Pale Lights - Book 2: Chapter 21

Steady breath, eyes ahead, walk like he had a reason for it.

It bought Tristan the ten breaths he needed to leave and step past the antechamber into the glass-strewn ballroom, where he let himself slump against the wall. Forehead and palms on the stone, the coolness steadying, and still his breath caught. Panic was a blind thing, an animal whose frenzy would get you killed, but his head cared not: it spun, and behind the shakes spreading down his limbs lurked worse. The sight of her fading, of leaving, of aband–

A hand on his neck, soft as a feather.

“Tristan,” Fortuna murmured. “What happened?”

His fists clenched. Do not weep. Weeping was the sound of the wounded, the weak, and rats fed on rats just like they did everything else. He hammered at the wall with his fist to give his fingers a reason to shake. Some small, pathetic part of him wanted to ask her if it was true: whether she would leave should he be caught and broken, whether she’d grow bored or sick and… Tristan traced out that part of him, like chalk on stone, and wiped it clean. Like Abuela had taught him.

Fear, pain and grief, they were just humors of the body. Smudges on the mind, like chalk on stone. Trace them, wipe them and walk away, Abuela’s voice whispered in his ear.

“Nothing,” he forced out. “It was all a trick.”

“The god hurt you,” the Lady of Long Odds said as she withdrew her hand, voice gone cold.

“I hurt myself,” Tristan said. “It just helped.”

He pushed himself off the wall, tugged his coat down into place. His eyes were dry but he knew they would be red-ringed, and the roof of his mouth was so parched it stung to pass his tongue over it. Fortuna was standing close, but her eyes were not on him – instead they followed along the length of the ceiling to and fro, as if following a butterfly’s flight.

Then she went still, and suddenly it burned cold to behold her. Golden eyes and golden hair like a distant star, skin like porcelain and a dress like a gushing wound. Too much of what she was for the world to suffer it without trembling.

“Death and defeat,” the goddess scorned. “Did you think they were wings, child? They are chains, slowly tightening around your neck. One day we will find an end to pull, and when that last rattling gasp is torn out of you I will breathe it in and smile.”

And for a heartbeat he loved her for that. For being closer than a shadow and not being so in his corner so much as living in it. And maybe she could not love him back, not like a person could, but sometimes he thought it was close enough it didn’t matter.

Then the room groaned, shook, and a piece of the ceiling fell behind them.

Fortuna cleared her throat and when he turned back to her she was the goddess he knew once more, not a trace of that cold greatness left. A relief. She shot him a winning smile that was tinged slightly nervous.

“We should, uh, leave the room,” the Lady of Long Odds said. “I think it might have taken that personally.”

“You think?” Tristan got out, voice still hoarse.

“It’ll take more than loose masonry to impress me, you glorified shrine maiden,” Fortuna sneered at the ceiling. “And considering you are Scholomance, falling apart isn’t nearly as impressive as you seem to believe i-”

Tristan walked out of the ballroom before his goddess could get them buried alive. With the slate of his mind clear, he realized how stupid a risk he had taken by walking away from the others, even for so short a walk. He needed tempering. Song might have done him a favor, however accidentally. So long as there were eyes in his direction Scholomance should not have been able to change much, but-

Outside the ballroom he stood not in the stone antechamber but at the end of a long hall. There were four doors on each side and one on the opposite end – open – but the part that caught his eye was the glass cases covering the walls. They were full of human heads, each lovingly preserved and put on display. Men and women, most of them older. All of them wearing crowns. Some in silver, some in gold and a few in iron that- Tristan wrenched his gaze away.

Scholomance wanted to distract him, he could not let it get its way.

He hurried through the hall, heading for the open door. It should still connect to the same room, since there had been people inside to prevent Scholomance from moving it. He was barely halfway through when movement to his right had him reaching for his knife. Only it was a blackcloak, not a lemure or devil. A large Someshwari man with a tattooed chin. As well as the usual sword and musket he had a wooden mace at his hip, unusually shaped. It looked almost like a bottle made of wood.

“There you are,” the watchman grunted. “Come on, before you get yourself killed.”

Tristan eyed the door at the end the hall. A trick, then. Scholomance had crafted an entire hallway so he would be inclined to follow its length when the real open door was one he might pass by without noticing. The school was clever, exactly like Professor Sasan had warned them. He followed the blackcloak through the door, finding a stone antechamber much like the one he had seen earlier: though now there were two doors, and both were closed.

“Where are the others?” the thief asked.

He had left before Maryan took her turn. It could be her talents would let her weather the experience better than he, but they might also make it a great deal worse.

“Your captain went into shock after throwing up,” the man replied. “They’re getting her to the hospital in a hurry.”

Tristan breathed in sharply.

“Everyone left?” he asked.

Even to his own ears his tone sounded plaintive. Like a whining child’s. He needed to master himself. The Someshwari looked amused.

“Don’t worry, we’re not lost,” he said.

He got out a small brass device that straddled the line between watch and compass, too thick for the former but with too many gears for the latter. There were two thick needles within, Tristan saw. One was pointing at the door to their left, the other behind them.

“Tristan, right?” the man asked.

He nodded.

“Dev,” the watchman introduced himself. “This is a roseless cardinal compass, though we usually call them cardinals. Your cabal will be handed one later this year – it points at a part of Scholomance determined by the needle, in this case the front gates.”

“And it works?” Tristan asked, skeptical. “Would Scholomance not simply shift the paths to keep us away?”

“Keeping that going forever would take more power than it’s got,” Dev told him. “It takes time and effort for the school shift itself, so if you follow the needle and you’re careful all Scholomance will achieve is making it a longer way.”

The god in the walls was not all-powerful, then. Professor Sasan had implied it fed on generations of students, but it must have been at least a century since the school closed. It might just be feeling starved, and weaker for it.

“That’s what Captain Yue was doing,” he grasped.

The older man nodded.

“Navigators do it better,” Dev freely admitted. “Their Sign lets them ‘see’ ahead some, so the school can’t shift rooms as close as it can for us. It’ll likely take us longer to get back, though if we’re lucky we might end up close enough the captain can detour to retrieve us.”

The gray-eyed man hummed. A very useful device, that. And one that explained the bounties Song had mentioned taking place within Scholomance. With such a tool a cabal venturing inside to fulfill it would not simply disappear into the depths to be devoured.

“So if the first needle serves to point at the gates, what is the second for?” Tristan asked.

Dev shrugged.

“Fucked if I know,” he casually said. “The last user must have forgotten to put it back. It could lead anywhere, really.”

Tristan made himself smile. That answer, he thought, had been just a little too casual. Practiced. The thief could not afford recklessness, so he must find an angle. Provoke a reaction. Pretend to run off? No, heavy-handed and potentially a mistake. A leading question? He had left too quickly, so he had too little to work with. Although… Scholomance could make sounds so it likely could kill them as well, but the knee-jerk would still be there.

“We should call out for the others, see if they are close enough to hear,” Tristan idly suggested.

Dev’s face tightened for only the barest of moments before it smoothed away. Shit.

“Feel free to try,” the watchman shrugged. “It might work.”

Tristan smiled again, put it on slow and trusting.

“Thank you,” he said, turning towards the door as if to call out.

All the while he hid his hand under his cloak, reaching for his knife and – he caught only a flicker a movement, but that made the difference between taking the hit on the head and on the shoulder. Tristan yelped, backing off with a wince as the watchman drew back his wooden mace.

“Fucking Masks,” Dev said. “I should have asked double for one of you.”

“HELP,” Tristan shouted, drawing his knife.

The watchman snorted.

“You think Scholomance will let that out when we’re fighting?” he said. “No, it wants blood on the floor. No help for you, boy.”

Still worth trying.

Dev had a foot on him and was built like a bear. There was fat to that belly but muscle as well, and that was the worst kind of foe for someone using a knife. Even if he got a good blow in it’d be hard to make it a killing one. I need to cripple a limb, Tristan thought, giving ground even as the watchman idly spun his mace and advanced. Closing the distance without being struck would be difficult, given the man’s greater reach, but it was his only chance. Maybe a distraction, a-

Hesitation cost him. Dev suddenly charged in, swinging down, and the thief backed away again – only it was a feint and the watchman flicked his wrist again as he bounded forward, catching Tristan on the side of the head. Cursing, vision swimming, he swung at the man’s arm but only cut into the thick coat. It got him punched in the stomach. Tristan folded with a wheeze, but through the pain he saw an opening and drew his pistol. He pointed at the man’s chest and pulled the trigger even as the mace swatted away the gun.

The shot went wild, the pistol spun on the ground and Tristan was struck in the belly again. This time he convulsed as he felt to his knees, beginning to puke, but Dev kicked him over so he was looking up. He heaved drily, the bile not quite leaving his throat, and the large Someshwari snorted at the sight as he raised his mace-

Thunder, smoke.

—

The Zhangshou-pattern musket was of smaller caliber than the mainstay of the Republics, the Jifeng, but fired from this close on an unmoving target?

The watchman’s knee burst like a tomato left too long under the sun.

Song, her mind still and clear as a frozen pond, closed the gap even as the man attacking her cabalist dropped to his knee with a scream. He half-turned, hitting out behind him with the mudgar mace, but it was blind flailing. Song flipped her musket, cleanly hammering at the back of his head with the butt. The man dropped like a sack of rice. From the corner of her eye she saw that Tristan had pushed himself onto his hands and knees, but his eyes were still out of focus. The Someshwari watchman groaned, reaching for the musket he had dropped, but she kicked it away.

“Tristan?” she called out.

She barely recognized her own voice. It sounded like another woman’s – faint, empty.

“Alive,” the thief said, licking his lips and grimacing. “It will bruise, but nothing permanent.”

“You honorless shit,” the watchman on the ground said. “From behind.”

Song tossed away her musket, reaching for her sword and sliding it out. Hand and torso at the right angle, drill-perfect. Her hand was on the chisel.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Our friend Dev here said you’d all gone ahead and I should follow him,” Tristan replied, getting onto his knees. “I smelled a trap, and you saw how the ensuing brawl was going.”

With him being thoroughly thrashed. What had the watchman been up to? Was it even the same soldier from earlier, or had this cursed school slipped in a fake that-

“He mentioned getting paid,” the gray-eyed man added.

The bounty, Song realized. This was not a Scholomance trap or the man going mad, this was about that misbegotten bounty someone had put on Tristan’s head.

“Honorless,” she said at the prone man, disbelieving. “You call me honorless when you try to bag one of us for sale– and now, now of all the hours in all the days.”

She could still feel the grass against her legs, taste the smoke of the paper crane through the vomit in her mouth. Song could still see the contempt in her sister’s eyes, how she had deserved it. And now this, this utter – Dev, still face down against the ground, laughed.

“You silver spoon brats,” he groaned. “Everything handed to you, not a-”

He suddenly scrambled for the mace he’d dropped. Ice cracked. He dared, still dared. Song snarled and swung, the angle perfect and the flick of the wrist practiced and nothing half so satisfying as the thunk as her sword carved through half the fingers on that hand. He screamed and drew back the mangled hand. Dry-eyed, she kicked him belly up and stripped him of his blade before tossing it in a corner. The mace followed a moment later.

She should have done that from the start. Song needed to concentrate, to stop making mistakes that would cost everyone around her.

“You can’t,” Dev moaned. “I’m a watchman, you can’t-”

“You are a corpse, unless you talk,” Tristan said, still on his knees. “Who paid you?”

His eyes were sharp now. He was entirely there and no happier about that than she. Gods, Song had only left to fetch them because she could not bear to look at the way Angharad was bleeding. Dev’s dark eyes went to the thief, afraid, then to Song. She raised her arm, sharp edge still dripping his blood.

“I don’t know,” the man swore. “There were no names. They paid me to bring him to the west gate, alive.”

Tristan started, muttering something about a ‘second needle’, but that was not what Song needed. She rested the point of her sword on the wounded man’s throat. Not cutting into the flesh, only pressing. A measured threat, her hand was on the chisel.

“Descriptions,” she ordered.

“They wore hoods,” Dev said, then hurried on at the look on her face. “Young though, students. One sounded Izcalli.”

She waited a moment longer for him to go on. He did not. She couldn’t help it: Song laughed incredulously.

“That’s it?” she said. “That is all you have to say?”

Her grip tightened around the hilt of her sword until it hurt. Blood on her blade, her Mask savaged and all she had won for it was this? Panes shattered like glass.

“One sounded Izcalli,” she mocked in a deep voice. “Do you have any idea how many fucking Izcalli student there are on this island, you –” Antigua failed her, “you gouzazhong.”

“Song,” Tristan said, somehow on his feet. “We shouldn’t-”

“You think I’m the fool? You attacked a watchman, girl,” Dev interrupted, sneering up at her. “You think that won’t make it onto your record? That the stain won’t follow you for the rest-”

And he was right, she realized. It would be their word against his, and though she was confident they would come out ahead in the hearing the incident would be added to her record. She had shot a watchman from behind. Every superior officer she could ever have would know she had crippled someone wearing the black. Who would trust her after that? Who would let her stand behind them?

Song had already seen how bad it would be, fighting against the tide, and now mere minutes out of that place she was somehow making it all worse. She had learned nothing, made all that pain and grief pointless.

Crack.

“-of your life,” the man laughed. “You’re fucked, brat, you-”

Her hand slipped.

It was not the blow of a duelist or a soldier: her blade hacked into the man’s face like a butcher knife.

“You trash,” she snarled, ripping her blade out and hacking down again. “You relic, you-”

Song screamed and struck again. And again, and again and again. He had cornered her, ended her career. Only when her arm hurt and her breath was ragged did the silver-eyed girl fall to her knees, choking out a sob, fingers closed around the chisel she had used to make a ruin of the watchman. He no longer moved. Her eyes were tearing up. Someone crouched down on the other side of the corpse, and suddenly she remembered Tristan was there. Had been there the whole time.

“Oh,” she softly exhaled.

It was bad, but she could not bring herself to resent it. She was a rag wrung dry.

“Oh,” he repeated, almost gently. “Hello, Song Ren.”

Her lips thinned.

“I am not a wild animal,” she said, swallowing. “I don’t need-”

No words left her throat. The gray-eyed man shook his head, brown locks tumbling.

“I greet you,” Tristan said, “because we just met for the first time.”

Her fists clenched.

“I am not this,” she hissed.

“This is all we are,” he replied. “The rest is just what we wrap around so the nerve is not exposed.”

The last of the rage retreated like the tide, leaving behind a long shore of anguish and horror. Gods, what had she done? Tristan rose slowly, gingerly.

“This is a failure,” Song croaked. “I was only coming to fetch you, not to-”

The thief crouched and leaned forward, checking the pulse on Dev’s neck. He might as well check a roasted pig for blush. There was blood everywhere, including the neck, so after withdrawing it Tristan wiped his finger on the watchman’s clothes.

“He was right,” Song forced out, the taste bitter. “This will be in our dossiers. It will follow us everywhere.”

“He has a cardinal compass with a needle pointing to the west gate,” Tristan said. “That will lend weight to our words when we say he meant to grab me and take me there.”

“It’s not enough,” she tiredly replied. “We would need to catch those waiting for him as well, and unless they are great fools we will not.”

She considered it a moment, bringing this to Captain Yue. The other party will not be idling in front of the gate like idiots, just keeping a watch from distance. They’ll run when they see it. And we do not have anyone who looks like Dev even from a distance to try baiting them close. It would not be enough.

“It will be our word and a needle it is not a crime to possess,” Song said. “They won’t expel us for it, but we will be marked. I killed a watchman, Tristan.”

“Did you?” he quietly asked.

Her eyes flicked up.

“You can’t be serious,” Song said.

“Repeat after me,” he said. “We did not run into any watchman. You found me in a trap and helped me out, which is how you lost your cloak.”

Song slowly blinked.

“What?” she said. “My cloak is fine.”

“It isn’t,” Tristan said, gesturing at her chest. “There’s too much blood splatter, it will smell even if we wipe it. You’ll wear mine and I’ll go without.”

The Tianxi looked down and swallowed. There were flecks of red everywhere. She had not even noticed.

“They’ll know,” Song said. “When they see the corpse-”

“He is still alive,” Tristan said. “He has a pulse.”

That should have been a relief but it landed on her like a gut blow. She looked down at the face she had made a ruin and it sank in, one inch at a time, that senior officers might witness what she had done in her frenzy. Her professor. The senior signifier on the island. Song was going to be sick.

“This is important,” Tristan calmly said, “so that if truth tellers ever ask us whether we killed him we can saywe did not.”

She licked her lips.

“If he lives-”

“He won’t,” the thief said, getting up. “Is it looking at us, Song? Scholomance.”

The Tianxi swept the walls and ceiling with her gaze, finding the curls of smoke writhing around them, and slowly nodded. The god was everywhere, dripping from the walls like vines. Drinking in the violence that had taken place here.

“I know you’re listening,” Tristan said, and it was not until he looked up at the ceiling she realized who it was he was addressing. “We could still kill him, you know. Put him out of his misery. But I’ll make you a trade: let us get back to Captain Yue without waylaying us, and we’ll leave him like he is.”

Song’s jaw clenched.

“That,” she said, “is a fate worse than death.”

To be slowly devoured by this place, piece by piece? She could think of few ends worse. And Tristan hesitated, looking down at the watchman. But he saw something there that snuffed out the hesitation like a candle and then suddenly the gray was steel, merciless.

“I wonder,” Tristan Abrascal softly said, “if they would have used silver knives too.”

He looked up at the ceiling again.

“I’ll even bind his knee for you,” Tristan offered, “so he doesn’t bleed out too quick.”

The sound that answered him wasn’t a laugh, not the way men laughed. It was wood groaning and floors creaking; it was the wind through an empty hall and iron turning to rust. It was stone and darkness and patience. And it laughed as gods do, the echo of it rattling her bones.

Tristan licked his lips.

“Song?”

Like a breath sucked in. That was the only way she could describe the way the Scholomance had vanished. Not a speck of it left, though somehow Song knew it was yet watching them.

“It is gone,” she said. “I can’t see it anymore.”

And what was left to do?

Song got rid of her blood-spattered cloak and they got their stories straight while Tristan bound the knee. The others were on the other side of the open door at the end of the hall, where she had left them.

It did not even take a minute to reach them but somehow it felt like years.

—

Something was wrong.

Song and Tristan were tense during the journey out of Scholomance, but Maryam did not think much of it: who wasn’t? Tredegar was looking in the distance and seeing nothing, dry blood crusting under her eyes as she followed the group without a sound. Even Captain Yue was unsettled at how one of their escorts was tricked by Scholomance right under her nose, trying to find a trace of the soldier through seeking Signs but finding nothing.

“It moved aggressively right after feeding through the Lugar Vacio,” Professor Sasan mused. “Unusual, that. The school tends to release those it supped on in the hopes they will return.”

He interrogated the pair on the nature of the trap Song had rescued Tristan from, the gray-eyed man doing most of the talking. It sounded like a nasty piece of work, not unlike the rumors she had heard about the temple to a clockwork god that Tredegar and her company had encountered back on the Dominion. He had been lucky to get away with only a few knocks, and that Song had been quick thinking enough to sacrifice her cloak pulling him out.

Professor Sasan was demonstrably right about one thing, at least: it took them barely half as long to exit Scholomance as it had taken them to reach the depths. Captain Yue kept a metaphorical eye out for the missing soldier on their way back, pushing herself enough that Maryam could feel her nav filling the air, but Scholomance was disinclined to spit out its meal. The signifier, far from her visible excitement earlier, looked almost sullen as they crossed the entrance hall and passed through the great gates.

“I will file the report personally,” Captain Yue told them. “It is a rare for anyone gone missing to be seen again, but we should make the attempt regardless.”

“I wish you the best of luck,” Tredegar said, voice hoarse from her long silence.

Song said nothing, simply nodding, while Maryam thanked the captain for her help and pretended not to notice Yue trying to catch her eye. No doubt the older woman would like to interrogate her when the impressions were fresh, but she had no intention of going anywhere but back to the cottage. Something was definitely wrong with Song and Tristan: him being chattier with an authority figure had been a warning sign, but that Song had not even bothered to vocalize her goodbye to the senior Akelarre on the island was another.

That and Maryam could not remember them so much as looking at one another on the way back.

Professor Sasan and the remaining soldiers took their leave moments after, headed back towards the docks, and the four of them were left to stand alone in a stretch of stone. The Orrery lights above – gold and green, feeling of ripeness to her nav – lazily flowed through in stripes, but somehow the emptiness around them loomed. Standing beneath the grand façade Scholomance only reminded them of how small they truly were. Tredegar opened her mouth, but Song cut through.

“Back to the cottage first,” she said. “We can… address things there.”

After the better part of a week of going back and forth to their hidden home, there was hardly any need for pathfinding. When they crossed through the open grounds of a gutted temple a handful of lemures followed after them, wolf-like in shape and silent on their feet, but once Maryam pointed her pistol they scattered. The monsters seemed wary to attack if it was not an ambush, and after following them for a few minutes to further lack of opportunities they abandoned the chase.

The long trek up the stairs felt short, so eager was she to return to the safety of walls, and she was not alone in her haste. Tredegar kept pace and more, the two of them several times slowing their steps not to leave behind the other pair – which, she saw with a frown, were mere feet away from each other but still behaved like so much as brushing elbows would turn them to salt.

The tense silence that had taken hold of them on the way back lingered even when they put away their arms and cloaks and drifted towards the drawing room. No one wanted to be the first to talk, Maryam suspected. Song silently busied herself making a pot of tea while Tredegar sat at the kitchen table, looking down at her hands, and Tristan stood by the windows looking out into the garden. She went to join him, leaving off the others for now.

“I’d ask how you are,” Maryam quietly said, “but I expect the answer is the same for all of us.”

She did not much feel like conversation, in truth, but she had been in the room the shortest of them. Suffered the least. It was her duty to look after the others.

“Looking back, it made mistakes,” Tristan mused. “Details that were wrong. But when I was inside it did not matter.”

“It affected our minds,” Maryam agreed.

He breathed in slowly, shallowly.

“The Lugar Vacio,” the gray-eyed man finally said. “The Empty Place. I wonder why they call it that.”

A soft laugh. They both turned towards its source: Angharad Tredegar was looking at them.

“It is not obvious?” she asked. “That room, it is empty. It can only wield what you brought in with you.”

Maryam had a sharp retort on the tip of her tongue but she swallowed it. Tristan’s gaze lingered on the noblewoman for a moment longer, then he looked away without answering. Seeing that for the dead end it was, Maryam moved to the table. She was no pardoner, filled to the brim with love and forgiveness, so she sat across Tredegar instead of besides her. The Izvorica opened her mouth, but she was cut off by a shake of the head.

“Don’t,” Tredegar said. “You were in there for mere moments, were you not? Do not pretend you went through the same thing.”

“None of us went through the same thing,” Maryam replied, not unkindly. “That was the point.”

“That is not what I meant, which you know,” Tredegar flatly said.

She was more on edge that the Izvorica had realized if she was willing to make statements about what someone else knew – the Pereduri usually stepped around such things, the habit of someone avoiding even the possibility of a lie. Maryam raised her hands in concession. Song came to join them, brusquely setting down the iron teapot on the table. Three cups soon joined it, the Tianxi pouring herself the first without a word. Tristan, drawn in by the assembly, raised an eyebrow.

“No cup for me?” he teased.

He always refused it when offered, though it was true Song usually offered regardless.

“No,” the Tianxi bit out angrily.

Maryam’s brow rose at the tone. Tredegar absent-mindedly passed a hand through her braids.

“You can have mine,” the dark-skinned woman offered, pushing it his way.

Tristan was about to decline, the Izvorica saw, but then Song caught the cup and moved it back to the middle of the table.

“No cup,” Song harshly said, “for you. After what you-”

She breathed in deeply. Tredegar frowned, eyes moving back and forth between them.

“What did you do, Tristan?” she asked.

Maryam could smell the blackpowder in the air.

“We should rest,” she firmly said. “Speak on all this when we have a night’s sleep in us.”

No one answered her, but no one said anything at all so it was better than she had hoped for. Tristan, who had yet to sit, turned away. Headed back to his perch up in the tower, no doubt.

“Eat something first, at least,” Maryam called out. “We should get a meal in before-”

“Enough.”

She turned to find Song’s face a cold mask.

“Let him skitter away,” she ordered. “I do not have the stomach for sitting at a table with him and pretending like nothing happened.”

Tredegar rose to her feet.

“I ask again, then. What happened?”

She did not sound like she would let herself be talked out of getting an answer a second time and that was the exact moment, Maryam thought, when the powder caught.

“Yes,” Tristan mildly said. “Why don’t you tell them what happened, Song, since you are feeling so chatty?”

“The soldier did not go missing,” Song said. “I good as killed him to save Abrascal’s hide and he talked me into giving Scholomance the body.”

“I talked you into that?” the gray-eyed man scorned. “I said we should take it to the captain. You were the one agonizing about a mark on your record. All I did was clean up the mess.”

“You lied to Captain Yue?” Tredegar asked, sounding aghast.

Missing, Maryam thought, that the pair had fed a still-living man to Scholomance. That was… Her fists clenched. The watchman must have been trying to sell out Tristan, reading between the lines. She would give no sympathy to slavers, no matter how grisly their fate.

“I fought the man in defense of a subordinate,” Song flatly told the Pereduri. “Had I sufficient proof I would have come forward with it, but there was none.”

“That,” Tredegar evenly said, “is not an answer to my question.”

“I did what I must to save his damn life, Angharad,” Song harshly replied, pointing at Tristan.

“And what is that worth, when you were the reason for the danger?” the thief laughed. “I’m not the one who decided to drag us into the mindfuck room for some points on a board, Song. Or to have one of our own escorts bribed to-”

“Because you never decide anything, Tristan,” Song snarled. “It just happens to you. Like a misfortune, because that’s what you are. A child holding the leash to a calamity god, deluded enough to think you’re the one pulling while making everything around you awful, always.”

She stepped around the table and up to him, prodding a finger at his chest. In the Sacromontan’s eyes Maryam glimpsed the promise of violence. Did he still have a knife on him? She couldn’t risk it, moved forward.

“We have enemies like fleas, we get tripped up everywhere and now I killed a watchman,” Song shouted. “I had it planned, Tristan. I had it all planned, and since I ran into you it has all being going to-”

Maryam pushed down Song’s hand, steeling herself through the betrayed look that earned her.

“Enough,” she said. “Your words step beyond what you believe, Song.”

“No,” Tristan said, quietly, savagely. “Let’s have it out for good, Maryam. Let’s all face the fact that Captain Ren is staring at our deepest, most intimate secrets – at everyone’s fucking secrets, all the time! – but we must all walk on eggshells and pretend it is not happening.”

He laughed scornfully.

“Not that you can read a room even with magic eyes. A calamity god, you fucking fool,” he said. “My goddess can’t even dislocate and suddenly she’s why everything goes to shit around you?”

He leaned in.

“If you want the reason for your stumbling, fetch a mirror,” he said. “Just leave me out of it. I won’t be bearing that cursed burden for you, Ren.”

If Song still had her sword, Maryam knew sure as dark that she would have drawn it. Help, of all places, came from Angharad Tredegar.

“Tristan, kindly cease,” the noblewoman sharply said. “Song did you grave offense by speaking of your contract, but wild accusations-”

“It is a fact she is cursed,” Tristan interrupted. “She has to purge it out. Don’t you, captain?”

Tredegar’s face closed and she turned a hard look on the Tianxi.

“Is this true, Song?” she asked.

“What does it matter?” Song replied.

“We have suffered harsh turns since coming here,” the dark-skinned woman said, “and you never once thought to inform us that you are cursed?”

Tredegar grit her teeth.

“How many of our reverses came from it?”

“That is not how it works,” Maryam sharply. “It lingers in her, not on others.”

“You knew?” Tredegar asked, then shook her head. “Of course you did. And you will forgive me, Maryam, if I do not take for pure truth the opinion of a woman who did not argue when called the worst signifier on Tolomontera.”

The Izvorica’s nails bit into the palm of her hand.

“You want a reason why we’ve been having troubles?” Maryam coldly asked. “It probably didn’t help that you picked a fight with the single most influential cabal within hours of your boots touching the docks.”

“I protected a friend and ally,” Tredegar replied just as coldly. “And though there might have been consequences, at least I acted. What exactly have you done, Maryam Khaimov?”

She leaned in.

“Can you name a single contribution you have made to the Thirteenth?” she asked. “The sum of you, as far as I can see, has been nipping at my heels and then being run out of your own covenant class.”

Maryam’s jaw clenched, all the harder for her lack of answer.

“She’s not wrong it was a bad move to antagonize the Ninth,” Tristan said. “We recovered, but-”

“You have been detained, committed arson and twice attacked in less than a week,” Angharad evenly said. “I take no lessons from you on matters of trouble, Tristan Abrascal.”

“My decisions don’t bring consequences on the entire brigade, Tredegar,” he replied, thoroughly unimpressed. “Picking that fight did. It’s not about the knives, it’s about your making the choice to face them for everyone.”

“Did I shoot that watchman for pleasure, then, Abrascal?” Song darkly laughed. “You bring consequences aplenty.”

“I did not choose to have that bounty put on my head,” he snarled. “Are we going to start counting enemies as our own doing, Song? Because as bad as mine have been, at least I don’t count one of our professors among them.”

Hands clenched into fists, red faces. It was getting out of hand.

“This helps nothing,” Maryam said.

“Fitting,” Tredegar laughed, “that you would speak those words.”

“Would you stop?” Maryam hissed. “How are we even supposed to work as a brigade after this?”

The noblewoman scoffed.

“Have we been?” she asked. “I thought so, but it seems I have been thoroughly deceived.”

Angharad Tredegar breathed in.

“I’d told myself I would not be taken in by smiling liars again,” she said. “It is too late not to be fooled, but at least I can refrain from continuing in that mistake.”

And just like that, she turned and walked away. Maryam watched, genuinely taken aback, as the Pereduri made for the door. She picked up her cloak, her saber and her pistol, and without so much as a glance back she walked out into the night. The three of them stared at that open door in surprised silence, until Song let out a bitter laugh.

“Well, you finally got your way,” she said. “She is gone and you are left.”

And before Maryam could answer, the Tianxi angrily picked up the iron pot and threw it at the wall with a shout of rage. It dented, spilling tea everywhere, and Song swept up the stairs. The Izvorica stood there, digesting that last barb, and passed a hand across her face. She could feel Tristan standing there, unsure what to do.

“I will be heading to the chapterhouse tonight,” Maryam said. “The only way I will be getting a wink of sleep is in a Meadow.”

“I can go with-”

“No,” she replied, opening her eyes just in time to see him smooth his expression. “I need time alone, Tristan.”

He nodded.

“Of course.”

Maryam forced herself not to notice the look in his eyes when she spoke the words.

She could decide in the morning who it was she was angriest with.