Pale Lights - Book 1: Chapter 43

It was a tight squeeze, but Tristan limped out into the alley.

He was third out of the hole in the wall the mayor made trying to murder Tupoc – an admirable undertaking, regardless of one’s politics or stance on people-eating – and the two that had come out ahead were as much keeping an eye on each other as the empty alley they stood in. The first, Lord Zenzele Duma, was cut of typical Malani cloth: tall, dark eyes, wide nose. Yet his cheeks were gaunt from grief and his soft noble features were gainsaid by the recent flint to his stare.

He was unharmed save for a bit of soot on his clothes.

In contrast Tupoc Xical, though as eerily perfect as usual, had suffered from the fight. Ironically not from the devils, two of which he had slain with whoops of joy, but from the volley the cultists had unloaded blindly into the Last Rest: he’d been shot twice, one bullet in his right shoulder near the edge of his breastplate and the other in the opposite thigh. Either should have knocked the man out of the fight but Tristan could see that the shoulder shot, from which Tupoc had casually ripped out the bullet, already looked like it was mending.

Not as quickly as it allegedly had in other circumstances, though. Was it because he had two wounds this time? Can the contract only heal a limited quantity of flesh at a time? Either way, while the Izcalli was steady on his feet he had chewed up limbs and his spear needed two arms to use. No wonder he was keeping a careful eye on Zenzele.

Maryam was next out of the hole in the wall that Mayor Crespin had meant to be in Tupoc’s head – with such a keen eye for popular policies, it was no wonder the devil had been elected mayor – and she coughed from the smoke as he helped her into the street. She’d gotten a bad knock on the head when the devil was tossed into the firing line that Tristan had been a nominal participant in, but her eyes no longer seemed as dazed. She nodded her thanks.

“Your leg?” she rasped out.

“Good enough to walk,” Tristan said.

He’d got a bad roll of the dice when he pulled on his contract to force Cozme Aflor to get stuck on their side of the inferno: a chunk of collapsing ceiling had hit the man’s feet, which had flavored his backlash. The spray of wooden shards from a splintering board had hit mostly flesh, but he’d still had to tie cloth around his leg just above the knee to prevent his trousers being soaked in blood. They had not moved far from the hole in the wall, so when the last of them squeezed through he overheard the talk.

“My thanks for the help,” Cozme panted out, patting his clothes into order.

He he’d lost his musket during the chaos, by the looks of it.

“If you had not tugged me back, that chunk of ceiling would have caught my head.”

Tristan winced, which the older man took as sympathy, but was in truth over the prospect of how vicious his contract backlash would have been over that. The thief nodded back at Cozme, too on the edge to feign deeper companionship.

“We need to move,” Zenzele Duma cut in, voice tense. “I do not see Lady Angharad or the others, which means-”

“We make our own way out,” Tupoc cut in with a drawl. “Obviously.”

It seemed such a petty, pointless offence that Tristan was tempted to dismiss it as Tupoc being habitually unpleasant but the watchfulness of the Izcalli’s eyes revealed that to be a lie. A test, Tristan decided. He’s prodding Zenzele to see how close the man is to drawing on him. By how the Malani’s hand tightened around the grip of his sword, the answer was very close indeed.

“The postern gate is on the west side of town,” Tristan said. “The most direct route takes us through a street just short of the town square, however, so I would suggest cutting across town and circling around the north instead.”

“A longer trip will be more dangerous,” Cozme said.

There was crashing sound to their side as another chunk of ceiling collapsed inside the Last Rest, prompting a furious scream from the mayor and panicked shouting from the cultists still contesting the legitimacy of his election. Maryam cleared her throat.

“Let’s argue further away from that,” she croaked out, pointing at the mess.

Sound advice, which they all took. Heeding the thief’s suggestion of cutting east across town instead of keeping west, where the alleys often turned into dead ends meeting the palisade, the five of them fled. Tupoc took the lead, likely as much to keep his distance from the others as because he preferred the vanguard, and while Maryam kept Cozme distracted Tristan drifted towards the back.

Before he could so much as speak a word, Lord Zenzele Duma frowned down at him.

“You are a headache, did you know?” Zenzele said. “Half the people I speak to think you are a champion in the making, the other half that you are a feckless poison.”

Tristan cocked an eyebrow. Not even a poisoner – which admittedly he was – but poison outright. A bold claim.

“And you?” he asked.

“I am uncertain,” Zenzele grunted. “Which is disconcerting for more reasons than you know.”

Oh? That smelled of a contract, a morsel he might have liked to nibble at in other circumstances. Unfortunately, he must keep to greater concerns.

“I am a rat, that is all,” Tristan shrugged. “But, it seems to me, a rat who might share some interests with you.”

Bait had been set out but Zenzele Duma did not bite it. Instead the Malani noble kept silent, eyes flicking back and forth across thin air as if parsing out the invisible. An ill omen.

“What is it that makes you want to kill Cozme Aflor so very badly?” Zenzele suddenly asked.

Tristan stilled. He had been excruciatingly careful never to be outwardly hostile to the man. Even when he had spoken against Cozme during the discussion in the town square, it had been as part of several – and Yong’s broadsides at him afterwards should have distracted most from remembering it besides. Even now, approaching the Malani, he had not given a name. And Tupoc is the one who tried to get me killed for Jun’s death, so he should be the first guess.

This was the work of a pact, and the thought that one might allow Zenzele Duma to see through his every façade was… uncomfortable. Like learning your shirt had been split open at the back the whole time.

“Guesswork,” Tristan said, forcing his tone to be dismissive.

But he had hesitated for a second too long, he already knew, and Zenzele rolled his eyes.

“You want to use me,” the noble stated. “Send me after Tupoc while you go for him so he cannot intervene.”

That was an unpleasantly accurate read of his intentions.

Tristan swallowed, looking for anything at all on the man’s face he could use but finding no purchase. Zenzele Duma’s grief had been open, his hatreds were known and his recent friendships were obvious, yet the thief found through these nothing at all to move him. The thief looked away, deeply unsettled. Everything he had learned, been taught, told him that Zenzele Dum should be easy to leverage. Instead he was finding that the man’s forthrightness had whittled away every grip, leaving him too slippery to move.

“I owe him a debt,” Tristan reluctantly said. “The bloody kind.”

Zenzele considered that.

“As a servant of the Cerdan or on his own account?”

“Oh, very much his,” Tristan murmured.

Zenzele grunted.

“You do not strike me as man to whom hate comes easy,” the Malani said, rolling a shoulder. “I will presume it was earned.”

He spat to the side, into the mud of the street.

“I want Sarai’s help,” he said. “Wounded or not, he might well kill me otherwise.”

Practical of the man.

“She is no fighter even with Signs,” he warned. “But a distraction can be arranged.”

The noble looked like he wanted to push for more, but Tristan was only willing to promise so much and it must have shown on his face. There were other ways to line up his knife with Cozme Aflor’s back, this was simply the most expedient.

“Fine,” Zenzele said. “Signal me when the time comes.”

Tristan nodded back. However tense the conversation he found that in practice they had barely spent half a street quietly speaking. Tupoc had them turning a corner short two streets short of the piled lumber hiding the gaol, to head straight north as the thief had earlier suggested and no one cared to contest any longer. It was there they first ran into more than the distant sound of musket shots: a dozen slaves, bearing makeshift clubs and field tools, filled the street before them. They turned, faces alarmed, and before anyone could so much as raise a weapon Tupoc stepped forward. He lowered his spear, saying something in the same cant he had used earlier, and it gave the hollows pause.

Their leader, a grey-haired woman with broad shoulders, asked something harshly. Tupoc shrugged, replying, and there were a few more terse exchanges before the hollows began to make room for them to pass through the street.

“Tupoc?” the thief asked.

“I made it known we have fought devils as well,” the Izcalli said. “That earned us some goodwill.”

“They will let us cross?” Cozme asked.

“So they said,” Tupoc cheerfully said. “Though I would keep my weapons in hand, were I you.”

The hollows seemed as wary of them as the other way around, both sides eyeing each other until their group of five had passed the former slaves. The five of them hurried once they were clear, the hollows watching them go. Tupoc gestured for them to slow as soon as they had turned a corner.

“They also let us pass because they are heading for the battle,” the Izcalli said. “Their captain seems to believe that the Red Eye cult is winning.”

“Slaves and savages against a pack of devils?” Cozme skeptically said. “It will be a massacre even with the numbers on their side.”

“There are still sounds of fighting in the distance,” Maryam pointed out. “Something must be evening the scales for there to be no clear victor.”

“We saw the warband that is now attacking Cantica when we made our way here,” Tristan slowly said. “They had a priestess with them, a woman the other cultists seemed to fear.”

“Pacts with old gods are dangerous things,” Tupoc said, tone unusually serious. “That which has no restraint in price yields none in power.”

That last sentence had sounded oddly cadenced, likely a quote. They began moving north again, skirting the edge of town to get around the fighting in the middle, but soon ran into cultists against. One cultist, more specifically, marked with ritual scarification from head to toe and trying to harangue a group of cowering slaves hiding out in the garden behind a house into joining their way. He turned his anger and his spear their way, shouting in some cant, but whatever he might have been about to say was cut short.

Cozme shot him in the gut without missing a beat.

He blew the smoke off his pistol’s barrel as the slaves screamed in fear, some scattering while others flattened themselves behind rows of cabbage.

“That should have been bladework,” Tupoc tightly said. “Someone will have heard you.”

“There are shots all over town,” Cozme dismissed.

“But not from here,” Tristan said. “Let us pick up the pace before someone thinks to question that.”

He slid by Maryam as their strides quickened. She cocked an eyebrow his way and he wasted no time quietly filling her in on the bargain with Zenzele. She grimaced.

“I will not use a Sign on Tupoc,” she murmured. “It is too dangerous.”

He did not hide his surprise. She had not mentioned him to be dangerous in that regard before.

“That spear of his,” Maryam said, “I saw it go right through a devil’s carapace. I think the head is candlesteel.”

“I have never heard of it,” Tristan admitted.

“Izcalli will not reveal how they make it,” she said, “but supposedly it has something to do with their infamous candles. The material is death on aether – even the solid kind devils are made of – and it’s only marginally kinder to Gloam, so no Signs anywhere near him.”

Considering Leander Galatas had exploded his own arm when a Sign of his broke back on the Bluebell, that seemed wise.

“Any kind of distraction will do,” he whispered.

A moment of hesitation, then she nodded.

“I will not be sticking around,” Maryam informed him. “The moment they fight, I run.”

“I expected no less,” he said. “Besides-”

In the distance there was a burst of fire and light as a burning house collapsed, stopping them in their tracks as the brightness revealed a slice of nightmare near the town square. Screaming devils twined in red string were fighting against others of their kind while scarred cultists in a phalanx kept away more of the creatures from their wildly laughing priestess, whose hands seemed to direct the puppeteered devils. Steel and powder faced a tide of claws and ripped shells, more hollows with makeshift weapons streaming from all sides to throw themselves into the fight.

“You might have been right about taking the long away around,” Cozme conceded into the silence.

“Kind of you to say,” Tristan replied. “But let us-”

For the second time in less than a minute he was interrupted, again by the collapse of a house near the town square. Only that one had not been on fire a moment ago. With a faint whistling sound a second shell fell down, striking the melee at the heart of the town. The impact flattened a devil and turned three men to pulp.

Far to the north the night filled with light as the Watch’s cannons began raining down fire on Cantica.

Why would they, Tristan began to think, but before he finished the question he already had the answer. Maryam had told him that in Three Pines the Watch had some kind of Antediluvian wonder that could see things afar. Of course they had used it after the collapse of the mountain, and used it on Cantica in particular – it was where survivors would be heading. They must already know that the devils broke the terms and that the town was being conquered by the cult of the Red Maw.

The devils had been right, in a way: the Watch had written off the trial for this year. Only they’d been written off with it.

“We need to get out of this cursed town right now,” Cozme hissed.

“Everyone will be rushing to the postern gate now,” Tupoc calmly noted. “It is closest to the town square.”

Meaning going that way was certain death. And looming trouble for Angharad’s crew, if they used that side of the town to circle north towards the meeting point. Which he thought most likely, since the other group would be expecting them to leave through that same gate. That might well turn into a disaster, the thief thought, but it was not one he could do anything about.

“Straight to the front gate,” Tristan said.

The world went bright.

It was a heartbeat before Tristan realized he was on the ground, his ears ringing. The house ahead of him was a shattered, burning wreck and he threw up on the ground. He could barely focus his eyes as he crawled away, limbs trembling. Had he dropped something? His bag was still on his back, but… He saw silhouettes moving, someone helping him up. Maryam, he saw, looking worried.

“-r me?” she was asking. “Tristan?”

“Yeah,” he croaked. “That’s me.”

“You were lucky,” she said. “If that had hit ten feet to the right, you would be pulp.”

“Lucky,” he repeated, rasping out a laugh.

The others were… Tupoc was on his knees but pushing himself up. Cozme seemed fine, though he was looking strangely at Zenzele who… had his sword in hand as he moved behind the Izcalli.

“That,” Zenzele Duma coldly said, “will do.”

He rammed the blade into Tupoc’s back, but the pale-eyed man twisted at the last moment. It was a wound, not a kill, and with a laugh the Izcalli swatted Zenzele’s leg. They fell, wrestling. A curse, and Tristan watched with wide eyes as Cozme Aflor bolted. He cursed in turn, pushing himself off Maryam, and his eye caught a glint of light on metal. His pistol lay where he’d fallen, flames reflecting off it.

Yong’s pistol, the last piece of the bridge had had burned.

Cozme was getting away, every breath furthering the distance.

His stomach clenched. Tristan looked at Maryam, found those blue eyes on him, and swallowed.

“Go,” she said. “Finish it. I will collect if we live.”

He licked his lips.

“You know where I’ll be,” he said.

And off he ran after Cozme, snatching Zenzele’s abandoned lantern as he went.

—

He ran through the nightmare, pursuing an older one.

Smoke and fire and screams, Cozme Aflor’s silhouette just far enough ahead with every breath he suffered the fear of losing him. The man was heading straight for the front gate, in as clean a line as he could, but the thief knew it would not work. Both devils and cultists would be heading for the postern to the west, but once one side had the clear advantage of that skirmish the losing one would be headed to the other way out.

To Tristan’s surprise, it proved to be the devils that lost out.

Cozme hastily stopped and slid behind a couple of barrels come loose from a pile as a pair of devils still in their corpses came running out of a larger street, bickering in Antigua as they ran for the front gate. Tristan saw the grimace on the older man’s face even before he slid down by his side. Cozme stiffened, hand reaching for his blade, but Tristan lay a finger on his lips. The older man bit the inside of his cheek, remembering that evils had uncanny hearing, and conceded with a curt nod.

They waited until the devils were out of sight.

“Why did you follow me, rat?” Cozme bit out when he finally felt safe.

A shell hit a few blocks to the east, both of them flinching as a house shattered.

“You think I want to be in the middle of that brawl?” Tristan replied. “I want out of this town place, Aflor.”

“Find your own way,” Cozme grunted.

“My way was the front gate, same as you,” Tristan replied, sounding impatient. “Only it won’t work, will it? It’ll be full of devils with the same bloody idea.”

Another shell fell, further away. They still tensed at the sound. Tristan licked his lips, made himself look nervous.

“Look, I might know a place to hide out away from the bombardment,” he said. “Found it with Xical and Tredegar.”

The mustachioed man stared at him.

“The underground gaol,” he said. “The one where you found first found the slaves.”

Tristan nodded.

“It should be empty now,” he said. “The cultists would have hit it first, those prisoners were sure recruits.”

Cozme slowly nodded, face never wavering, and a heartbeat later Tristan had a knife at his throat. Gods, he’d not even seen the other man unsheathing it. Groggy as he was from the shell earlier, that was sloppy of him.

“Why?” Cozme asked suspiciously. “Why run after me to share this and not simply go yourself?”

Tristan bit his lip, made himself look aside. Look how embarrassed I am, he thought.

“Because I can’t defend the place,” he said, feigning bitterness. “If cultists go there, or a devil-”

“They will trounce you,” the older man finished, sounding thoughtful. “And the foreign girl’s near as useless, it’s true, so she was not worth bringing along.”

A shell hit something a few blocks over, screams sounding out. Cozme took away the knife.

“All right,” he said. “Lead me to the gaol, Tristan.”

—

The place stank of mud and filth, but that was only to be expected.

It was large enough that the two of them could have a few feet between them, and through the open hatch half-covered by wood they could see the bombardment still lighting up the night. Until the Watch was done hammering away at Cantica, it would have been madness to leave their hiding place. Maryam should be headed this way as well, soon enough, so Tristan must end it before then.

He did not want his friend in the middle of this.

The bare stone room they sat in was about ten feet long and teen feet wide, a rough square, and there was nothing inside save for the open door leading into the deeper gaol full of shit and straw. Tristan had Zenzele’s lantern at his side, almost entirely shuttered so it could not draw attention.

Cozme still had his sword and knife, but no longer his musket and his pistol had not been loaded since he’d killed a cultist with it. Tristan himself was down to his blackjack and knife. He did have needles in his bag, but a subtle blow with them would be nigh impossible in a place like this.

Cozme Aflor was a fit man with two inches on Tristan, and though in his fifties the soldier was a hardened killer grown long in the tooth doing the dirty work of House Cerdan: in a straight fight Tristan would lose, and what could there be but a straight fight in a room of bare stone?

Fortunately, Tristan still had the last of Abuela’s gift. Two vials: bearded cat extract and medical turpentine.

He palmed his vial of bearded cat extract and quietly uncorked it, dripping the liquid into the shuttered lantern. The entire dose went in there, enough to drive a dozen men mad for an hour, but it would barely be enough for what he needed. The dose he could deliver by a needle or a knife would be too slow to act, but Alvareno’s Dosages was full of interesting notes about the substances it recommended for a poison box.

Like, for example, that when left near a source of heat for the correct amount of time bearded cat tincture turned into a kind of volatile smoke very sensitive to temperature. Tristan discreetly got rid of the empty vial and waited for Cozme to be looking up through the hatch to take off his tricorn. The other hand he kept on the lever that moved the shutters.

“Cozme,” he whispered.

The moment his enemy turned, he pulled the lever. The shutters opened and with the difference in temperature – hot in, cold out – white smoke came billowing out furiously. Tristan covered his face with his tricorn, throwing himself back, but still felt smoke lick at his skin in the few heartbeats before it dispersed. His skin grew red and welted wherever it was touched, the sensation deeply unpleasant.

It was probably why Cozme Aflor was screaming, as it’d gone right into his eyes.

Most of the mind-altering properties were lost when the extract was made into smoke – it caused barely a tingling sensation, instead of hallucinations and violent bouts of emotion – but it did become significantly more acid. Tossing aside his hat, Tristan found Cozme clutching at his eyes and palmed his blackjack, coming closer to aim a blow.

The man moved, though, and what should have been a hard strike on the side of the head instead caught his shoulder. Cozme reacted swiftly, grabbing his wrist and yanking Tristan forward. Keeping silent save for grunt of efforts, the thief wrestled with the old killer. An elbow hit his chin and he hissed in pain, striking at the flesh under Cozme’s ribs in retaliation, but then the mustachioed man headbutted him.

Vision swimming, Tristan rolled away only to hear the sound of a knife leaving the sheath. He kept rolling, Cozme blindly stabbing at the ground where he had just been, and grit his teeth. He’d heard Cozme beat a god in a knife-fight, out in the maze. Even with the other man blind he doubted he would win.

“I knew there was something off about, you little shit,” Cozme snarled. “Who was it that hired you, the Ruesta?”

Tristan drew further back and held his breath, but he knew that would not last long. The older man’s eyes were closed and cringing, but he might still be able to see some and the pain would pass. His gaze swept the room, finding it bare save for one thing. Swallowing, he bet on a gamble: Tristan threw his blackjack against the wall to Cozme’s left, and while the man struck blindly there darted to right. Where he snatched up the lantern, swinging the mass of forged iron Cozme’s head even as the man turned back his way.

It caught him right in the cheekbone, crunching most satisfyingly as Cozme Aflor dropped to the ground.

Oil went spilling, aflame, but hit only stone. It would keep. Tristan dropped the lantern, just carefully enough it wouldn’t spill, and kicked the knife out of Cozme’s hand as the man lay moaning on the ground. He kicked the man in the stomach, making him curl, and took his sword out of the sheath before tossing into the other room.

In the distance, the fires of the blackcloak artillery burned.

Tristan went about it methodically. Boot coming down he broke the right knee, the older man screaming hoarsely. Then he broke the left arm, at the elbow. That should be enough to prevent Cozme overpowering him. Finally baring his own knife, he sat on the man’s chest and rested the blade against this throat.

“Fool,” Cozme croaked. “The bitch is dead, do you really think the Ruesta will still pay you?”

“I have no agreement with House Ruesta,” Tristan said. “Our business, Cozme Aflor, is much older than that.”

The man blinked, eyes red and tearing.

“Who are you?” Cozme rasped.

“My name,” he coldly said, “is Tristan Abrascal.”

It had been years, more than a decade, but still the old killer remembered. It barely took him a moment. Tristan might have cut him, if not for that.

“The violinist,” Cozme said. “Tomas Abrascal, gods. You’re the son.”

“I am the boy who was hiding under a table when you put a bullet in his father’s head,” Tristan told him. “He’d been so strange, those last few weeks. Mother kept crying and I worried, thought he might sick. So I followed him, thinking as children do that I would protect him.”

Cozme rasped out a laugh.

“Manes,” he said. “He was close to losing it, so we brought him in through the trap door. There weren’t any guards in that house – you saw that fucking slaughterhouse, didn’t you?”

If Tristan lived to be five hundred years, he would not forget what he had seen down there. Children in pieces, strapped to stables and hooked to copper wires. Barrels of limbs, pools of blood. Men with more parts sown on than not and that… thing held up in the air by golden chains so no part of it could touch the ground.

“I told them a second entrance was a terrible idea,” Cozme said, “but Ceferin insisted. We couldn’t keep bringing people in through the warehouse, people would ask questions.”

“Theogony,” Tristan said. “That’s what you four called it, when you had your little talk. What were you doing down there, Cozme? What was it all for?”

“I don’t know, kid,” Cozme tiredly said. “I just ran the guards, Ceret was the one with the grand plans. They put me in charge of finding Murk folk who already had contract, then Lord Lorent introduced them to the Almsgiver.”

Tristan stilled, for at long last he had the fifth name on his list. The name of the god that had its filthy hands all over this butchery, that had contracted with his father knowing it would kill him.

“The god that gave out the contracts, this Almsgiver,” he said. “Was it a Mane, Cozme?”

“I don’t know,” Cozme replied, too quickly.

“Tell me,” the thief hissed.

The older man laughed, only laughing harder when Tristan pressed his knife harshly against his throat.

“You’re going to kill me anyway, Abrascal,” Cozme said. “Your threats mean nothing.”

Tristan slashed through his eyes, the man screaming and struggling. Cozme was stronger, but blind and in pain. It was not a straight fight.

“Pain always means something, Cozme,” Tristan replied. “Tell me.”

“I don’t fucking know, kid,” the older man rasped. “I was just ran the guards.”

Whether that was true or not he could not tell, but he sensed he would get no more out of Cozme. A dead end, but he was not yet out of questions.

“You were there when they closed it down,” Tristan said. “Moved out. Where did they go, Cozme? Where are they butchering children now?”

“Somewhere out in the Trebian Sea,” Cozme laughed. “I never asked. Never cared. I’d paid my dues, I was on the rise.”

“Not for long,” Tristan thinly smiled.

Else he would not have been send to the Dominion of Lost Things, risking life and limb for favor.

“Never for long,” the man said. “That’s the way, isn’t it?”

The thief’s lips thinned.

“Do you even regret any of it?” he asked.

Cozme snorted.

“I lived like a lord for years,” he said. “Rich, respected. I might even have married into a good family, if I hadn’t got cocky at the end. Regrets, Abrascal?”

He was laughing.

“You think you’re the only one with mud on your shoes, rat? Regrets, gods.”

The blinded man offered a red, ruinous smile.

“The hungry bite,” Cozme Aflor rasped, “the beggared snatch, the cornered-”

Tristan twisted, cut his throat before he could finish the words. He watched the man gurgle, blood spill out, and said not a word as his father’s executioner died. Father, he had been half-mad at the end. One eye gone yellow, a leg growing warped. It had been a mercy in some way, what Cozme did, and for that Tristan did not make his death slow.

But he did not make it quick either.

And only when the gurgling ended, when Cozme went still and his began to stiffen, did he finally tear his eyes away.

“Three,” Tristan softly counted.

May his father be spun smiling by the Circle into his next life.

He sat by the corpse, silent, waiting for Maryam to join him – perhaps with Zenzele, if the man still lived. And when he closed his eyes, when he thought of the sound of that trigger being pulled and Father’s brains splattering the floor mere inches away from his little feet, of the way he had bit his lip until it bled so he’d not make a sound, the scales felt slightly closer to even.

“Laurent Cerdan,” he whispered into the dark. “Lauriana Ceret. Ceferin.”

All old names, worn from the speaking. And now there was one more to add.

“The Almsgiver,” he tried out.

It sounded, Tristan thought, like a promise.