Pale Lights - Book 2: Chapter 19

Tristan had never been the sort to find mindless labor soothing. He had seen too many people break their bodies stacking stones and scraping canals to believe there was anything noble about work, no matter the talk about the dignity in sweating for one’s wage.

Horses were patted and fed carrots, but when they got old they were still made into glue.

Still, the thief was not afraid of work when it had good reasons and there were plenty to weed the garden. For one he had seen Song laying out the beginnings of a chore sheet, so it would be best to get ahead of the tide and position himself as the designated gardener to avoid being volunteered for something worse.

The sheer quantity of soap the Tianxi had bought promised an unfortunate amount of mopping lay in someone’s near future.

“Oh, this one’s red,” Fortuna enthusiastically said. “Do you think it’s poisonous?”

Tristan eyed the weed in question, whose stem was pinkish and bore oval red leaves covered with thin white strands that were somewhat hair-like. It was not even the most suspicious plant he’d come across in the remains Sakkas’ ancient garden, which had him glad he had bought leather gloves.

“If this is the prelude to the usual suggestion I try to make tea out of it, I refuse,” he told the goddess.

“Coward,” the Lady of Long Odds accused, slumping down by his side.

Her red dress impossibly fluttered as she sat, her fingers sweeping back her golden hair to expose the choker on her neck – a riot of rubies and pearls he could only grieve not being able to pawn in the material. Eyes on the weed, Tristan carefully caught it and ripped it out with an eye to getting all the roots. Once satisfied he had, he tossed it onto the pile behind him.

“You don’t listen to me anymore,” Fortuna continued, tone growing whining.

“I’ve never listened to you,” Tristan absent-mindedly replied, ripping out another weed.

“You could let me test Song, at least,” she pressed. “You know you’d planned to, before Maryam chewed you-”

His gloved hand ceased short of another weed as he turned to glare at her, which only had her grinning.

“We had a disagreement, that’s all,” Tristan said.

Fortuna answered with a strange, poorly executed gesture that only the accompanying sound of ‘wu-paah’ let him understand was meant to be a whip being cracked.

“Come on,” the goddesses wheedled. “It doesn’t have to be in the middle of dinner, I can wait until it’s just the three of us in the room and make like I’m punching her in the-”

He ripped out the weed and threw it at her face, sailing right through.

“Rude,” Fortuna glared.

“We will test her, that hasn’t changed,” Tristan said. “But she gets a few more days of reprieve.”

The goddess, already grinning again, opened her mouth but he raised a hand to silence her preemptively.

“And no, Maryam is not why,” the thief said, then frowned. “Also that’s not what a whip sounds like, you’re doing it wrong.”

Fortuna spluttered in genuine offense, beginning a diatribe about how she’d once had whips of pure gold dedicated to her honor and no one in Vesper better knew what the crack of a whip might sound like. He rolled his eyes and returned to weeding.

Getting cornered by Maryam had not been pleasant, and there was perhaps some truth to her claim he had pushed too far with Song, but Tristan had not been convinced then and he was not now. A reminder that if Song turned on him he had the means to ruin her was not a threat, it was evening the score. Considering how rattled she had been that night he could have gotten much more out of her, so as far as he was concerned he had shown a great deal of restraint.

Maryam was evidently of a different opinion – ‘kicking her when she’s down’ had come up a few times – but he had given ground largely to end the conversation. Which she had caught on to, and been twice as angry about, but truth be told nothing she had said since moved the needle. Song Ren was not his friend, she was someone Tristan occasionally traded with. To keep the Thirteenth functional he was willing to throw her the occasional bone but he owed her nothing.

That Maryam evidently did count her a friend would weigh on the scales going forward, but that was all.

“I don’t understand why I should wait,” Fortuna pouted. “You want confirmation she really sees me, and since you insist your lady friend is not enough to stop then there should be nothing holding us back.”

Tristan sighed. He had been going to wait only a day or two, originally, so she was not being a pest entirely without reason.

“Teratology, this morning,” he said.

“The man with the skinny mustache who likes to hear himself talk,” Fortuna said, then cocked her head to the side. “Oh, he did pick on her some I suppose. Why do we care?”

Sometimes it was easy to forget that the Lady of Long Odds was not human, for all that she wore one’s guise. ‘Pick on her some’ was an interesting way to describe the public humiliation of Song Ren before a hundred of her peers, neatly destroying her reputation and marking her as poison to the touch for everyone in the room – and then most of Scholomance by day’s end, no doubt. Professor Yun Kang had known precisely what he was doing with that speech.

But Fortuna was a goddess, so neither humiliation nor being made a pariah weighed all that much on the scales of her mind. She would not be harmed by such a thing, so she could not truly see it as the attack it was.

“About Song? We don’t,” he replied.

Fortuna frowned.

“Then why?”

“Because we do not,” Tristan evenly said, “side with landlords.”

And that was what Professor Kang was, when you stripped him of the black cloak and title. Just another petty king sitting atop his land and rationing your right to have a roof above your head. A landlord of knowledge instead of houses, this one, but Tristan well knew the likes of that tone and that little smile. Yun Kang was the worst of the breed, those that promised they would delay your rent if you sold out the other tenants. No, you never sided with the landlord even when it cost you to hold back.

It was only a matter of time until it was you they came to bleed dry: there could be no peace with a leech, only truce until it grew hungry again.

Professor Kang had marked Song publicly in the hopes that the rest of them would turn on her, and no doubt he would toss little favors to those that went out of their way to trip her. But Tristan knew that game and he would have no fucking part of it, so Song Ren had from him a reprieve – she would be tested only when she had found her footing again, because he refused to let his own actions help the plans of the likes that man.

“So we dislike the professor more, that’s fair,” Fortuna mused. “I could punch him instead, if you’d like.”

He glanced at her, brow rising.

“What is it with you and throwing hands lately?”

“You said I can’t take revenge on Hage,” she said.

“I told you to apologize to Hage,” Tristan corrected.

She dismissed his words with a wave, then made a moue.

“And I have been feeling restless,” the Lady of Long Odds admitted. “Something about the air here is invigorating.”

Fortuna with greater vigor? Now there was the stuff of nightmares. She was pest enough while lazy.

“Is it because Tolomontera is an aether well?” he ventured.

Gods were like fish swimming in the aether, so perhaps the metaphorical change of water had been good for her.

“Maybe,” Fortuna muttered.

Much as he would have been inclined to keep pursuing that, the goddess rose to her feet in an indication she was so disinclined. Best not to push, he decided, or she’d get contrary about that subject in the future. Instead Tristan returned to the business of weeding until he had finished the whole rectangular field he had earlier outlined. It would take days more to clean up the full garden, at this rate, but he would begin sowing before that. They had already bought seeds with brigade funds and he was itching to use them.

It was a few trips moving the piled of ripped weeds to a corner of the garden where he would let them dry for a day before burning them, careful never to let anything touch his bare skin. He doubted that any plant that’d so long survived near the cottage of an archbishop of the Sunless House was entirely harmless.

Though he was done with the work he’d decided on for the day, the thief elected to scope out the boundaries of the garden one more time. Tredegar clearly intended on using some of the space for her exercises, which he supposed was fair enough, and he suspected that soon there would be a push for a shooting range as well. Best to delineate those areas now so the arrangements were not haphazard later. He had already put numbers to the dimensions with a measuring rope, but accounting for where the bushes and the-

“Huh,” Tristan said, stopping.

Fortuna leaned over his shoulder.

“You didn’t dig that, did you?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “I did not.”

So why was there recently dug earth in a corner of the garden, tucked away behind bushes? He was curious enough to go fetch the shovel and find out. He found nothing, and begun to think someone had dug as simple exercise – sounded like something Tredegar might get up to – until around a foot and a half deep he hit something solid. He loosened the earth around it then finished digging up by hand, revealing what appeared to be… stripes of chicken starting to rot. Frowning, Tristan examined the pieces and found some of them were lightly charred on the bottom.

Who had cooked these was not in question, but why she would have buried them was.

“Bait for animals?” Fortuna suggested.

No, they did not seem to find their way through the protections Sakkas had left. Tristan had not seen so much as a rat around, though there were insects so the filtering was demonstrably not universal. He put the stripe back into the hole.

“We wait until next week to test Song,” he finally said.

“Come on! If anything, ruining a chicken should lose her a day,” Fortuna protested.

“Only an idiot jostles for position with someone standing on the edge of a cliff,” the thief grunted back. “Maryam was right.”

Not for the reasons she had given him, but merit where it was due. He reburied the chicken and smoothed out the ground before scattering some twigs and dead leaves atop it. Tucking his gloves into his belt after he was done, he stretched out and sighed. Enough work for the day. He put away the shovel and went around the increasingly visible garden path to head back inside, finding that another had arrived while he was distracted.

Angharad Tredegar was seated at the low table by the windows, uniform loosened and a cup of wine in hand. They’d bought and brought new chairs yesterday so she could have sat at the kitchen table instead of on the ground in the drawing room, but he supposed the view was nicer where she sat. They were still missing furniture around the low table, though. Tristan had been disappointed to find out that the very comfortable armchairs he’d sat on in the Witching Hour were rotten through, though there would not have been enough for all of them anyhow.

“Evening, Tristan,” Tredegar said, turning to face him, and he froze.

The dark-skinned woman had what appeared to be a swelling black eye on the right and some bruising on the opposite cheek. Gods, what had she been attacked by to actually be hit – Lucifer’s own retinue? Only she seemed in a fine mood, not fuming, so she must not see herself as being defeated.

“Evening,” he slowly replied, then cocked an eyebrow. “Did you get that cleaned up properly?”

“Water is enough for bruises,” she began, “surely-”

He sighed and went to fetch the physician’s kit he had acquired from the Watch depot for a desultory sum – though the officers there had noted his name and brigade, so he could not buy them by the dozen and sell them to others at a markup. He touched a soft rag with alcohol and sat down by her side, gesturing for her to face him properly. Though Tredegar seemed faintly embarrassed and muttered something about fussing, she let him clean her face. Some of the cheek bruises had broken skin so the touch of the rag must have stung, but her face did not even twitch.

“What happened?” he asked. “I was under the impression you did not have Skiritai class today.”

“It was not obligatory,” Tredegar said. “The Marshal arranged rounds of sparring with each other to assess of our capacity with steel, powder and fists so we might best pick our companions for the fight on fifthday.”

Tristan’s expectations of what might be asked of Skiritai students had been high, but somehow he still had been surprised that ‘open a mystery box full of maneating monster’ had turned out to be their introductory lecture and the marginally improved situation of being allowed to pick the next enemy with foreknowledge was going to be a weekly occurrence. He cocked an eyebrow at her.

“I take it the fisticuffs turned on you?” Tristan asked.

The noblewoman grimaced.

“Muchen He is a devil up close, which I should have inferred when he sought me out for the fight,” she said. “Mind you, I trounced him with a blade. He pulls left and his footing is weak on the retreat.”

“Did you get him to use his contract?” he curiously asked.

Simultaneously he made to clean an already clean cheek as a distraction while his hand subtly crept towards the side of her coat. It should still be in the pocket.

“Marshal de la Teverin forbade their use,” Tredegar informed him. “He insists that-”

He barely felt her fingers catch his wrist before she slammed it into the table. He yelped, snatching back his hand when she released it, and sighed as he stopped falsely cleaning her cheek.

“What gave it away this time?” he asked.

The noblewoman smugly smiled.

“You always try with your right hand,” she said. “I have begun keeping track of when you obscure my line of sight with your left.”

He hummed. That was a bad habit, he would need to work on it. Tredegar’s own hand went into her pocket, producing the iron coin with a copper border he had been trying to steal.

“Do you need it back?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Keep it,” Tristan said. “I need to keep practicing. Hage says that in two weeks regardless of my progress he will have me begin to practice the opposite.”

“Planting coins?” Tredegar asked, amused. “How charitable.”

Best that she did not consider what else he would be able to plant, once he knew the tricks. Still, it was somewhat amusing to him that in Sacromonte he had considered himself too fine a thief to practice something as risky as pickpocketing but that as a Mask he was being trained in it.

“Thanks for the help,” he honestly said. “Maryam never notices, so it is little help.”

And Song had declined to participate, which he was starting to believe might be for the best.

“It helps keep me on my toes,” Tredegar happily said. “It is good training for me as well.”

Tristan rose to his feet, putting away his physician’s kit, and stretched out one last time. In other circumstances he might have been tempted to take a nap before getting started on the readings assigned by Professor Sasan, but he found his gaze straying to garden.

“I will be cooking tonight,” he decided.

Tredegar perked up, interested.

“Oh?”

“Something my mother taught me,” Tristan said, rolling his shoulder. “Sopa de colcha.”

“Quilt soup,” the Pereduri translated. “A strange name. What is it made of?”

“Whatever’s left,” he drily replied. “Come on, you can help me make it.”

Her main contribution ended up fetching water from the well, but at least she tried.

—

Considering how often Tristan had to go digging for secrets, it was a pleasant turn when answers were dropped right onto his lap.

He had expected Theology class to be of only accessory use to him, and little of what he first saw disabused him of the notion. They sat in the same hall used for Mandate, even settling at the same table – Song had sat there, and since yesterday everyone was treating her like glass even though she remained outwardly calm no one dared suggest another spot. This time the professor began at precisely the announced time rather than studying them through the eyehole as Professor Iyengar had. Professor Malba Artigas was tall, fair-haired and prone to frowning rather ferociously at the smallest of distractions. The thief was also fairly certain she was corregida – that is, a woman once believed a man.

Professor Artigas introduced herself as a signifier from the Akelarre Guild, speaking naught else of her qualifications or even her rank, and when a student muttered something in the back of the class she traced a Sign and swelled his tongue to the size of a sausage for half an hour. It hung out of his mouth, tar-black like some sort of leathery slug..

No one dared to chatter after that.

Her way of lecturing had more in common with Professor Kang than Professor Iyengar, only rarely calling on answers from the class and expecting copious notes to be taken. She laid out the nature of what would be studied in the first year – essential metaphysical forces, divinity and the infernal, the boundaries of contracts and Signs – only to then suddenly earn Tristan’s full attention.

“The introductory concept I wish you to leave this class with today is one of the foundations of Theology, the ‘Necalli scale of orders’,” Professor Artigas said. “It is also called the ‘order of entities’ by some, after its most common use.”

Tristan, who had only recently read that Fortuna was determined not to be a ‘second-order entity’, leaned in eagerly. There were faint murmurs in the back of the hall, but this time the professor did not raise her hand to punish the guilty.

“For those among you not on the Savant track, surprise at hearing the name Necalli spoken without a following curse is understandable,” the professor conceded. “To those yet in the dark, Necalli Suchil was a great border lord who reigned in the northeast of Izcalli in the years during and after the unification of that kingdom.”

Oh Manes. Bad took on a different depth of meaning when paired with the mention of an Izcalli noble with troops near a border. Professor Artigas folded her arms.

“Necalli was deeply concerned with the decay and destruction of Glare devices in the region, to the extent that he elected surrender to the House of Toxtle as a vassal rather than warring to remain a king,” she said. “He then spent the better part of thirty years and a massive fortune studying the deepest mysteries of Gloam, Glare and aether on an unprecedented scale.”

That did not sound too bad, but the faint grimace on the blond woman’s face told him otherwise.

“In that process, Necalli is believed to have enslaved, murdered and tortured somewhere in the vicinity of sixteen thousand souls,” Professor Artigas said.

And there it was.

“Yet, unpleasant as that reality is, Necalli Suchil is the father of the modern discipline of Theology,” Professor Artigas continued. “His writings are foundational and his great work, the scale of orders, has become the scholarly consensus.”

A look around the lecture hall revealed dark looks by the dozen – Someshwari and Izcalli both. The Kingdom of Izcalli had been unified in what, the Century of Loss? The man must have been despised beyond rival, for his name to still cast such a cloud after five hundred years.

“Necalli’s first contribution to the discipline is the principle of occupancy, which is as follows: the same discrete quantity of aether cannot hold two affects simultaneously, while remaining susceptible to pressures of mass.”

Professor Artigas took the time to write it out on the slate, her looped handwriting ornate but easy enough to read.

“In simplified terms, the same aether tainted by a man’s anger cannot also be tainted by someone else’s sadness, but an entire city grieving will push out a single mother’s rage. Since a god in their incipient state is essentially an aggregate of tainted aether, this means that gods cannot ‘overlap’.”

She turned a steady look onto the class.

“That is the reason why, for example, there are thousands of regional war gods instead of a single such entity for all of Vesper.”

Tristan cocked his head to the side, only barely following. So gods were like petty kings out in the Murk, each collecting from a handful of streets and kicking each other in the knees so none could ever get on top and collect from too large a territory. Greater gods like the Manes would be the equivalent of the large coteries, then, who had carved out a larger slice of the city and gathered enough roughs that no one could edge them out anymore.

“Having proved the principle of occupancy through his experiments, Necalli then went on to create his scale orders: it is a measure of the conceptual ‘space’ an entity occupies in the aether simply by existing.”

So a rating of coterie sizes, Tristan mused. How large a territory they would be able to claim. The professor drew a six on the slate.

“Animals,” Professor Artigas said, “are sixth-order entities. This is the lowest order and means that their trail in the aether it the smallest of all living beings. Their emotions, limited as they are, cause such little emanation in the aether that until late in the Second Empire they were believed to have none.”

Above the six she traced a five.

“Humans are fifth-order entities,” the professor said. “A single’s soul emanations are measurable but not mathematically significant. The overwhelming majority of beings in Vesper are fifth-order entities, however, so by sheer dint of numbers this order has the most significant influence on the aether.”

A four followed.

“Fourth-order entities are the least of the beings we call gods – that is to say, aether intellects that fed on a particular spectrum of aether taint until they became defined by it, forming into a continuous entity.”

The professor traced a long line, as if to separate the orders that would follow from the rest, then drew the three.

“Third-order entities are what we call ‘manifested’ gods,” Professor Artigas said. “Gods that took a physical form. This order of entities contains the most degrees of variation of any on the scale, the weakest in it being prone to overpowering by fourth-order entities while the greatest can be an object of worship across entire nations – the Moon-Eater of Izcalli and the Thousand Eye Lord of the Someshwar come to mind. Third-order entities have stabilized their existence and barring harm done unto them will continue to exist forever.”

She turned a steady look on them.

“This is not necessarily a blessing,” Professor Artigas said. “A god that manifested in the material but had its ‘space’ in the aether squeezed out by other entities will enter what we call rampancy: loss of intellect combined with an existential need to create masses of aether taint it can feed on to reclaim its space.”

That didn’t make sense, Tristan thought. Fortuna was weak enough she could not even dislocate, so how could she be of an order that stood above that of manifested gods? Why would the Watch even think that possible?

“Second-order entities are the highest ever recorded,” the professor continued, marking the number. “These are gods not only manifested but which have become such integral part of a concept they are fed by its mere continued existence in human consciousness.”

Now he rubbed the bridge of his nose, idly glancing around. Fortuna did not appear to be there – she usually wasn’t, during classes – so hopefully she had not heard that. The last thing he needed was for her to get delusions of grandeur about her being the incarnation of luck or somesuch nonsense.

“Standing in the presence of such an entity will kill most humans, as they are so large and solid within the aether that they are nearly impossible to dislodge by other pressures,” Professor Artigas mildly said. “Your soul, unable to emanate your emotions into the aether, will swell like an overfilled wineskin until it pops.”

Tristan grimaced at that, and he was not the only one. The professor brushed back a strand of hair escaped from her elaborate hairdo – curled, twisted and pinned up – and smiled for the first time since she had entered the hall.

“The only known way around this difficulty is to expose individuals of an age to have begun but not finished coalescing their soul to high-density aether,” she said. “For a period of time of several years would be best, over time allowing the soul to become… elastic, for lack of a better term.”

None in the hall were fool enough, Tristan thought, to be unaware that Tolomontera sat on one of the largest aether wells in Vesper. Or to miss what the professor was hinting at.

“It would not create immunity to the effect, unfortunately, but it would allow such individuals to stand in the presence of such a god without simply metaphysically suffocating to death,” Professor Artigas said, and then smile was gone.

The last number, one, was drawn almost as an afterthought.

“First-order entities are entirely theoretical, but they are the logical conclusion of the Necalli scale of orders,” she told them. “Such a being’s will would be absolute within the aether, and through conceptual symmetry it would be able to shape reality with but a thought.”

She shrugged.

“The Sleeping God, should he exist, would be such an entity.”

The lecture did not continue for long after that, and Tristan was only half-listening anyhow. What was it about Fortuna that had led the Watch to even consider she might be so high in the scale of orders?

And why was it that the more he learned, the more answers turned to questions in his grasp?

—

Warfare boasted two teachers and a horde of assistants.

The pair introduced themselves as Captain Rhys and Captain Nandi. The former was a Stripe, the latter Skiritai, and they shared the surname of Khota. Married, he decided after watching them a bit. Rhys sounded Pereduri – name as much as accent, which had much in common with Tredegar’s – while Captain Nandi was markedly darker of skin as well as near a foot taller. Captain Rhys was handsome enough he got admiring looks, two golden studs in his lip moving every time he smiled, while his wife had so many scars Tristan would believe it if told she’d fallen into a pile of razor blades face first.

The day’s class was to take place on a drilling field tucked away between two wings of Scholomance, only a short walk away from the plaza outside. The spikes hammered into the ground were much rarer, with longer distances between them, but the walk there was no more pleasant for not being inside the halls of the school. Silhouettes seemed to be following them from rooftops, shadows hid pits and unsettling windows. The students had moved as a group without someone stepping up to propose it, dim unease making them close ranks.

The pair of captains was not alone on the field, either, with a small horde of officers around them. Captain Rhys explained that Warfare was to alternate between individual practices led by Captain Nandi and the cabal-based tactics studies which were his half of the class. His wife kept picking up his sentences where he trailed off and the other way around, which Tristan found annoying but many around him seemed to find charming. What the Malani explained was that, more than any other of the general classes, Warfare was to be loosely evaluated.

Unlike Professor Kang’s promise of a test every two weeks at the minimum, neither of the captains intended on following their students all that closely.

“Basic marksmanship with a firearm of your choice and an acceptable standard of armed or unarmed close combat will be all that is required of you to pass to the second year,” Captain Nandi said. “I expect at least many of you would be capable of passing that evaluation today.”

“There will be a test at the end of the year, both written and field, for the tactical half of the class,” Captain Rhys said. “That is all.”

“Warfare exists for two reasons,” his wife continued. “The first is to bring the recommended from non-combat covenants to an acceptable field standard.”

A fair concern, Tristan mused, if they were to be sent out on assignments where all cabalists might be drawn into the fighting. The Watch was not going to pour years and a fortune into training a Tinker just so they could be eaten by the first lemure to sneak into camp at night.

“The second,” her husband said, “is for those of you who want to sharpen your skills to have the opportunity to do so. You will get from this class what you put in, nothing more or less.”

“It is your right to coast through,” Captain Nandi acknowledged. “Some of you will.”

“And among those, some will live to regret it – if they live at all,” Captain Rhys bluntly said. “The Old Night does not care what covenant you belong to.”

And on that charming note, they laid out how the class was to take place. The drilling field was to be split into three thirds: one for firearms, one for armed combat and one for hand-to-hand. Students were invited to head where they would prefer, and could even move from one group to another during the class as they wished. The captains and the other blackcloaks on the field were to serve as instructors for one of the subjects, with the emphasis on the first day being evaluating if a student was currently capable of passing Captain Nandi’s end-of-the-year evaluation.

The mass of students exploded into chatter at the announcement, cabals pulling together to discuss. The Thirteenth was no exception.

“I will be heading to the armed combat,” Tredegar immediately volunteered.

“Aren’t the only ones likely to give you a challenge Skiritai?” Tristan noted. “You already train with those.”

“Captain Nandi moves likes a swordmistress,” the noblewoman said, eyes bright. “I would test myself against her.”

“The firearms for me,” Maryam contributed. “I would find out if I am fine enough a shot with a pistol already.”

He slid a glance at Song, expecting to hear the same. She must have caught his unspoken meaning, because she shook her head.

“I would not learn anything,” she said, which should have sounded like a boast.

It did not.

“Armed for me as well,” the Tianxi said. “I could use the practice.”

Eyes went to him, as the last holdout, and he grimaced.

“Hand-to-hand,” Tristan said.

He was tempted to find out if someone could teach him the knife – close up and thrown – but weapons could be taken from you. Your hands could not.

Well, not without a hatchet and some effort but if it came to that he’d have more pressing worries.

“Wise,” Maryam praised. “They won’t let you throw the pistol here, and that’s your best shot with one.”

He glared at her. Mostly true, but still.

“Unarmed is a fine choice,” Tredegar praised. “We could practice at the cottage on evenings!”

“Let’s see how bad my bruises are first,” the thief snorted.

“Remember not to take risks that will see you wounded,” Song reminded them. “Tomorrow afternoon we are to undertake the bounty.”

A round of agreements and they parted ways, breaking up as most of the other cabals were. The subject Tristan had picked turned out to be the least popular, so comparatively the twenty or so headed the same way as him should benefit from more attention by the instructors. Only the thief found himself getting a little too much attention when one of the instructors picked him out from the pack immediately.

“This one does not even know the basics,” Sergeant Mandisa said. “I’ll put him through a remedial.”

“Surely that’s not-” he began.

She dragged him off by the scruff of the neck, other instructors answering his pleading stare by pointedly looking away. He could not even be angry at them for it: Mandisa was terrifying. She released him only when they reached a circle of white paint in the sand, and none too gently.

“A pleasure to meet you again, sergeant,” he charmingly smiled. “Why-”

The slap on his right cheek wasn’t hard. It didn’t even hurt, really, the sting was mostly from surprise. He had barely seen her move.

“You little rat,” Mandisa smiled. “Did you really think Wen wouldn’t notice you went through his things?”

Ah, unfortunate. It would have been nice to get away with it.

“It was the assignment,” he said, which was largely true.

“You entered my home,” she coldly said. “My room was unlocked, m underclothes in the open.”

Tristan eyed her with open confusion at the odd turn.

“What would poisoning you gain me?” he asked.

More confusing still was how baffled she looked at his answer. He wasn’t the one implying the use of a probably expensive contact poison on underclothes to rid himself of a Watch officer who’d yet to even act against him.

“Pois- what are you even saying?” she said. “I mean stealing them.”

He cocked his head to the side, studying the madwoman.

“For burning?” Tristan asked.

Surely they couldn’t be that expensive. No, by the look of her face he’d missed his shot in the dark.

“Ah, of course, for washing,” he tried, injecting confidence he did not feel.

Although why she would be angry at him doing a choice for her he could not say. The sergeant stared at him for a long, unblinking moment before sighing. He had… passed a test, maybe? Or perhaps been disqualified, it was hard to tell.

“All right,” Mandisa said. “I won’t be breaking your nose purposefully.”

“I think you mean accidentally,” Tristan said.

“There was not,” she beamed, “going to be anythingaccidental about it, I assure you.”

“I don’t suppose I could have another instructor,” he tried.

“I’m a qualified hand-to-hand instructor who places well in tournaments,” Sergeant Mandisa said. “You have the best possible instructor already, Tristan.”

He sighed.

“Try not to give me another black eye,” he asked. “The last one is just starting to get better.”

“Sure,” Mandisa lied.

—

He was not qualified in hand-to-hand or with a pistol. It was going to be a long year.