Pale Lights

Chapter 59

It was for the best.

By morning tomorrow Maryam would arrive at Black House, and with the signifier’s return the secret Song had kept would finally out. Evander Palliades would be told of the coup brewing beneath his feet and, inevitably, that Song had kept silent on the matter even when looking him in the eye. She was not sure what she expected from that yet, but a sense of betrayal on his part would not be unwarranted.

It would not be a clean break, but it would be a break – and that, as she kept thinking, was for the best.

She chewed on that thought even as the carriage shook beneath her, catching a loose stone. Evander himself seemed pensive this afternoon, something she had learned to recognize as him practicing a speech inside his mind. As well he should, for from what she had been told he would have to give no fewer than four speeches today.

Landing Day was a feast day particular to Asphodel, and far removed enough from the timing of traditional seasonal festivals that its root might well be genuine. The claim was that, on this day centuries ago, King Oduromai first made shore on the isle. While for most the people of Asphodel the sole celebration was that the temples of Oduromai gifted meals of wine and meat to all who attended the feasts thrown by the priesthood, the nobles had their own custom.

In Tratheke that custom was for a mighty feast to be thrown by the Lord Rector for all the descendants of King Oduromai and his officers in the same district where the great temple of the deity sat, the Collegium. As all the ruling dynasties of Asphodel had claimed descent from King Oduromai in the flesh as means of legitimacy, they took the king’s seat in such celebrations and were expected to foot the bill for such celebrations.

Which were not inexpensive, as centuries of royal houses needing to awe their nobles into submission had made the affair increasingly elaborate and extravagant.

There was a knock on the side of the carriage, the lictor besides the driver leaning close to the window to address them.

“We will be arriving momentarily, Your Excellency.”

“Thank you, lieutenant,” he replied. “As you will.”

He was sharply dressed today, Song thought not for the first time. A high-collared gray doublet in brocade with elaborate golden scrollwork was paired with an equally high-collared brown overcoat whose scrollwork perfectly matched. Hose and netherstock in gray flattered his claves, ending in slender calfskin shoes, and he wore no jewelry save for the heavy gold chain hanging on his neck. Freshly shaved and his glasses polished, he cut a fine figure whose clothing somewhat evoked a sea captain’s stylings.

His feathered bicorn certainly was not being born to protect from any rain.

Song tugged at her collar, for she was not dressed poorly today either. Though her formal clothing should have sufficed, Evander had insisted on providing clothes as a gesture of appreciating for Song attending the Landing Day festivities as his escort. She would have declined, if not for the tempting promise that the provided clothes would have provisions made to hide weapons. Surely that made the gift equipment, she told herself. Said equipment happened to have the shape of a splendid white, black and golden gown tailored to her, coincidentally. Still, it lived up to the promises: neither of the gown’s two layers impeded her movement, the skirts were slender and made with running in mind.

The waistline around the hip was ridged to give the illusion of a belt, but also so that she could keep a knife hidden in a fold of the cloth as well as three powder charges and shots. On the side of her skirts, hidden by braided golden rope, was an opening through which she could draw the pistol holstered at her hip. There had, unfortunately, been no way for her to carry her jian. She’d asked Angharad’s help to put her hair up in a high bun kept in place by a small golden cloth but also golden needle with a butterfly-shaped head. A gift from Mother, who had told her it was only a gold coating over steel but no lesser for it.

The change in hairstyle kept drawing Evander’s eyes to the bare nape of her neck, which she chose not to notice.

“It suits you,” the problem in question quietly said.

“It would have been an egregious waste of coin if it did not,” Song told him.

His lips twitched.

“I must wonder at how little you must be complimented, for you to be so terrible at taking compliments,” Evander said, tone teasing.

“Was that a compliment?” she drily replied. “I could not tell.”

His eyes caught hers through the spectacles.

“You look stunning,” he said. “It is an effort not to stare.”

Ugh. Did he have to be so genuine about it? Song looked away, pleased that the cosmetics hiding the last of her black eye should be hiding the heat on her cheeks.

“Thank you,” she forced out, then turned to cock an eyebrow at him.

See, she silently said. I have no trouble taking compliments, Palliades.

“Masterfully done,” Evander replied, not batting an eye.

He was clearly making sport of her, his face much too serious. This island’s veritable epidemic of planned regicide was, Song Ren mused, perhaps not entirely unwarranted. Before she could decide on a way to put him in his place that did not sound like it had been dreamed up by a drunken Pingyang Zong, the carriage began to slow. The Lord Rector was out first, and offered her his hand in stepping down on the pavement. Song accepted, purely to avoid the risk of her hidden knife making noise.

As he withdrew the warm touch, she looked up at the den of debauchery where the Landing Day feast was to take place this evening. No edifice in the Collegium was left empty, considering the absurd worth of even a speck of room in that part of the capital, but this one came closer to most: the four-story building, an elongated oval of brass, was almost entirely a water reservoir. Antediluvian machinery inside pumped and sucked out water that, beneath the streets, helped the canals of Tratheke flush and flow. It was on the roof of that edifice the feast would take place, a place that was normally inaccessible and for which a temporary lift had been built on the side wall.

Song did not walk in with the Lord Rector of Asphodel, merely as one of his party. The lift, an intricate mass of pulleys and metal, was of clear Tianxi make and operated by some of Song’s countrymen – not a ringing endorsement of Asphodelian engineering, but perhaps less likely to get someone killed. Being of the Lord Rector’s party meant that unlike other guests they were not politely frisked by the lictors to ensure they bore no weapons.

Nobles would and no doubt would complain, but less so when told that the precaution and the inaccessible nature of the roof meant that the feast would not be swarming with lictors – merely a dozen on the roof, spread around.

Emerging upstairs with Evander, a pair of lictors and a happily humming Perfect Nestor gave her a glimpse of why the location had been chosen – though not before she noted with approval that, as at the bottom of the lift, a pair of lictors checked the guests for weapons. The Landing Feast was an inevitable pit of nautically inspired décor, she’d been told, but this year was almost impressive: with a bit of clever piping the water from the reservoirs below had been brought to the roof so that it could be turned into a makeshift island chain.

Platforms of varying sizes – most only six feet by six, others large enough to serve as a feats tables or a dance floor – had been decorated with shapes in silk, evoking not only trees and mountains but many of the cities mentioned in the Oduromeia. Brass passages connected everything, and the water was not as deep as it looked: Song’s eyes could see through the trick employed, which was painting the roof blue to give the illusion of depth.

Knee length at the deepest, she figured, which was still impressive for a roof that had been a smooth surface of brass two months ago.

Taking in the furnishings had her eyes off Evander for a moment, long enough that when she returned the man who’d been smiling in the carriage was gone and Lord Rector Palliades stood in his place. An easy smile and cold eyes, smooth manners paired with knowing just a little too much – she’d seen him like that before, after the play when he mingled, but never before had the difference seemed quite so stark. Not my trouble, Song reminded herself.

He got to work and Song followed in his shadow with the pair of lictors who’d come up with her. Much of the Tratheke Valley nobility was here, but there were also some who claimed descent from King Oduromai and his crew from further out. Lord Cordyles and Lord Arkol, Angharad’s frequent companions, as well as the inevitable Minister Apollonia Floros. The stern, unsmiling older woman had arguably a better claim to royal blood than Evander.

That might just get her killed before the years was out. A failed coup always saw the traitors turn on each other like jackals.

There were maybe sixty nobles on the roof, a dozen lictors and at least as many servants handling drinks and food. Prefect Nestor discreetly pointed her to a structure on the opposite side of the roof, a bronze house that was meant to represent Asphodel – and could, she was informed, serve as a safe place to stash the Lord Rector if an attempt was made on his life. She resisted the urge to reminder the old man that she was not contracted to safeguard Evander Palliades, only use her contract on his behalf. He’d forget in a moment anyhow, best to let him nod along.

Her eyes did linger on the servants, while Lord Rector Palliades rose on a dais and made his first speech of the night. None had contracts, and neither did any of the lictors. Among the nobles, only contracts she had already seen – there were few new guests, and none with either boon or contract. That bled some tension out of her and she let her gaze wander.

The guests had been herded at the feet of the dais, a crowd of nobles in rich dress and varying degrees of nautical accuracy. Song wondered if the captain Lady Doukas alleged descent from would have been amused at the row of egg-sized gold anchors she wore as a necklace making press up a very generous necklace. Perhaps they would have been proud, that their descendants could indulge in such pointless pageantry and not become impoverished for it.

Either way, there was only so long she could look at peacocks without tiring of it. Her attention wandered, then she stilled. Across the street, on a roofless tower adorned by half a dozen ships’ figureheads, a figure sat and watched them. A man with black hair ruffled by the wind, crowned in flowery gold and purple. His eyes were a burning blue, an oil fire in azure, and on his lap lay a jagged sword of bronze. His clothes were… a sailor’s leathers, one moment, then the purple robes of some ancient king.

He pointed a finger upwards, silent.

Song swallowed and respectfully bowed her head to the god Oduromai. By the time she raised her head he was gone.

“Asphodelians claim it brings good luck when he shows himself.”

Song recognized the voice, and it almost had her reaching for her knife as she turned. Lord Locke and Lady Keys looked the same as when she had first met them in the palace: a tall, thin woman with austere features under spectacles and a portly man with a mustache beneath which twitched a jolly smile. The clothes had changed – they were in matching red and white tonight – but neither the smiles nor the lurking, almost nonchalant sense of malice around them had dimmed.

Song was on the side of the dais, close to a lictor but not so close she would be overheard. It was still highly unsettling she had not caught either of them leaving the crowd to join her. That they did not care they might risk offending the Lord Rector by chatting during his speech, however, she was less surprised.

“Come now, dear,” Lady Keys chuckled. “Our good friend Captain Ren knows better than to put stock into such superstitions.”

“It is no superstition to be wary of the powers behind the curtains,” Song cautiously replied.

She had never introduced herself to them as a member of the Watch or a brigade’s captain. Hage’s stern warning to keep the pair smiling and avoid meddling in their business was kept close in her thoughts.

“They can never resist taking a peek past the cloth,” Lord Keys told her, balancing what had to be entire serving place of crab legs on one hand.

He was freely helping himself too it, too. The plump man took a bite, letting out a little moan of pleasure.

“Amada you must try the crab. It is almostas delectable as you.”

“You know I dislike eating any creature with a shell, dear,” the tall woman said, winking at Song as she said it. “I’ve always held great sympathy with their kind.”

The Tianxi swallowed. The Thirteenth had been suspecting her of being a devil for some time. Confirmation or some kind of game being played?

“Manifold apologies, darling, I’d forgot,” Lord Locke mused, taking another bite and barley chewing before it disappeared down his gullet. “Asphodelian cuisine does have its limits, I am sad to admit. It might be for the best we will be departing soon.”

“Will you? I am sad to hear that,” Song lied.

“Oh, our little adventure in these parts will soon come to… a natural end,” Lady Keys idly replied.

The following chuckle was all too sinister.

“We still need to pick up a souvenir,” Lord Locke enthusiastically said, “but we have seen most of the sights on the isle.”

Song’s eyes narrowed. Were they hinting at the infernal forge? Was that why the devil and her helper had come to these shores?

“Did anything catch your eye?” she risked.

“I’d pocket an entire principality if I could,” the jolly man mused, thumbing his mustache. “But I expect I will have to settle for something regional.”

“One can never go wrong with the nautical,” Lady Keys opined. “But I must say, Lady Song, that I am surprised.”

She tensed.

“Why is that?”

“Is the Lord Rector not your escort?”

“He is,” Song warily said.

“Ah,” Lord Locke said, flicking a glance into the crowd to her right. “In that case, I must agree with my dearest – it does seem a mite ungrateful on your part to then allow his brutal murder.”

Song turned to follow his look, and found among the crowd a man in servant’s livery who was removing a pistol from under his serving platter – some short, stubby thing. He raise his hand to aim it at Evander, the lady behind him noticing and gasping, but Song was quicker. Her own pistol was in hand, aimed, and she fired first.

The body dropped. The crowd screamed.

Fear and surprise washed over Song like a tide: in and through, receding back into itself. Hand on the chisel. Her hands moved, calm and sure, reloading the pistol without need for thought. Evander leapt down from the dais, taking cover down in the water behind it. Lictors were drawing weapons. There would be more than one, of that she was sure.

How many?

Shouts behind, hoarse. Lictors dying and her gaze strayed long enough to see the billowing explosion – flesh and wood strewn, a mass of smoke. They had blown the lift and now the nobles were turning into beasts, screaming and tripping over themselves as they scattered like a flock of birds. She found Prefect Nestor, caught his eye.

“Get him out,” she shouted, gesturing at the brass house.

The old man looked startled, as if he could not understand what was happening, but what he saw on her face steadied him. The iron went back into his spine and he leapt down the dais, onto the water behind, where Evander had taken cover. They would make a run for it, Song thought, and soon.

She moved past the standing Locke and Key, yet grinning devils’ grins and eating crab. Through the nobles that were shouting and elbowing each other, stepping on the backs of the fallen in their haste to get away from the danger to – nowhere. The enemy was here, and as Song leapt up onto the dais she found them.

Song blinked, saw it all as she sucked in a breath.

Flicker. A man, dark-haired in servant’s livery. A short and stubby pistol, cobbled together. Aimed at the edge of the dais, from where Evander and the lictors would run out. Her hand moved without thought, arm steady and the trigger clicked. Snap, smoke, the man’s face a red ruin and he spun and fell. Fresh screams, but she was not listening.

The dead man’s face crumbled beyond the killing wound, falling apart in flakes. Some kind of ash? It was an Izcalli beneath, with a swath teeth filed to a point.

Click, snap: Song threw herself down, the bullet whizzed past her – tore a hole in her skirts. She hit the wooden dais hard, chin bouncing off, but grit her teeth and snatched out her knife. Boots on wood, another servant climbing up with a knife in hand but Song was already moving. She shouted, slamming into the assassin just as she reached the apex of the climb, and they tumbled down onto brass.

The killer tried to plunged the dagger into her back but she rammed the point of her elbow in the creased of her opponent’s. A swallowed moan of pain and Song slammed her forehead into the nose, feeling it break. Her skin came off wet with blood and sticking, too-warm flakes. The woman was dazed, and that was enough. She rammed her knife her throat, gored her messily, and rose while ripping it out.

That made three. How many more? There were dead lictors by the lift, but others had muskets and there were only so many assassins. Two more dead on the ground, one fighting, and –

HUI YU, the golden letters spelled out above the woman’s head.

The contractor pulled the trigger on her musket, but she missed. The shot only skimmed past Evander’s shoulder, though it burst through Prefect Nestor’s chest and he dropped. The two remaining lictors put themselves between him and the killer, dragging him along, but the contractor was reloading.

Song moved. Through the scrabbling, squalid crowd drowning in the weight of the rich clothes and jewels, through water touched with swirls like red ink, past a fallen lictor whose throat was cut – she dipped low, awkwardly dragging the dead man’s sword out of his sheath. Heavier than she was used to, shorter. Yet the weight of steel in her hand was like the weight of certainty.

She caught a reflection of herself in the water, a heartbeat before her foot broke that reddening mirror. So did the killer, and she pivoted with her musket held high. Reloaded, finger on the trigger. And for a moment Song, skirts heavy around her feet as she held a dead man’s sword, looked death in the eye.

Death blinked first.

She saw it come down through the arm, the twitch before the trigger pull. She moved low, right and heat licked at her face and she was half deaf but then she was in. She slashed, quick and brutal to the neck, but the contractor caught her wrist. Song rammed a knife in her side but caught mostly cloth, for she’d been kicked in the belly. She tumbled backward long enough for the assassin to pull out a long knife.

“You again,” the stranger snarled.

“We will not,” Song replied, “meet thrice.”

A flash of hate led the steel and Song parried – too slow, from this misbegotten sword, but the weight and thickness had the knife slapped back further. In the water, with skirts, Song had all the elegance of a drunk but the killer moved as quicksilver. A feint had her parrying air and then the assassin’s blade was slicing at her shoulder, caught in the padding.

Hand on the- Song snarled, leaping at the assassin. She was not in the business of elegant deaths. Sword and knife dropped in the water, Song slamming the killer’s head against the border of a brass island as her throat was squeezed until she felt it would snap. She bit the killer’s wrist until she tasted red and was slammed in the water for it.

Under the tide, not even silver eyes saw clear.

She fought against the killer’s grasp keeping her down, kicking and screaming, but the other woman was strong. Song felt her hair come loose, her fine gown turn into a coffin and – and she reached back, groping blindly, until she found her mother’s gift. Her fingers closed around it as Hui Yui pressed her against the bottom, the assassin’s reflection-distorted face just above the water line.

Under gold there was steel, and the steel pin was what killed the assassin when Song rammed it in her neck.

She ripped free of the twitching grip, kicking the gurgling assassin down, and gasped free air. Her knife was by the edge of island, glittering in the Asphodelian light, and she made sure she would not prove a liar: it went into the contractor’s heart, and she twisted it to make sure. Gasping, exhausted, Song dragged herself onto solid ground as plumes of red spread in the water. A hand came for her and she almost stabbed it, but the lictor stepped back warily.

“Your pistol, ma’am,” he said, presenting her with it.

She took it, and reached in her dress to find her last powder charge was dry. The leather it was in had not let the water through. Relieved, she reloaded even as the lictor cleared his throat.

“The Lord Rector is safe and the assassins are dead, ma’am,” he told her. “You got the last of them.”

Song wearily got up. The words brought no relief, for she could not help as if something was missing. Like she had forgotten something. Dead bodies, nobles not yet sure whether to be relieved. Only a handful of lictors left. Song slid the bullet into the barrel of her gun.

“How were they going to live?” she murmured.

“Ma’am?” the lictor asked.

They’d blown the lift at the start to keep reinforcement from coming up and Evander from going down. But how were they going to leave, afterwards? Were they even intending do? She began to walk towards the brass house without quite knowing why. The lictor followed, mercifully silent. The Obsidian Order were assassins, but they were also cultists. Had they been intending to sacrifice themselves for the kill the entire time?

If they had, then their plan had been too weak. The moment Evander got to safety and barricaded himself they were finished, for eventually enough of the crowd would slip loose the shackles of fear and realize the killers did not even number ten. She was mere feet away from the door of the house now, and doubt was like an itch. Why had they not prepared for the possibility that…

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“Oh,” Song breathed out.

They had.

And Oduromai, god of sailors and heroes but most of all patron of Asphodel, had even told her where to look. She looked above the house, where the god had pointed. Where a man in servant’s livery was finishing his work: positioning a barrel of powder on the roof, a small lamp already in hand. Song met those eyes and was flashed a grin of partially filed teeth.

“Too late,” the assassin said, and lit the wick.

Breathe in, breathe out. Steady.

Song raised her pistol and pulled the trigger.

“You missed, Tianxi,” the man laughed. “Bless be She, and carry me on her wings to the deathless lands.”

“I don’t miss,” Song Ren said.

And he realized it when he looked down: that she had not been aiming for the him or the lamp but the wick. Snarling he reached for the lamp, trying to set the barrel directly aflame, but she’d bought the lictor long enough. They were well-drilled soldiers, skilled at arm. The musket shot took the assassin in the chest, and he tumbled past the edge of the house. And the edge of this entire edifice, screaming as he fell.

Song panted, letting her pistol face the floor at last.

“There,” she said. “That was the last of them.”

--

The inside of the brass house was sparse. A table, a pair of seats and stretcher.

Song had been allowed in only after the lictors swept roof one more time and dropped the powder barrel in water. Now the scared and bloodied nobles were being brought down from here with ropes and ladders while a sea of lictors flooded the roof. In here, however, she was alone save for a lamp and Evander Palliades. His soldiers had flatly refused to let him leave the house, afraid there might be another ambush waiting for him in the street.

“It did cut skin a little,” Evander told her, picking at her shoulder with a wet cloth.

Song swallowed a hiss of pain, sitting on the table. She’d not felt it with the fight in her, or even after, but the cut being dabbed at was quite unpleasant.

“I’ve had worse,” she said. “Leave it alone, would you?”

He humphed at her.

“Even small wounds can take badly,” he said.

Still, he did as she’d asked. Outside the walls, she thought, were most likely the cooling corpses of an entire cell of the Obsidian Order. There had been ten of them in whole, that were caught at least. As she watched Evander brush back his hair, folding the cloth before placing it back in the medicine kit, it occurred to her she would not escort him again.

Tristan had reported finding a contract with the Order, and those assassins were dead. In particular the contractor who could fool eyes, who was the reason Song had been requested as an escort in the first place. It meant, she thought, that tonight might well be the last time she saw Evander Palliades before leaving Asphodel. At most once more, when the contract was fulfilled.

Which meant she could give the Yellow Earth what little outdated information she had and then, truthfully, tell them she would no longer have access to the palace. She could be free of them as well, in the process. It was soon done, she realized. She would soon be gone from this isle, and the feeling was so liberating she felt like a giddy child.

“Song?”

She met his gaze and swallowed, then pushed off the table. He rose to his feet as well.

“I suppose you should report to Black House,” Evander acknowledged.

And she did go to the door. To lock it. She turned to find his eyes gone wide. She was too tired still to be smooth or seductive, so instead she crossed the distance between them – he stepped back, until he was pressed against the wall and their noses were almost touching. She had solved it all without anyone bleeding, Song thought. She was allowed to take some pleasure from the world.

He was the one to kiss her, glasses knocking against her nose as he threaded a hand through her loose hair and she moaned against warm, soft lips. He had such slender and artful fingers, it stoked embers in her belly. They parted ways only when they were out of breath.

“I,” he swallowed. “Are you sure?”

She drew back, and almost laughed at the disappointment on his face. After all she had only done it to turn around.

“You’ll have to help me take the gown off,” she said, looking over her shoulder.

The look that put in his eyes had her belly clenching, and a heartbeat later his mouth was on her neck as he pulled her against him.

It took them forever to get the dress off, but at no point did she complain.

--

It’d take days before the last of the drugs left her, but finally Maryam back in the capital.

To her surprise, even as the Watch carriages rolled into the courtyard of Black House a glance through the shutters – mercifully open, after all that time in a box – revealed the delegation were not the only ones returning that morning. There was already a carriage in there, four servants in Watch livery wrestling with the giant serpentine head strapped to its back.

The dangling twin retractable crests going up its nose told her she was most likely looking at the head of a Ladonite dragon, who pressed out those crests when they blew fire. Something about the gases involved? Maryam’s interest in teratology did not run deep.

Confirming her guess was the man standing by the struggling servants, a long-haired Izcalli with perfectly partitioned hair and matching round earrings. Tupoc Xical was more interested in heckling them than helping, apparently, and he spared a look their way when the carriage doors open. His brow rose when he saw Maryam emerge, gaze sliding over the rest of the delegation.

“Khaimov,” he amiably called out. “You managed not to melt your brain in my absence, I see. Shame, it would have made for fine humor going forward.”

Captain Cervantes raised an eyebrow at his word, but someone who did not know either of them could take that for banter between comrades. Commander Osian Tredegar, though, knew better. The tall Pereduri swung his bag over his shoulder and, ignoring the majority of the vacant courtyard, walked up straight to Tupoc. In front of the Izcalli he paused, then let out a noise of impatience. Tupoc’s face went blank.

“Sir,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“Are you blind?” Osian Tredegar asked. “You are standing in my way to the door. Move aside, boy.”

The Izcalli’s gaze moved across the empty courtyard grounds, through the detour Commander Tredegar had taken so Tupoc would stand between him and the door. There was an unkind chortle from the Deuteronomicon tinker while Maryam simply folded her arms and enjoyed the play being put on for her. To Tupoc’s honor, though was a slight tightening around his eyes he managed to put on a smile.

“Of course,” he said, moving out of the superior officer’s way. “My apologies.”

“You should pay closer attention to your surroundings,” Osian Tredegar mildly said. “It will do wonders for your life expectancy.”

Attaining a level of pettiness that what Maryam could only yet aspire to, the commander still made sure to shoulder Tupoc on his way to the door. Tupoc could probably have ducked, she thought, but he must have decided that taking his lumps and let Angharad’s occasionally delightful uncle get his way. The rest of the delegation filed out of the courtyard after Commander Tredegar, Captain Cervantes pausing by Maryam to remind her that while she was not expected to report directly to Chilaca there wouldbe a general debrief tonight she was expected to attend.

“Don’t play around for too long,” she then added, glancing at Tupoc. “Your captain should have heard of your arrival by now.”

Maryam simply nodded, matching gazes with the Izcalli, and after the last of the delegation left she cocked an eyebrow at him.

“Xical,” she belatedly replied. “Alone, I see. Already got your cabal killed?”

“Only the one,” he shrugged. “Acceptable Losses lived up to her name.”

Maryam paused, startled into silence. And while there were condolences on the tip of her tongue, Tupoc had spoken of the death so casually she could not bring herself to speak them. One did not bare their neck to a leopard unless they wanted to get bitten.

“So does the Death Brigade,” she said instead. “Finally found something for the Fourth to be the best at, I see.”

The Izcalli turned pale eyes on her, face expressionless, and though he hardly moved she could almost taste the violence in the air. She itched to have a hatchet in hand, or at least a fourth ring, but going for either would have been showing weakness. Suddenly he grinned, and the suffocating tension was gone like morning mist.

“Cold,” he appreciatively said. “I’ll have to remember that one.”

Maryam only grunted.

“That is your Ladonite dragon, I take it?” she asked, gesturing at the head.

It must have not have been as heavy as it looked, given that four servants were capable of taking it down without anyone getting crushed. She’d confess to some curiosity about where they were going to stash that. Not the stables, surely? It would scare the horses. Then again this was a Watch estate, odds were it had been built with the notion of storing the corpses of giant lemures in mind.

It’d certainly explain why the front gates were so unnecessarily large,

“That it is,” Tupoc proudly said. “A devil to catch, it was. Traipsing through wheat fields out east for days, the local lord’s men shadowing every step and making enough of a racket for thrice their number.”

Maryam raised an eyebrow.

“You took reinforcements from the nobles?”

“Gods no,” Tupoc snorted. “The steward in charge feared we’d anger the beast without killing it, so he wanted soldiers out there to finish the job after…”

He traced a finger across his throat. The Izcalli clearly still smarted at the remembered inconvenience, but Maryam could understand how lords might be skeptical of a small cabal of Scholomance students proving capable of killing a Ladonite dragon. It was all too easy to imagine a wounded dragon going wild and setting wheat fields aflame in a rampage, miles of it burning.

“You got it done regardless, evidently,” Maryam shrugged.

Tupoc slyly smiled.

“We gave them the slip,” he said. “And even found a little something of interest out in the Nitari Heights.”

She cocked her head to the side.

“Did you now?”

The Izcalli wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.

“I heard the Thirteenth’s been up to some interesting things as well,” he said. “Go fetch someone with actual bargaining power and it might be I’ll trade tit for tat.”

Ah, he had been staying too pleasant for too long a stretch of time. Some piss on her boots was only to be expected.

“You, of course, being the tit,” she innocently smiled back.

She turned a clean pair of heels to the Izcalli before he could reply, satisfied with having seized the last word. Condolences would wait for someone who deserved them, like the rest of the Fourth.

--

Like everything else about Song Ren her kindness was methodical, so by the time Maryam got back to her room she found that a warm bath was already drawn for her and a meal of her Asphodelian favorites being prepared. Song spared her the need to report until she got out of the tub scrubbed clean and pleasantly warmed, and even then they made small talk over the meal instead of diving straight into it. Tristan’s absence was easy enough to explain, but she asked as to Angharad’s.

“She is out in the city,” Song explained. “Attending the dedication of an orphanage in the southeastern district at the invitation of Lord Menander.”

“So the man is still squeezing us for information,” Maryam mused. “Makes sense, he has to be worried that since the Watch went down to the shipyard we figured out he had a route there.”

Her captain seemed to take that as a sign that the conversation was shifting to the report, which was fair enough. As if to draw some invisible line Song rose to fetch the teapot waiting on Maryam’s dressed where the servants had left it, bringing it over with two cups before pouring in that measured Tianxi way.

“Tell me about the shipyard,” Song ordered after she finished, slipping back into her seat.

“It’s go going to be a mess,” Maryam told her. “That shipyard’s some kind of masterpiece, apparently: at the moment it could spit out a warship-grade aether engine every five months or so, but the Asphodelians are still repairing parts of the machinery.”

Her focus had waned during the afternoon part of the visit, due to a pounding migraine, but she’d still seen that though the inner ring of the shipyard was mostly up and running a lot of the outlying machinery was still inert or broken. No doubt because it would cost a veritable fortune to get it back in shape and the Lord Rector’s coffers were already mightily strained.

“How bad would it be?” Song asked.

“The Deuteronomicon tinker that had a look, he was of the opinion that it could be brought up to one every two months,” Maryam said. “Commander Tredegar argues three, because part of the reason the construction’s so quick is they use tomic alloys like they’re never going to run out.”

The silver-eyed woman drummed her fingers against the table.

“But they will, so they will have to water their wine even before the cache runs out,” she said. “Mix in lesser metals.”

“Tredegar is betting they’ll be grabbing that strange brass they’ve got everywhere in the capital, which has some useful properties, and his estimate for that is three months,” Maryam said. “And that’s after them setting up a foundry for it down there, which we think they might have just begun.”

Some of the buildings in the part of the cavern the Watch had been restricted from accessing had the right shape for it.

“Then it is a matter of months, years at most, before the shipyard can overturn the balance of the Trebian Sea,” Song murmured.

Maryam grunted in agreement. Four skimmers a year did not sound like much, until one considered that most great powers had fewer than fifty in their service – and not all of them war-fit. Oh, even the greatest skimmers out of Asphodels would be no match for the old monsters some kingdoms had lovingly preserved. The Imperial Someshwar was said to possess an ancient warship near the size of an island and Sacromonte’s infamous harpooners had killed even gods.

But those monstrous machines were rare, and given the impossibility of replacing them they were never risked without good reason. If it came to a war of attrition, a united Tianxia had the purse and sailors to last all its enemies out. As long as they held the shipyard, anyway. That was the rub.

“Brigadier Chilaca will, at the very least, force through restrictions on the sale of military-grade engines,” Song finally said. “That has the potential for ugliness if Tianxia contests the matter.”

“Force?” Maryam repeated, surprised. “I didn’t think the Watch had the pull for that right now.”

“Things have changed,” Song said. “With the Lord Rector’s help I solved the cypher on the correspondence of Hector Lissenos. Not only is it all but certain the Hated One is the entity in the prison layer you discovered, said prison is breached.”

That sounded like bad news, but hopefully the kind of bad news the Thirteenth would be able to dodge by getting off this treachery-ridden rock.

“And he’ll need the Watch to either seal that breach or kill what’s left inside,” Maryam said. “That is wind at Chilaca’s back for the next round of talks.”

“Look at you, gone all nautical,” Song teased.

Maryam rolled her eyes.

“Look at you, all loose-limbed and smiling,” she shot back. “Popped your cork with our friend Evander, have you?”

Song’s face was unreadable, which was all the answer she needed. The Tianxi would be sputtering up a storm right now if it weren’t true.

“Were you able to find out a possible means of entry for Lord Menander?” Song calmly asked.

“Transparent,” Maryam chided. “But I’ll spare you, so long as you let me in on a few details when we next sit over wine."

Song stared her down.

“This is still a report,” her captain chided back.

Maryam’s brow and she returned the stare undaunted. A moment passed.

“It had best be plum wine,” Song sighed.

“No promises,” Maryam cheerfully replied. “As for the Drakos business, there was an embarrassment of potential entrances once I figured out what to look for: the upper third of the cavern is full of cracks, crevices and passages that could go all the way up to Tratheke.”

“How high a drop?”

“Sixty, eighty feet,” she replied. “Not climbing height, it would need ropes.”

“Thus why the cache remained there to be found by the Lord Rector,” Song completed. “Thank you, Maryam. That answers another question.”

It did: Menander Drakos, while a greedy fuck, was no cultist. He had not been grabbing for the old Lissenos papers to find the trail of the Hated One the same way the Thirteenth had.

“All we need is Angharad finding out whether he has an infernal forge and we can cut him loose,” Maryam said. “We’re nearing the end of the road, Song.”

“More than you know,” Song replied. “Tristan sent some reports during your absence: we have a name to the assassin that first struck at the Lord Rector. There is a contract between a ‘H. A.’ and our old acquaintances the Obsidian Order.”

Maryam traced a finger against her palm, Gloam shimmering, and opened her stored memory of the initial suspect list the Lord Rector had given them.

“Lord Hector Anaidon?” she asked. “He had a boon fitting the Golden Ram, as you mentioned.”

“Our current lead suspect,” Song said. “Captain Wen refused me the right to arrest him based on mere initials, so we will look at… alternative ways of obtaining information.”

“You want to kidnap him,” Maryam amusedly said.

“Of course not,” Song blandly denied. “Kidnapping has the implication of asking for a ransom. We would be abducting him.”

The signifier grinned. Maybe Song should take kings for a ride more regularly, it did great things for her sense of humor.

“We should probably wait for Tristan to return,” Maryam noted. “Given how many abduction attempts he’s been involved in, he is our ranking expert.”

Song, perhaps afraid to face the reality that she was captaining a brigade that had such a thing as an abduction expert, cleared her throat and changed tack with aplomb.

“I personally killed the Obsidian Order contractor and several accomplices, so the immediate danger may have passed there,” Song said. “Now that I am no longer bound to escort the Lord Rector and we have our ciphers solved, all that remains is to wrap up our investigation.”

“You did what now?” Maryam flatly asked.

“It was but a small matter,” Song dismissed.

Maryam leaned forward, squinting.

“How public was that?” she asked.

“Public enough that I am now believed to be secret bodyguard instead of a mistress,” Song said. “That repute has made my presence in the palace much too noticeable, which is what forced Brigadier Chilaca to free me from escort obligations.”

Because if Song was watched it might lead the cult back to their brigade, so Chilaca forcing her to continue escort duties and risk that would be direct interference in the Thirteenth’s contract. Good, now their back was covered.

“Then we will be grabbing Hector Anaidon,” Maryam said.

“As soon as our last loose ends are wrapped up,” Song agreed. “Tristan was to attend a meeting of the conspiracy three days ago, but has not reported since and should currently be faking his deaths. Once he is back and Angharad has finished with Lord Menander, we are free to proceed. Unless you’ve obligations of your own?”

“I need to head back to the palace to report to the Lord Rector about the aether in the shipyard,” Maryam said. “And while I’m up there I want to establish where the prison layer’s entrance is.”

“You think that knowledge could be of import?” Song asked.

She sounded somewhat skeptical. I think that knowledge will put me in a room where I can finish devouring the shade, Maryam thought.

“I developed a theory about the nature of the layer while I was down there,” she said instead. “How it was built, and how the cult might be using it to move around.”

She laid out the clues she had but together with the shade’s help. How the prison layer containing the Hated One was as a flask with a bottom, the brackstone shrines, but that it must also have a cork – some mystery location up in the rector’s palace. And thus the most important detail.

“Whatever they used to first breach that layer, it lets them enter it wherever the material thins,” Maryam acknowledged. “There’s no controlling that. But where they exit? It’s not a coincidence the assassin emerged next to a brackstone shrine. The only exits are the shrines and the ‘cork’.”

“Meaning that anyone infiltrating the palace will have to pass through there,” Song slowly said. “To hold that room would prevent a surprise attack by the cult.”

“That’s the theory,” Maryam said. “Either way, having a closer look should let me confirm or disprove my theory.”

“Potentially very valuable information,” Song said. “We are in agreement there – it is as good a use of your time as any until Angharad and Tristan’s matters are settled.”

She nodded.

“Shame we won’t be the first to finish our test,” Maryam said, “but so far it hasn’t cost us a corpse and I think we have a good chance at being the second.”

“A very good chance,” the silver-eyed woman said. “The Eleventh Brigade came back last night. Whatever it is they found out in the hills, it had them ransack the Black House library.”

“For what?” Maryam frowned.

“Books about the gods of Asphodel,” Song said. “Inauspicious, considering they first set out for a seemingly simple exorcism contract.”

“And the Nineteenth is still chasing their assassin.”

“So we believe,” she said. “They have not returned here in six days, though at least on the first we know from Tristan that they were chasing a lead in the Kassa workshop.”

That had Maryam asking why the Nineteenth would be curious about the workshop, which had Song laying out what Tristan had been up to. The Mask runarounds were only to be expected, but his running into some sort of bound god assassin was not. Hopefully at least some of the Nineteenth would get killed chasing forces beyond their understanding and the rest could be rustled up for the noose. Song did offer one note of dissent there, however.

“So Izel Coyac got cold feet,” Maryam shrugged. “Until he turns on the rest of the traitors, I see no reason for him to have a different fate.”

“If we is willing to testify, it would make rooting out the Ivory Library much easier,” Song said.

“Then let him,” Maryam said. “So long as he hangs afterwards.”

The Tianxi sighed.

“We can set that aside for now,” she said. “Tristan will no doubt have his own opinions on the matter.”

Murderous opinions, presumably. As it should be. And considering watchmen who ought to be sent to the gallows brought an earlier encounter to mind.

“I ran into Tupoc on the way in,” she said. “He offered to trade information, hinted he ran into something interesting out in Nitari Heights.”

“We do have interesting bits to trade,” Song noted, drumming her fingers at the table.

“He’s a prick but he doesn’t offer wares he does not have,” Maryam said. “It could be worth the price.”

“I don’t disagree,” Song said. “In fact, I believe we might need to broaden the matter.”

“Make a meal out of it?” Maryam drily asked. “We thank you for your sacrifice.”

“Bring the Eleventh into this,” Song replied. “I want to know what has them so spooked – and if there’s any chance of it coming back to haunt us.”

Maryam almost wished her good luck, but then she thought again. Tristan was in the wind and Angharad presumably busy telling the local orphans how the orphans back home had it much better due to the inherent superiority of Malani ways.

Which meant she would be stuck playing second for Song at that meeting.

“Balls,” she complained.

Somehow Song failed to be moved by the eloquence of her argument.

--

After the debacle that had been the last evening with the Asphodel brigades in the same hall, precautions were taken: only two from each brigade, no food and no liquor.

Captain Imani of the Eleventh Brigade showed up with her designated second, Thando Fenya, and both the dark-skinned highborn had rings around their eyes. Long nights and little sleep, something Maryam was more than passingly familiar with. She’d had the strangling nightmare every night since the shipyard. For the Fourth it was Tupoc and Alejandra Torrero, who unlike her captain seemed to be taking Acceptable Losses’ death hard. She looked just as exhausted at the pair of the Eleventh, enough her usual scowl was lackluster.

They used one of Black House’s private parlors for the talk, and though there was hardly any small talk before the servants brought jugs of water and two tea pots the tendency was towards friendliness. The Nineteenth’s absence kept things civil, something that Maryam almost could not believe she was thinking when one of the ingredients in the brew was Tupoc Xical.

“Someone will have to go first,” said bastard mused, sipping at his goblet. “Perhaps a little wager to-”

“I will pay upfront,” Song flatly interrupted.

Tupoc shot her an irritated look at having cut the grass beneath his feet, but that faded when Song began dangling choice morsels in front of the others. She revealed the existence of a brewing coup – though she named no names – and that the cult of the Golden Ram was heavily involved in it. She even revealed that the contracted assassin who made the first attempt on the Lord Rector had been Obsidian Order and that she had personally killed her.

“And your Mask?” Imani asked.

“Tracking down the cultists,” Song replied without batting an eye.

Alejandra Torrero instead turned to Maryam, catching her gaze.

“I hear you were in the shipyard,” she said.

Maryam nodded in acknowledgement.

“Assessing the aether down there,” she said. “I believe I have some understanding of the layer we earlier encountered and its purpose.”

“Which would be?” Tupoc frowned.

Song raised her hand to silence Maryam.

“My throat is parched,” she said, pointedly sipping at her tea.

Captain Imani snorted, Thando laughed and Tupoc rolled his eyes.

“Fine, fine,” he said. “Our hunt began badly. The dragon was digesting an orchard when we first approached Nitari Heights, so we had to guess where it had retreated to – and the local troops kept making a racket as they shadowed us. Thankfully, we read up on the breed before setting out.”

“Ladonite dragons are very territorial,” Alejandra said. “So we had Acceptable Losses rig up explosives that would make a sound similar to an adult male’s roar and set them off near the heights, where it would echo."

"It worked too well,” Tupoc said. “That same night, just after dark fell, it swept through the mountainside and lit up half the camp of our local friends in the first pass. It did not linger enough for us to get a shot at it, but Alejandra was able to tag it with a Sign.”

“Lieutenant Mitra helped,” she said. “Regardless, we slipped away and tracked it down to the cliffside cavern where it dwelled. It had not noticed us, so we decided to strike a decisive first blow.”

“We climbed up half a hundred feet and rigged the cavern to blow while it slept,” Tupoc happily said. “Which worked, at the low price of a massive landslide.”

Maryam breathed in.

“Is that how…” she trailed off.

“No, though Expendable twisted his ankle,” Alejandra said. “We were waiting for the last stones to settle when we found out there was a second mouth to that cave, hidden even higher up.”

“It hit us out in the open,” Tupoc calmly said. “If the cave collapse had not mangled a wing, we would all be dead. Acceptable Losses had grenades and powders in her haversack, and when she was clipped by flame…”

He popped his hands open, making a fwoosh sound that had most everyone wincing.

“Bait blinded it with spare grenade, which had it crash,” Alejandra grimly said. “I kept its mouth shut so it could not breathe fire again while Expendable and Tupoc went in with spears.”

“I lost an eye – do tell Zenzele it was the same one, Song, I expect he will be jealous – but we got our spears deep in the throat where the gland that sprays the fluid is. It began choking on the liquid, which was distraction enough to pierce its first heart, but it panicked and fled.”

Tupoc shrugged.

“It was probably going to die, but we had to be sure so we pursued,” he said. “That took almost as long as finding the beast, but at some point the Sign ceased moving so we knew it’d likely died to the wounds.”

“It hid the better part of a hundred feet up the cliffside of the Nitari Heights,” Alejandra Terrero said. “In a hidden temple we believe was its original lair.”

“Long abandoned,” Tupoc said. “It was wrecked and filthy, generations of Ladonite dragons laired there. But we found out why this one went on a rampage in the first place: someone chased it out. There were signs of fighting inside, at least nine months old, and the dragon had broken scales and healed bullet wounds on the chest.”

“The temple itself was some sort of large grave,” Alejandra revealed, “but there was a shrine at the back and an altar that must have held some kind of sacred object. Missing and recently taken.”

“Graverobbers,” Tupoc sighed, sounding almost fond. “All this trouble because someone wanted to grab an old trinket and make a fortune pawning it.”

“That’s our part,” the scowling signifier added. “On you, Eleventh.”

Eyes moved to the Malani pair, who shared a look before Imani Langa spoke up.

“Our part is, I fear, significantly less exciting,” Captain Imani said. “We are not dealing with a forming god or a remnant, or even some lemure. We found two ritual sites, one having been freshly used.”

“Human sacrifice,” Thando said, tone turned detached. Methodical. “The victims were all at least sixteen, most of them Asphodelians with no seeming care to gender. Six died at each site, buried alive. They were awake during, as proved by attempts to claw themselves out.”

“It is a ceremony meant to carry prayer directly to the god,” Imani said. “One that works, by the way lemures have been fleeing the region – the lingering taint in the aether is what they are migrating to avoid.”

She paused.

“The trouble is that whatever cultists of the Old Night did this, they then erased most traces of the ritual beyond the sacrifice itself. We only know stone altars were used because the river they disposed of the second one in ran thick with rain and spit it back on the shore.”

“Before we learn what deity is being invoked, there is no point in chasing this cult through the hills,” Thando added. “If this is all being done to bargain for contracts, as we suspect, then we cannot afford to go in blind.”

“You’re right,” Tupoc said.

Several shot surprised looks his way, but Maryam and Song had known him since the Dominion. They knew better.

“It was boring compared to ours,” he added.

That rather set the tone for the free exchange of information coming to an end, at least the formal part. There was some chatting – Imani was somewhat blatantly hitting Song up for information and getting frustrated at the icy wall of Tianxi politeness facing her – and Alejandra took her aside.

“You got strong again,” the other signifier said.

Maryam shook her head.

“I have gained my strength back,” she corrected.

Alejandra looked her up and down, scowl tightening.

“In what we do, Khaimov, there is always a price,” she said. “Even the good. Especially the good.”

“And I have been paying mine for years,” Maryam coldly replied. “I’ll be sure to have every drop of my due.”

“On your head be it,” Alejandra grunted. “I’m not your mother.”

Neither am I, Maryam thought. But when I’m done, when I have every kernel it stole from me back?

Then she would at last be a worthy successor to Izolda Cernik.