Chapter 12

Angharad woke to the smell of breakfast.

Tossing aside her sheets – where Tristan and Maryam had found such a profoundly ugly shade of brown, she had no idea – she pushed herself up. Though she had slept in a bedroll laid on the ground, it had been a decent enough night’s sleep. The Pereduri still looked forward to securing a proper bed and mattress for the bedroom she’d claimed, possibly paired with sheets that did not make her feel like wincing.

Getting up, she washed herself with a cloth and a pot of tepid well water before putting on her new combat uniform. There was no looking glass in the room, or indeed much of anything except dust and the bags she had set down yesterday, but there was one downstairs she would use to verify nothing was askew. Coming down the steps – they creaked under her feet – she found that Song and Maryam were already seated at the drawing room table, chatting quietly over plates and cups of tea.

Song nodded her way, Maryam instead shoveling in a mouthful of eggs and rashers and loudly chewing. The Izvorica had been unreadable since Angharad faltered before her yesterday, which left her unsure of her footing around the other woman.

“Tristan still sleeps?” Angharad asked, nodding back to Song.

Their captain shook her head.

“He woke first,” she said. “He’s out digging in the garden.”

Very industrious of him, Angharad thought approvingly. Yesterday there had been talk of planting herbs and vegetables in the yard so they might have a supply even should the goods in Port Allazei grow too expensive. A most prudent notion. While it had not happened in Angharad’s lifetime, she’d heard that Frangoch Heights – the lands to the east of Llanw Hall – had closed its roads to merchants in her grandmother’s day and the sharp rise in the price of lumber and iron had almost ruined House Tredegar.

Being at the mercy of one’s neighbors for necessities was a dangerous thing.

The noblewoman helped herself to a plate in the kitchen, learning the meal was Song’s work when she asked, and sat with the others to eat. Conversation was halting but amicable and though Angharad polished off her plate rather quickly there was no snide comment from Maryam following. Though her cheeks yet burned at the memory of how she had shamed herself blubbering out her grief to a stranger, she dared hoped that the continued silence might mean they had reached a truce of sorts.

It was encouraging that last night Maryam had specified to the others that she was not merely Triglau but Izvorica, implying they had not known before. It had thus been a true gesture for the pale-skinned woman to tell her that, not mere window-dressing.

When Angharad brought back her empty plate to the kitchen, she found Tristan was in the antechamber wiping his boots. The Sacromontan was faintly sweaty, his hands and knees caked in dirt, but at least he had only gone out in his shirt and trousers instead of dirtying a uniform.

“Morning,” he greeted her. “Is everyone done eating?”

“Good morning,” Angharad replied. “Song will soon be finished with her tea, I believe.”

The gray-eyed man grunted in acknowledgement.

“Then I best get changed,” he said.

Well, if he was headed that way already… Angharad cleared her throat.

“I bought a comb yesterday,” she said. “In case you were looking for one.”

Tristan’s lips twitched.

“If my hair is known to be messy, then when it is combed it can serve as a disguise,” he told her.

She did appreciate that he attempted not to lie, though given her familiarity with exact wording his efforts were very much transparent.

“My father once told me the trick to getting away with that is using a truth that sounds like a lie,” Angharad advised him. “That way the adversary chases an untruth that does not exist.”

He cocked his head to the side.

“Your father sounds like a wise man,” Tristan conceded.

It should not have made a difference, to hear the word in someone else’s mouth when she had just spoken it, but it did. Angharad was suddenly aching at his absence, and struggled to master herself.

“He was,” she finally replied, and left it at that.

And dead, sure to be, but the knowledge that there had been survivor from Llanw Hall threaded that grief with new uncertainty. Imandi Langa had told her a prisoner was taken by the men who had slain her family, but not who. A cousin, her uncle? A servant, more likely, but Angharad could not imagine those unknown soldiers thinking a servant of House Tredegar being worth much as a hostage.

Who would pay for their release with mother dead and Angharad herself disgraced? Unless they had known secrets of the house, and that was why they were kept alive. There had to be a reason House Tredegar had been struck at, for that slaughter had been carefully planned. But Angharad knew nothing, and the only answers at hand were in another woman’s grip – to be paid for, and dearly. And yet the urge to know was like an itch she could not scratch.

Within ten minutes they were all ready to leave, a merciful distraction from her thoughts. They were all armed, bearing the pistols Song had insisted they all acquire at the hip and their preferred arms besides. Angharad’s saber and their captain’s straight sword were no surprise, but the handaxe belted at Maryam’s side was. The Izvorica did not have the callouses of someone trained in wielding such a weapon, but there must have been a reason for her to pick it over more common blades.

Tristan bore a knife, but Angharad knew better than to think it his only one.

They crossed the garden and took the stairs down, first going down a series of convoluted passages and circling stairs – empty doors windows stared at them like unblinking eyes, every scrap of metal turned into rust-red strokes like blood spatter – before reaching the opening that Tristan had yesterday seen from the outside. It looked as if a courtyard had been carved a single saber’s blow, broken stacked rectangle-houses hanging open on both sides. Rusted metal wires, each large a fist, hung across the gap for some mysterious purpose and copper pipes peeked out like ribs.

It was not stairs they stepped onto down to the street but rubble, the stones large enough they served the purpose with little danger.

“If we are to remain here for several years it might be best to clear this out and put in proper stairs,” Angharad said.

She did not look forward to carrying mattress stuffing up this, or solid furniture for that matter. The Thirteenth was in a most dire need of chairs.

“We should first settle the cottage properly,” Song replied. “It needs a thorough cleaning and further furnishing.”

“Tredegar’s right,” Maryam said, shaking her head. “If it rains this all turns into a slippery death trap. We should look into putting up a rope rail, at least.”

Surprised, Angharad nodded her thanks for the support. The Izvorica curtly nodded back to. A pleasant turn, and perhaps a hopeful one.

Once they were out in Port Allazei they took to the streets eastwards so they might find Arsay Avenue, the road that led straight to Scholomance and was said to be regularly patrolled by the blackcloaks.

The Grand Orrery’s false stars cut a green swath this morning and it made it stand out all the more that the neighborhood around their new home were overgrown with trees and vines, like flowers grown on bones of stone. Twice Angharad caught sight of what looked like silhouettes watching them rooftops, but no one ever emerged. It took them only ten minutes to make it to Arsay Avenue, which they found quite busy.

Given the hour – it was now nearly six forty-five, according to Tristan’s watch – that was no surprise. According to the instructions Captain Wen had passed along, every student in Scholomance was meant to be in class by seven thirty.

A patrol of twelve armed watchmen was briskly marching down the avenue, but the others were all students. The Thirteenth drew eyes at having come out of ruins, but little more than that. They would not be the only ones indulging in shortcuts and detours. As they came onto the road they crossed paths with another cabal whose captain, a handsome Malani with carefully tended beard, came over to introduce himself with three companions.

“Captain Philani, Thirty-Eighth Brigade,” he said, offering up his hand.

“Captain Song, Thirteenth,” Song replied, taking it.

The man’s brow rose, perhaps in recognition, but the demeanor remained friendly. After a brief round of introductions, they agreed to move forward together.

“I am told the garrison made a deep sweep along the avenue last night to clear out the lemure nests, but beasts always creep back in,” Captain Phalani said. “There is safety in numbers.”

Certainly others believed the same, as Angharad glimpsed other groups trudging along the road that were too large to consist of a single cabal. As they set out she and Song ended up at the front with the captain, Tristan and Maryam instead keeping pace with the others.

“I have yet to see a lemure on the island,” Angharad admitted. “Though we are admittedly recent arrivals.”

“Shades are the most common,” he said. “But like the Malani breed, they flee groups and strike only at the weak or wounded. The real threats are the lycosi packs. The Ninth Brigade also spread word there is a briarid wandering along the western edge of Allazei, but it sounds easy enough to avoid.”

Angharad knew of the latter lemure, mostly by virtue of it looking striking on bestiary pages. Briarids were also called ‘hundred-handers’, both large and extremely territorial. The other name, however, she was unfamiliar with.

“Lycosi?” she asked.

“Wolf-like creatures capable of some shapeshifting if they have recently partaken of meat,” Song contributed.

The other captain nodded.

“One is hardly a threat to a trained soldier,” Captain Phalani expounded, “but they move in packs and are known to use cunning stratagems.”

Conversation continued pleasantly as they walked down Arsay Avenue, though after ten minutes or so they were forced to halt. There was some sort of road blockage from a fallen house, a crowd of students milling around the rubble. Both the Thirteenth and the Thirty-Eighth approached in curiosity, finding the reason for such interest – there was a wounded. A tanned girl had a mangled leg, perhaps broken by falling rubble, and a handful of students were seeing to her wound.

Around her were a pair of bloodied corpses, but they belonged to lemures and not men: harpies, feathered monsters with fearsome talons and some measure of intelligence. Some sort of ambush must have taken place here, Angharad thought. A disconcerting prospect, given that they would need to pass through here five mornings out of seven.

Students were beginning to circle around the collapse, though some enterprising soul instead made their way through the rubble-strewn avenue. That was half the reason for the crowd, as the easiest way across was somewhat narrow and an informal line had formed. They parted ways with Captain Phalani there, as he intended to cross the rubble while Song decided they would be going around instead. They backtracked for a bit then cut west, through a cracked stone courtyard.

There, however, surprise struck.

“Take a tracing, then,” Ferranda Villazur exasperatedly said. “It isn’t going anywhere.”

On the other side of the courtyard, beneath a pair of broken columns, the Thirty-First Brigade was inspecting some kind of mechanism. Zenzele was leaning against one of the columns, hat pulled down and looking half-asleep, while Ferranda was addressing a kneeling Tianxi that Angharad could only see the back of. Their designated lookout, however, did not miss the Thirteenth’s arrival.

“Well, well, well,” Shalini Goel grinned, pushing off the wall. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

“I see we are too late,” Song solemnly replied. “The Someshwar’s already invaded.”

“We’ve come for your hats and women,” Shalini agreed.

She turned to Angharad, wiggling her eyebrows, and the Pereduri could not help but snort.

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“It is good to see you as well, Shalini,” she said, offering her arm to clasp.

The short, curvy gunslinger took it. To Angharad’s surprise she was even drawn in for a quick embrace, just as quickly released as the Someshwari went off to greet the others. Meanwhile Zenzele had come to join the reuinion, and just as he traded greeting with Angharad they were joined by the last two of his brigade. Ferranda she was familiar with, naturally, but the fourth was a new face.

“Angharad, if I might introduce you to our fellow cabalist Rong Ma,” Lady Ferranda said.

The Tianxi was barely taller than Shalini, dark of eye and with short black hair combed to the side. With those slender eyebrows and delicate features, Angharad was honestly unsure if she was looking at a man or woman – or other, for that matter.

“Angharad Tredegar,” she said, offering her hand.

“Please, call me Rong,” the Tianxi replied shaking it.

The voice was soft and ambiguous, which did nothing to settle the matter. Angharad was going to have to ask.

“Rong is an Umuthi Society recommendation,” Ferranda said. “They’re headed for the Clockwork Cathedral track.”

Ah, there it was. Angharad nodded her thanks at Ferranda for saving her the awkwardness of asking a stranger their gender, getting a smile back.

“I must confess I do not know of this Cathedral,” she said.

“It is an internal distinction of the society,” Rong told her. “Tinkers of the Clockwork Cathedral concern themselves with entirely mechanical devices, whole those of the Deuteronomicon study mainly aetheric machinery.”

They cleared their throat.

“I hope you do not find me too forward to asking, but are you truly related to Captain Osian Tredegar?”

Angharad paused, taken aback.

“He is my uncle,” she replied. “How do you know of him?”

“He is a rising name in the Clockwork Cathedral,” Rong told her. “If not for the opportunity to attend Scholomance, I might well have attempted to enter his workshop as journeyman.”

One of these days, she thought, she was going to cease being surprised by the sheer depths of things she did not know about her uncle Osian. Yet today was not that day, evidently.

“He had sent word he will be passing by the island soon,” Angharad said. “I could make introductions, if you would like.”

Rong’s eyes widened.

“That would be very kind of you,” they happily said.

That set a rather friendly tone which extended into a round of introductions between the cabals, faltering only when the Tianxi was introduced to Song. The hand they had been about to offer went down, as if fearing to be burned by the touch, and the face of Angharad’s captain tightened. To their honor, Rong grasped the rudeness of the act.

“Apologies,” they said. “But everyone knows touching a Ren is…”

“Bad luck,” Song evenly said. “So I have heard. It is no matter.”

Angharad’s gaze cooled as she stared at the other Tianxi, who looked somewhat abashed but not in any way inclined to take back the snub. Perhaps her uncle’s schedule would not allow for an introduction, after all. Ferranda pushed through the tenseness with forced cheer, suggesting they walk to Scholomance together, and Song agreed. The mood had somewhat soured, but thankfully the walk to the outskirts of the school grounds was a mere few minutes long after they cut back east and returned to Arsay Avenue past the rubble.

Scholomance’s silhouette grew taller and taller, like a giant staring down, and around them ruins grew sparser and sparser until they were flanked by little more than fields of grass. Walking in the hulking school’s shadow, they approached the school through a wide paved yard. The span of Scholomance’s grounds was traced by a shallow canal long gone dry, Angharad saw, and there were but two stone bridges across it.

Before each bridge a tall bronze statue, most of them lost to time, and near them students were lining up to wait. Beneath the statues were pairs of blackcloaks with ledgers and equipment, which were handing the students something Angharad could not make out before sending them on their way. The Thirty-First picked one line and the Thirteenth another, bringing their common road to an end.

The parting was polite, but noticeably cooler than the first greetings had been. To Maryam’s honor, she seemed even more miffed by Rong Ma’s lack of etiquette than Angharad herself was. As they made to stand in line the noblewoman saw there were only two cabals ahead of them, but the process seemed slow-going. Angharad found her gaze drifting past the blackcloaks and students onto the school itself, at last getting a closer look.

Scholomance, she found, was beautiful.