Chapter 10

It was an old road, nibbled at by the elements the way crabs would nibble at a corpse, but it had held up well.

Enough so their pace across the plain was swift even though two of their crew were old. Vanesa was in better shape than Francho, whose cough resurfaced with often, but Tristan would still bet on the toothless old man in a fight: she’d candidly admitted that without her spectacles she might as well be blind. In truth, the thief thought, it was all going a little too well. According to Vanesa’s pocketwatch it was now slightly past midday and they’d seen neither hide nor hair of a lemure. Where Tristan was growing restless, though, most the others were growing lax. The idle talk was proof as much.

“Mad to think there’s a road here in the middle of nowhere,” Aines said, shaking her head. “Who even built it?”

Yong had taken the front and Lan the back – the grieving twin was in no mood for company – but the rest of them were haphazardly arranged somewhere in between. It felt more like they were on an evening stroll than the dangerous journey they truly were, but there was no point in trying discipline this lot. Twice now Yong and Tristan had tried to prod people into a proper column only for the effort to collapse within a quarter hour as people drifted wherever they wanted. They might be the fittest of the band, along with Sarai, but their authority ran thin.

“Some emperor,” her husband shrugged, scratching his arm. “I expect the infanzones would know which, what with Sacromonte being the old capital.”

Francho snorted, earning himself an unfriendly look.

“Something funny, old man?” Felis asked.

“Sacromonte was a regional port, never the Second Empire’s capital,” Francho informed him. “That honour belonged to Liergan first, then to Tamaria after the Vituperian Crisis and-”

Felis loudly gathered up saliva and spat to the side, straight into the tall grass. It would have been hard to miss given that it reached up to his shoulders.

“You’re full of shit,” Felis said. “Everyone knows Sacromonte was the jewel of the old empire.”

“One always blinks first when staring down the blind,” Francho sighed, then rasped out a cough.

Though he had no horse in this race, the thief stepped in. Best not let this turn into too much of a squabble.

“That’s from Chabier, isn’t it?” Tristan asked, cocking his head to the side. “One of his Historical Reflections.”

The old man nodded, beaming his way.

“Not the most dutiful of historians, but he had a way with words,” Francho said. “Did you study his work?”

Lan let out a harsh bark of laughter from the back.

“Does he look like a student to you, old man?” the blue-lipped woman mocked.

“I did read the two of the volumes,” Tristan evenly replied, “but never could get my hands on the rest.”

Gifts from his teacher, who had curated most of his readings by dint of being the one providing him the books. It’d been his mother who taught him to read and write, his father never having the time, but past that his education had largely been born of Abuela’s largesse. It was accordingly full of holes, as she only appeared infrequently and was uninterested in most of what would be considered common scholarship, but he’d found the eclectic nature of what he’d learned had its uses. Knowing both a little less and a little more than you should had a way of making you difficult to predict.

“The last three of the ten are only in print in the Kingdom of Izcalli,” Francho told him. “Even when I taught at Reve I could not obtain copies.”

Tristan started in surprise and he was hardly the only one.

“You were a Master at the University of Reve?” Sarai slowly asked, as if disbelieving.

Much like him, she must be wondering what such a learned man would be doing on the Dominion of Lost Things. Even if Reve’s other Masters decided to throw him out, half the infanzones in the city would be squabbling to bring him into their household as a tutor. The university might be adjoined to Sacromonte but it was not within its bounds, so the scholars were not beholden to the infanzones: they could not simply be ordered to teach feckless noble youths.

“Of moral philosophy,” Francho confirmed, “though I’ll confess I always preferred history. I parted ways with the university after I had some disagreements with our rectoress over a matter of scholarship.”

“I’m sure it had nothing at all to do with those books you paid the blackcloaks with,” Lan said, thinly smiling. “From the Reve library, were they?”

The old man reared up in offence.

“I am not a thief,” Francho hissed back, “I-”

He broke down into a wet hacking cough, which was when Yong found Tristan’s eye. Without saying a word the former soldier made himself clear: this was getting too loud. The thief inclined his head towards Lan, volunteering to handle her and getting a nod back. He let himself lag, casually joining the lone sister at the back. The Meng-Xiaofan twins had been impeccably groomed when they first came onto the Bluebell, their blue robes freshly cleaned and their City trousers without so much as a crease, but that was long gone. The clothes were rumpled, Lan’s blue-tinted lips cracked from weeping and the side of her head, once shaved to contrast with the ponytail, was now thick with stubble. She kept a veneer of sneering calm but the look in her eyes reminded Tristan of broken glass.

“Come to chide me, Tristan?” Lan smiled. “I must have been a bad girl indeed.”

“You’re stirring the pot,” Tristan said. “I’ll not gainsay grief-”

“How kind of you,” Lan harshly cut in.

“- but that ends now,” he quietly finished. “We can’t afford to be bickering.”

They had been lucky enough to avoid lemures so far, his trick with the lodestone extract having worked better than he’d dreamed it might, but with every step they got further away from the source of that luck. It was only a matter of time until monsters or cultists found them but he would not hurry that inevitability by making a racket in the middle of an open road. He was not sure how well tall grass would swallow sound and unwilling to bet on such steep odds.

“Big strong man you are,” she smiled. “Are you going to point your pistol at me now?”

“No,” the thief calmly replied, meeting her eyes. “I am going to beat you unconscious, then cut up your leg so you can’t catch up and the blood draws lemures off our trail.”

She began to laugh in his face, but as she studied it the sound trailed off and she swallowed. She’d found the truth he had let onto there: he meant every word. He owed her a debt for her aid back in camp, when the crowd had been close to turning on him, but that had its limits.

“The others-”

“Have nowhere else to go, even if they disapprove.”

Lan licked her cracked lips.

“You owe me,” she said.

“I am not a student, it is true,” Tristan affably replied, “but I am not Malani either. How much do you think debt is worth to me, Lan? Enough to risk my life?”

They both knew the answer to that so the woman straightened in alarm, her anger swallowed up by much more immediate fear. Good. Now time to see what he could squeeze out of her while she was on the backfoot.

“I’m still useful to you,” Lan said.

“It’d been days and Felis hasn’t gone into withdrawal,” Tristan acknowledged, “so you must have dust hidden away. That makes it useful, not you. Try again.”

She flinched at the unspoken reminder that Angharad Tredegar was a long way from here and none of this crew would care to play the hero for her sake. Lan’s possessions were only her own so long as no one cared to take them from her. The former Meng-Xiaofan frontwoman grit her teeth.

“I know things,” she finally said. “Ju and me, we looked into other people.”

Tristan cocked an eyebrow, expectant.

“That Song girl that went with the infanzones, her surname Ren and she’s from Jigong,” Lan revealed.

She stopped there, as if it were supposed to mean something to him.

“At that means?” he invited.

She sighed.

“That she’s cursed,” Lan said. “Her family clan is responsible for the Dimming.”

It took a moment for him to place what that was.

“The Luminary that got broken a few decades back?” he asked.

Lan rolled her eyes, nodding in confirmation.

“Rats,” she complained. “Always going around like Sacromonte’s the heart of the world.”

Tianxia was one of the wealthiest lands of Vesper not only because of trade but also because of its great grain fields, which were bathed in light even hundreds of miles away from the cities. The machinery behind that miracle was called the Luminaries, great mirror-conduits set in firmament that connected the Glare to towers at the heart of the founding republics of Tianxia. Only there were nine Luminaries and ten republics, so every five year a lottery was held to determine which republic would go lightless. The Dimming had been disaster enough to warrant discussion around other shores of the Trebian Sea because somehow the Republic of Jigong had damaged one of the mirror-conduits up in firmament, bringing the number of functioning Luminaries down to eight.

Jigong had been refused the right to win the lottery ever since, consigned to the dark.

“It would have happened before she was born,” Tristan pointed out.

He was not clear on the year of the Dimming, but it was at least three decades past and Song Ren looked hardly older than he.

“Half the functionaries in Jigong cursed the Ren after the Dimming happened,” Lan snorted. “That means hundreds of gods and the kind of hate that’ll flow down a bloodline.”

It was the thief’s turn to roll his eyes. Cathayan Orthodoxy was famously superstitious, the inevitable consequence of letting gods take the examinations that elevated one into the ruling bureaucracy of the republics. Lock a Tianxi’s door and they’ll blame nine gods, the old saying went.

“Song Ren is bad luck,” he shrugged. “Fine. That’s all you have?”

Lan scowled, her pride obviously pricked by his indifference.

“That Asphodel noble, Acanthe, her contract has something to do with corpses,” she said.

That got his attention and he didn’t bother to pretend otherwise. He’d chatted with Acanthe Phos for some time without ever getting a hint of what she might be keeping up her sleeve.

“What did you find?”

“We looked inside her bag on the Bluebell,” Lan said. “She has small box with bones in it, broken shards and some thin needles.”

It couldn’t be only that, he thought, else Lan would have said the contract had to do with bones and not corpses. Thinking back on Acanthe’s actions since she’d left the ship, only one stood out to him as unusual.

“She was gathering corpse-ash from the pyres, wasn’t she?” he asked. “When she nosed around them with the rest of Tupoc’s crew.”

The former Meng dealer narrowed her eyes at him.

“Scooping it up with her bare hands,” Lan said. “You were looking into her too?”

“Tupoc, but it drew my eye,” Tristan admitted.

She nodded in agreement, then shot him a sideways look.

“That’s enough to prove I’m worth the trouble, I’d say,” she stated.

“You have more,” Tristan guessed, and by the closed look on her face he was right.

“And I’ll be keeping it, in case we must have another of these pleasant chats,” Lan evenly replied.

He might be able to get a little more if he twisted her arm over it, Tristan decided, but it was not worth burning down the bridge for good. This would have to be enough.

“You’re worth the trouble,” the thief conceded.

Her triumphant look never quite got to bloom.

“So long as you lay off making it,” he finished.

He left her to mull on that, putting a spring to his step so he might catch up to the others. Tristan was of a mind to head to the front and speak with Yong, as they’d been on the walk for half a day now and a better plan than fleeing forward was due, but alas that was not to be.

“I’m bored,” Fortuna announced.

She was staying at his side without bothering to pretend she was walking, a sight highly uncomfortable to his eyes. It felt wrong, as if the world itself were an illusion he was glimpsing through. It was something the goddess was well aware of and frequently used to screw with him whenever she felt like things were getting too dull. She wasn’t walking the wrong way for the one she was advancing yet, at least, which was a relief. That gave him a headache every bloody time.

“I’m a little low on choices for entertainment here,” Tristan murmured, pretending to scratch his hair. “What do you want?”

“Go bother Sarai,” Fortuna immediately suggested. “She’s amusing.”

At least it wasn’t one wedded pair she’d taken to, thank the gods for that. Other gods only, because he refused to give Fortuna any form of gratitude for a lesser shade of being a pain in his ass. Giving the goddess a measuring look, Tristan decided she was in one of those moods best left untested. Sarai it was. The false Raseni was near the head of the pack, chatting with Vanesa, but the old woman glanced his way with a smirk when he approached and made a show of leaving them to talk alone. She was misreading this quite deeply, but he saw no need to correct her when the misunderstanding was to his advantage. It was hard to tell if Sarai had noticed, under the veil and mask, but he suspected not.

According to the dark sweat spots around the armpits and back of her thick grey dress, she should be a mite distracted.

“How many layers do you have under there?” he snorted. “It’s not that warm out.”

Trebian weather, as it was called, cool enough for a coat in the wind but punishing the heavier fashions outside of it.

“This entire forsaken sea is a boiling pot,” Sarai growled back, that faint accent touching her voice again. “It is a miracle the Raseni aren’t all dried up husks, wearing as much as they do.”

“The weather’s cooler around their island, I hear,” he said. “Regretting the disguise?”

“It doesn’t get in my way when I move, it is only the heat that’s trouble,” Sarai sighed. “It will keep.”

“Or you could take it off,” Tristan said. “I’ve no idea what you are trying to hide, but is there truly anyone here worth hiding things from?”

He gestured around them, valiant alliance of leftovers that they were.

“You’re right,” Sarai said.

“I am?” he replied, somewhat surprised.

“You do have no idea what I’m trying to hide,” she pointedly replied.

Fortuna cackled loudly in his ear, sadly getting her bargain’s worth after having been a pest. Still, it would not do to let himself be trampled too thoroughly.

“A smidge above none, I’d argue,” he shrugged. “You’ve just admitted you were not born to a shore of the Trebian Sea.”

She shot him a steady look through the mask. Ah, hadn’t noticed that had she?

“You don’t sound Malani,” he continued, “so my guess would be the Imperial Someshwar. Somewhere inland, or maybe one of the peoples on the Tower Coast?”

The end was pure fishing and that veil gave nothing away. The eyes, though, betrayed not a whit of concern. He’d missed the mark.

“You dig so eagerly for others’ secrets,” Sarai chided, “but you ought to look better after your own.”

“Secrets? There are none, I am as an open book,” Tristan brazenly lied. “Ask me anything.”

She studied him for a moment, then shrugged.

“If you insist,” Sarai said, then leaned closer. “Who paid you to kill the Cerdan brothers? I figure it’s some infanzon trying to get at Ruesta.”

Fortuna oohed gleefully as his blood went cold, that horribly uncomfortable feeling of having been seen through seizing him by the throat again, so the rat smiled wide and bright to hide it.

“You misunderstand me, my friend,” Tristan replied.

“Do I?” Sarai teased.

How much did she know? Had she only noticed a coincidence and gone fishing, as he had? Yong wouldn’t care about his killing Recardo, he’d been open enough to the idea, but the former soldier might not be as eager to have the infanzones as outright foes. And if Tristan lost the veteran, he lost this crew: standing alone he would have no authority to assert. Sarai must know this but she was not threatening him or trying to leverage it. Either she didn’t know as much as she was implying or she simply did not care. Not from the shores of the Trebian Sea, he reminded himself. Did she simply care nothing for petty squabbles so far from her home? His silence was beginning to stretch on for too long, but indecision stilled his tongue.

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“Take the bet,” Fortuna whispered against his ear. “She’s got even hands, Tristan. She gave you measure for measure every time.”

His goddess could be a fool in many ways, he knew, but sometimes her eyes saw true. Sarai had been scrupulously even-handed in their every bargain, giving as good as she received. If he gave trust… It went against his every instinct, the lessons of the years he had spent alone with only fickle fortune as his companion. When someone has a knife at your throat, Abuela had taught him, you must either destroy or befriend them. And if he’d learned anything from Fortuna, it was that sometimes the long odds took the prize. Swallowing thickly as he came to a decision, mouth gone dry, Tristan put on a winning smile.

“You do,” he firmly said. “Me, an assassin? Perish the thought.”

Sarai snorted, but the mirth caught in her throat as he continued speaking.

“No one paid me, so more accurately speaking I would be a murderer.”

She choked on that, though the surprise did not silence her for long.

“Are you telling me,” Sarai got out, “that you are not even gainfully employed?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“You are a deep disappointment, Tristan,” she solemnly informed him. “I thought you a man of means.”

“Alas, I have but methods,” he confessed.

She let out a quiet, delighted laugh at that. Something like a smile tugged at his own lips, the thrill and relief of the long odds having borne true tingling against his scalp. And maybe more than that. How long had it been since he’d found it so easy to talk to someone?

“Are you going to tell me why?” Sarai idly asked.

“Are you going to tell me your real name?” he idly replied.

“I thought Sacromontan men were titans of gallantry,” she complained.

He could hear the pout.

“That’s the Malani,” he informed her.

“Of daring, then.”

“The Izcalli.”

“… charm?”

“Tianxi,” Tristan drawled, “and if you think I do not have a ready triteness for every corner of Vesper then you’ve obviously spent little time in the company of sailors.”

“See?” she enthused. “Such a wealth of worthlessness, you are not entirely destitute after all!”

He swallowed a grin, somehow certain she was doing the same under the veil. And as he had given trust, he was given trust in return.

“There will be a need for a plan soon, if we are to keep this band together,” Sarai said. “I have something that might be of use for that purpose.”