Pale Lights - Book 2: Chapter 9

When Song suggested they go to the Emerald Vaults for breakfast and conversation, it was not really a suggestion.

She had that look on her face, the one Maryam had learned meant the decision was already made and arguing was at your peril. Not that any of them were inclined to argue, the Izvorica least of all: she was still recovering from the inside of that coffeehouse. Feeling out such a strange shop with her nav had been habit, barely even a conscious decision, but what she’d felt… It had been like standing in the middle of rapids, the currents in the aether strong and wild. Lucky her there had not been rocks, else her spirit-effigy might well have been wounded.

The inside of the Chimerical had not been the overly cluttered study of a widowed trader it looked like, but something carefully arranged to stir the aether within. Maryam had known such a thing was possible, of course, at least in principle. She was no Umuthi tinker, but she understood the basics of how aether machinery functioned – through conceptual symmetry movement was induced simultaneously in both aether and the material, creating motion or some other expression of energy.

The devil of the Chimerical, this ‘Hage’, he’d accomplished what would take the finest mechanical minds of Vesper years of research and a fortune in material with a stuffed alligator and potted plants.

A sense of awed dread carried her most of the way to the Emerald Vaults in silence, which Tristan took notice of. He slowed his stride as they approached the hostel that was their destination, as if waiting to enter together.

“What’s wrong?” he quietly asked.

Maryam licked her lips.

“That coffeehouse was arranged to confuse signifiers,” she said. “I got too curious for my own good.”

It was impolite, she knew, but Maryam still sent out her nav to feel him out. Tristan always felt the same to her sense: like fire hidden away in a dark bottle, known only through heat and glint. Always warm to the touch. The thief’s eyes were narrowed when she found them.

“How bad?”

She shook her head, heading that off at the pass.

“That the devil can do this at all means he could have done much worse,” she said. “This was slapping a child to teach them manners, not an attack.”

Not harshly, but firmly enough the lesson would be committed to memory. Tristan slowly nodded.

“Wen already knew Hage,” the thief said. “And he said earlier that the Chimerical ‘opened here’, as if it has existed in places other than Tolomontera. There is more to that devil than we know.”

“This island has more secrets than the sky has stars,” Maryam complained. “Come on, let us catch up to the others before Song declares martial law in the name of breakfast.”

The woman in question was waiting impatiently in the entrance hall of the Emerald Vaults, which was opulent enough Maryam understood why Song had so wanted them to stay there. When they were escorted into the garden, she noted it was not a blackcloak but a man in servants’ clothes that led the way. They were settled on the edge of a large terrasse overlooking a field of purple and silver flowers sown with lanterns of wrought iron.

Everything about this place was irritatingly pretty, even the elegant wooden table they shared covered by an intricate gray tablecloth.

A servant was there in a matter of moments, asking their favored drink and preference in breakfast: freshly baked honeybread, a plate of fruits with buttered white bread or fresh fish on eggs with Sarayan spices. Song seized on the honeybread with her equivalent of unseemly haste – waiting for a long, pointed moment then immediately speaking – while Maryam went for the fruits and the other two for the fish.

“I shall soon return with the drinks,” the woman smiled, bowing low.

Maryam stiffened, though not because of the words.

It was difficult to explain the sense to someone who had not forged their nav – not unlike telling a blind man of colors, she suspected. Mother had described it as terazije-vid, the scales-sight. To be able to feel weight and worth with the mind’s eye, like the fox in the story of the Weeping King. Disloyal as the thought was, Maryam preferred the way Captain Totec had told it. We are as fish in the river, he’d taught her,sensing the current by being one with it.

And what she sensed in the current was someone trying to mark Angharad Tredegar with their nav.

She sent out her own spirit-effigy, slapping away the attempt, and the intruder immediately gave ground. Tredegar flinched, batting away from her ear a fly that did not exist, and Maryam’s gaze swept the terrasse. The garden overlook was hardly crowded, but neither was it empty: six other tables were occupied. Two singles and four shared, and though she looked for the guilty party no one revealed themselves by expression.

“Maryam,” Song prompted.

“Tredegar has the attention of a signifier,” she replied. “I drove them away.”

The Malani stiffened.

“Have I been cursed?” she worriedly asked.

The Izvorica almost rolled her eyes. As if it were so easy to curse someone with Gloam. Even the most bare bone of curses, those that were essentially Ancipital Signs – concentration and manipulation of raw Gloam – simply sliding a bubble of Gloam somewhere important in a body and hoping it got sick, took at least a few minutes of concentration and refinement if you did not want to be terribly obvious about having done it.

“No,” Maryam said. “At a guess, they were trying to get an impression of your soul so you would be easy to pick out of a crowd.”

“And you prevented this,” Tredegar slowly said. “Acting in my defense?”

It was easier to take offense to the surprise than read into it, so that was Maryam did.

“My name’s on the same cabal list, Tredegar,” she coldly replied. “Triglau can keep their word too.”

From the corner of her eye she saw Tristan wince. The noble’s lips thinned.

“I did not mean to impugn your honor,” she carefully said, “but to thank you for your efforts on my behalf.”

Song was staring at her hard enough it was going to bore a hole into the side of her skull, so Maryam held back and simply grunted in acknowledgement of Tredegar’s words.

“Well,” Tristan said. “That seems as good a segue as any into the first meat we must carve up, ou-”

Whatever he had been about to say, it was not to be. Not because of the return of someone’s impudent nav or even the servant from earlier but by a tall and neatly dressed young man in a formal Watch uniform. Lierganen, Maryam assessed. Mustachioed as was so often their way, fit and dark-haired. He bowed and offered a charming smile.

A glance around the table told Maryam none of them had any idea who he was.

“My apologies for the boldness of the approach,” he said, “but I could not help introducing myself.”

“Could you not?” Song pleasantly replied. “Your life must be very difficult.”

She even smiled politely at the end, like she’d not just told him to fuck off, and Maryam swallowed a grin. Song was most enjoyable when someone had just stepped on her toes, as this one had. The man’s smile grew a little strained.

“I am Captain Tristan Ballester of the Forty-Fourth Brigade,” he bravely continued, then entirely dismissed Song and turned his smile onto Tredegar.

Song looked like she was seriously considering strangling him, Maryam noticed, and the grin slipped out.

“Do I have the pleasure of addressing Lady Angharad Tredegar?”

The Malani’s face was like a bland wooden mask.

“I am she,” Tredegar replied. “Can I help you, Captain Ballaster?”

“Please,” he easily said. “Call me Tristan.”

Their own Tristan was eyeing the stranger with the faintest of frowns, trying to figure out the angle at work and more than willing to be forgotten about until he had.

“I come to congratulate you on your stunning victory last evening, my lady,” Captain Ballaster continued.

His eyes flicked up and down Tredegar’s uniform, quickly but visibly, and Maryam almost had to shove her fist into her mouth not to start laughing when she realized what was happening.

That dog was not just barking at the wrong tree, it wasn’t even the right forest.

“Alas,” Captain Ballaster gallantly said, “I must inform you that you prevailed twice over for your grace and beauty have triumphed over my-”

“No,” Song flatly said.

The man paused, turning his gaze back to her.

“I don’t follow,” he said.

“No,” Song repeated. “You do not get to interrupt my morning meal for your attempt to talk my cabalist into dallying beneath her.”

“Excuse me?” Ballaster bit back, straightening his back.

“Ah, at last we are of a mind,” their captain replied. “You are, indeed, excused.”

The man’s cheeks reddened but when he glared angrily there was not so much as a hint of give in Song Ren. She stared him down, letting the weight of her words and the ensuing silence wilt him before the eyes of the entire room – because this entire debacle had, naturally, drawn the attention of every last soul on the terrasse.

If Tristan felt like fire in a bottle to her nav, then Song was a millstone: heavy, plodding on with a deceptive slowness. It was all too easy to forget its nature was to grind anything it caught to dust.

Captain Ballaster further reddened at the continuing silence, looking at Tredegar and finding only an unsmiling, expressionless face. He cleared his throat, now unpleasantly aware of the eyes on him. Any longer standing there and he would be a figure of fun among Scholomance students by the day’s end.

“Some other time,” Ballaster said, then offered Tredegar a nod. “Lady Tredegar.”

The Malani’s lips quirked into something falling short of a smile and she did not answer, letting him retreat with his tail between his legs without once glancing his way.

“Double Death Brigade indeed,” Tristan noted. “What with the way Song just murdered him twice.”

Maryam choked and Song tried to send him a disapproving look but it was difficult for her to manage one while flattered. Tredegar was the one frowning.

“How lacking in manners, to approach a lady in such an unsuitable setting,” she deplored. “I wish we had not been quite so rude in return, but he did seem likely to linger otherwise.”

“If we are to look for allies,” Song firmly said, “we can do that better than that.”

The man was now back at his table – he was one of those eating alone – and was carefully not looking their way. Some of the other students were whispering as they shot unsubtle glances his way. The drinks arrived mere moments later, Maryam soon sipping happily at her xocolatl. The cool, spicy brew lingered against the roof of her mouth and washed away the last dregs of unease from their visit of the Chimerical.

“Something about meat on the table,” she prompted Tristan.

He nodded, setting down his cup of pressed oranges.

“Enemies,” he said. “I found out several things last night and I expect Tredegar did as well. Shall we take stock?”

“Let us,” Song approved. “Though we must discuss classes after, as Captain Wen requested we make haste in choosing electives.”

Tredegar was invited to begin, which was how Maryam learned she had not simply gone around picking honor duels for the pleasure of it. If the man from the Ninth Brigade had been stabbed while taking a swing at old acquaintances from the Dominion then the Izvorica was inclined to forgive the trouble brought to their doorstep. She liked Ferranda, always had, and Song had once implied to her that Zenzele’s contract was a very useful one.

Between that and Shalini Goel’s deadliness with pistols, even if their fourth cabalist was a bag of onions they would still make fine allies.

“Captain Nenetl was markedly friendlier afterwards, and intimated the possibility of deeper acquaintance between our cabals,” Tredegar continued. “The other significant approach was Captain Imani Langa.”

“Eleventh Brigade, the one who honed in on you early,” Tristan said, leaning forward. “What was she after?”

Tredegar hesitated for a moment.

“To recruit me,” she said. “You say she captains the Eleventh? She did not mention this.”

He nodded.

“Then it appears Lord Thando extended me an offer on her behalf earlier in the night that I ignored,” Tredegar noted, then embarrassedly cleared her throat. “I also believe some of her interest in me might be of a personal nature.”

Maryam sought out Tristan’s eye. He discretely mimed a low-cut dress and a shapely figure. Oh dear, the Izvorica grinned. She gleefully caught Song’s attention, cocking an eyebrow at the captain. On the Dominion the Tianxi had more than once bemoaned Tredegar’s infatuation with the brightly colored snake going by Isabel Ruesta and it now appeared that Angharad Tredegar was to have enduringly terrible taste.

It was the most likable Maryam had ever found her.

Song, predictably, grimaced unhappily at the Tredegar’s obvious interest.

“If that woman is not Krypteia, I will eat my hat,” Tristan shared. “She has had training in tradecraft.”

“It would be unwise to deepen that acquaintance,” Song stated, eyeing Tredegar.

The Tianxi did not, however, outright forbid it. Going easy on Tredegar again, or worried about giving orders that would not be obeyed? Hard to tell. With Tredegar’s part of the tale out of the way, they got to Tristan’s and there matters grew convoluted.

“So Tupoc Xical is spying on us,” Tredegar coldly said. “I should have expected it. He means to be a foe on Tolomontera as well, then.”

“Or he is assessing how dangerous we would be should we come after him,” Song said.

“He had Ferranda tracked as well,” Tristan pointed out. “And more thoroughly than you. That has me leaning Song’s way.”

The same was true of Maryam.

“Xical goads others so he can get a read on them,” she said. “Only then does he risk fights, when he has the lay of the land. I do not think this is any different, only that the nature of Scholomance means he can no longer rely on insults and provocations to learn what he wants.”

Song nodded her way in approval.

“Either way,” the Tianxi said, “there is no gain in going after him unless we have good reason to believe he will come after us. A reconnaissance of our own might be in order, but no more than that. It is the other threads you’ve picked out that concern me, Tristan – that a member of the Nineteenth Brigade, this ‘Lady Cressida’, helped him bring in his spy.”

“An ally of his?” Maryam guessed, then shrugged. “Hard to believe, I know, but…”

“To some souls strength is preferred to character,” Tredegar agreed. “That part I do not doubt. It is that Tupoc Xical would make bargains unless there was a great need I find dubious.”

Maryam conceded the point with a nod. At least on the Dominion, Xical had only allowed himself to dally with accords when he was a leading force within them. The moment he no longer had his hand on the steering wheel, come the Trial of Weeds, he had walked out.

“It could be the Nineteenth has another stake in this,” Song said, sneaking a look at Tristan.

The thief hummed, not denying the possibility.

“Help Tupoc’s cabal and ours get into a fight, then swoop in when losses are taken to collect on my bounty?” he said. “It’s not a bad plan, if that is what they intend.”

The Tianxi sipped at her tea, thoughtful.

“The meetings you mentioned Captain Ferranda has been arranging might be an avenue to learn information on the Nineteenth,” Song decided. “Gossip between captains is certain to be informative, if not necessarily accurate. I will attend the next one and see what I can learn.”

Maryam cleared her throat.

“The Nineteenth could be trouble down the line, but the Forty-Ninth is a threat in the present,” she pointed out. “We need to deal with them.”

“I am most impressed you were able to escape them, Tristan,” Tredegar said. “Some sort of grenade was involved, I understand?”

The thief licked his lips.

“It’s more complicated than that,” he admitted. “The roof broke when I blinded their Skiritai, and then I fell into what I thought was a basement but proved to be something else.”

“The ‘accidental crossing’ they detained you for,” Song said, silver eyes narrowing.

Maryam breathed in sharply.

“That they what now?” she said, seeking Tristan’s face for fresh bruises.

He always got bruised, it was like the man was made of peaches.

“You were in jail?” she demanded.

“I was in detainment, Maryam,” he replied without batting an eye. “That is completely different.”

She met his gaze, distinctly unimpressed.

“Did they lock the door?”

If they locked the door, it was a jail.

“I’m not going to dignify that with a response,” he haughtily replied.

Tredegar cleared her throat.

“If I may ask,” she said. “Where did you cross into, Tristan?”

“The watchmen called it a layer,” he said. “It is some sort of… place in the aether, an impression made by a particular time, and supposedly there are several here. The one I visited is called the ‘Witching Hour’, a dream of the night the Watch invaded Tolomontera.”

Eyes went towards her at his words, even Tristan’s, as save for Song she suspected none of them knew much of anything about metaphysics. Maryam herself only knew so much, having come to Akelarre teachings later than most. Besides, she must acknowledge that the Navigators were not as concerned with the academics as the Peiling Society.

Signifiers taught mostly in practicals, but that practical knowledge was admittedly still be more than anyone else at the table would. Maryam bit her lip, worrying it as she chose her words. An impression was one of those concepts that could not easily be explained without drawing on several other concepts.

“Do you know what an aether well is?” she finally asked.

Hesitant nods all around. Song was the one who volunteered a concrete answer.

“It is a naturally occurring phenomenon where aether flows into reality in great quantities,” she said. “Tolomontera is one such place.”

The Izvorica nodded. A simplification, but essentially correct.

“Aether is both a realm and an element,” Maryam told them. “The word is used to refer to both interchangeably, which can be confusing, but the simplest way to put it is that the material world has an immaterial mirror, which we understand as the ‘realm of aether’.”

She licked her lips.

“The realm is called that way because it is made up a single element, aether, and that element leaks into the material world through places we call aether wells.”

Maryam found the attentive gazes a little unsettling. Even Tredegar looked heedful. Particularly Tredegar, honesty compelled her to admit.

“You will have heard from all sorts that your emotions taint the aether, which might have you wondering how anger at stubbing a toe can reach such an immaterial realm,” she said. “The simplified answer is that your soul straddles the line between material and immaterial, reaching into both.”

Awakening her blind soul into a nav, a soul-effigy, had been the first step on Maryam’s path to being able to wield the powers of the world. To weave Gloam without first doing this was possible, but it would condemn one to petty tricks and ugly death.

“We do no matter much,” Maryam told them. “A single soul’s emanation is nothing, a drop of water in a sea. It would take thousands of deaths either all at once or in the same small place for an impression to be made on the aether and something like a god come into existence in the immaterial.”

She grimaced.

“Only the rules are different near an aether well,” Maryam said. “There is physical aether here, the element leaked into the material, and that is much more susceptible to impression. Enough a sufficiently bloody battle – like the invasion of Tolomontera – would do the trick.”

“So Tristan did not journey through time,” Tredegar slowly said. “Only tread the grounds of this… dream of the past?”

“There is no such thing as going back in time,” Maryam firmly said. “Only forward, and aether cannot even do that. Besides, there have long been arguments about whether what Gloam does is actually-”

She paused, breathed in. Prune the irrelevant, Maryam reminded herself. It was frustrating, like having to explain the intricacies of cliff-climbing to someone who had never so much as seen a hill. She had not realized until now how much of what she took for granted relied on knowledge uncommon, how deep the teachings of the Akelarre Guild truly ran.

“No, he did not journey through time,” she repeated. “The impression, the layer, it is real in the same way that your soul is real. But it is like a memory, a remembrance of what was. The complication here is the physicality of it all.”

She mulled the explanation, sliced off the unnecessary like peeling an apple.

“A layer is real like a soul is real,” she finally said, “because it also straddles the line between the material and the immaterial.”

“But my body was there,” Tristan slowly said. “Wasn’t it?”

She wiggled her hand.

“When you walk around this terrasse, does your soul also move?” she said.

He coughed.

“Yes?”

“No,” she said. “Your soul is where you are, always, with no movement being involved. In the layer, the reverse was true: your soul was the one moving around and your body was where the soul was, always, without movement being involved. But in the same way that if you got stabbed, your soul would be unharmed…”

“If he had been wounded inside the layer, his body would be unmarked,” Tredegar said.

She nodded.

“Should someone get decapitated in there, they will very much die,” Maryam took pains to make clear. “But their corpse will not be headless, the death will come from harm to the soul.”

The Izvorica leaned back into her seat.

“It is why the place where you entered is not the same where you came out,” she told Tristan. “You entered the layer through a weakness in the material, slipping in, and after your soul moving around some you slipped out by another-”

“And since soul and body are one, it was as if he had been transported from one place to another,” Song murmured. “That is…”

“Difficult to believe, I know,” she admitted. “If it helps, layers are exceedingly rare and near unknown outside the environs of aether wells.”

Song shook her head.

“Potentially useful,” she said. “A way to move around the city unseen.”

She winced.

“That would be extremely dangerous, Song,” Maryam said. “Flesh heals naturally but souls do not. They have to be mended by hand, and even then they will never be the same.”

The Tianxi looked displeased but did not argue. Maryam foresaw in her near future a thorough questioning on the risks and possibilities of traveling through a layer, until Song was satisfied she had been either right or wrong.

“The watchmen that found me were worried, Song,” Tristan reminded. “They tested me with the brigade seal to find out if I was possessed by a ‘mara’.”

Maryam whistled. There were dollmakers here? They should have been warned the moment they came off the boat.

“Nasty things,” she said. “We should be very careful if there are some on Tolomontera – their kind lingers near boundaries to steal bodies and minds.”

If there truly were several layers in Port Allazei, their presence made sense. They’d hate the Grand Orrery, but having so many thresholds around would be like a honey to their sense.

“They are sort of lemure?” Song asked.

Natural aether intellects that failed to become gods, Maryam mentally corrected. Or signifiers that… crossed lines. Only both of those answers would have begged questions she could not or would not answer, so instead she nodded. It was close enough, practically speaking.

A pair of servants arrived with plates of food, setting them down with nary a sound, and by unspoken accord the conversation came to a halt. Maryam eyed her silver plate with surprise, as it bore more of a bounty than she had expected from an island tucked away in the middle of nowhere. Oranges and pomegranates, figs and persimmons. Even a mango diced into artfully arranged little cubes, which had her nostalgic.

She’d been a fiend for mangoes as a girl, her father’s hall has kept those large baskets of them. More than once she was switched for pilfering some, hiding up in the branches of the oak in the courtyard to gorge herself on the sugary flesh like some squirrel. Only Mother withering the oak with a touch of Gloam had broken her of the habit.

She dug in with gusto, though she spared a few looks for the plates of the others. Song’s honeybread looked appetizing enough, she thought, the Tianxi methodically eating it piece by piece while drinking sips of her tea to extend the meal. Yet Maryam could not countenance how the other two might be so eager to eat eggs with fish, of all things, and those reddish spices aplenty. Maryam had never taken to fish, which she’d rarely had as a girl.

Volcesta – the town of her birth – was in a valley commanding passage from Dubrik to the sky road so they had eaten more like the hillfolk than the kings of the coast. Fruit and cattle, not fish and wheat. Before the Malani began bringing their own cattle over from across the sea her father had grown rich trading them sheep and goats at the forts on the shore.

Maryam was forcefully ejected from that train of thought by the sight of Tristan cutting into his eggs, trailing yolk all over the fish and slathering a piece of it in the yellowness. He caught her gaze and raised an eyebrow, raising his fork as if to offer a bite, and the Izvorica forced a smile when shaking her head. She would try a mouthful of the tablecloth before subjecting herself to that.

Busying herself with her plate, she polished off the filling meal of fruits and bread then leaned back to sip anew at her xocolatl until Song finished the last of her honeybread. She was amused to notice the Tianxi had only drunk half of her cup of tea, everything carefully measured. Sometimes Maryam thought that if Song Ren got shot in the gut it would be the messiness of it that troubled her most.

Setting down her green tea after one last sip, Song cleared her throat.

“I intend to take an elective class,” she informed them.

Maryam cocked an eyebrow.

“You knew that before ever seeing the list, didn’t you?” she accused.

She had yet to trace the borders of what the Tianxi did and did not know of Scholomance. Sometimes it seemed she was in on every secret, others that she was just as lost as the rest of them.

“My uncle recommended that I take Strategy,” Song admitted. “It is a study not only of stratagems but also of warfare on battalion scale and larger. Watchmen inducted into the Academy in the traditional way are taught something similar.”

Tristan squinted at her.

“How large is a battalion?” he asked.

“Six hundred to a thousand soldiers,” the Tianxi replied without missing a beat. “It is the most common kind of independent detachment under the Watch, led by officers of commander rank.”

Song’s lips quirked in a subtle hint of satisfaction, as they often did when she was asked questions she knew the answer to. Maryam, though, thought she had replied too quickly. Song had answered by rote, regurgitating something she had read off a page or heard from a superior officer. It might even be true, but the Izvorica knew better than to trust anything a power like the Watch wrote and said about itself.

The foot put forward for everyone to look at was never the limping one.

“Ambitious,” Tredegar said, and she sounded approving. “Do you intend to seek a field command under the Garrison after your time in a cabal?”

“If the opportunity arises,” Song acknowledged. “Such positions are fiercely fought over, however, so it is more likely I will eventually raise my own free company.”

Tristan let out an interested noise at that. Maryam would admit to some surprise, as though it was true the free companies were largely free of the Conclave’s edicts she had not thought the Sacromontan particularly fond of Song’s captaincy. They would grow into it, and each other, but it would take time.

“That sounds like it would require a great deal of funds,” he said. “How do you intend to secure them?”

Ah, it was Maryam’s mistake. Her viper had only smelled coin and grown curious about what treasures Song might have tucked away. The Izvorica was as well, admittedly, so she cocked an inviting eyebrow at their captain.

“Cleverly,” Song calmly replied, and changed the subject. “Have you given thought to an elective, Tristan?”

The thief nodded.

“Medicine,” he said.

Maryam made a noise of surprise. She was not the only one, for though Tredegar was pleased – as if she had a right to approve or disapprove of his decisions – Song’s face was forcefully even in that way it tended to be when she was keeping emotion off it.

“I would have thought Alchemy your pick,” Maryam admitted.

“I got much more use out of the medicine than the poisons, on the Dominion,” Tristan shrugged. “And unless one of you intends to take that class…”

Maryam did not, and Song had already her eye on a more ambitious track. Which left Tredegar. The hint flew right over the other woman’s head and instead she beamed at Tristan.

“It is a worthy and respectable occupation to be a physician,” she told him.

“People trust doctors with all sorts of things they shouldn’t,” Tristan happily agreed. “Besides, if I pull out painkillers most will assume I’m a Savant pick instead of Krypteia. That ought to make it easier to get around.”

That beam was wiped right off Tredegar’s face, and if it happened to find its way onto Maryam’s instead then that was mere happenstance. Song, at least, looked somewhat impressed.

“It is a decent enough pretense,” she said. “It might not last long, however, if you are asked about your preferred field of study. The Peiling Society is one of scholars.”

“My precise field of study is avoiding being caught out in such a manner,” Tristan mildly replied.

Tredegar cleared her throat, which Maryam was mildly grateful for. It distracted the two before that deceptive mildness could be turned into something sharper by Song’s continued prodding. The Tianxi did not mean it an insult – she was poking holes so they might be filled with something stronger – but Tristan would only see it as a stranger doubting his competence. Or worse, trying to dig up his secrets.

You had to trade with him, Maryam had understood that from the moment a strange boy approached her in the Bluebell’s belly. Anything else he would see as tax, and the infanzones had taught him to hate those to the bone.

“I was told you had poisons on the Dominion but, given the source, had not put stock in the accusation,” Tredegar said, frowning. “How did you use them?”

And there went Maryam’s gratitude. Though it did seem like an unusual blunder for Tristan to speak of poison before the Malani, so she glanced at him with a frown. The utter lack of a wince on that face was reassuring.

“As bait for lupines, and I fed a dying hollow a large quantity of volcian yew knowing the airavatan would eat him,” Tristan easily replied.

Not a single lie spoken. You prepared that well in advance, you rogue, she fondly thought. How long had he been waiting to sow that seed?

“I am unfamiliar with volcian yew,” Tredegar admitted, taking the bait.

“It is a poison for lemures and lares,” Tristan elaborated. “It did not kill the heliodoran beast – I had nowhere enough for that – but it did make it go blind, which let us trick it into its doom.”

And what a coincidence, Maryam amusedly thought, that the explanation of what the poison was would so neatly dovetail into a reminder of his most visible and selfless act of valor on the Dominion. That would feed right into the Malani obsession with equating action and character, the rotten disease teaching them that only good people did good things and only bad people acted badly. Tristan had done good things, so he could not be bad.

And he had not, by a sane woman’s reckoning. Maryam considered every death dealt by his hand deserved. She would not have kept silent otherwise.

“I heard that Ocotlan was killed by poison but that the dealing hand was Vanesa’s,” Tredegar slowly said. “Did she…”

“She plundered my stores without asking,” Tristan flatly replied. “Though I would have flavored his drink without a second thought had she asked. He was a brutal thug and half the reason she was forced to take the trials besides.”

His hand twitched, like he had forced himself not to reach for the brass watch he’d inherited from the old woman. For all that he liked to pretend himself beyond grief or regret, she had never seen the thief without it.

Tredegar nodded, thoughtful, and the stormclouds went away. Song had watched them all the while, not saying a thing even though their captain had come across just enough to undo Tristan’s nimble footwork had she so wished. But she had not, because Song knew that if Tristan was made to leave then Maryam would leave with him. So the Tianxi had kept silent and let it play out. But she never lied either, so that if this all blows up Tredegar will find her easy to forgive.

There was always an angle at work, with Song. She was not angry of it; it was a desirable quality in a captain.

“I intend to take Seafaring, myself,” Maryam said, half so they might move on in full.

Song eyed her curiously.

“You dislike ships,” she said, and it was not a question.

You would too, if you had seen hundreds of prisoners dragged into their holds never to return, Maryam thought.

“I am a Navigator,” she replied. “It is not a rule among the Akelarre Guild that a member should be capable of, well, navigating – but there are certain expectations nonetheless.”

The navigation a signifier was expected to be capable of was that of Gloam storms, preventing the ship and crew from being swept away and swallowed by the dark, but since many of her guildsmen spent most of their career on ships it was common practice for them to be capable of traditional navigation as well. It also allowed them to charge a higher price when hired onto trading ships to ward off Gloam storms, by far the most regular and lucrative work the free companies of the Watch undertook.

Sailing on merchantmen up and down the Tower Coast was not the kind of contract that brought in a fortune all at once – like killing an old god or digging out a cult – but it was solid, constant and largely riskless income. Those contracts were the bread and butter of free companies and why the name ‘Navigators’ was better known than Akelarre out in Vesper.

“It is a worthy thing to overcome one’s discomfort by effort,” Tredegar offered up.

No condescension was meant, Maryam knew that. It still felt like she was being patted on the head by a woman who thought herself her better. Swallowing the sharp reply on the tip of her tongue, the blue-eyed Izvorica forced civility.

“What elective are you considering?” she asked.

Song’s grateful look stung. It was not unreasonable of her to dislike Tredegar. She had the right if she so wished.

“I am inclined not to take one,” the Malani said.

Of course she was, Maryam derisively thought. Angharad Tredegar was already perfect, what was there to improve?

“Should my hand be forced I might learn Samratrava or Centzon,” Tredegar continued, “but before having a grasp on the demands the Skiritai Guild might make of my time I am reluctant to make such a commitment.”

That was, the Izvorica unhappily conceded, not all that unreasonable. Somehow she doubted the Militants would have the most intellectually demanding of classes on the island, but there was little doubt they would be the most physically brutal.

“Captain Wen mentioned that we yet have a week to pick an elective, but that there are no guarantees seats in them will remain,” Song told them. “Keep that in mind before giving me your decision. His request was that I pass him the choices as swiftly as possible, so if any of you are certain…”

She trailed off, inviting answer. Maryam was sure and told her as much. If she was to ever sail a cutter she would need to be trained and her discomfort was nothing in the face of necessity. Tristan committed to training as a physician a heartbeat after, and though Song did not mention it Maryam saw her scribble her own name by the Strategy class on the list. Tredegar decisively maintained her indecision, bold bravery that closed the matter of classes for now.

“We should take stock of our funds,” Maryam suggested after. “I think we could all use a little coin to burn so we might get our affairs in order before classes begin.”

“Ah,” Tristan said, “that remind me.”

He went fishing inside his cloak, removing a slip of paper which he then handed her under the puzzles gazes of the others. On it was written the number 112 and an ink seal – crossed keys inside a circle – had been stamped at the end.

“Your cloak,” he said. “They wouldn’t let me keep it in detainment so I paid for it to be kept in a warehouse. The farrago warehouse, they called it.”

She beamed at him. With a hood to pull down, she might be stared at less in the streets.

“The same warehouse where my uncle’s gift is being kept,” Tredegar noted. “We can settle both affairs as once.”

The Malani then eyed her with surprise.

“I did not know you had bought a cloak, Maryam,” she said.

The Izvorica bared her teeth.

“At that price, why, it was robbery,” she replied.

Song cleared her throat.

“It seems to me that the both of you should head there while Tristan and I-”

She was interrupted by the sound of wood scraping on tiles obnoxiously loudly. Maryam turned to see someone stealing a chair from the nearest table and wedging it between her and Song, back first.

The one doing it was one of the most handsome men she had ever seen.

Lierganen, his dark hair going down to his neck, smooth tanned skin and striking blue eyes. Closely shaven and meticulously clean, the man’s regular uniform drew the eye to lithe muscles and broad shoulders. The stranger sat, facing them and leaning his elbows against the back of his chair, and though his teeth were perfect Maryam could not help but think they looked sharp as knives.

“This is no way to make acquaintance, sir,” Tredegar coldly said.

“We are already acquainted,” the man said. “By name, if nothing else.”

He leaned over and casually took Song’s cup, bringing it to his face to take a sniff and then making a little moue before setting back down on the tablecloth.

“Jigong green?” he said. “Insipid.”

Before the baffled Tianxi could call him to task for it, he smiled.

“Captain Sebastian Camaron,” he introduced himself. “Ninth Brigade.”

Ah, Maryam thought. Shit. It was going to be one of those conversations, wasn’t it? The princeling of princelings glanced at Tredegar.

“You struck my man last night, made a fool of him,” Captain Sebastian said.

“Unbecoming modesty,” Angharad Tredegar replied without batting an eye. “I assure you, he hardly needed my help at all.”

“That’s funny, it is,” he chuckled. “You’re funny, Tredegar.”

He cocked his head to the side.

“Were you like that, before they butchered your family and put a price on your head?” he asked. “Or maybe you’re one of those sorts that put a smile on grief.”

The Pereduri went very, very still. Sebastian Camaron kept smiling.

“My aunt, she says only a fool picks a war in dark,” he said. “So, I looked into you all while your fat waddler of patron came to make terms with her.”

Deftly taking a small silver spoon, he rapped it against the side of Song’s cup – then pointed it at Maryam.

“The worst signifier on the isle.”

Her teeth clenched. It stung all the more to know that he may, in truth, be correct. The spoon moved to Song.

“The most hated surname under Heaven.”

To Tristan.

“Nobody.”

Only then did he look at Angharad again, no longer smiling.

“And Angharad Tredegar, surely the costliest niece in the entire history of Vesper,” Captain Sebastian Camaron said. “You are the only one here worth a second glance here, Tredegar, and by all indications you happen to be the worst fool of the lot.”

The captain rapped the silver spoon against the table pensively.

“Vexing,” he decided, “is what this is. Chasing you out of Scholomance is pointless – who takes heed of a broadside fired into a sinking ship? On the other hand, you manhandled Musa last night and then went about swaggering about at my brigade’s expense.”

Sighing, he rapped the spoon against the table again. Like punctuation.

“My tia agreed on terms with Captain Waddles, so I will heed them out of respect for her,” Captain Sebastian said. “You must be disciplined, of course, but after that I wash my hands of… this.”

The disdain in the last word, spoken as he eyed them all, was a heavy thing.

“I advise against coming to my attention again,” Sebastian Camaron said.

Song’s eyes were cold.

“And what will happen,” she said, “if we do?”

No, Maryam thought. That’s what he wants you to say, Song. So he can make his threat. The man laughed.

“How bold the illusion of safety makes even the least of us,” he mused. “You are not protected, Song Ren. It would be for the best you shed that particular delusion before it gets you hurt.”

Sebastian Camaron pushed back the chair and rose to his feet, contemptuously tossing the spoon onto the tablecloth.

“Twenty-seven, Rainsparrow Hostel,” he said. “Your room, yes? It will be empty when you return.”

The captain of the Ninth Brigade smiled.

“This time I choose to leave the Thirteenth Brigade with the clothes on its back,” Sebastian Camaron said. “That is the last mercy you’ll get from me.”

Then he beamed at them, nodded a goodbye like an old friend and walked away whistling a jaunty tune. They watched him go in silence. Even after he left the terrasse, not one of them spoke until at last Song broke the silence.

“Tristan,” she said.

The thief turned her way.

“Song?”

“It appears we’ll be heading to your cottage early,” she said, “for we are in need of new accommodations.”