Chapter 11

“The pork?”

“Nine coppers a pound,” Abrascal replied as he slid onto the bench.

The tip of Song’s reed pen scratched against the paper, adding the latest price to the list. Poultry seemed marginally less expensive than pork, but the costs were more or less the same across the board. Frowning down at her work, an orderly cluster of names, goods and prices, the Tianxi fit the pieces together.

“We will have to rely on fish,” she finally said. “And rice.”

It had surprised her how cheap bags of rice were on Tolomontera. Though it was hardly an uncommon crop in Old Liergan, it was not a staple the way it was in Tianxia and the Someshwar.

“Maryam’s going to have a fit,” Abrascal snorted. “Did you see the face she made when I ordered ojo de pez this morning?”

Song took a moment to translate the Antigua – ‘fish eye’, more or less – and matched the meaning to the plateful of fish and eggs Angharad and the Sacromontan had taken for morning meal.

“She will have to grow used to it,” Song said. “It is the cheapest meat by far.”

“Well, we’re not living in Farm Allazei,” Abrascal drawled back.

Song did not roll her eyes at the feeble humor, though it was a close thing. The thief’s continued attempts at being charming were, at least, without witnesses: they were alone in the dining hall.

The Rainsparrow Hostel had neither a terrasse nor a garden, being an inferior establishment to the Emerald Vaults in every way. For eating what it offered was a sparsely decorated hall – drapes and tapestries hung from the walls – set with long tables, more a cantina than a true establishment. There were no servants doing the catering here, the guests instead invited to order at a counter in the back and choose their own table to eat.

After leaving word out front for Angharad and Maryam to be sent their way when they arrived, the pair had claimed at table in the corner and begun the work of accounting for their stay on Tolomontera. It mostly involved Abrascal venturing out to find out prices in shops while Song sat and took notes, putting together passable meals as she remained behind to ensure someone would be there should the others arrived.

She was on her second cup of water, but Abrascal was so often on his feet his first was still halfway full. Setting down the reed pen, Song looked up into the dark-haired man’s frowning stare. It seemed that, just like her, he could tell something was off.

“Suspicious, is it not?”

He sharply nodded.

“Those prices are too low,” he said. “There’s no way any of those shops are turning a profit.”

Reaching for his cup, he sipped absent-mindedly and set it down.

“Back in the City, if I stretched my leftovers and planned well I could live off about five coppers a day in food,” Abrascal said. “Now, let’s be conservative and double it-”

“More than that,” Song interrupted. “We will do strenuous physical exercise and keep long hours, both of which require good meals to compensate for. One portion of meat, one of rice and another third.”

He whistled, as if impressed. That bought him a sliver of pity, despite herself. Song’s family had been more influential than wealthy before the Dimming – generations of service even in the higher reaches of the bureaucracy brought respect but not overflowing coffers, unless you were corrupt – but even in the early days of their exile they had been able to provide at least this much in fare to their own.

“So about six coppers a head for every meal,” Abrascal said. “If we lean on fish and soup.”

“That sounds accurate, yes,” Song said.

He grimaced.

“The same meal you’re describing would cost somewhere between nine and twelve radizes, in Sacromonte,” the thief said. “And there is no way that food on this nowhere island should cost less, even if there is some kind of hidden colony tucked away somewhere.”

And there she must agree again. The prices per pound were close to the bargain a buyer might get for acquiring a large bulk at once, or perhaps buying straight from the farm. Unless the meat and greens were quite literally dirt cheap, the shops could not be making a profit off the sale. Which meant profit was not the point of having those shops there.

A concerning thought.

“On our end, at least, the costs seem reasonable,” Song said. “At twelve radizes a head for every day, over a month the price comes to-”

Thirty-four copper radizes to a silver arbol, three arboles to a golden rama. That would come to – three hundred and thirty-six coppers a week, one thousand three hundred and forty-four a month. A little under thirty-seven silvers and a half, meaning…

“- around twelve ramas and an arbol every month,” she finished. “I would not wager it a coincidence that is half of the twenty-five gold our brigade receives monthly.”

Abrascal blinked at her.

“When did you have time work that out?”

Song’s brow creased.

“You just heard me,” she said.

“Did you-” he began, glancing down at her list for something before shaking his head. “Never mind.”

The thief cleared his throat.

“We haven’t got the prices for supplies yet but I suppose it doesn’t matter if we are not yet sure what we actually need,” he said.

“I think it prudent to assume another seven gold and two silvers,” Song said. “Between ink, paper, clothes and blackpowder the lot might end up rather costly.”

And it brought the costs at an orderly twenty ramas out of twenty-five, a round number satisfying to the mind.

“That’s five gold loose,” Abrascal said. “Toss a rama our way each in private funds, then stash the last away for a rainy day and that is still quite the generous allowance for the Watch to give us.”

“So long as the prices stay the same,” Song warned. “Should they rise…”

It would eat into everything else, and worse.

“That is the part that trips me,” Abrascal admitted. “The current prices are apt to ruin the business but the shops don’t seem Watch-owned. Why would the owners empty their pockets for our sake? It smells like a racket, but I cannot see the point of it.”

“The point could be to provide us food at an affordable price,” Song said.

“Then why involve shopkeepers at all?” he asked. “Why not have some Watch quartermaster run the whole affair instead?”

That was, Song would admit, a reasonable question to ask. It seemed unnecessarily complicated, something the Watch was usually decent at avoiding. Tristan drummed his fingers against the table.

“Last night, the cooks and servants at that fancy evening were not part of the Watch,” he said. “They were tradesmen, here at its sufferance.”

Song nodded.

“It is the same on Regnant Avenue,” she said. “I saw a watchman buy from one of the butchers when first exploring the streets and he paid as anyone would.”

The man grimaced.

“All right, so the obvious play is letting the shops raise prices so everyone gets squeezed,” Abrascal said. “I just don’t see the point.”

“Why not have higher prices from the start, you mean,” Song said.

He nodded.

“Poor planners might find themselves lacking funds,” she suggested.

“Would anyone that foolish make the cut for Scholomance?” he asked.

Again, a fair point. Song had yet to ascertain the skills of her fellow captains but it would be a mistake to assume incompetence.

“Whatever the game,” he continued, “we should stock up on food that’ll keep.”

It was a step in the right direction, but not far enough.

“We need to learn how to fish,” Song said. “Or find a place where we might hunt. That might be the very reason two days a week are potentially left to us.”

The Sacromontan hummed in approval.

“Well, we have a garden,” he said. “Good black earth, not that I know much of gardening. We could buy seeds and plant them so we won’t have to rely on the greenmongers.”

Clever, that. She nodded.

“Herbs and vegetables,” Song mused. “A fruit-bearing tree would take too long to grow to be useful, I fear.”

“Berry bushes can grow quickly,” he disagreed. “But better to stick with vegetables, yes. I believe saw a bag of carrot seeds in one of the shops.”

The Tianxi glanced down at her papers, musing a new list involving seeds, and found there was little room left for one. She should have brought more paper. It was unfortunate that only so much of it that could be carried on you easily in a Watch uniform. Before she could begin debating whether or not to set out to obtain more, movement at the entrance of the eating hall caught her eye. Given that they were late for the morning meal and too early for the evening one, she had a guess as to who it might be.

As expected, it was Maryam and Angharad.

The former wore a hooded cloak Song was going to have to discreetly inquire had been stolen from who, given the distinctive blue and yellow embroidery, while the latter had a new saber belted at her hip. Much richer work than the standard-issue Watch blade she’d been using since the Dominion, but the sword was not what caught her eye: both women were carrying a pair of muskets whose make she did not recognize.

Song saw in fine detail so long as she could see at all, a consequence of her contract’s nature – though her experiments had established that the guiding nature of the ability was conceptual instead of physical, so ‘sight’ was not entirely correct – and the look of those flintlocks was not artisanal. These were workshop-built. Interesting, given that the barrel was overlong for a musket. Were these like her Zhangshou, built for sharpshooters?

Maryam put the two guns she had been carrying on the table and sat by Tristan, stealing his cup of water without even bothering with a greeting first. He let that pass without comment, looking amused, and a heartbeat later Angharad set down the other two muskets on the pile before joining Song’s side of the table.

Now was not the time to ask about these, but most definitely would.

“There were messages in front,” Angharad told her, reaching inside her pocket. “From our covenants, unless I am greatly mistaken. I took the liberty of bringing yours.”

She passed Song a folded paper sealed in wax, the hand-and-bolts of the Academy clearly visible.

“My thanks,” she said, and broke it open.

The contents were short and to the point, almost brusque. A time and a place – three in the afternoon, the OId Playhouse – as well as a dress code. She was to come in her regular uniform and armed. Song turned, cocking an eyebrow at Angharad.

“Maryam and I also received one,” the Pereduri said.

“Akelarre lessons will be in the chapterhouse, unsurprisingly,” Maryam contributed.

“I do not know where the training will take place for the Skiritai,” Angharad said, “but it is at the front gates of Scholomance we are summoned to. Fully armed.”

“The Old Playhouse for us, armed as well,” Song offered, then flicked a glance at Abrascal.

“I haven’t received summons,” he said. “Unless Maryam has mine?”

She shook her hand. The thief snorted.

“I suppose it would have been too easy for the Krypteia to just tell me what it wants,” Abrascal said. “I’ll have to find my own way without summons, I think.”

Song slowly nodded.

“I could ask other captains about it, should you fail to find a trail,” she offered.

He inclined his head in thanks. Good. It had been a concern he might be too proud to accept. Song’s attention returned to the cabal at large.

“We have investigated our funds and a variety of prices,” she said. “Meanwhile, word was sent to Captain Wen as to our choices of electives.”

A pause.

“Now we must agree on what will be bought and how we will divide the work of obtaining everything before we return to the cottage,” she said, eyeing the other three.

Already there had been a casualty: Angharad had preemptively become bored by the matter. She was feigning attention, but not very well. And while Maryam seemed attentive for now, Song suspected most of the interest would be withdrawn when it was established what her private funds consisted of. The Triglau was tight-lipped about her origins, but Song had noticed in her a tendency to expect she would be provided for most common in those born to means.

It was rather irritating that the only other soul at the table with any financial acumen was an avowed thief. Well, perhaps Song could add a little something to keep the attention of the miscreants.

“After which we will be discussing this afternoon’s robbery,” Song casually said.

And fancy that, now she had their full attention and all it had taken was crime.

—

The hood did its work.

Maryam looked suspicious going around with it pulled down, but it still drew fewer stares than her skin had. Suspicious was not that uncommon, in a place like Tolomontera, and she found it a relief. Her time on the Dominion had let her forget the invisible weight following her everywhere – oh, sometimes there had been stares but were too exhausted or worried to take issue with her paleness. But here on Tolomontera, where blackcloaks patrolled and students wandered around, she could hardly turn a street corner without someone gawking.

Or glaring.

The smithy’s front shop – called Brillante, if the sign hung above the door was to be believed – was run by an older woman of Lierganen looks, gray-haired and heavyset. Tristan haggled with her in Antigua so fast and so peppered with jargon she could hardly follow, though it appeared to involve the price of a pair of iron pans leading to either the Thirteen Brigade living in the streets and dying of the plague or the old woman being divorced by her wife while their grandchildren were sold as slaves to pay gambling debts.

By the time Tristan paid both seemed pleased, and the old woman threw in a tin ladle to encourage them coming back. Maryam remained profoundly unsure whether or not they’d been gouged.

“The old bastard at the Petstik will rob you on anything that has iron in it,” the old woman warned them. “Izcalli can’t work anything but noble metals properly anyway, everyone knows that.”

“I will heed your advice, tia,” Tristan assured her.

She rolled her eyes at him.

“Out, you pest,” she said, shooing him out. “I’ll need to trick at least two fools to make up for your taking advantage of me.”

Maryam trailed after him, openly amused, as he put away the pans in the bag. Song had left them with a list, written in her neat looping handwriting, and by the time Tristan looked up she had found the next items.

“We need knives,” she told him. “At least two. Should we head back in?”

He shook his head.

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“Let’s go see the old bastard at the Petstik,” Tristan mused. “Might be he cuts us a price if he hears what the fine ladies of the Brillante have been saying about him.”

“You sound like you enjoy this,” she noted.

“I have never spent so much coin in a single day,” he admitted. “It feels like a fever dream.”

Maryam hummed. Neither had she, but that was because she’d hardly ever had to pay for anything. Her father had fed and clothed her as a girl, sometimes bought her trinkets, and Mother’s warbands had shared everything. There was no spare coin there, or sometimes any coin at all.

“Best not get used to it,” she said. “Between the clothes, supplies and arms we are like as not to be thin on coin by the end of the month.”

The dark-haired man’s face tightened. He cared little for most of his belongings, she knew, but the loss of Yong’s pistol had stung. Like as not he would begin looking for where the Ninth might have stashed their possessions, which she wished him luck on. Maryam had learned to travel light and always keep what she could not afford to lose on her, but she’d liked her clothes. They were comfortable and fitted to her frame. The pair cut out of Regnant Avenue and through an alley, heading north towards where they’d seen the other smithy earlier.

“I won some coin off the Forty-Ninth,” Tristan idly said. “If you need anything that will not get a nod from Song, tell me.”

She squinted at him.

“Are you telling me,” Maryam said, “that we are going to be robbing these poor souls twice?”

She had been pleased to hear of the scheme, even more so for the way it visibly made Tredegar uncomfortable.

“It took only a few silvers,” Tristan easily replied. “We can call it reparations for trying to ambush me, if you like.”

She snorted.

“I will mention it should there be pressing need,” Maryam said. “Still, it is amusing that you and Tredegar would be the ones with coin to spare, out of the four of us.””

He cocked a questioning eyebrow.

“She got a pouch of gold from her uncle, along the saber and the rifles,” she explained.

And there her steps stuttered.

Maryam had not heard it laid out so plainly before. It had not truly sunk in, how the rest of them made do with what they could steal or scrabble for while Angharad Tredegar had been handed treasures and a pile of gold without so much as lifting a finger for it. Simply by virtue of who she was.

And Maryam had hardly even noticed, because the Malani had looked sad.

“Maryam?”

She looked down at her hands, found the fingers clenched into fists. She’d been had. Maryam had known better and still been had. That was how insidious they were. A hand on her arm dragged her out of her anger to find Tristan frowning at her.

“What happened?”

“She grew fragile looking at her new expensive saber, whining of the old one being a gift from her father,” Maryam bit out. “And like a fool, I bought it.”

Tredegar had been literally pocketing gold as it happened and still she’d fallen for it. The shame burned, enough she felt like walking away – only she did not know where they would be headed. The pair was standing by a condemned house, the door walled in with bricks but the front steps still standing, and Maryam had not been paying much attention to their path.

“Her family was murdered mere months ago,” he said. “I do not believe that grief feigned.”

“So we all have to pretend she does no wrong,” she harshly replied, “because she is grieving and polite and she means well?”

“Well-meaning doesn’t come into it,” Tristan said. “The nicest tick still sucks blood, Maryam. Tredegar’s an exceptional swordswoman, but she had the chance to become that only because her family squeezed the blood out of a hundred other families.”

He shrugged.

“There might have been talents greater than hers plowing the fields of Llanw Hall, cleaning her kitchen or washing her sheets. The world will never know, because she was born with the right surname and they were not.”

“But you like her,” Maryam accused.

“I have forgiven worse of people I needed less,” Tristan frankly replied. “I’ll not forget what she is, but what gain is there in pillorying her for it? It won’t take back the name or squeeze her back into her mother’s womb.”

You sound like my father, she thought. It was not a compliment. Mother might have been half-mad with blood and rage, at the end, but she had been right about everything. That they hadn’t listened to her was why Volcesta was now called Ifanje on maps and Malan’s ram-horn banner flew over her childhood home.

“That’s how they get away with it, Tristan,” she harshly said. “They come to you charming and generous, until their foot is on the door and then they begin squeezing you out. Small things, they ask, and you’re always talking with a reasonable man – it’s another Malani who wants to raise tariffs, who raided that town or seized that mine. You just need to meet them halfway, and isn’t the golden peace worth a small trifle?”

She leaned in.

“Then you take a step back, they take a step forward and before you know they’re sitting in your house,” Maryam said. “Eating your food, drinking your wine, until they do away with even that and call it their house.”

Gray eyes considered her, and she already knew how it would end. Mother had told them how it would end, that pack of kings grown fat on trinkets and trade, and they had turned on her for it. Vranasestra, they’d called her. Crow-sister, mouth of ill omens. Tristan was cleverer than they’d been, but-

“All right,” he said. “If you’re sure, we kill her.”

Maryam blinked, looking at his face for any trace of a lie.

“It will have to be poison,” Tristan continued. “Something slow acting, dosed over several days – we can blame the cottage for it, maybe plant something sinister-looking in her room and claim it was a hidden curse.”

She licked her lips.

“You are serious,” Maryam said.

He shrugged.

“You have yet to steer me wrong,” Tristan said. “If it is your honest belief she needs to go, she goes.”

Maryam swallowed. Either he meant every word or he was a much better liar than she had thought. She let herself consider it for a moment – once Tredegar was gone they would have to recruit a fourth, but it should not be impossible. Glassy eyes, stiff limbs. Worst come to worst they could grab someone from a team of spares as a temporary helper until they found a better fit. That full face gone gaunt, feverish. It would be easier to make peace with the Ninth and… Maryam bit her lip and cursed, looking away.

Much as she wanted to think only on the consequences, the outcomes, that was not where her mind kept leading her. It would be murder to kill Tredegar now. Simple murder. There was no getting around that.

Feeling lost, Maryam stumbled back. She caught herself before Tristan’s hand could grab her elbow, gently lowering her to sit on the edge of the stairs. Her limbs were shaking, weakness haunting her. He sat down by her, close without touching, and spoke not a word. Her voice was shaky as her fingers when it came out, feeling like it belonged to another woman.

“They hunted me, you know,” she said. “An entire company. Hounds and men chasing me for half a month through the wetlands.”

Her nails bit into her palm.