Chapter 1

Tristan woke to the gentle rocking of the ship.

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

They were not any real indication of safety.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Which?” he got out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She leaned forward.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes,” Abuela simply replied.

“Why?”

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

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

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

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

“Yes,” Tristan hissed.

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

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

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

He grit his teeth.

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

A thoughtful pause.

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

And it fell into place, just like that.

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

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

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

His eyes narrowed.

“If that is even your name.”

Abuela considered him for a long moment.

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

“She called you an abomination,” Tristan challenged.

She laughed, sounding almost pleased.

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

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

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

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

Abuela smiled.

“What do you think?”

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

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

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

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

He grimaced.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tristan frowned.

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

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

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

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

“It is gambling,” Abuela said.

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

“Why indeed,” Abuela said.

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

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

Abuela smiled.

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

He blinked.

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

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

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

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

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

Tristan sighed.

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

To his surprise, the old woman looked approving.

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

He swallowed.

“I’m listening,” Tristan said.

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

He did not hide his surprise.

“The Cerdan?” he asked.

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

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

“Students are allowed to fight each other?”

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

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The thief glanced at his useless limbs and sighed.

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

“Yes,” the old woman agreed.

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

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

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

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

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

“Coincidence,” Fortuna dismissed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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