Pale Lights - Book 2: Chapter 1

Tristan woke to the gentle rocking of the ship.

It was dark inside the cabin, his bedding pulled tight around his body in deference to the coolness of sea winds. The thief’s eyes stayed closed even as he pricked his ear, every groan of the old galleon keeping him on edge: it sounded like someone walking on an old floor. Though the Fair Vistas was large enough he had been given his own cabin and it had a lock on the door, Tristan had spent a great deal of his life picking locks.

They were not any real indication of safety.

Not that he had solid reason to fear for his, as an inducted watchman on a Watch ship headed for a Watch school. There was just something about the almost-silence and the dark of the cabin that… And that sound was not just creaking wood. Movement, Tristan thought as his eyes flew open and he threw himself out of the bed. A knife hit the headboard with a sharp thud, half an inch from his face, and as he threw his bedding at the attacker the thief reached for the knife under his pillow.

It wasn’t there. Shit. Tristan ripped out the knife in the headboard just in time to get kicked in the stomach. He staggered back, striking blindly, and heard a snort as his wrist was caught. He moved with it but it was twisted behind his back. He kneed his attacker in the side but they ignored the blow and kicked his footing down from under him. Dropping to the floor, he rolled and covered his ribs from another kick before cutting at the side of their leg.

It drew blood, going through a thin layer of cloth, but his triumph ended when a heel was placed on his throat. When they didn’t immediately push in his pharynx and kill him, he realized something was wrong – not that he had time to spare for thought, pushing away that foot and headbutting between the opponent’s legs. A woman, he learned from both what he hit and the faint grunt of pain before he got kneed in the face and rocked back. Scrambling away, he rose to his feet and…

And his leg gave. His limbs were trembling, like he’d been-

“Contact poison on the knife’s grip,” Abuela said. “That was your first mistake.”

Well, that explained why Fortuna hadn’t woken him up. She avoided Abuela like the plague.

“Ow,” Tristan eloquently replied, flopping to the ground.

His limbs were in open rebellion, the louts, and his face was most definitely going to bruise.

“Which?” he got out.

“Shellfish toxin, my own recipe,” she said. “You will be fine in an hour. Save for the bout of diarrhea, which we shall call the price of getting sloppy.”

Tristan let out a whimper. The runs, really? There was no privacy on a ship, everyone would hear. The humiliating punishment would have been confirmation of who he was facing even if he couldn’t more or less make her out in the dark. Even absent a lantern he glimpsed the silhouette of her as she sat on the edge of his bed. Abuela was rather short, five feet and change, but her impressive mane of snow-white hair made her seem taller – the mid-length wavy bob looked almost regal.

Sharp, red cheekbones with cheeks pulling tight and a jutting chin finished the distilled look of a Sacromonte family matriarch, which her stern maroon eyes helped sell. Abuela looked frail, all wrinkled skin and bones, until she kicked you in the stomach and it felt like you’d been hit by a cart.

“Now,” she said. “What was your second mistake?”

The thief forced himself to think even as his limbs twitched uselessly, lying on his side and looking up at his teacher. The dosage must have been very precise for the toxin to weaken his limbs but leave his tongue just fine.

“I should have cried out for help,” he realized after a heartbeat.

“Yes,” Abuela agreed. “You are of the Watch now. You need to learn to use that, to shake off the habits of the Murk.”

He’d not even thought about it. Back home calling for help was a gamble at best and when you were a thief the odds that the reinforcements would be on your side made it the kind of gamble only the Lady of Long Odds cared for. Tristan slowly nodded. The others, Maryam and Tredegar and even Song would have come to his aid had they heard. He knew that, intellectually. But it was not yet an instinct.

“You always said not to grow roots,” he said.

He shied away from outright asking. He had not done well enough in her test to earn the right to ask whatever he wanted – he’d be taking whatever she cared to throw his way, nothing more.

“The others will be taught by their covenants that a cabal is a sacred thing,” Abuela told him. “Comradery beyond law and reason. It is not.”

She leaned forward.

“You do not have the luxury of that lie,” the old woman said. “You are to be a Mask, Tristan Abrascal. A creature of angles and lies, necessity’s bastard son. The Krypteia is despised by the other covenants because we are, in truth, as much a check on them as we are on the Watch’s enemies.”

He could not quite see it, but he felt Abuela smile.

“Care for them, if you like,” she said. “But do not ever forget that should they betray the Watch, it is you that will be called on to put poison in their morning tea.”

And part of him rebelled at that, not even at the killing but the unfairness of it – that everyone else might get a home while he would only ever have a room – but another part accepted it without batting an eye. Of course it would be that way. All his life Abuela had taught him to use the crowd without being part of it, this was just but an extension to an old lesson. She was not the kind of woman whose teachings made exceptions, not even the Watch got a pass.

There was a sharp comfort to that, a knifelike relief. Some things did not change.

“Your performance tonight was only middling,” Abuela continued, “but I did promise you answers before sending you down the path to the Dominion. You may ask.”

Tristan swallowed, a hundred curiosities crowding his throat until it felt fit to burst. He must pick carefully, he told himself, for she would not be patient forever. Something important, a useful secret. And yet what ripped itself past his lips was anything but.

“You trained me for this,” he said. “All this time, you meant me for the Watch.”

“Yes,” Abuela simply replied.

“Why?”

“Why put a knife to the whetstone, a till to the land?” she asked. “Because that is their purpose and nature. When I found you, Tristan, our hunt was already carved into your bones. Now you will chase them with skill as well as hatred, that is all I changed.”

His jaw clenched. It had the ring of truth to it.

“Scholomance,” he pressed. “There are other ways to join the Watch, or even that school. Why send me to the Dominion of Lost Things?”

“You could have been enrolled on my word alone,” Abuela casually admitted, “but you would have lost your chance at Cozme Aflor. A name on your little List, yes?”

“Yes,” Tristan hissed.

It had been weeks yet he still savored the memory of his knife cutting that throat like the finest of meals. The Cerdan brothers had only been interest on an old debt. Cozme Aflor, he’d been the fifth of a balance in need of settling.

“And what did you learn from him?” Abuela asked.

“It is still Lord Lorent that runs their house of horrors,” Tristan said. “It’s out in the Trebian Sea somewhere but the staff may have changed. Professor Ceret is being used as a children’s tutor, of all things.”

He grit his teeth.

“And I know the god, now,” he said. “Cozme called it the Almsgiver.”

A thoughtful pause.

“Not a name known to me,” Abuela said. “A sobriquet, I imagine, as it would have been foolish to use its real name. Still, that is useful information. You did well.”

And it fell into place, just like that.

“You used me to get at them,” Tristan said. “In a way that can’t be traced even if the Cerdan have people in the Watch. It wasn’t just about me, it was about what I could get for the Krypteia.”

“And you got us a name, dear,” the old woman smiled. “You did not disappoint.”

“And Lieutenant Vasanti, was she another bird to catch with your one stone?” he coldly asked. “She hated me from the moment she knew you’ve taught me, Nerei.”

His eyes narrowed.

“If that is even your name.”

Abuela considered him for a long moment.

“It is not the one I was born to,” she told him. “Yet it is the one I have kept the longest and which I prefer, as it was earned and not given.”

“She called you an abomination,” Tristan challenged.

She laughed, sounding almost pleased.

“I am the last of the fifty servants of the Changing King, eater of his name,” Abuela replied. “For this men came to call me Nerei Name-Eater, crowning me heresiarch. One day you will learn the meaning of that word, Tristan, and understand that fear is the least of what it deserves.”

And though he knew not why the whisper of the syllables in the air – heresiarch, king in heresy – sent a shiver down his spine. It was as if the word itself were a dreadful thing, poisonous to the touch.

“Vasanti Kolanu sought to unearth things best left buried and was thrice chided for it – twice by myself, once by one of your fellow students,” Abuela idly continued. “She took poorly to the lesson.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Tristan quietly said. “Did you set me up to kill her for you?”

Abuela smiled.

“What do you think?”

“I think you’d say you left it up to chance,” the thief said. “But you know how I am and you know how she was, so chance was never part of it. I cleaned up your loose end for you.”

“You did not take her life yourself,” Abuela said.

“Neither did you,” he said. “But that’s now how you taught me to do it because it’s not how Masks work, is it? I did you a favor. That means you owe me.”

“Bold,” she said, but did not deny him. “And what would you use a favor on?”

He grimaced.

“There’s a man in Sacromonte,” he said. “He was married to one of the trial-takers-”

“Pietro Ragon,” she said. “The General-Killer’s wayward husband. Run off with Hoja Roja money, I believe.”

He was not even surprised she knew. Gods, Abuela even knew more than he did – he’d not known the surname of Yong’s husband or even that he had one.

“Yes,” Tristan said. “Yong was in a red game, under terms that if he got to the third trial they would write off the loan and spare him. He did get there, but…”

“You want me to make sure,” Abuela said.

“And to tell him about what Yong did,” he said. “I will myself, one day, but I understand I might not be able to return to Sacromonte for some time.”

“It is a wasted favor,” she told him. “The coteries scrupulously observe all the terms of the red games.”

Tristan frowned.

“It’s the Hoja Roja,” he skeptically said. “They’d cheat their own mothers for drinking money.”

“True,” Abuela said. “And yet I did not lie.”

Ah, a riddle-lesson. A puzzle whose pieces he must find and put together by asking the right questions.

“The red games themselves are nonsense,” the thief said. “Yet plenty of the largest coteries do them. What is it they get out of it?”

“It is gambling,” Abuela said.

“A senseless kind,” Tristan pointed out. “It is expensive to buy seats and they do not even see the deaths. Paying a fortune for reports seems like a poor game. Why not have their indebted fight to death in a pit, if that is their itch?”

“Why indeed,” Abuela said.

He cocked his head the side. He’d been looking at it the wrong way by wondering why the Roja would suddenly grow a conscience. They had not. It was simply that the choice was not theirs to make.

“They’re not gambling with each other,” he said. “There’s a god involved.”

Abuela smiled.

“The coteries bet on the manners of death,” the old woman said, “and if they predicted correctly they earn boons from their patron.”

He blinked.

“That is ritual sacrifice, or close enough,” he slowly said. “Forbidden by the Iscariot Accords.”

“The deaths happen on Watch grounds, under Watch auspices,” Abuela said. “It is a narrow line, but they walk it – as they have for over a century now.”

And the Watch let it happen, Tristan thought, so there would be more deaths to feed the gods they used to keep the Red Maw contained. Red games, red fates and red hands all around. Gods but it was an ugly business. But Maryam had broken the machine and that should put an end to it. There was no more seal to strengthen, no need left for an altar. That was something.

“So Pietro Ragon is safe because if they welch on the terms of the bet the god will get angry with the coteries,” the thief mused. “That only means the debt is written off, though. The man might still be in trouble.”

“Minor troubles,” Abuela said. “Worth using a favor on?”

Tristan sighed.

“Yes,” he regretfully. “Please tidy it up for me.”

To his surprise, the old woman looked approving.

“Tying off all your loose ends properly is the mark of professional,” she said. “A sensible decision, worth the reward of a warning.”

He swallowed.

“I’m listening,” Tristan said.

“You are a wanted man,” Abuela said. “A price has been placed on your head – taken alive.”

He did not hide his surprise.

“The Cerdan?” he asked.

They should not know of him, at least not enough to put coin on his death. His killing of Remund Cerdan was still a secret to all but Maryam and a dead woman.

“No,” Abuela said. “It is from inside the Watch, someone with connections. Scholomance will not be safe.”

“Students are allowed to fight each other?”

He’d thought the trials of the Dominion an outlier, not the rule.

“Yes. Not to kill, but much anything short of that,” the old woman said. “Abducting and selling you would not be against the rules, strictly speaking.”

He would have rubbed the bridge of his nose if he could. They’d not even docked at the bloody island and already other students had it out for him.

“I don’t suppose there is anything you could do?” he tried.

“Do not worry of any hands but that of other students,” Abuela said. “That is what I have done.”

He slowly nodded his thanks. She was running interference with whoever was behind this, then, but could no more dip her finger into Scholomance affairs than his mysterious enemy could. It was not a pleasing compromise, but he would live with it. Would have to. Abuela leaned forward, patting his shoulder.

“One last word of advice,” she said. “Do not wait for plaques to be forged. Take whatever they have on hand.”

Though he had no notion of what a plaque would be, Tristan filed the advice away. If she had bothered to give it out it was worth heeding. Still, the mysteriousness was worth a dig.

“Cryptic,” he said, rather proud at the double-meaning.

Even in the dark, he could feel the unimpressed look he was being fixed with.

“That hasn’t been funny in at least a century,” Abuela sighed.

Tristan would have made a rude gesture back, but his limbs were still flopping about. He really must ask her for that recipe next time they met, he could think of all sorts of uses for it. The old woman rose to her feet, brushing off a piece of lint from the loose shirt she was wearing. Those are the same shirts and trousers most the sailors are wearing, he noted.

It only occurred to him then that the Fair Vistas was days away from any land and had not slowed enough for another ship to dock.

“Have you been on the ship the whole time?” Tristan asked.

“Have I?” Abuela mused. “I wonder. You might learn if you saw me leave.”

The thief glanced at his useless limbs and sighed.

“Can you tell me where my knife is, at least?”

“Yes,” the old woman agreed.

He was unsurprised when she walked away without another word, unlatching his lock and quietly closing the door behind her. Tristan rolled onto his back, wiggling his ass to find if he might be able to sit but instead landing with his cheek pressed to the floor.

“For a proper prostration you’re supposed to be on your knees with your hands past your head,” Fortuna said. “Still, I’ll give you points for trying.”

“Thank you for the help, as always,” he sarcastically said. “Would it have killed you to give me a heads up before running for it?”

“I didn’t run for it,” the Lady of Long Odds lied. “I was just busy with other things.”

“Funny how you’re always busy when she comes to visit,” Tristan said.

“Coincidence,” Fortuna dismissed.

He rolled again, looking up and finding Fortuna seated atop the trunk holding his affairs. She had changed the style of her dress again – though still blood-red, it now bore a high collar and a pale mantle before descending into puffy sleeves. The skirts were more closely cut, still hiding away her feet but no longer trailing behind. She had gone heavier than usual on jewelry, too: the loose belt around her waist was a golden rope set with red jasper and over her mantle she wore a gold choker alternating rubies and pearls.

“Your mood has turned,” he noted. “Are you that afraid of her god?”

He did not for certain Abuela had a contract, but had always assumed. It was either that or she was half-ghost, able to appear and disappear at will. Fortuna glared at him.

“I fear nothing,” his goddess insisted. “She is discordant, Tristan. It is… imagine the worst sound you know, made into a song.”

“Discordant,” the thief repeated. “As opposed to ‘harmonious’?”

The word she used to mean becoming a Saint. Fortuna looked away without answering, which was as good as a confirmation. What was the opposite of sainthood, then? Maybe having a soul so hostile to divinity it hurt gods to be in its presence. Tristan itched to know what a heresiarch was, but it seemed like the kind of question that was dangerous to ask. He would have to be careful, gauge the dangers and put a scholar in his debt.

“I am starting to look forward to Scholomance,” Tristan mused. “It seems a place full of opportunities.”

And enemies, but of where was that not true? The thief’s stomach gurgled ominously. Ah, the side-effects of the shellfish toxin Abuela had warned him about. Tristan tried to move his hands and got some of his fingers to twitch.

Now he would get to find out which came first: working limbs or the runs.

—

Breakfast on the Fair Vistas was odd.

The galleon was the largest ship Tristan had ever been on, but Captain Krac – don’t try to joke, the first mate had warned them, she’s heard them all and she’s got a temper – had arranged matters so they got to eat between sailors’ shifts. The four of them were usually alone in the common room, a strange feeling in a ship that felt crowded even when running on a skeleton crew.

The morning cook was an old Sacromontan bastard missing an eye and most of his teeth, which he’d had replaced with obviously fake silver. He and Tristan had taken to each other instantly, smelling the rat on the other, and as a consequence the old man simply cocked an eyebrow instead of asking about his black eye or… nightly affliction. Tristan trudged out with his plate and mug, nodding his thanks, only to immediately be ambushed by his own crew.

“Did you somehow lose a fight with your bedframe?” Maryam asked, lips twitching.

He glared halfheartedly at the Triglau. Having shed any pretense of disguise, like Song the pale-skinned woman was now entirely in Watch blacks. A collared tunic with silvered buttons that went down past her knees, black breeches tucked into tall leather boots. With a dark headband to keep back her bangs, she looked very much like the blackcloak she’d been since they first met.

She also sounded amused, because Tristan was cursed to be surrounded by women who took delight in his pain. He sometimes suspected he might have crossed some great god of femininity in a previous spin of the Circle.

“I was visited last night,” the thief grunted back, setting down his plate.

He claimed the empty spot by Song, facing Maryam and Tredegar – who only offered him a nod, tearing into her meal with polite gusto. To his continuing bemusement, the noblewoman seemed to enjoy ship fare. More than him anyway: he was used to the fish and cheese, but he could have done without the ale. Unfortunately Captain Krac had rationed drinking water until the next rain, so he was left to drink that fermented swill regardless of preference.

“By the runs, I hear,” Song drawled. “Apparently the crew though you were getting attacked.”

Song wore much the same as Maryam, though unlike the Triglau she wore the accompanying black cloak even when inside. By the looks of it she’d freshly remade that long braid going down her back.

“Was it the dipped biscuits?” Tredegar asked, sounding sympathetic. “I saw some the crew offering you some, but that is risky business. My mother always said you should never eat shipboard food you haven’t seen the cook nibble at.”

In truth that seemed rather sound advice, like most of the advice Angharad Tredegar attributed to her mother. Some kind of famous Malani explorer, he’d been told, but ‘Sizani Maraire’ rang no bell. A month ago he would have thought Tredegar’s concern a false one, perhaps a verbal knife being twisted, but Tristan had learned better. The noblewoman was painfully earnest, which somehow made this worse.

It was a little early for a man to be besieged on all sides in such a manner but Tristan had long known that life was full of injustices.

“I did get attacked,” Tristan said, gathering together the last shreds of his pride. “Abuela came in the night, beat and poisoned me then left behind some crumbs of information.”

Angharad Tredegar straightened on the bench, eyes hardening.

“We are guests on this ship, under the protection of the Watch,” she said. “To attack you is-”

“I appreciate the concern,” Tristan cut in, surprised to realize he mostly meant it, “but it has always been this way with her. She is a hard teacher but not unfair.”

“Ah, a lesson,” the dark-skinned woman nodded. “I understand.”

The thief squinted at her. Usually people disbelieved him when he mentioned Abuela’s methods – one Orthodoxy priest had thought she was a pimp beating him, something Fortuna hadn’t let go for months – so he had to admit some mild concern over Tredegar’s absence of concern. Mind you, her parents had tried to feed the Pereduri to a monster once a year since she was eight so her standards might be skewed at tad.

Maryam leaned across the table, frowning at him, and slowly came to rest a finger on the bridge of his nose. He went cross-eyed trying to look at what she was doing until she withdrew her finger.

“You’re not emanating any different in the aether,” she said. “You shouldn’t be cursed. That I can tell, at least – it isn’t my specialty. And while I’d like to make fun of you for getting beaten up by yet another crone, I’m rather stuck on the detail that this Abuela of yours apparently showed up on our ship in the middle of the sea.”

Tristan shrugged.

“It’s Abuela,” he said.

“That’s not an explanation,” Maryam informed him.

“Give it a few years,” Tristan honestly replied, “and it will be.”

It had been something of a shock as a boy to realize that the sweet old lady that’d obviouslygotten lost in the Murk and needed to be warned off the Menor Mano boys – out to rob her and sell her off to a Trench crew – had never been in any danger at all. She had, if anything, been the danger.

Song cleared her throat.

“You mentioned information?” she asked.

This isn’t over, Maryam mouthed to him from across the table. Chwop billy tang, the thief mouthed back, nonsense just legible enough she’d think she had failed to read his lips right. Song was cocking an eyebrow at him by the time he looked to her again.

“Apparently there is a price on my head,” he said. “Some people might be after me at Scholomance.”

A pause.

“As a prisoner,” he clarified. “Not a corpse.”

“Already?” Maryam mused, chewing her cheese. “That’s probably some sort of record, Tristan. Our cabal is already breaking fresh grounds.”

“Take this seriously, Maryam,” Song said, tone gone flat.

Tredegar looked unmoved at the thought of further enemies but Song was openly irritated. Tristan and the Tianxi did not get along particularly well – that the noble on their crew would be easier to deal with than the republican had been a most unwelcome surprise – though he’d concede her dislike did not color how she treated him. She was a professional, which he could respect.

“Difficulties mount,” Song sighed. “Tristan, kindly investigate the matter after we dock so that we might decide how it would best be resolved.”

“That was already my intention,” Tristan shrugged.

Best to go to his would-be abductors before they went to him, as choosing the grounds was a lot likelier not to end in him with shackled in some ship’s belly.

“I’ve also been advised to take whatever plaques are on hand instead of waiting for new ones to be forged,” he said. “Though I’m not sure what it means.”

Maryam’s face gave no hint as to her thoughts and Tredegar was politely attentive, which had yet to stop being… unsettling. It was Song who had answers.

“When our cabal is registered on the school rolls, we will be granted funding and identification plaques to access it,” she said. “I only know so much of Scholomance, so I cannot tell you more.”

Tristan hummed.

“How do you know so much of Scholomance, anyway?” he asked. “Maryam does not seem to.”

He flicked a glance at the pale-skinned woman, who shrugged.

“I don’t,” she said. “The Navigator that recommended me hasn’t been this far south in years and before I was offered a candidature I lived on one of the guild’s island outposts. Not the sort of place where juicy gossip gets traded.”

Maryam was not, of course, a member of the Akelarre Guild. Like Song she was a member of the rank-and-file of the Garrison, though Maryam had been recruited by a Navigator and only ever stayed in outposts under the authority of the Akelarre Guild. They had clearly been grooming her for the covenant before offering her the shortcut of joining by graduating from Scholomance.

“Much like all of you, I have a connection in the Watch,” Song admitted. “My great-aunt’s widower, a member of the Academy. He is the one who recommended me.”

“And he’s got something to do with Scholomance?” Tristan pressed.

“He is of sufficient rank to know some things, but only so much. The school is some kind of private fiefdom within the Watch,” the Tianxi said.

“My uncle mentioned meeting me in Scholomance as soon as he can,” Tredegar said. “I could ask him about this.”

Ah, yes, the famous Uncle Osian. He of the apparently unlimited funds and jolly bribery. Tristan thought it more than passing odd the Pereduri officer would be willing to sink a fortune in helping a niece he’d apparently only met twice, but that might be the orphan in him talking.

“If we’re to register it will probably be the same day we dock,” Tristan said. “Unless he’s already there and waiting for you we’ll have to make the decision blind.”

Tredegar acknowledged the reply with a nod.

“It would be foolish to dismiss a warning from a high-ranking member of the Masks,” Song noted. “Let us heed it if we can.”

“We could ask Ferranda and the others if they know anything,” Maryam suggested. “They should be getting there about a week before we do.”

Mostly bad luck on their part, that. While Lady Ferranda Villazur had accepted the offer of being recommended for Scholomance by the Academy, she’d been told that the best way to have the formalities finished in time was passing through the Rookery. As a consequence, while Ferranda and the two she intended to make a cabal with – Shalini Goel and Lord Zenzele Duma – had departed on the Bluebell days ahead of the Fair Vistas’ expected arrival, the four of them should have arrived at Scholomance long before the others did.

Only the Fair Vistas had been a week and a half late, a third of her crew missing when she docked at Three Pines. They’d run into a Gloam storm, of all the bad luck. If they’d not had a skilled Navigator with them the storm would have likely taken every soul on board. There was a reason Tristan and the others had all gotten individual cabins instead of being made to share.

“I approve of reaching out in principle,” Song said, “but it might be difficult to find them in practice. The number of students attending should be slightly above four hundred.”

Tristan let out a low whistle.

“That is a lot of dangerous people,” he said.

Maybe some of those who’d got in through connections would be softer, but anyone making cut for Scholomance was bound to have an edge to them.

“The school itself might be as dangerous as the competition,” the Tianxi said. “We must be very careful when we arrive. Already our… situations come with enemies, we cannot afford to make fresh ones.”

Tredegar cleared her throat, which earned her a fondly raised eyebrow from Song.

“Yes?”

“Then we should remember that Tupoc will have had weeks there to dragoon some followers,” she said. “He will no longer be alone.”

Tupoc Xical had left a day before the Bluebell, that was true. The Aztlan had gotten in good with a cabal during the battle for Cantica and one of the members had insisted that Tupoc get to sail with them.

“They’re supposed to go through the Rookery as well,” Tristan pointed out. “He might get there at the same time as Ferranda’s lot, but not much earlier. Certainly not weeks.”

Tredegar shook her head. To his surprise, so did Maryam.

“Did you not have a look at their ship’s hull?” the Pereduri asked.

Tristan shook his head. He had stayed away from the docks in Three Pines, wary of attracting the attention of the cabal before it departed. If one of them was a Mask, they might get curious about the odd details surrounding Cozme’s death.

“It was metal,” Song provided. “I have seen others like it before, though rarely and only flying Watch flags.”

“They are tomic ships,” Tredegar said. “That is to say, the hull is made of a tomic alloy. You might know such ships better by the name of ‘skimmers’.”

The thief blinked. He had heard that name before.

“As in the magic ships that never lose their way and can fly?” he skeptically said.

“They cannot actually fly,” the noblewoman said, sounding faintly disappointed. “But the metal is an Antediluvian alloy with strange properties that cut through Gloam and aether. They ‘skim’ on the surface, thus the name.”

“That’s only mostly true,” Maryam noted.

She got a hard look from Tredegar at the phrasing for that, innocently smiling back. Those two were taking to each other worse than he and Song, and he was not even sure he could entirely blame the noblewoman for it. When she angered Maryam, it was usually by accident.

Maryam was most definitely doing it on purpose.

“You can have a tomic ship that’s not a skimmer,” the blue-eyed woman continued. “Most aren’t. There are some that don’t even make the entire hull with alloy, just the keel. It’s why you can get rich raiding First Empire ruins and finding no artefacts: even a door frame made of tomic alloy will be worth a fortune if you strip it out and sell it.”

Interesting he had never heard of that around the docks, but then that kind of trade would have been a little rich for his blood.

“The ship in port was one of those?” Tristan asked.

Maryam nodded.

“It just had the metal hull,” she said. “Mind you, it’s still quicker than anything made out of wood.”

“Except Malani ironwood,” Tredegar mildly added.

She sounded rather satisfied she could correct Maryam in turn. The Triglau rolled her eyes.

“Except the magic wood Malani sell to no one, yes,” Maryam agreed. “For a ship to be a skimmer, however, it needs not only a tomic hull but an aetheric engine. That is much rarer, and even though they surpass everything else in service no one makes skimmers anymore.”

“Are the engines truly that difficult to make?” Song asked, sounding surprised.

How Tianxi of her, Tristan thought amusedly. Like it was no trouble to make even shoddy copies of Antediluvian wonders. Half the Six were on top of the infanzon pecking order mostly because they’d got their hand on some First Empire treasure and could work it well enough.

“I can only guess, but I would say it’s about coin,” Maryam said. “The aetheric engines we can make are nowhere as good as those inherited from the First or even Second Empire, so the largest ships we can make are still smaller than caravels.”

Tristan was no sailor, but he had worked around the Quay long enough to learn a thing or two about trade ships. Caravels were known to be sleek, quick and needed only a small crew but they were a rare sight in the Trebian Sea because a caravel also could not carry much cargo. Hulks, carracks and galleons were a lot more profitable to run unless your goods were small and needed to be moved quickly. Caravels were mostly Malani and Ramayan ships, meant for exploration across dark and distant seas.

“So the skimmers we can make are expensive, too small for war and too expensive risk on exploration,” Tristan summed up.

“They also need a dedicated shipyard on special grounds and the materials for the engine are almost as rare and expensive as tomic alloys,” Maryam said. “The great powers probably can afford to build some skimmers, but for what? The old ones keep well, so most nations have legacy ships still in service that make anything they could build look like children’s toys.”

“The Republics might buy them,” Song noted. “Most of the fleet from the times of the Kingdom of Cathay has been sunk or stolen.”

“No one will sell the Republics ships,” Tredegar said, not unkindly. “Tianxi are already very quarrelsome at sea, no other power would want to strengthen their position.”

Tristan choked.

That was more than slightly amusing coming from a Pereduri, of all things. The Kingdom of Malan was infamous not only for producing more pirates than all the other great powers put together but also for its tendency to anchor war fleets just out of bombardment distance of whatever small nation they wanted to establish trade with. It was an old sailor’s joke that any land discovered by the High Queen’s ships would soon have to take either her gold or her lead.

“Tianxia has been involved in many quarrels at sea, I am sure,” Song calmly replied, a delicate rebuke. “Regardless we have strayed from our original conversation. I take it your point is that on such a ship Tupoc will arrive long ahead of us, or Ferranda’s crew for that matter?”

Tredegar nodded.

“He will make a cabal, or take one,” the Pereduri said. “We should be prepared to face him.”

“He’s a Stripe, so the only one of us who should share classes with him is Song,” Tristan said.

The Tianxi shook her head.

“Only about half the lessons will be handled by our covenants,” she said. “There will be general classes as well, where we might run into him.”

Which meant they would, because Tupoc would not be able to resist poking at his old friends from the Dominion.

“I’m told we’re not allowed to kill other Scholomance students,” Tristan said. “But also that not much short of that is disallowed.”

Tredegar perked up, gaze turning to Song.

“If I cut all his limbs off, do you think they would grow back?”

The thief quietly swallowed, mouth gone dry. The tone was hopeful, like a little boy who thought he might get lamb for supper. Like she was not casually speaking of chopping off a man’s arms and legs. Gods, every time he thought he was getting used to her.

“Perhaps we might try diplomacy first,” Song mildly replied. “Either way, unlike Ferranda’s crew he is best avoided if we can. I expect he will find his fellow students have much less patience for his antics than circumstance forced us to keep back on the Dominion.”

Tristan hummed.

“We are going around in circles,” he said. “There’s no point in making a plan if we do not know the lay of the land we’re headed into.”

“That is… not untrue,” Song reluctantly conceded.

“It will not be too late to decide once we get to Scholomance,” Tredegar said.

She rose from the bench, picking up the plate she had emptied before anyone else at the table.

“I was promised a spar by one of the officers I do not want to be late for,” she informed them. “If you will forgive me, I must take my leave.”

“I might as well accompany you,” Song said. “I finished the book Captain Krac lent me, I should return it before asking for another.”

He and Maryam waved them off, their own meals still unfinished. After they had left to return their plates to the cook, leaving the two of them alone, he cocked an eyebrow at his friend.

“You know much of skimmers,” he leadingly said.

“A Navigator is needed to run them properly,” Maryam replied, a little too casually. “Preferably a Tinker from the aether branch as well, but always an Akelarre guildsman.”

He said nothing, only biting into his salted fish.

“And I might have a personal interest in them,” she admitted.

The grey-eyed thief cocked his head to the side.

“May I ask why?”

Maryam considered him a long moment, then sighed.

“There’s somewhere I need to go,” she said. “And it is, I think, the only kind of ship that could get me there.”

“This place of yours – dangerous?” he idly asked.

“Very.”

“Secret?”

“There are no maps in existence.”

“And, I assume, forbidden?”

“By both gods and men,” she agreed.

“Sounds,” Tristan Abrascal mused, “like an interesting place to visit, one of these days.”

Blue eyes on grey. A moment passed, then her shoulders loosened.

“Maybe I could be talked into bringing you along,” Maryam Khaimov smiled.