Pale Lights - Book 2: Chapter 10

It was a half-hour walk, most of it following the road to Scholomance.

Angharad had paid little attention to the path once they left the paved avenue, busy quietly seething at the fact they had been robbed. Sebastian Camaron had not lied. When they’d returned to their room at the Rainsparrow Hostel they found it just as empty as he had said. Even the clothes she had acquired yesterday gone.

Once more, she owned nothing but what she wore.

Incomprehensibly, Angharad was not allowed to kill the man responsible for this even though she knew his name, face and he had confessed to the crime. It made her blood boil. This was what honor duels were for – burning out evil, reminding the nobly born that their station was not only a privilege. That it came with rules of conduct.

Only beginning to taste blood forced her to stop biting at the inside of her cheek, though mercifully distraction was offered soon after.

“This is it,” Tristan announced. “Never saw it from below before, but there’s nowhere else like that in the city.”

When the Sacromontan had spoken of a hidden cottage, Angharad had expected some charming but worn-down building tucked away in an alley between larger ruins. Instead she was looking at… well, there wasn’t exactly a word for this as far as she knew. In a way it reminded her of the Trial of Ruins, the way devils had stacked temple over temple until the pile became something it its own. This was humbler work in scale, she thought, and more… architectural. Not a mere pile haphazardly grown.

The edifice was three city blocks long and three wide with matching height, roughly a cube, but it was not a single entity. Someone had stacked small rectangular residences one atop another to fill the cube, though the work was imperfect. Like with poorly lair bricks there were empty spaces between the residences, forming alcoves and makeshift halls. Some of these were filled with stairs, some kept empty as corridors and pits. The structure went so high she could not see what the roofs looked like, but even from down here she could see they were of differing heights.

There were no doubt many things to look at in there, Angharad thought, but glaringly missing was the reason they had come here in the first place.

“The cottage,” she tried, “must be well-hidden indeed.”

Tristan threw her an amused glance. Perhaps her attempt at diplomacy had been a tad transparent.

“There’s something here,” Maryam announced. “I could not tell you what, it is far beyond anything I have ever seen, but the aether around here is too smooth. Like something is keeping it from having ripples.”

The Triglau inspected thin air, until suddenly wincing and rubbing the bridge of her nose. Some Navigator trick, no doubt.

“The archbishop’s trick still works, then,” Tristan said. “That’s good news should we get past it. I’ve never come up from the bottom, but I expect if we enter through that opening-”

Angharad followed his finger, then frowned. There was nothing but a rampart of walls, windows and doors.

“What opening?”

“I do not see it either,” Maryam admitted.

All their eyes went to Song, who was frowning.

“I see it,” she said. “Like a crack in the facade, two stories high. Only I do not think-”

The Tianxi winced.

“I try to think of passing through and,” she began, then paused for a long heartbeat.

She suddenly flinched, then cursed.

“I can think of finding a path,” Song slowly said. “And see the opening is there. But I cannot think the two things put together.”

Angharad shivered. Only madmen wove in Gloam, and madder still those who trifled with their works.

“Lucky for us,” Maryam assured them. “It means we’re dealing with an Acumenal Sign – that is to say, one that affects senses or perception. The archbishop laid an illusion, not a curse.”

“Tell that to my migraine,” Song sighed.

“Tristan,” Maryam replied without batting an eye, “this is an illusion and not a curse.”

Angharad coughed into her fist to hide the amused twitch of her lips. The gray-eyed man put a hand to his heart, affecting a wound.

“That was most unwarranted,” Tristan said.

“That is true,” Song noted. “As you’ve already been detained, the warrant has been served.”

Angharad would have liked to add something – making sport of Tristan was most enjoyable, and he ever took it in stride – but for the life of her could not think of something clever to add. Served, something about lowborn service? No, that was clumsy. Wincing at her own gracelessness, Angharad cleared her throat.

“Have any of you a notion of how we are to enter that veiled opening?” she asked.

Eyes went to Maryam, who shrugged.

“Like Ilija’s brothers in the woods, only without the man-eating monster,” she said.

There was a brief heartbeat of silence as the three of them shared glances. Ah, so she was not the only one lost. Reassuring. Tristan cleared his throat.

“Pretend I’ve never heard of this Ilija,” he said.

Maryam squinted at them.

“Ilija and his seven brothers are sent to cross woods by a witch, every night for seven nights,” she tried.

At the lack of reaction, she pressed on with a frown.

“Only Ilija knows the way so they walk in line holding the belt of the brother in front, that way they cannot get lost and the monster cannot grab them?” she continued, increasingly desperate. “Only then the monster starts eating the last in line and pretending to be them until only Ilija survives?”

“Horrifying,” Tristan cheerfully replied. “But in a refreshingly novel way, as I have never heard this tale before.”

“I could swear hearing Lierganen have the same story with the names changed,” Maryam muttered. “Or was it Izcalli?”

She shook her head.

“Regardless,” she said, “in the absence of belt simply holding each other’s clothes in a line should suffice. We need to focus on the act of holding the cloak, not the movement, while Tristan guides us to the right place.”

“And once we have been in that cottage, we will have broken the illusion on our minds if Abrascal is to be believed,” Song said. “That seems feasible, if everything goes as said.”

“Even if the Sign still works on you after and we can’t use it as a hideout, we could still use the place as a stash for things we need kept safe,” Tristan noted. “It won’t be a wasted trip.”

It was somewhat undignified, but they gathered behind the Sacromontan like ducklings. Maryam behind him, Song behind her and Angharad herself at the rearguard.

The journey that followed was strange, but not unpleasant.

The noblewoman knew that she was walking forward, headed somewhere, but the only time she let the thought fully form she was brusquely jolted out of her reverie by Song tugging at her coat. Even considering the ground beneath their feet, whether it was pavement or rubble or rust, seemed to get her lost inside her own mind. Angharad learned to focus her mind on holding the back of Song’s uniform, letting her feet move without direction.

“This is close enough. We are on the grounds.”

Angharad allowed herself to see the ground beneath her feet, overgrown grass, and let go of Song’s uniform. A glance back showed she was barely past a wide set of stairs, stone and rust descending into the dark, and then she was staring at what the others were.

Tristan had not lied, for amidst the garden – half wildly overgrown weeds, half dead earth – stood a charming cottage. And a rather large one, the cobblestone structure two stories high and rising into a turret. It was larger than the cottages in the countryside by Llanw Hall, and considering the stone walls and tiled roof it was also much better built.

“That is larger than I expected,” she said.

“Don’t flatter him,” Maryam laughed.

Angharad choked, wise to the implication, but of all things Tristan shot them a puzzled look. He was a man and a common birth, so surely he would understand bawdy humor.

“Come,” Song said. “Let us have a better look.”

The door was unlocked, which seemed to relieve Tristan. The inside of the cottage was, well, dusty. Their boots left footsteps as if walking in soot, and Song sneezed. But aside from the ravages of time, the cottage seemed quite pleasant. The bottom floor was the entrance, a drawing room by beautiful glass windows overlooking the garden and to the side a kitchen of respectable size.

They found stairs by the kitchen, leading up, and five rooms waiting there. Two dilapidated bedrooms, a locked and barred door that would require some ingenuity to get open, a reading room stocked with rows of books and a small storage. Within the storage was a ladder going up, which after climbing Tristan informed them led to a small stargazing room inside the turret.

“It will take some effort to make livable,” Song said, “but the space is there, at least.”

“I vote in favor,” Maryam announced, leaning against a wall.

She strung out the word vote teasingly.

“My opinion should be clear,” Tristan said, dusting off his shoulders.

The room up in the turret must have been no less dusty, for he was quite filthy.

“Angharad?”

The Pereduri wrenched her gaze away from the disaster and cleared her throat.

“It is a fine enough place,” she said. “I have no objection.”

Song nodded.

“It is settled, then,” the captain said. “Which leaves us to begin the work.”

She glanced at Tristan.

“Abrascal, take stock of the kitchen,” she said. “Do we have plates, cutlery, pans? Everything necessary to cook.”

The gaze moved to Maryam.

“Find out if there’s a broom in this house or anything to clean. If not, we will need to buy necessities – and find a source of water, if you can. I cannot believe a man of the rank of archbishop would have built a house without one.”

The Triglau nodded. Angharad stood at attention, waiting for her turn. She got it.

“Angharad, find out how much of the furniture is broken or rotten,” Song said. “We will likely need to replace parts of it.”

Song glanced at them, eyebrow cocked.

“I will make a list and look for a key to our mystery room,” she said. “Let’s get to it.”

It took them about half an hour to get the answers, to mixed results. The kitchen was still stocked on everything but food, though a shelf had collapsed when Tristan touched it and would need repair. They would need fuel for the cookpot, too. Most of the larger furniture had kept well, Angharad reported, and there was not a trace of rot or insects in the house. On the other hand, the chairs were either collapsed or about to and testing a bedframe with her boot had resulted in the thing coming apart at the seams.

Maryam found a broom and a mop as well as several copper buckets, but only the buckets were fit to use. There was a water well behind the house, she revealed, but it would need new rope and bucket to be of any use. Song, to the Tianxi’s visible irritation, did not find a key.

“It isn’t as bad as I expected,” Song opined, adding the last note to her list. “It is mostly the bedding that will be expensive. And if we organize properly, we should get most of what we need here in a single journey.”

Angharad cleared her throat.

“Can our brigade funds cover the expenses?” she asked.

“I do not know,” Song admitted. “Nor am I too versed in the prices for the food and supplies sold on Regnant Avenue. I need to visit the brigade vaults and find out the sum at our disposal.”

“We all have business in town,” Tristan noted. “Though in different places. Shall we split up and meet at the Rainsparrow Hostel when done?”

That seemed sensible enough, Angharad thought, until she considered the details. Both she and Maryam were headed to the farrago warehouse, so should the cabal be split… She opened her mouth to suggest a different arrangement, but she had been too slow.

“Agreed,” Song said. “Abrascal, with me. You two can pick up your affairs.”

Angharad’s eyes strayed to Maryam, who was looking back at her with the same lack of enthusiasm at the prospect of the common journey.

And to think the day had been looking up.

—

The poets liked comparing cities to living things, to beasts.

Only the pretty ones, mind you: leopards and wolves and eagles, the kind of creature some noble might proudly use as heraldry. Sacromonte tended to get the griffin, owing to old statues and a popular epic by Salivares that waxed on about the ‘lion-blooded city rising on eagle’s wings, twice-noble’. Pretty beasts, griffins. Tristan had once read they were so territorial they sometimes drove themselves to extinction by smashing the eggs of their own kind, so despite his best efforts Salivares might have stumbled onto some deeper truth.

Tristan was no poet, but he’d come to agree with them in a broad sense if not in the specifics. There was something alive about a city, be it sick or hale, and you could follow that pumping blood to the heart of the creature. Here in Port Allazei, he was finding that the vital center lay in a rough triangle of streets of which Hostel Street was the bottom. But it was on another side of the triangle that Song led him, after they parted ways with the others.

To the west of Hostel Street, past a narrow lane, lay Regnant Avenue. Paved and wide, it cut from southwest to northeast. On the bottom end lay the barracks and fort of the Port Allazei garrison, while along its length were nestled a multitude of shops and trades. Butchers and bakers, greenmongers of all kinds, but also proper tradesmen like smiths and tailors. There was even a shop that could only be called an armory, selling firearms of all kinds and powder by the barrel.

“Hard to believe they’re selling soldier’s arms out in the open like this,” Tristan noted as they passed by. “It is against the law in Sacromonte.”

Pistols could be bought by anyone with the coin, and even muskets so long as they were fowlers – hunting guns, better at killing birds than men – but the kind of muskets that might be used in war were not to be found. The Six strictly controlled their make and distribution and had banned their sale in the city by foreign traders. It was one of the rare laws the Guardia was heavy-handed in enforcing, and every year would-be smugglers got strung up for having tried their luck.

Sometimes the Six received complaints from other powers, but everyone knew they’d rather have those than face confederales armed with more than butcher’s knives.

“Sale is legal in Tianxia, usually,” Song told him. “It is owning them that is restricted. Most of the Republics have decreed that there should be no more than one such musket per household.”

“That’s still a lot more gun than infanzones would ever be comfortable us having,” Tristan said.

“That is because they are yiwu trash,” the Tianxi replied in the casual tone of someone stating a commonly known fact. “A people armed are answerable to, and the only answer to affronted dignity is uprising.”

The thief eyed her with surprise.

“I thought you a moderate, as far as these things go,” he said.

She had certainly wasted no time cozying up to nobles on the Bluebell. The silver-eyed woman snorted.

“I am no Yellow Earth fanatic, arguing that we must liberate all Vesper by powder and sword, but I am certainly no royalist,” Song sneered, speaking the word with utter disdain. “Jigong spent most of the Cathayan Wars either under the Imperial Someshwar’s boot or being sacked by it. We have seen the true face of kings, Tristan, and care little for it.”

Song shrugged.

“Still, most of Vesper keeps nobles,” she said. “In time all will be free under Heaven, but until then we must keep to what is instead of what will be.”

“Practical,” Tristan conceded.

“The northern republics have to be,” she said. “Unlike the Sanxing, we do not have the luxury of sharing borders only with each other and the sea.”

The Three Stars, that word meant. The three southernmost republics of Tianxia, which also happened to be the largest and most powerful of the lot. They were the victors of the Cathayan Wars, as much as anyone could be called that, and had led the liberation of what was now Tianxia from Izcalli and the Someshwar. He flicked a glance her way, having caught the faint distaste at their mention. She did not elaborate, however, and he did not ask.

It had been a surprisingly cordial conversation and Song had grown more congenial since the cottage – and a demonstration of him being useful – but Tristan was under no illusion that the nature of their rapport had changed.

Having come to Regnant Street from further west and gone up its length to the northeast the pair had begun to approach the junction to the last third of the triangle: Templeward Street. They were not to go all the way, as their destination was the brigade vaults somewhere ‘inside’ the triangle, so he asked the Tianxi about it. Song laid it out for him, precise and methodical.

If Regnant Avenue had been concerned with practical goods like food and supplies, she said, then Templeward was concerned with the thoroughly impractical. In a word, luxuries. Song elaborated when pressed, listing a teashop with a garden terrace, a draper of silks and velvet, a clockmaker and no less than three launderers. And that was not even the whole of it, she assured him.

“There was a shop of curios and antiquities,” Song said, the two of them finally leaving Regnant for a side street. “And more structures further south the street I did not take the time to inspect.”

“That is an extravagant amount of extravagance,” Tristan flatly replied. “Even accounting for the presence of Watch princelings with coin to spend.”

Even assuming, generously, that a tenth of the four hundred students and change attending Scholomance were wealthy and feckless enough to buy silks and clocks for their quarters on the island, that was a mere forty souls. There were much too many shops catering to the wealthy for the wealth actually present. The garrison might indulge as well, he adjusted as a moment. But only the officers would be able to afford it, and there cannot be that many.

“It might not be as excessive as you think,” the Tianxi said. “For one, I expect the clockmaker will do brisk business with Umuthi students. It may be that some of these shops have similar uses.”

Tristan hummed, considering that. If covenant classes gave their students assignments requiring to dip into the luxury shops the entire affair might be sustainable, barely. Maybe. He’d have to get his hands on ledgers to be sure and he suspected those fine shopkeepers would not simply hand them over if asked.

“Seems thin on the ground,” he finally said.

He kept a careful eye on Song, wondering if offense would be taken. Instead she sighed, nodding.

“My guess is that it is an investment on the part of the owners,” she said. “Next year more students will come to Scholomance. We may be too few for them to truly profit now, but…”

Tristan picked up where she trailed off.

“In a few years, they will have the numbers and be established with students in a manner that would be difficult for latecoming competition to overcome,” he mused. “There is sense to that. So Port Allazei feels empty because it is as boots were are not yet filling, so to speak.”

“It is only a guess,” Song said. “We know unfortunately little of this place.”

And Song more than he, Tristan thought as he followed the Tianxi turning a corner to the right. She had guided them without once getting lost, not familiar with the streets but having clearly found landmarks to orient herself by. It was cleverly done, he thought, and he could only be glad one of their cabal had taken the opportunity to get the lay of the land.

“You should mark this neighborhood well,” the Tianxi said gesturing around them. “It is empty at this hour, but last evening many of the houses were full.”

Tristan cocked his head to the side, eyed sliding over the winding rows of stone houses with faded red tiles for roof. There were precious few ruins and collapsed buildings here, he had noticed, and many houses had wooden shutters or drapes. A sign they were inhabited.

“The shopkeepers live here,” he said. “Some officers from the garrison as well, I wager.”

“Their families as well, for both,” Song told him. “I have seen no young children, but some older ones were afoot playing in the street.”

“Rich living, having both a shop and home,” Tristan said. “Enough I doubt they own either.”

“I do not know if the Watch charges rent, in truth,” Song told him. “Regardless, I came across more than one student taking a look at empty houses last night. I imagine many brigades will be moving into the neighborhood over the coming week as the hostels begin to cost coin.”

The conversation petered out as they turned another corner and came in sight of what could only be the brigade vaults. He was mildly amused to see the blackcloaks had appropriated an old temple for their treasury: the tall house of yellowing stone still had alcoves on the sides where worn pedestals for statues stood. A pair of watchmen flanked the front gate, eyeing them as they approached, and demanded to be shown their brigade plaque before allowing them entry.

After they did one of the guards hit the great wooden gate with the pommel of his sword, thrice, and after a moment Tristan heard the sound of a metal latch being pulled up. The pair of them were ushered into the building without further ceremony.

Within a heartbeat of entering his footsteps stuttered, as did Song’s.

Every wall and ceiling of the once temple’s antechamber was covered with bas-relief of human skulls. Not an inch was spared, not a nook or cranny. The blackcloak who had gestured for them to enter let out a happy little laugh, grinning at their faces.

“I’ll never get tired of that,” she said. “Come on, kids. Coin’s inside.”

Song obeyed, face already a smooth mask of calm, and Tristan followed. Except for the same unfortunate taste in relief, the room past the antechamber was nothing remarkable. It had been filled with four desks, each of which was manned by a blackcloak clerk, and chairs had been set down for them to fill. Song asked a bored-looking Someshwari clerk about the Thirteenth’s funds while he sat by her side, learning that the vault currently held twenty-five gold ramas and that the same sum would be added on the first of the following month so long as they remained four members.

Tristan stared at the brown-skinned clerk, stunned. Twenty-five gold a month? For four of us, the thief reminded himself. It was still a significant sum, but not as large as it would be for a single man.

“I will withdraw five ramas,” Song said. “Three in kind, one in silver arboles and for the last two thirds in coppers.”

Song had to show her plaque again and to sign for the withdrawal, but there were no other formalities to go through. A watchman headed out back, and after some wait they were handed a fat pouch of coin. Tristan frowned. The brigade vaults would be difficult to burgle, given that there appeared to be only one way in and out of the old temple and a similar bottleneck to access the back of the building where they were keeping the funds, but fooling the clerks did not seem overly difficult.

All you needed was a plaque from that brigade, a name – the clerk had checked for Song’s on a list after she gave it – and some care. Biting his tongue, he waited until they were out of the temple and then out of earshot to speak.

“I would recommend we get our coin out of there as quickly as possible,” he bluntly said. “It is much too easy to steal from.”

Song frowned.

“You exaggerate,” she said.

He took it as the invitation to contradict her that it was.

“I don’t,” Tristan replied. “With about ten coppers’ worth of cosmetics, a change of clothes and your face I could empty one of the vaults today.”

He had expected for his words to be dismissed, or perhaps an argument to follow, but what Tristan got instead was Song Ren stopping so she could face him full and turn that unsettling silver stare on him. He cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Whose?”

“Pardon?” he asked.

“Whose vault, Abrascal?” Song asked.

Wait, was she really…

“The Forty-Ninth’s,” he said.

Silver eyes narrowed.

“Keep talking,” Song Ren ordered, and the thief grinned.

—

Angharad found the farrago warehouse to be a strange mixture of the laudably organized and the reprehensibly chaotic.

The building, though nestled between old and elegant stone structures, was mostly wood and recently built. It fit in appearance what one’s imagination would muster at the words ‘port warehouse’, a broad rectangle filled with crates and barrels forming broad alleys to walk through. There did not, however, appear to be any kind of order to the goods within beyond that shallow bottom line.

Just past the door a harried-looking woman of middle age sat at a desk, frowning down at a ledger she was messily crossing with lines. Past her a brown-skinned watchman was idling on a crate, blowing at a steamy mug of tea.

“If you don’t have a paper slip, leave,” the woman said, eyes still on the ledger. “This isn’t a shop, it’s-”

Angharad cleared her throat and approached, Maryam trailing behind her. The Triglau was not her preferred company, but she too had business here. Song’s assignments were apt, if not particularly pleasant. Still, fifteen minutes of walking in silence was better than the same spent sniping so the Pereduri felt it in bad faith to complain too much.

“I have a letter,” Angharad said, producing her uncle’s words.

The disheveled woman – a sergeant, by the pin on her collar – looked up from her work. Her stare slid past the noblewoman, coming to rest on Maryam, and there the watchwoman’s eyes widened in surprise. Before tightening again, in irritation.

“You again,” she bit out. “I told you last time, girl, I don’t care if you have a name and a plaque I won’t let you-”

Angharad frowned at her companion. What business had Maryam had here? The Triglau cut through the watchwoman’s words by revealing Tristan’s paper slip.

“Fine,” the woman sighed. “You, Malani, give me that letter.”

The Pereduri glowered at her, but the sergeant only snorted and snatched the paper from her hands. She brought it closer to her lantern, eyes scanning the lines, then grunted.

“I remember those,” she said. “The long crate and the casket. Sergeant Chen’s shift.”

The watchwoman blew on the pages where she had been crossing out words, drying the ink, then began thumbing through the ledger. After a moment she let out a little noise of satisfaction.

“Three hundred and three,” the sergeant announced.

She then eyed Maryam.

“I guess you weren’t full of shit after all,” she said. “Still, rules are rules.”

The Triglau’s pale face betrayed not a speck of her thoughts as she approached.

“So they are,” Maryam said. “Here’s mine.”

She offered up the paper, which got a quick look.

“One hundred and twelve,” the sergeant called out. “You hear both of those, Bibi?”

“Don’t call me that,” the brown-skinned man mildly replied, putting down his mug. “Three o three and hundred twelve, I heard you.”

Rising, he stretched his limbs and sighed.

“Come on, you two,” the watchman said. “Let’s not dawdle, it wouldn’t do for my tea to get cold.”

Angharad almost rolled her eyes. Such professionalism. Maryam, however, lingered by the desk.

“I don’t suppose,” she said, “that you happen to remember what time I came by?”

The sergeant eyed her strangely.

“Just a lick before five,” she said. “Is your memory going, girl?”

“Just curious,” Maryam smiled.

‘Bibi’ made an impatient noise and the Triglau pulled away. The pair of them followed after him, into the depths of the poorly lit warehouse. Angharad cleared her throat.

“You have been here before?” she asked.

Maryam’s face tightened. So it was as Angharad had suspected: the Triglau had, out of spite, tried to get at Uncle Osian’s gift. To steal it, destroy it? Who knew. Sharp anger bloomed. For one meant to be part of the same cabal to-

“I spent the night in an Akelarre chapterhouse with only one way in or out,” Maryam quietly said. “And left it around five thirty when Sergeant Mandisa came to fetch me.”

Angharad’s steps stuttered, as did her righteous anger.

“The sergeant lied?” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” the Triglau replied, openly frustrated.

She must be anxious indeed to be this blatant in her emotions. Maryam rarely deigned to show more than dislike when Angharad was about. Still, it appeared she had been too swift in her accusation. Though never spoken out loud, the thoughts shamed her. The noblewoman was reluctant to give apology regardless.

What good would it do?

The blackcloak led them first to Maryam’s cloak. Soon they were standing before a large open crate filled with straw, partitioned into smaller compartments. Numbers were carved in front of each compartment and the watchman slid a finger across until he had found one hundred and twelve. Digging into the straw, he yanked out a heavy black cloak with a lightly embroidered hood.

“All yours,” he said, and handed it over to Maryam.

The Triglau slid it on without a word. To Angharad’s critical eye it was too broad at the shoulders and slightly frayed at the hem but Maryam had implied the acquisition to be inexpensive. It occurred to her, after a moment, that it might be the hood – she had seen precious few on cloaks here – that interested the pale-skinned woman. The streets were largely empty, at this hour of the day, but Maryam had still drawn stares on their way to the warehouse.

Angharad had yet to see another Triglau on Tolomontera, and doubted she would.

“Now the rest,” the watchman hummed, putting a spring to his step.

Her uncle’s gift was deeper in, but a lantern had been hung close so they saw well enough. Their guide stopped by a hollow between two tall crates, leaning in and removing a plain wooden casket that he set down to the side. With a grunt he then pulled out a long wooden crate about five feet long but less than a foot wide and hardly even a foot long. The watchman got it clear out for them, then popped the lid open with a length of metal. It still lay atop the contents, though, revealing nothing to Angharad’s eager gaze.

“There’s your goods,” he announced. “The casket I set aside too. You’ll be inspected on your way out, so don’t get grabby.”

Gritting her teeth and the implied accusation of thievery, Angharad glared at his retreating back. She hoped his tea was tepid. Maryam cleared her throat, eyeing the crate, and the Pereduri knelt with a sigh. Setting the lid aside, she let her brow rise when she saw the contents.

Muskets lay in a bed of straw, four of them and unusually long. In a corner of the crate there was a silken red pouch. Angharad reached for that first, finding it heavy to the hand and clinking. Coins? She loosened the strings, peering inside, and found the gold luster of Sacromonte coinage – ramas. At least twenty pieces, she decided, perhaps more.

Good, she could repay Tristan by the hour’s end. The debt had been weighing on her.

“Useful gifts,” Maryam said, tone approving. “May I?”

Angharad glanced her way and found her kneeling by the muskets, hand just shy of taking one. She shrugged her assent and the Triglau took it, inspecting it curiously. It was only when she glanced inside the barrel she let out a surprised noise.

“Is it deficient?” Angharad asked.

It seemed unlike her uncle to send a broken gift, but perhaps he had been fooled by some merchant. Mostly she was puzzled at having been sent muskets at all, given that she was not a trained shot.

“There are grooves inside the barrel,” Maryam said. “Those are rifles, not muskets.”

“I do not know the difference,” the noblewoman admitted.

“They shoot further than muskets and more accurately, I think,” the Triglau said. “Though I hear they are also delicate things, and slow to be loaded.”

She then flipped around the rifle, showing Angharad the side of the wooden heft.

“That’s a word in Umoya, isn’t it?”

The Pereduri cocked her head to the side, reading the isibankwa discreetly carved there. She nodded, for it was.

“It means lizard,” she said.

“Lizard,” Maryam skeptically repeated.

Angharad’s lips quirked. It seemed that she, too, had a story to tell. If her own happened to be better told than the Triglau’s well, she would be satisfied in that.

“It is from an old Malani tale, almost old as Morn’s Arrival,” she said. “When the Sleeping God was yet the Waking God and making the world, he created mankind. First he decided they were to be as mountains and rivers, undying, and sent the fastest of all birds to tell them these news. But the bird, arrogant, stopped by a river to gorge on berries as it knew even so it would still make fine time.”

How long had it been since Father had told her that tale? She could not remember the years, only that she had been young. It was one of the rare tales from Malan he’d liked. Perhaps not so coincidentally, most Redeemer priests believed it to flirt with heresy.

“The Waking God grew angry at this laziness,” Angahrad continued, “and sent out a lizard to tell mankind they were instead to be as trees and animals, mortal. Only the bird saw the lizard, and in haste took flight.”

She cleared her throat, for Father had there made sounds and mimed the action but she saw no need to mimic that performance for Maryam Khaimov. Who, it must be said, was listening with seeming interest. It was more than Angharad had hoped for.

“The bird was so fast it would still have arrived first, so the God turned its feathers to silver and the weight made it fall it into the river. The lizard arrived first, announcing death, and in shame the bird took oath never to leave water – so turning into the first fish.”

Angharad hummed, pleased she had recalled it all without flaw.

“That is why we are mortal,” she finished, “and why fish die when they leave water.”

“So the rifles,” Maryam slowly said, “are named after the quick-footed giver of death.”

She nodded. The Triglau looked greatly pained.

“That is,” she admitted with great reluctance, “pretty catchy.”

Angharad did not quite allow herself to be smug, though she conceded to a quirk of the lips. No more, however. It wasn’t as if her uncle had named the rifles, though perhaps he had mentioned the tale to whoever did. As neither intended to carry the crate out, they removed the rifles and Angharad put away her uncle’s generous gift of coin. Only after putting the lid back on the crate did she recall the slender wooden casket, retrieving it and setting it atop the lid.

There was a latch, so Angharad knelt again to work it open. It popped open with a sharp tock, revealing red cloth wrapped around a long and thin object. She undid the knot and the wrap, heart beating against her throat, and only stopped when the whole of the sheathed saber was revealed.

It was, Angharad mutely thought, a beautiful piece.

Practical in its use of leather and steel, made for use and not mere ceremony, but the chape – the metal tip at the end – was sculpted into a pair of harps. As for the locket it was made of the traditional rings of steel, but over them the two-tailed snake of House Tredegar was stamped in elegant silver.

Fingers trembling, she pulled the saber halfway out. Steel flashed in the lantern light, the blade pristine save for a discrete maker’s mark near the cross-guard that looked like a stalk of wheat. The guard was steel but touched with silver tips suggesting a forked tongue, the grip fine leather wrap ending in a rounded, angled pommel. Gorgeous work.

Her eyes burned.

Clearing her throat, she slid the blade back into the sheath. It should have made her happy, this gift. Her uncle must have spent a fortune on it and it was a loving gesture besides. Only, looking at the elegant work before her, she could only think of the saber she had left behind on the Dominion at the bottom of some dark cliff. Her father’s gift, traded for lives and honor.

It was unfair to compare the two, a disservice to Uncle Osian to… Angharad swallowed, mouth dry. And yet. Her last scabbard, it’d had rings on the chafe instead of the locket. Four of them? Angharad breathed in sharply. No, five. She could not remember. Not for sure.

Something like panic seized her by the throat. She could not remember.

“A valuable gift,” Maryam said, leaning against a wall of crates. “Your uncle is a fine kinsman.”

Angharad closed her eyes, trying to get her breathing even. She would not shame herself by weeping for no reason. She needed to get up, to move – Maryam had not said it, but there was an expectation in the Triglau’s voice that they were to leave now. Take the gifts and go.

Only Angharad’s limbs were lead. Her fingers shook against the scabbard, the silver rugged to the touch. She licked her lips.

“Do you have family, Maryam?” she asked.

Her voice came out rough. A moment of silence followed. Angharad did not quite dare face the other woman. Breathe, she told herself, eyes still closed. In and out, in and out. Only her heart was a horse gone wild, its eyes white.

“My aunt may still live,” Maryam finally said. “I am unsure.”

It helped, listening to someone else speak. Thinking about something else, anything else. The Triglau’s voice was unreadable.

“But not your parents,” Angharad said.

“No,” Maryam Khaimov softly said, “not my parents.”

She heard Maryam push off the crates, lightly step forward. It was cowardice, but Angharad did not open her eyes even when she felt the other woman looking. She was shaming herself enough already. Only instead of the barb she was steeling herself for, she heard Maryam kneel next to her. Not so close she could feel the warmth, but enough if she reached out she would find the other woman.

In and out, Angharad ordered herself. Breath by breath, until her heart calmed. Not that her limbs ceased trembling. The Pereduri felt sweat on her back, as if she had been fighting for her life. She spoke, if only so that she might know something else than the dull, panicked rattle inside her head.

“Was it us?” she asked, voice gone throaty. “Malan, I mean.”

Is that why you hate us all to the bone? Maryam did not answer, at first, and Angharad almost flinched. Fool she, to ask about such a-

“My father,” Maryam said, “died of gout. His heart gave.”

Angharad hid her surprise. Gout was called the rich man’s disease and with good reason. Was Maryam from a wealthy household?

“It’s my mother the Malani got,” she said. “Only they were not, Angharad Tredegar, content with killing her.”

The pause there felt like a blade leaving the sheath.

“They stripped her, beat her and impaled her on a wooden stake.”

Angharad swallowed.

“I am told,” Maryam softly said, “that it took her hours to die.”

Sleeping God, impalement? It was a rare punishment these days, reserved only for the worst of rebels and traitors. The practice was a holdover from the dark days before the Peace of Nine Oaths, when a thousand kings had ruled the land with red laws and redder hands.

“I am-” Angharad began, then stopped.

Sorry? She was, for impalement was a cruel way to die. Cruel enough that Maryam’s mother must have done something to earn it, but could such a thing really be earned?

And though Angharad could say that she was sorry, she also knew that the word would mean nothing to Maryam coming out of her mouth. No more than some induna bemoaning the end of House Tredegar would mean something to Angharad, for what weight did the word hold when it was the only recompense offered?

If the apology of the lips did not reach the hand, it had only the worth of a breath.

“I do not know what to say,” she finally admitted.

She could not see it, but she felt it – Maryam clenching like a fist, something in her tightening until it creaked.

“That might be the wisest thing you ever said to me,” she replied, tone sharp. “What is it about that saber that picked at your scabs, Tredegar, that you saw fit to pick at mine?”

She did not want to answer, not really. But it was owed, if not by honor then at least by right. Angharad opened her eyes, breath almost steady, and found her uncle’s saber waiting for her.

“I had a saber, on the Dominion,” she said. “It was a gift from my father.”

A noise of acknowledgement.

“Song told me you lost it fighting off the cultists,” Maryam said.

I lost it refusing the Fisher, Angharad thought. And that loss was not forced on me, I was a choice. So why does it now unmake me, looking at the arms that would replace it? The Pereduri stared at her uncle’s gift, breathing out slowly. Steadily.

“It is not about the saber,” Angharad whispered. “Only – only that sometimes I think the cruelest part of a death is what follows after it.”

Her stomach clenched. It had been months now since she last dreamt of screams on the wind, but right now she could almost smell the smoke.

“Seeing it happen, that grief, it is…” she trailed off, licked her lips. “Like putting a hand to fire, Maryam. It hurts, and it stays, but it is a candid sort of hurt.”

She felt Triglau’s heavy gaze on her but did not meet it.

“It is what comes after that creeps in through every crack,” Angharad confessed. “A song my mother loved found on a sailor’s lips. Speaking a courtesy my father taught me. Hearing children laughing and thinking of…”

She swallowed.

“My cousins, Maryam, they were just boys.”

Angharad wearily laughed.

“There is no vigil that will keep you from that, the remembrances the world springs on you. Thorns in the flesh. And still I would hold them tight, drive them in, because otherwise…”

She let out a ragged breath.

“My saber’s scabbard, I-,” she stammered. “I can’t remember how many rings there were on the chafe. Four, I think, but it might have been five. And it is a fool thing to be undone by, but I cannot remember.”

Her finger clenched until her nails dug into her palms.

“I did not care enough to mark the detail, when my father first gave it to me,” she whispered. “I was pleased with the gift, with the blade and the occasion, but it was not a treasure to me.”

She had known nothing, then, less than nothing.

“Only by the time I stepped onto the Bluebell,” Angharad continued, “it was the last thing I had of him. It mattered then – should always have mattered, but in the throes of plenty I never gave a thought to lack. So now here I am, wondering how many rings there were on that scabbard.”

How wretched, that she would be here kneeling besides a stranger who despised her and the words would simply not cease leaving her mouth.

“I simply do not remember, Maryam,” she said. “I am a tree shedding leaves, one by one. Small things, now, but that will not last. How long before I forget what my mother’s face looked like, the sound of my father’s voice?”

Maryam Khaimov did not answer, did not so much as move a finger. Perhaps that was why Angharad had said it all – she was confessing to a statue, not a woman. Maryam’s silence was as resounding as in a temple to the Sleeping God. A pale hand rose before the both of them, the other woman silently tracing a symbol against thin air. A circle, and something more intricate within it. There was the slightest sighs in the air.

A moment of silence followed.

“Five rings,” Maryam said. “Your scabbard had five rings on it.”

And though no explanation followed, Angharad believed her.

“My people do not call themselves Triglau,” Maryam said. “All those born below the Broken Gate are of the Izvoric, so I am Izvorica.”

The pale-skinned woman rose to her feet. She opened her mouth and Angharad found hesitation there, suddenly overcome.

“It doesn’t help,” Maryam brusquely said. “Remembering it. It’s just carrying their coffins on your back.”

“Some weights are worth bearing,” Angharad said.

“I used to think that too,” Maryam replied.

They did not speak another word to each other until they found the others.