushing the plank it budged.

Ah, their assassin had put weight over the plank so it wouldn’t move easily. Enough to trick most who did not know about such tricks.

“Treasure?” Fortuna asked.

He almost jumped, swallowing a curse. He delicately moved the ceiling plank, discovering some sort of trick with a tied stone was the reason for the weight. That was a problem – he didn’t know how to replicate it. There would be no putting everything perfectly back in place when he was done.

“Supplies, I expect,” he murmured back.

Since he was not fool enough to blindly go groping around an assassin’s belongings, he instead reached into his bag and pulled out a long, slender piece of wood to use that instead. Lightly tapping around he got empty space, until suddenly there was a hard snap. He drew back the stick and found it had been snapped clean through and the sides were somewhat eaten at. Some sort of poison?

“As always,” the Lady of Long Odds proudly said, “we are one step ahead.”

Tristan squinted at her for a long moment. He then climbed down the cot, got into his bag and pulled out a second piece of wood before reaching inside again.

Snap.

“Two steps ahead,” Fortuna crowed.

“Remember that, next time you tell me to take your advice,” he said.

“I won’t,” she honestly replied.

At least she was admitting it, he mentally praised.

As Tristan was now out of sticks, he had to make to with using a bit of rope. The lack of a snap had him, warily, wrapping his hand in cloth and even one of the bedsheets before reaching inside. He pulled out a small leather satchel, the length of three fists and about as broad as one, decorated with what he could only call steel mousetraps with teeth and – he took a sniff – some kind of jellied acid? That must be expensive.

He covered his mouth with a scarf and used the broken sticks to open the satchel buckle, just in case, but it seemed that was to be it for the traps. Inside was a knife, two bandage rolls, a pair of unmarked vials and what looked like three small rubies. A real fortune, that. But most important of all was a single sheathed scroll, laid over the rest. Taking all due precautions, he got the scroll out of the sheath and unrolled it.

Lucky him, it was in Antigua.

And what an interesting reading it made, neat handwriting filling row after row in the lantern light. His lips twitched: it seemed an old friend had come to visit, because he was looking at a contract between the Obsidian Order and someone known only as H. A. for the death of Evander Palliades. The Izcalli assassins weren’t after Angharad this time, which was somewhat amusing, as was the staggering sum H. A. was paying the cultists of the Skeletal Butterfly for: thirty-thousand arboles.

A kingly sum, as befitting the purchase of a king’s head. And that was telling, because how many people on Asphodel could afford to pay such a massive sum? Precious few, he’d wager, and should he follow that trail to its conclusion a most useful name was bound to be waiting.

“Who is H. A. ?” Fortuna asked, leaning over his shoulder.

“I’ve no idea,” Tristan admitted. “But then I have been out of contact for some time. I expect those letters are best passed to Song and Angharad, who will have a fresher list of suspects.”

Alas the initials did not match Apollonia Floros, even reversed, which would have rather simplified the whole thing. While he was of the opinion that the Obsidian Order would only insist on such a contract to insulate themselves from the possible backlash of discovered regicide – if the Grasshopper King got accused of assassinating kings in the Trebian Sea, he would no doubt throw the Order under the carriage wheels without hesitation – and that meant he name should be true, there were no certainties.

He hesitated for a moment before deciding there would be no hiding he’d been through the satchel, pocketing the sheathed scroll and the rubies. After a moment he pocketed the vials as well, Hage might know something useful about their contents. While he could see the liquid inside and it was translucent, the vials themselves were of cheap brown glass so he could not learn more without opening them.

It was not the time or place, and better left to experts besides. The rest of the pillaged stash he put back in the ceiling, then wedged the plank in place without bothering to attempt the rock trick again. It seemed like the kind of thing it took quite a bit to learn, and he could afford to stay here too long. Just because the room here was deserted did not mean that the workshop itself was.

As if the gods were setting out to prove him right he heard the muted sound of voices. Time to leave. Before this got complicated. He grabbed his affairs and closed the door behind him, pausing only when he recognized the timber of a particular voice through the door leading into the alley. Temenos. What was the old man doing here? There was the sound of a key being used, Tristan tensing for one heartbeat before realizing that Temenos was headed into the workshop.

And speaking with at least two more people, by the sound of the voices.

Tristan bit the inside of his cheek, hesitating, but in the end Temenos was now his most important lead: he must eavesdrop if he could. His lockpicks came back out and he put his ear to the door leading into the workshop from the hall. Three others with Temenos, he discerned. Two women and a man. Waiting until the voices headed deeper into the workshop, he got to work.

A minute later the lock popped open and, hand on the door, he cracked it the slightest it open after smothering his lantern. A lamp had been lit in the workshop, near the front, but those inside were speaking quietly enough he was not able to hear much but noise from where he hid.

He’d have to head in.

Immediately on the other side of the door was a small balcony overlooking the workshop proper, with a solid wooden railing, so it was just a matter of waiting until the noise of conversation would cover his movement and slip into the workshop. He asked Fortuna to check when they were all looking the right way, and when she gave the signal through the wall he slipped in.

Tristan closed the door, pressed against the railing, and slowly crept down the stairs. He could hear much better from down here, and-

“Describe it for us, if you would,” Captain Tozi Poloko ordered. “As many details as you remember.”

Oh, you utter fool, he cursed himself. Of course the Nineteenth would come to investigate the first botched killing by their mystery assassin, he should have seen that coming a mile away. He was lucky it was Temenos they’d sought and not him, though it was true Tristan had worked to keep his name away of it at least in a formal manner.

The traveling man had dismissed going to the lictors about the matter in the first place, and been all to understanding of Tristan’s request to be kept out of the matter when it was kicked up to authorities – an implication that the way he had reached Asphodel might cause him trouble had been enough to earn an understanding pat on the back.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“It looked like a broken god,” Temenos said. “Craggy and unkempt, reeking of salt and blood. Its eye sockets were empty and precious stones dangled off them.”

A curious noise.

“Like in the tale of King Oduromai, when he plucked out his eyes and replaced them with the treasures of two kings,” Cressida Barboza said.

“I suppose,” Temenos shrugged. “It wore an iron helmet, with scars, and I think a breastplate of the same. It wielded a sickle.”

“A sickle,” Izel Coyac mused. “Can you describe it?”

Tozi, Cressida, Izel. Better than if Kiran was there, the Skiritai would eat him for breakfast, but Tristan suspected that the tinker was likely the worst fighter of the three and was still uncertain how such a fight would go. One against three, it was a sure thing. And not in his favor.

“Bronze,” Temenos said. “It looked sharp.”

“It looked sharp,” Cressida muttered, disbelieving, and he could almost hear her roll her eyes.

Stock. What did he have? A knife, his pistol, thief tools. Not his blackjack, which as uncommon enough a tool in these parts he’d now wanted to risk sticking out by being seen using one.

“No strange lights, no symbols carved on the blade?” Izel pressed.

“Didn’t see none,” Temenos grunted.

“We were told of another witness,” Captain Tozi said. “Did they see more?”

Tristan’s stomach clenched. It seemed he might have to disappear before finding out about these revolutionaries after all.

“She wasn’t in the room when the thing came,” Temenos lied without batting an eye. “Just came up to help me after.”

His stomach unclenched. There were, it seemed, advantages to a man like Temenos believing he owed you his life.

“And the wound on your leg?” Cressida mildly asked.

“Work accident,” Temenos shrugged. “Does it look like a stabbing wound to you?”

There was a heartbeat, as if the Nineteenth were looking at the wound, then Tozi hummed in agreement.

“The angle’s off,” she conceded. “It barely went in.”

Tristan decided not to look that gift horse in the mouth, even if the horse was being a mite insulting about his knife-throwing skills. He’d not been aiming at Temenos in the first place!

“Craggy, you said,” Cressida brought up. “In what sense?”

But it was not the continuing interrogation Tristan pricked his ear for, but something altogether subtler. Soft, aimless. Steps getting closer. Shit. The thief reached for his knife. His pistol would be a sure kill, striking from surprise, but also ensure he was chased. He’d probably make it out into the street, but from there? The way they were deserted at this hour would work against him, at least at first.

He still set it down next to him, loaded.

Whoever was walking around – not Tozi, she was still talking - they had no clear destination in mind. But they were getting closer, step by step. Knife in hand, Tristan settled into a crouch. If he struck the throat quick enough, he could drag the wanderer behind cover and make his escape before the others realized what was happening. One step, another and now he could hear the breath. A hand atop the railing – it had to be Izel, the footsteps were too loud for Cressida – and when the other man turned the corner he sprung into action.

Tristan caught a glimpse of widening eyes and that nearly-shaved head before his knife hand darted towards Izel’s throat, but the Izcalli hastily leaned back. And, before he could rise into another blow, caught Tristan’s wrist and wrestled it down. It knocked against the railing and he swallowed a pained curse, Izel urgently straightening instead of calling out for help.

“Izel?” Captain Tozi called out.

“Slipped on the stairs,” the Izcalli said, sheepish. “Sorry.”

“Stop wandering around, would you?” Cressida said.

“Soon,” he said, meeting Tristan’s eyes as he did.

The thief’s gaze narrowed. What was Coyac up to?

“You need to get out of here,” Izel whispered from the corner of his mouth. “Is the door unlocked?”

Tristan slowly nodded. The Izcalli casually went up the stairs, past the thief, and opened the door. He did not so much as touch the loaded pistol, though he could have.

The door opening drew the attention of the others.

“It isn’t locked,” Izel called out. “I’ll check the hall.”

Below the cover of the railing he gestured for Tristan to go into the hall. The thief did with the pistol now in hand, still on edge but failing to see what the Izcalli had to gain by letting him out. If they wanted to grab him, three on one with a single witness to silence was as good a deal as they were likely to get. Tristan grabbed his bag and lantern, knife sheathed but gun still in hand, and in the shadow of the hall found the other man’s eyes.

“Don’t let us see you in the city,” Izel whispered. “Danger.”

Which Tristan well knew. The surprise was that he was being told.

“Why?” he probed.

“Go,” Izel harshly replied. “I can only do so much.”

And Tristan debated pushing, but he did not like the weight of those dice. No, Izel Coyac was proving to be more interesting than he had thought but here was not the time and place. Pull a string too tight and it’d break. So instead he nodded, and as Izel returned to the workshop the Mask disappeared into the street.

It looked like tonight he had learned not one but two useful things.

--

Early in the twenty-third day of her stay on Asphodel, Angharad collected Tristan’s latest report and his answer to her inquiries about getting into Captain Domingo’s room. She rather wished it was not necessary to buy a coffee from the devil every time, but he insisted it was formal Mask policy and she was not certain enough of him lying to call him a liar.

Use a ten-foot pole. The moment you touch anything you’re on a clock, they have alarm Signs. If you take something it can be marked, put it out in direct Glare at least three hours.

Angharad made the conscious decision not to consider too deeply why Tristan would know of that last detail, then silently cursed him for his general unhelpfulness. Admittedly, his having survived so long as a thief might have something to do with avoiding robbing Navigators. It was a sensible, if unfortunate, bit of logic.

Still, she might have a solution of sorts.

Returning to Black House, Angharad headed directly to the library and looked into a particular set of Watch rules. Specifically those about those what was allowed in pursuit of an investigation of suspected treason among fellow watchmen. The underlying thread was ‘report it to the Krypteia’, but she did get some usable answers. Harming or detaining another rook was not allowed, but accessing one’s possession was more of a grey area.

One with considerable latency as to the means of, say, entry into a locked room.

That afternoon Angharad politely asked one of the servants to unlock the armory for her, then limped inside and used her contract. A few moments later she winced, thanked the servant and went to find Song in the library, where she was reading on the great spirits of Asphodel. The captain cocked a quizzical eyebrow.

“If I were to ask you about a volume on the subject of using blackpowder for demolition,” Angharad said, “would you have a particular suggestion?”

Silver eyes narrowed.

“Do I want to know?”

“It might be best if you did not,” the Pereduri replied.

A beat passed.

“Powder Compendium, it’s in the shelves on the far left,” Song said. “The middle section, it starts with a drawing of a skull on barrel.”

Angharad’s brow rose.

“That was quick,” she observed.

Song Ren sharply smiled.

“My father’s relatives in Mazu helped us, but they also had some very unkind things to say to my mother,” she said. “It so happens that, as a girl, I became curious as to the exact quantity of powder that might be required to drop the pretty tower they live in into the waters of the port.”

Angharad would now confess to suspicions that somewhere in Tianxi detailed diagrams of how such a thing might achieved were neatly tucked in a drawer, along with precise dosages and weather recommendations. Well, far be it for her to begrudge someone their… curiosities.

Now she had best get that book, so that when tomorrow she attempted to blow up that door with a barrel of blackpowder she did not quite embarrassingly kill herself in the process.

--

For a little under an hour the carriages rolled down a slope, then they came to a halt and Maryam was brought out to witness a fever dream of a shipyard.

Under a towering cavern ceiling was a complication of buildings and canals, waters so still and dark they could have been tar, while above the organized chaos rose a forest of crane-towers in polished brass. Some were as water mills, with slowly spinning arms shaped like ornate panels, while others were topped by oversized twisting cogs connecting through steel cables to others of their kind, the entire forest some kind of greater machining.

Near the heart of the mess the islands the towers were on came together, forming eight tenths of a square, and the machines there surrounded a half-built skimmer set on rails that would drop it straight into the water if pushed. Warm, glowing Glare lights that were pure spheres of glass lit up the cavern like a thousand fireflies.

Maryam paused breathless at the top of the rise where they were all standing, for it was one of the most strikingly beautiful sights she had ever witnessed. The subtle artistry of it, how seeming disorder had an underlying current of purpose, it was… pleasing to the eye in a way she could not easily express. Like having a spot on your back you couldn’t reach scratched perfectly, or the axe splintering dry wood all the way through in a single perfect blow.

She was jostled out of her thought by gentle nudge, a tall Aztlan man with thick brows looking at her with mixed amusement and concern. The second tinker, the one from the Deuteronomicon.

“You must be quite sensitive to aether currents,” he said, voice faintly accented. “It is always a flip of the coin whether a Navigator will sense the conceptual symmetry or not.”

Maryam frowned, nails and wood digging into her palm to force focus.

“That’s what this is?” she asked.

The man nodded.

“The kind of aether engines that propel skimmers are usually simple perpetual motion devices relying on conceptual mirroring to cheat entropy,” he said. “They are not complicated to make, but they are very delicate – even the slightest imprecision will result in the engine blowing up within months.”

Maryam blinked.

“Blowing up?” she repeated.

“It is an implosion, technically,” the tinker admitted, as if conceding to some abstract point she had made. “Mind you, modern studies indicate it’s not so much a hole in the fabric of material reality so much as a temporary leak aether-ward.”

Maryam, for the sake of her already troubled sleep, decided to set aside that aether engines apparently exploded and sucked their immediate surroundings into the aether often enough there had been studies about it. Deuteronomicon tinkers had a well-earned reputation for eccentricity and generally driving themselves insane or straight into the grave, though Akelarre guildsmen still tended to prefer them to their Clockwork Cathedral fellows. The madmen, after all, had a better understanding of how the underlying forces of Vesper functioned.

It was somewhat ironic that Izel Coyac seemed one of the best-adjusted Deuteronomicon tinkers she had ever met but still wouldn’t beat the average survival age by virtue of being a traitor whose skull she would split open with a hatchet.

Their little aside was stopped by a band of lictors coming up the stairs, spreading out in ranks as their captain came to the front. Captain Cervantes stepped up to meet the mustachioed man commanding the lictors down here, Maryam only half paying attention as she tried to sketch out what lay in the cavern aside from that bewitching shipyard.

The road they had taken, which she suspected began near some sort of lift, stretched out from the distant dark and ended at the rise on which they now stood: essentially a tall terrace overlooking the towers and water below, a broad set of stairs leading down to the lower level. She would have expected lodgings there, but all she saw was barracks and a fort that was a glorified wooden tower. There were more wooden structures on the other side of the shipyard, though, nestled against the cavern wall.

Four rows of modest cottages, squeezed between the outer canal and the stone, while past them were larger edifices that must be dormitories and meeting halls. There were fire pits outside and some of the cottages had smoking chimneys, while what Maryam suspected to be laundry lines hung between cottages full of drying clothes.

There were a few people outside their homes, on that other shore, and children playing between cottages. Few, though, compared to the number of houses. They must have been warned in advance of the visiting blackcloaks and chosen to stay inside. It’s still enough to see they brought entire families down there rather than risk leaks, she thought. Palliades is being very, very careful about keeping this place out of sight.

Truly, she mused, Song Ren’s tits were a thing of magic.

“-ld thank you to keep away from the far shore, where our workers and their families are lodged,” the lictor was saying. “Our senior shipwright, Master Dioles, will guide you through the shipyard. You will be invited to break bread with us at the barracks come noon.”

The lictor cleared his throat.

“I am told there is among you a woman by the name of Maryam Khaimov?”

If Captain Cervantes felt the same surprise Maryam did, she hid it better.

“Warrant Officer Khaimov, step forward,” she ordered.

Maryam did as ordered. The lictor captain spared her a curious glance.

“At the Lord Rector’s order, a visit of the model skimmer has been arranged for you,” he said. “A guide was arranged to answer any question you might have.”

While she was not eager at the thought of being separated from the others, she would not deny she was eager to have a closer look at that skimmer. She looked at Captain Cervantes, who nodded, and off they went. A pair of lictors followed behind her, but her guide was not one of the Lord Rector’s soldiers. Mistress Thais was plump but sure-footed shipwright in her thirties, her dark hair a mess of curls and her green eyes serious.

Thais led the rest of them through the mess of islands and bridges towards the outer edge, where Maryam found a massive underground canal heading into the distance – presumably a passage leading to the sea, though there was not a speck of light out there to confirm the guess.

“When I worked on the model my time was mostly spent on the hull,” Mistress Thais told Maryam, “but I have some experience with the aether engine as well.”

“Have you ever sailed it?” the Izvorica asked.

“I never held the helm, but I was aboard when we first unveiled it,” the older woman replied.

Maryam had a dozen questions on the tip of her tongue, but her lips were dragged shut when they passed under a tower-crane and came upon a long dock of stone and brass – where, cleanly moored, waited the skimmer. With all this talk of model, of demonstration, Maryam had half-expected a glorified rowboat with an engine slapped behind it. What she was looking at, though, was a brass warship the size of a middling caravel.

One that was, in its own way, beautiful.

The silhouette was not like a sailing ship’s. Though the front of the hull cut upwards in a beak, the prow was rounded and below the waterline she could make out that below the ship were jagged, curving metal blades slicing into the water. The bridge was flat, with a turret two thirds of the way through and a two-story glass-paneled cabin further back. No, she then noted, there was another part: behind the cabin was a curved rise covering stairs that must descend below deck.

The skimmer gave the impression that it should be leaning back in the water, for the back third of it bore complicated – and massive -cogs and wheels in the shape of broad half-moon that dipped a noticeable span deeper than the keel. There were railings on the sides, rigging on the deck and curving bones of brass embraced the hull like ribs. For all its rounded curves the whole skimmer had a jagged, piercing look to it. Like an arrow in flight.

“A beauty, isn’t it?” Mistress Thais proudly asked.

Maryam belatedly realized she had frozen without even stepping onto the docks and cleared her throat in embarrassment.

“It is,” she said. “Can we go aboard?”

The older woman nodded.

“I can even show you the engine room, though you are not allowed to touch the insides,” Mistress Thais said.

She eagerly followed the shipwright, crossing the docks and hopping overboard on the skimmer. Neither of the lictors followed. The brass deck was, she found, not quite warm but at least lukewarm. And fascinatingly enough the ship did not at all bob in the water. It was unmoving, like solid ground.

Mistress Thais began with the deck. The turret, she learned, was made to pivot to thirds of a circle and though it currently lacked armaments it was meant to be fitted with a cannon. The glass window cabin with two stories was, at the bottom, for navigation: it held a wood-and-brass steering wheel. From inside one could climb up to the second level, which held room for a fog light a perch for a signifier.

As Maryam had earlier guessed the curved rise went downstairs, into the surprisingly spacious below deck. A hall went straight through, fitted with six comfortable cabins and a relatively small cargo hold. The largest room on that level was the engine room by far, occupying a third of the skimmer’s length. Beyond that barred door lay a nightmare of ticking cogs and wheels, at the center of which lay the core of the engine.

It had the look of a heart made of medal, but somehow also of a hot air balloon. It pulsed and ticked and pumped, weights and counterweights moving to some unseen and eerie measure as cogs and chains whirred and something like steam was expelled by a beak.

“There is a second level below the heart,” Mistress Thais told her, “but it is dangerous to slip into without proper precautions.”

“It is the largest aether engine I have ever seen,” Maryam admitted.

Larger than anything the Tianxi could make, and probably even that Someshwari city-state with its ancient forges.

“And powerful, do not doubt it,” the shipwright said. “We knew that we would not be able to make a proper warship on the first go, so we didn’t even try – it is meant for transport, not war. For the engine, however, the Lord Rector gave the order to build it as large and strong as we could.”

Because the great powers of Vesper were perfectly capable of laying down a hull of tomic alloys themselves, Maryam thought. It was the aether engines that stumped even the cleverest of the Tianxi republics. And if their ambassador had stood in that same room Maryam now did, there was no amount of wealth he would not be willing to throw at Evander Palliades to secure access to the creations of this shipyard. Keeping that thought off her face, Maryam hummed.

“I notice you only call it the model,” she said. “Was it never named?”

“An jest of the shipyard crew,” Mistress Thais said, rolling her eyes. “It is an old custom of Asphodel that giving a child a name before their third year is bad luck. Petty superstition for mountain folk.”

Much as Maryam would have liked to spend another hour in here, they had already been on board for almost two and she suspected that if she was caught feeling out the engines with her nav it would be something of a diplomatic incident. Reluctantly, Maryam let herself be ushered out of the skimmer. The lictors were still waiting by the docks, one of them smoking a pipe, and they looked almost irritated when the two of them returned to land.

She could not help but look back. Would be it be good enough, she wondered? To sail up the Broken Gates. She was not sure, but in what world would she ever be able to get her hands on even as fine a ship as this?

With the visit ended Maryam was guided back towards the rest of the delegation, though it turned out that they were currently in the heart of the shipyard and the bridges had been withdrawn – it would take some time before they were positioned for passage again, so the signifier was led back to the rise where they had come out of the carriage this morning before being unceremoniously handed bread and sausage.

The lictors then left her sitting there by the carriages, fleeing as if they’d tossed a wild animal a cut of meat and were retreating while it was still distracted. A little flabbergasted, Maryam sat there and ate looking down at the shipyard and cavern. Even down here it seemed the color of her skin made her no friends, though no doubt being known as a Navigator had no helped.

Gloam witches were feared for a reason.

The solitude gave her time to think, at least. Song had charged her with finding out by where Menander Drakos could have entered this place, but as her gaze wandered to the two entrances – the tunnel to the lift and the canal presumably leading to the sea – she had to admit she was not finding a credible answer. If Drakos could use the lift or sail out, why had he not stripped this place clean of the entire stash? On the other hand, there was no other way in that she could see.

“Because you’re looking in all the wrong places.”

Maryam reached for her side out of habit – even though they had not been allowed weapons and so she lacked a knife – and almost fumbled the last bit of sausage doing it. The near miss had her scowling in distaste even before her most unwelcome of guests strolled out from behind one of the empty carriages, smug as you please. The shade wore Watch black again, black cloak and tunic fitted to her with a twisting golden brooch.

“Scavengers do not proudly walk the high road, Maryam,” the shade said.

“You would know,” Maryam snippily replied.

She’d already worn three rings on and slid on two more out of principle.

“What do you want now, anyway? Did you not have enough of my company on the way here?”

“I come to offer aid,” the shade said. “Proof.”

“Proof of what?” Maryam frowned.

“That we could be more together than at odds,” she replied.

I could be more after I devoured you whole, Maryam thought, and never have to deal with your presence again.

“I will have what you stole from me,” she scorned. “Do not think the workings on this cavern will protect you if you test me.”

“Protect me?” the shade laughed. “No, I think not. This is a cursed place. The Ancients carved an island in the aether, Maryam, so that no waves would trouble their tinkering. It is even worse here than it was in the palace high above.”

She cocked her head to the side. From her hesitant investigations the aether here did that have that same stillness and sterile tinge, though up there it had been like bad taste in the mouth while here it was almost oppressive. She’d kept her nav tucked in for a reason.

“They did it on purpose,” Maryam slowly said. “To keep the aether unmoving so it would be easier to build their engines.”

“What is building a seawall, to those that shaped the material like clay?”

And another detail fell into place. She had been told, and witnessed herself, that the aether on Asphodel was odd. Wild and dangerous, in some way broken. She had also been told, by Captain Wen himself, that when the Second Empire first forced the submission of Asphodel they stole Antediluvian devices and that it had wounded the local aether.

The Ancients had built their shipyard under Tratheke, a box under the box, and encircled every story of that box in some device that stilled the aether to make building their engines earlier. Only the Second Empire had then broken and stolen the artefacts that kept the middle layer in place, essentially forcing an aether rapid through reefs – while above and below the aether remained frozen, essentially funneling all the local aether through Tratheke like it was being squeezed through a tube.

No wonder the city’s aether was so unstable. Nav, no wonder gods kept rising and dying there: they were effectively force-fed currents of aether that made them swell faster than they should, and without a solid foundation some of them would simply eat and eat until they popped. An aether intellect could only feed on so much aether it had no conceptual tie with before too much of it became unrelated to itself and it dissolved.

“So you’re saying up there and down here are closed gardens of aether,” she slowly said. “Then how did the assassin get into that half-layer to leave the palace?”

“There is an anchor,” the shade said. “You could not feel it, but I could. If the brackstone shrines are the bottom of a flask, then the cork-”

“Is in the palace,” Maryam muttered. “It would have to be, Hector Lissenos would have wanted it that way. It would be much easier to protect there. So our assassin somehow got into the flask, and from there they can pop out at two places: near the brackstone shrines, and near the ‘cork’. Wherever that is inside the palace.”

The harpoon, she decided. It had to be the harpoon they’d used to get into the layer, it was the only part of what she had seen there that stood out. It must be some Antediluvian weapon the enemy had used to enter the Hated One’s prison, effectively turning it into a back entrance to the palace and city. Utter madness.

And, she could not help but notice, it solved the main military trouble for someone attempting a coup in Tratheke: that the rector’s palace could be held indefinitely by blocking the lifts up. If the same road the assassin had employed was used to sneak in men, they could seize the lifts by surprise before the Lord Rector even knew a coup was happening.

This reeked of the cult’s involvement. Whoever had been capable of binding the Golden Ram and bleeding it for boons might just be capable of getting into the Hated One’s prison as well. So then why was Lord Gule so convinced the assassin had not been their conspiracy’s doing? He might have just lied to Tredegar, Maryam thought. It occurred to her that Malani ‘honor’ would be a very useful shield, should someone refuse to uphold it once in a while.

She had much to chew on, but that was for later. Song had given her an assignment and the time she had to spare in it was limited. It was a greater concern, at least for now.

“You said you came to offer aid,” Maryam finally said.

“I did,” the shade replied. “Will you listen this time?”

“I asked, didn’t it?” she bit out.

“Menander Drakos is scavenger,” the shade said. “Whatever he stole, it was not enough to draw the Lord Rector’s attention. Why do you think that is?”

“Because he took only small things,” Maryam said. “Your point?”

“Would a man greedy enough to steal under the Lord Rector’s own nose stop at trinkets?” the shade challenged

No, Maryam had to agree. Assuming Evander Palliades did not yet have access to the shipyard back then, should he be careful Lord Menander could have stolen the entire stash and simply pawned it off abroad. It wasn’t as if the Lord Rector of Asphodel had many contacts in the ports of the eastern Someshwar, and down on the Riven Coast no questions were asked when ships came to sell goods no matter what those goods might be.

“It’s not that he didn’t steal larger goods but that he couldn’t,” she said. “Whatever path he used to get in, nothing too large or heavy can be brought through.”

And so Maryam’s eyes left the rise and road, the large underground river, instead turning to where they should have been the whole time: the cavern walls. What she had assumed to be smooth stone all the way up was not: there were cracks in the stone, some fissures large as a cart, and even holes. All of them high up, at least three dozen feet high. Looking again, she could see that closer to the ground where paler streaks in the stone. More fissures, filled with plaster.

“All it takes is one of those fissures reaching up to an old Drakos dig,” she whispered, “and Lord Menander has his in.”

And it would explain why he’d grabbed nothing too large, because it would have to be pulled back up by his men afterwards and carried through narrow spaces.

“You’ll be thought odd, if you keep talking to yourself,” the shade smirked.

Maryam cast a wary look around, but there was still no one in sight. She supposed there was no need for her to be supervised when she was standing on a rise with only one way down that wouldn’t break her legs. Where else would she go, back into the dark? Not a soul around, she realized, and likely not for some time. And that, well, that saw a thought turn from a seed to a bloom. Because there was something else that had occurred to her, during their talk.

She devoured the last of her sausage, swallowed.

“You know, Hector Lissenos did not strike me as a fool,” Maryam quietly said, rising to her feet. “He lived in the rector’s palace, knew his descendants would as well. So why would he take the risk of putting the cork to the prison there?”

The shade shrugged.

“He must have believed the seawall would protect him from this,” she said.

“Yes,” Maryam said. “And Hector, not being a fool, would have consulted whoever helped him build the aether lock on this matter. If he believed the border would prevent the Hated One’s filth from seeping out, he had good reason to.”

“And?” the shade asked.

“And you told me the borders down here are even stronger,” Maryam replied, and pulled.

The shade fought her, but she had struck in utter surprise. She pulled on her nav with the strength of every ring she’d slipped on, and when the shade swallowed a pained scream she plunged her hand into the creature’s chest. She took a kernel in hand, another part of what she was owed.

“There is a shielding layer between my soul and the Gloam here,” Maryam calmly continued. “And that means I can eat you safely.”

She ripped out the kernel, the shade dissolving like mist, and she saw it all.

Like wriggling worms her soul gobbled up eagerly, a fistful of writhing secrets ripped out from the Cauldron and swallowed whole. She saw what she took, what she owned – how to make smoke sing, to bewitch echoes out of stone, to draw in flesh with a finger for brush – but also what went to waste. The wound she had ripped into the Cauldon, it leaked… smoke, for lack of a better term.

And that smoke disappeared into the aether, forever lost.

How much was it, she wondered, even as she dimly felt pressure mount behind her eyes. How much would be lost even if she had a whole feast down here, by bleeding out in the nothing or even by virtue of being eaten incomplete – it was not secrets whole and sectioned she took, only whatever she blindly ripped out.

A hundredth, a tenth, a fifth?

But even as a migraine whitened her field of vision and she swallowed drily, it was not that fearful prospect that consumed Maryam’s mind. It was the last thing she had felt, when she ripped that kernel out of the shade. The emanation in the aether, clear as Glare. Fear. The shade had been afraid for her life. And that was… it had not been Maryam’s emotion. Nothing stolen from her. Not something mirrored or mimicked.

And a parasite should not be able to taint the aether like that.

--

(“You lunatic little bitch,” Captain Domingo Santos shouted, emerging through a cloud of thick powder smoke. He looked rather singed, and was already tracing a Sign. Angharad sighed a moment before a spike of Gloam tore through her stomach and then the wall behind it.)

The vision ended abruptly. Coughing into her fist, Angharad continued walking past the door.

Tomorrow she would remember to first ask if Captain Domingo was still inside his room first.

--

“I need a dead body,” Tristan Abrascal announced.

It was the morning of his twenty-fifth day on the isle of Asphodel, before first light. He didn’t immediately get an answer as they traded the goods. Hage took the pouch of suspicious brown powder – dirtied flour, though it could easily pass for wagfly drops – and handed Tristan an apparent pouch of coin. Coppers all, because devils underpaid even feigned labor. Tristan going in the early mornings to sell Hage the false drugs was an excuse for their irregular contact, hiding that the traded pouch and bag contained messages from the Thirteenth and his own latest report.

The devil raised those thunderous eyebrows, leaning back to scratch Mephistofeline who promptly let out a ghoulish shriek of approval and pressed his jowls against Hage’s fingers. He had a little necklace now, adorned with shiny scrap metal sickles. Kids from the neighborhood had made it. Apparently it was a reference some sort of Asphodelian myth about some god in the ground inflicted with endless hunger, much like the orb-adjacent Mephistofeline.

“A whole body?” Hage finally asked.

He nodded. The devil clicked his tongue.

“Start with thigh meat first, work your way up to fingers,” Hage advised. “An entire body’s too ambitious, you don’t even know if you like the taste yet.”

“Not to eat, as you are well aware,” Tristan sighed. “Tonight is the meet and after that I’ve no more use for the Kassa. It is time to feign my death and disappear.”

It might have been on the table to simply disappear earlier in the infiltration, but if ‘Ferrando’ turned to thin air immediately after his first look at the conspirators it was sure to be noticed. An altercation with a basileia man gone wrong would make waves in the Kassa pond, but it wouldn’t earn suspicion.

“What kind of death?” Hage asked.

“Violent,” Tristan said. “I’ll leave whether accidental or not to you.”

“It will take at least two days,” Hage said, “and there will be a fee.”

Two days would work fine, he did not want to disappear too quickly after the meet.

“Take it from the brigade funds,” he replied, granting Hage a nod and the cat a bow. “Your Highness, fare thee well."

Mephistopheline majestically shrieked in response, flopping belly up in a maneuver that had the wooden shelf beneath him creak before batting his paws up as if he were a kitten instead of a creature that could comfortably fit several kittens within its ample folds. Tristan thus left with the solemn blessing of a prince of Hell, returning to the inglorious labor of his day as a Kassa traveling man.

He read the letter on the way. He’d reported the encounter with Izel Coyac, but Angharad wrote that the Nineteenth had disappeared into the city the day after and no one knew where they were. She again asked if he had heard anything about the Yellow Earth, who had apparently tried to coerce Song. He didn’t know the details and they were probably best not put to paper, but apparently there’d been fighting.

He'd have to take a look into that, when he could spare the time. Until then the names ‘Hao Yu’ and ‘Ai’ were a pair he’d kept an ear out for, but as the last time she had asked he had heard nothing. Though the Kassa had ties to the Republics, they were not in part of the family operations he worked in.

Tristan blanked through the day, mind already on what lay ahead, and got a few frowns for having slowed down compared to his usual performance. Not enough for a reprimand, however, when in their little circle he yet rode high as Temenos’ savior. Come evening he met at the Black Dame with the other veterans, but neither he nor Temenos drank much. They were there only to spend the hours, and near eleven they were joined by three more souls in Kassa employ: twins from the weavers and a hard-faced sort who spoke for the warehouse men.

The meet was to be had at the stroke of midnight, which Tristan thought unnecessarily dramatic, but it was not his conspiracy to run.

He kept a running tally of what an agent of the Krypteia might consider conspiratorial mistakes as the five of them set out under cover of dark. First, the location: while the northwestern ward was largely abandoned, its abandoned warehouses were still of interest to the local basileias. Two, the numbers gathering. The closer they got to the meeting place the more they ran into others, most of them coming in smaller groups than the Kassa but groups nonetheless.

How many people had been invited to this conspiracy? It was looking like at least half a hundred, which was only marginally better than handing your secret plans over to the town crier to yell out on the square.

Third, while there were toughs with blades handling security they were clearly basileia hands. Which meant on top of the invited masses and the conspirators themselves, a significant portion of a local basileia had known about this in advance. In some sense it made the entire affair easier to swallow: this was likely said basileia’s territory, and thus they could drive away searching eyes and kill rumors to some extent.

Yet, in another sense, Tristan was wondering if by the end of the night he was going to have to explain to some lictor captain that as a warrant officer of the Watch he could not be detained and someone needed to head to Black House to confirm his word. Gods, he hoped not.

There were only so many times Song could fetch him from prison before she decided to strangle him to spare herself further indignities.

It was worse than he expected when they reached the warehouse, for there were already a crowd of thirty-odd people in there. The front doors were held by toughs, who patted down for weapons but did not ask as to anyone’s identity.

Tristan stuck with Temenos and the warehouse man, whose name was Damon, and kept a watchful silence as the two men began counting out the workers from which trading houses had come. Of the ten largest, Tristan learned, seven were present now that the Kassa men had accepted the invitation. Twice as many merchant houses from the middle of the pack had shown, but none from the bottom of the ladder. Or perhaps they had not been invited?

It was beginning to occur to him that this was not some secret cabal’s council holding a meet, but instead something closer to a rally. Secrecy was not the order of the day because whoever led this conspiracy had no intention of showing their face – it was about recruiting bodies for the cause, not bringing another ringleader into a plot.

Tristan kept his silence and stayed with the Kassa as the last souls were allowed in by the men at the door trickled in, his eye staying on the front of the crowd. There crates had been piled to make for a makeshift platform, the throng of people naturally settling in a wobbly half-circle around it. They didn’t have to wait long for those meant to stand on the crates to show up, half a dozen men and women walking in to a wave of murmurs.

“That’s Stavros Kassa,” Temenos whispered, pointing out a tall man with a pointed and oily beard. “He is the one who asked us here.”

Tristan caught a few more surnames spoken by the crowd. Delinos, Metaxas, Patera, Remes. All magnates, all of them Trade Assembly. There was one of the lot, however, that needed no introduction by a third party.

Tristan knew exactly what Maria Anastos looked like, for she had been waiting for the Watch on the docks when their ship first arrived at the Lordsport. He would have to be careful, the Mask thought. Though his looks did not stand out and that day he had been wearing rook black as one of many, there was always a chance she might recognize his face.

It was her that claimed the stage, the other magnates arranged around her like a display of force. The Anastos were not the informal first among equals of the Trade Assembly that House Floros was for the Council of Ministers, but they were very influential – and as the only family head present, it was only natural she took the lead. But none of the other heads showed, Tristan thought. To avoid risk, or because their families are not in this to the hilt?

“You all know who I am,” Maria Anastos called out. “And you all know why you’re here.”

Mutters in the crowd.

“There’s only so long we can bury our head in the sand,” Mistress Anastos said. “It was one thing when the boy king’s ministers raided our coffers, but now they are no longer content with that: fearing our influence, they’ve begun murdering us.”

That claim got pushback. Some shouts called her a liar, others accused the magnates of being behind deaths, others demanded proof. It was the last call that Maria Anastos answered.

“Kimon Metaxas is dead, poisoned,” she answered. “A magnate’s own brother. Patera?”

An older woman with a dignified bearing stepped onto the stage.

“The captain of the Sunderer was found dead a month back,” she said. “A single stroke through the neck, no witnesses.”

A gangly man from the crowd shouted it was true. A foreman for the Patera, Tristan deduced from the way those around him reacted. Next came testimony of a murdered warehouse foreman from the Delinos, and the cousin and basilea contact of a Remes travelling man. He’d seen the testimony from Stavros Kassa coming, so when the bearded man called on Temenos to speak to the assassin that had tried to murder him with a sickle he’d already slipped deeper into the crowd.

Given how agitated the lot of them were by the rising list of deaths, it had been precious easy to pretend he’d been caught by some eddy of the mob.

“It’s true,” Temenos grunted. “Came for me in the night, it was a narrow escape. The man cut through wood like it was paper, a contractor for certain.”

That set the crowd to loud talk. There was some skepticism, several calling Temenos a liar, but Tristan noticed that most of the older men and women were taking the Kassa foreman seriously. The society of those who’d remained in magnate service for decades held sway here, if not sovereignty. Their claims were taken seriously.

“Evander Palliades no longer rules the Rectorate,” Maria Anastos told the crowd. “The Council of Ministers does, and we all remember the Floros years – that woman won’t rest until she’s ground us all to dust.”

Angry, shouting approval. Apollonia Floros was not beloved of this crowd, it seemed. She wouldn’t be, given how much of her regency had been spent stepping on the very magnates employing most everyone in the room. Tristan wove around the congregation, only half listening to the speech. It was all grievances and accusations, working up the anger in the room before putting some form of salvation on sale.

Of all the goods hawked by charlatans, hope was the one men would most make fools of themselves for.

The other magnates did not seem surprised by anything out of Maria Anastos’ mouth, so they were as much part of this as she was. Though the Mask struggled to remember what also those mighty families were most famous for, it seemed to him that it was the magnates with strong roots on Asphodel that had shown. The Lagonikos, who headed the wealthiest trade consortium of the Trade Assembly but based on the island of Arke, did not have a representative.

So only part of the Assembly’s in on whatever this is, he mused. A handful gone over to the Ministers in exchange for titles, as Song had theorized? There seemed too many families present here for that, in his opinion, but then it was entirely possible that the largest ones were using the second-stringers as disposable cannon fodder to secure their new titles.

“We’ve appealed to the throne, but Palliades ignores us,” Maria Anastos was continuing. “He’s lost the reins, and it’s only a matter of time until he’s cast down – and there is only one who can replace him, isn’t there?”

Floros’ name was shouted, with varying degrees of anger and disgust.

“We can’t let it happen,” Maria Anastos said. “Won’t let it happen. Else half of us will end up in a grave, and the rest in the street.”

Shouts came from the crowd, asking what could be done, but Tristan’s attention had gone to the basileia men. While some of them had noticeable tattoos and scars, there did not seem to be a running them that’d give him a symbol to look into. The only thing they had in common was cheap brown cloaks, which by the way they kept adjusting them were a new addition.

That was a trail he could run down, he decided. There were only so many places in Tratheke where one could by over twenty mostly identical cheap brown cloaks.

“- then we can only defend ourselves,” Maria Anastos shouted. “We’ve let the aristoi step on us for centuries, but we will not let them have our lives!”

Answering a signal from one of the magnates, pairs of those burly figures brown cloaks stepped forward carrying large crates. Not just crates, Tristan corrected after a moment. Some barrels as well. No, he then dimly thought, clenching his fingers. Truly?

To the shouts of the crowd they were opened, revealing crates full of muskets and bullets while the barrels were full of blackpowder.

“If the Ministers think they can just take the city, let’s show them who really rules Tratheke!”

Roars of approval from many, but not all. There were some in the crowd who looked horrified, as if beholding a ship about to run into reefs.

Tristan felt numb, mind racing down lanes of fresh realization.

Angharad had found weapons being smuggled into Tratheke, when she headed out in the countryside, and Song had put together that they were being made in the valley and not by nobles. That was what had led his captain to the belief that some of Trade Assembly magnates had gone over to the other side for the promise of titles.

But there had been other details, hadn’t there? Hints they came across earlier in their investigation. The Brazen Chariot telling them of how blackpowder was worth more than its weight in gold, as if it was being bought by everyone – why would the ministers scheming their coup need this, if they had a workshop out in the valley furnishing their troops? Why take the risk someone would notice the powder being grabbed so aggressively?

Because the coup that Tristan Abrascal was looking at was not the same as the one being planned by the Council of Ministers.

He swallowed drily as there were alls for silence, from both the magnates and the doubters.

“A few crates of muskets will not take Tratheke,” an older woman called out.

“A hundred crates will,” Maria Anastos replied, “if we have the men to wield them. And there may be a bare hundred here, but how many will listen if you call for volunteers?”

She raised her fist.

“Thousands,” she shouted, and there were cheers.

“Thousands of men who have never fought,” another voice scorned from the crowd. “Against lictors and retinues! A thousand corpses is all you’re promising.”

“And what if we take the city, Anastos?” Temenos shouted. “Who rules us then? Who protects us when every lord from the east and the west comes for our blood?”

“We rule ourselves,” Maria Anastos shouted back. “Each of us, free. And we are not alone.”

There was a hush from the crowd as another figure was welcomed onto the stage. The woman was not particularly tall or shapely, with simple dark hair held in a topknot while she wore unremarkable city clothes. She did not even have much presence, yet two thirds of the room were spellbound for a simple reason: she was Tianxi and she wore a yellow sash.

Even here in Asphodel, men knew what that meant.

“My name is Ai,” she said. “I am of the Yellow Earth, sent by the Republics, and come to tell you this: seize your freedom and you will not stand without allies.”

The crowd breathed in, almost as one. There was an excitement in the air, a thrumming in the blood. The charlatans had finally unpacked the salvation they’d come to sell.

“A vote has been held in secret,” Ai said, “to recognize Asphodel as a sister-republic to Tianxia should Tratheke be seized and the Lord Rector overthrown.”

A dull roar began to rise, but she pitched her voice louder still.

“Claim your freedom,” Ai shouted, “and when the nobles come to take Asphodel from you they will find a fleet of your Tianxi allies holding the Lordsport, the armies of half the republics come to fight at your side!”

The roar rose, shivering in the air.

“Rise,” Ai shouted. “Rise and your children will be born free. Rise and you will never have to be beaten and stolen by nobles again! Rise and you can have it all!”

And as the air shuddered with the shouts and stomping feet of near a hundred men, Tristan was left to stand there in horrified awe.

At this rate, even a half-empty city would run out of room to fit all these treasons in.