Chapter 16

The bulk of the students would have set out for the Old Playhouse, by now.

The thought itched away at Tristan, like coarse cloth against the skin – the more he rubbed it, the worst it got. But Izel had needed to stop by the workshop, and though the tinker had offered to head out alone and catch up later Tristan had no intention of letting him wander around Allazei alone. He’d already found the three houses that Yaotl Acatl had claimed for herself and the newly founded Nineteenth Brigade, but if the princess grabbed Izel off the street getting Izel out of one without killing anyone would be difficult. The Nineteenth’s roster would see to that.

So instead Tristan was waiting outside the Umuthi workshop with Angharad, sitting on the edge of a dried-out fountain. The Orrery cast down on them in pale and gold, a reminder that every minute brought them closer to the time of the meet. The thief forced himself not to tap his foot. It would have been petty, and transparent besides.

“-my uncle’s rifles may be able to punch through the dermis,” Angharad said. “We would have to test it out.”

The prospect of actual useful progress being made, even if it was just information acquired, was enough to drag him back out of his irritation.

“The targets from Warfare can be adjusted,” Tristan said. “We could go visit grounds tomorrow after Saga.”

He blew out a breath.

“My concern is how quickly it moves,” he admitted. “We won’t be killing the dantesvara until we find a way to lock it down.”

“Kang suggested poison, in his own way,” Angharad said, tone carefully even.

Worse, it was a good suggestion. If dantesvara were as gluttonous as Teratology had suggested, then it was just a matter of ensuring the creature found the bait and he had some notions about how to ensure that. Angharad wouldn’t like them, but that could be worked around.

“Bit of a pain how useful he’s being, isn’t it?” Tristan said.

Her lips thinned.

“Continuing along these lines may yet salvage his reputation,” she said.

And that didn’t seem like a coincidence, did it? He grunted in assent. Like all things about the curse, Song had taken Yun Kang’s turnaround as some mark of personal failure. Tristan, and Angharad as well evidently, believed instead that this was about the man realizing that last year had taken an axe to his career and if he did not want to end up in a backwater posting after Scholomance he needed to clean his slate. Fortunately for him, mobs had short memories. Few would remember and fewer care that he’d tried to get a student killed after a few more months of the man being interesting and useful.

“There’s few ways of getting rid of a teacher at Scholomance, save slitting their throat,” Tristan said.

He’d looked into it, not even Colonel Azocar could dismiss a teacher – only detain them. The matter would be kicked up to the Obscure Committee.

“Kang will keep,” he stated.

They had enough to handle without adding cleaning up for Song Ren to the list. She was quite capable of helping herself, these days, even if- Tristan’s teeth clenched until his gums ached. It was unfair to think that, he knew. Half the reason Song had made that choice was that if she did not Maryam’s countrymen would be evicted from Tolomontera. But Tristan’s eyes sought the shape of a woman in red sprawled across the fountain, or critiquing the fountainhead, and found nothing. Fortuna would have chided him for the unfairness, but she wasn’t there. So it fucking stood.

A light touch on the edge of his sleeve.

“Izel is back,” Angharad said, pointing at the distance.

Tristan’s eyes lingered on the sleeve after the fingers withdrew. Tredegar was being… touch-prone, lately. Not in a way that discomforted him, she was careful about it, but she kept drawing his attention to things and he could not recall ever speaking so much with the Pereduri as he had these last few days. Izel loped their way across the cobblestones, a pair of scrolls tucked under his arm.

“Sorry,” he called out. “I had to sign out one of these at the archive registry, apparently it’s a restricted scroll.”

Tristan rose to his feet, as did Angharad.

“We’re not running late, but the margin has thinned,” he said. “Best we get moving.”

“Of course,” Izel said. “Apologies again, I did not-”

Tristan bit down on a flare of irritation.

“No trouble,” he cut in.

From the corner of her eye, he saw Angharad gesturing at Izel’s left. Where his roundhead mace was strapped, hanging from the handle. ‘Loose strap’ she mouthed, and Izel nodded thanks before tightening it with the scrolls shoved up against his armpit. They all went armed, of course. Even if this were not a hunter’s meet, after Misery Square most brigades had begun to carry not only blades and pistols but muskets as well.

The Thirteenth was no exception. Angharad had added her uncle’s rifle to the usual saber and pistol, Izel some kind of wooden cylinder protruding arrowheads to his own standard pair and aside from his knife and pistol Tristan had tucked away in his coat two vials – dragon snail venom and the most concentrated extract of volcian yew he could get his hands on.

The three of them moved through the small, blocky streets at the heart of southeast Allazei as fast as they could without running. It was all crumbled shops and tall, narrow houses around here, crowding the streets that spread out between the hospital, the Umuthi workshop and the Ossuary. Tristan’s hand rarely left the knife at his hip, for few of these ruins had been reclaimed. The Ossuary housed both the Arthashastra and the Peiling Society classes, which along with the proximity of the workshop ensured these streets were often trodden, but few had settled among the houses.

It was from a combination of rats, humidity from the wind – the seawall was more dust than stone – and nearly all the shops being in the Triangle. More stray cats dwelled here than men.

Mind returning to the road ahead and what lay at the end of it, Tristan found himself eyeing Angharad Tredegar as she strode that measured mirror-dancer’s stride. He had a few questions, and she had been unusually voluble around him of late. And those questions needed to be asked, because while as a general policy Tristan disapproved of Cressida Barboza being correct, but she’d had a point this once: something was off about Marshal de la Tavarin.

Scholomance had no lack of secrets so usually he would have been content to let that be someone else’s trouble, but he could afford this no longer. The hunter’s meet would be run by the Marshal, and largely the hunt as well. Burying his head in the sand was no longer an option, so Tristan had gone digging instead. Still, at the end of the day going through sifting through record and rumors only got you so far.

You needed someone who’d rubbed elbows to get a sense of what made someone tick, and luckily he had at hand one who had spent a year under the tutelage of the man in question.

“Tell me about the Marshal,” Tristan bluntly asked, since subtlety would avail him nothing.

Angharad cocked an eyebrow at him. Izel, who flanked him to the right, leaned forward in interest. Any more of that and his spine would snap, Tristan thought, from the wretched angle he put it through.

“He is the senior Skiritai on Tolomontera,” Angharad ventured.

“Truly?” the thief said, brow rising. “A stunning revelation.”

She rolled her eyes at him.

“I am not sure what you ask for,” Angharad said.

“Your take on the man,” Tristan said. “I know a hundred rumors, but Skiritai are tight-lipped about what goes on down in the Acallar.”

Angharad hummed, looking ahead.

“Callous,” she finally said. “The Marshal is callous.”

Tristan kept silent, watching her sort out her thoughts.

“Deaths do not matter much to him,” Angharad continued. “He expects them, counts them part of turning us into Skiritai in the span of time he was given to teach us.”

“But he is not cruel,” Tristan probed.

“No,” she replied, shaking her head. “He… I do not think he cares about laws so much as rules. He will not bat an eye at lawbreaking, but someone breaking the rules he set for the Acallar will offend him.”

“That sounds like a petty tyrant,” Izel quietly said. “Caring about his fiefdom and little else.”

“Then I have misrepresented him,” Angharad replied. “He is, I think, a very fine instructor. One who cherishes what it means to be of the Skiritai Guild – and that means he will only let us put on that name if we will not shame it. His methods are harsh but only ever to serve that purpose.”

By the tense cast of Izel’s jaw, the man was less than convinced. Tristan had a guess or two as to why. In spars, either in Warfare or at the cottage, Izel always moved in a way that was a little clumsy – nothing like the fluid, brutal fighter that had slain Tozi Poloko in a single blow. Maryam had won against him as often as she lost, early on, and Tristan held her in esteem but Maryam Khaimov was not exactly a mistress of armed combat.

It’d come together when they first encountered a lemure out on a patrol bounty, Izel casually splitting open a lycosi’s head before Tristan even finished drawing his pistol. Izel knew how to kill, but he was not used to sparring. Whoever had taught him to use that mace didn’t believe in blunted weapons and pulling blows. He really should have picked up on it sooner, but part of Tristan had balked at matching a habit you usually found in coterie killers to the son of Izcalli’s finest general. Foolish of him. Cruelty cared not for the cut of your clothes.

He cleared his throat, drawing Angharad’s gaze back on him before she could pick up on Izel being skeptical.

“Would you say he acts nobleborn?” Tristan probed.

Angharad’s lips thinned.

“I cannot confidently speak as to the habits of nobility beyond the Isles,” she replied.

Tristan traded an amused look with Izel. That’d been a Pereduri no.

“Encoberto truly exists, in case you were wondering,” he shared. “It’s a sitiada to the northeast of the Meridian Road, right in the middle of the Peones, and it is known for its mercenaries.”

“Truly?” Angharad said, sounding… relieved?

Oh gods, Tristan realized with horrified amusement. She made sure never to look up if Encoberto is real so she wouldn’t have to call him a liar if it doesn’t. He turned to meet the eye of- empty space. Always empty space, though he kept looking like a fool. He forced the smile to stick on his face, though he could feel it turn stiff. Izel cleared his throat.

“The Peones,” he repeated. “I’m unfamiliar with the… region, is it?”

“Region,” Tristan confirmed. “When the Second Empire took a dive right into the pit, the parts that first went dark were mostly the heartlands and the east. Where the wealth and people were. The Trebian Sea coast was barely touched because except for Saraya it was a backwater.”

He paused, let the image of the southern Issa going dark while the northern rim of the continent remained alight sink in.

“The Peones are the good farmlands between the coast and what went dark, or at least what’s left of them,” Tristan said. “Much of the place was lost to Gloam during the Century of Strife.”

That tended to happen, when half the great lords in a region put on imperial red and started knifing each other even as the hordes of the Sunless House knocked at the door. Old Liergan hadn’t needed to collapse the way it had, their Saga lessons had made that clear. It could have contracted, kept going the way Izcalli did during the Whirlwind. But after five centuries of the Paz Liergana no one had really believed Liergan could fall, so instead of closing ranks the grandees had kept jostling for better seats as the empire’s lights were snuffed out.

There was a reason the Watch existed: Vesper could only afford so many mistakes of that scale.

“There’s no telling if he was truly the Count of Encoberto,” Tristan said. “Still, the mercenary angle does lend credence to how he goes around dressed like a farfan who stole a Watch coat.”

“The Watch does recruit heavily from mercenaries,” Izel agreed.

And why wouldn’t it? The Garrison offered worse pay than most kings, but it paid on time and its contracts lasted for seven years so it was popular for those who preferred steady coin to looting. It was a passing rare thing to be recruited directly into a covenant, of course, but then the Marshal’s early years were a mystery – his record started abruptly in 68 Sails with him already being a full-fledged member of the Skiritai Guild.

It wasn’t like the man was some sort of secret either. The dossier Hage kept on him, which had none of the work under seal or private contracts in it, was the better part of forty pages long. Yet for a man who’d been in the Watch at least sixty years, precious little could be found about whom ‘Hermenegildo Berenguel Adamastor de la Tavarin’ actually was.

“I have noticed,” Izel then slowly added, “that while College professors often joke about him, they never treat the man himself like a joke.”

Tristan hummed in approval, for he’d noticed that too. The Marshal often acted like a clown but he wasn’t treated like a clown by other officers. And that was telling, because no matter how good you were at killing things if you went around wearing garish clothes with personal pages to announce you people were going to roll their eyes. And they did, but watchmen rolled their eyes at the antics and not the man. That implied a level of respect.

This wasn’t some over-the-hill Skiritai that his guild had sent to Scholomance as a way to get him out of the way, or tricked into teaching as a subtle means of retirement. The Marshal was the man the Militants had wanted in Scholomance, and apparently with good reason: he’d been able to force through his hunt-as-test idea in the face of opposition from Colonel Cao, the best-connected Academy officer that Tristan had ever met.

“I do not recall ever seeing him defer to anyone,” Angharad admitted. “Though marshal’s rank certainly would warrant such disregard.”

If he weren’t retired, Tristan completed in his head. Although how retired the man was if he taught at Scholomance was a subject worth some debate. The conversation petered out naturally, as they were now in sight of their destination: the Old Playhouse, from the outside a sloping hill with stairs carved into the stone.

“I have been looking forward to having a gander at the inside,” Izel enthused. “I’ve never seen what lies past the crest of the hill.”

Tristan’s lips twitched. Well, at least one of them would be getting joy out of this. He glanced at Angharad as they began climbing the stairs, wondering if she found this as oddly nostalgic as he did. She caught his eye and smiled.

“Should I wish you to draw first instead, this time?” she teased. “Surely we ought to take turns.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he mused. “Last time you drew it was a butterknife, and that turned out decently for us.”

Izel cleared his throat.

“Didn’t you end up feuding with the Ninth, get your affairs stolen and miss out on the Misery Square assembly?” he asked. “Everyone was talking about it last year.”

“It turned out decently for us eventually,” Tristan conceded.

“Draw first, Tristan,” Angharad gravely said. “I’ve left my favorite hairpin in our room.”

He rolled his eyes, but he was smiling.

—

There was no servant playing the gatekeeper this time, and hardly anyone at all in the lodges.

The two upper rings of them, at least. The Old Playhouse was a hollowed out hill whose inside had been turned into three concentric rings of lodges, growing smaller as they neared the bottom, and below the last ring lay the floor where plays had once been put on and rather more recently a wooden stage had been built. Time and nature had swallowed up the walls and seats, leaving behind something akin to ring gardens.

The lowest of the rings – closest to the stage and the one with the largest lodges, telling Tristan everything he needed to know about who had once sat there – still had seats and a modicum of discretion if you cared to look for either. A few students were speaking there, or looking at the crowd below since it was where the main body of students had gathered.

They stood there chattering away in front of the wooden stage, as if this were some sort of garden party instead of an assembly of students who had signed up to hunt a slavering monster out in one of the most dangerous parts of Port Allazei.

Tristan had no intention of heading down there: he had better view of the lot from up here, and less chance of being dragged into the inevitable bickering between some of the rivals he’d already noticed. The thief sat on a stone so worn there was no telling what it had once been, leaning forward past the edge of the stone railing. Angharad silently slid into a seat by his side, and after a moment Izel flanked him from the other.

Tristan kept silent for a time, eyes flicking across the crowd below. Counting, measuring. There were more than eighty students waiting at the bottom of the Old Playhouse, most of them broadly sticking to their brigade. That made it easier to pick out the faces Tristan did know, and there were quite a few – the majority of those attending were upperclassmen. Word was that the first years had been advised by their patrons to wait until they were used to Scholomance to sign up with either test, which was wise but did their already ailing reputation no favors.

“We have quite a crop here,” Tristan finally said. “More of the top Stripes are present than I’d anticipated.”

The exploration was Cao’s game, after all, not the hunt. His eyes marked the standouts one after another. Ninth Brigade, second place. Second Brigade, fourth place. Twentieth Brigade, seventh place. Third Brigade, tenth place. Tristan was mildly surprised not to find Tupoc Xical and his Fourth, who had ranked eighth and with the Thirteenth would have meant over half the top ten Stripes had joined to the hunt. He’d slip a word to Song later about needing to expect that particular stone in her boot.

“Are there?” Izel asked. “I did not pay close attention to the rankings beyond those who beat the Thirteenth.”

Tristan slid him a reluctantly amused look. In all fairness, the Mask could not name the top five out of the College lists. All three societies kept public lists on a wall at the Ossuary, though these were strictly scholarly rankings as determined by examination marks.

“Shall I walk you through it?” Tristan teased.

“Please,” Izel fervently replied. “I’ve already had to learn what feels like a hundred new names from the first-year tinkers. You wouldn’t believe how many Zichens we have now, it gets damnably confusing.”

“Give them nicknames,” Angharad suggested. “We have two Bibeks, so we named them Short and Tall.”

How unusually diplomatic of the Militants, Tristan mused, not to have merely named one Short Bibek and constantly slighted him.

“We have at least eight Zichens,” Izel miserably said. “We’ll run out of things to differentiate them by.”

Tristan tamped down on his petty urge to suggest they hand out numbers, instead turning his eyes back below.

“We can do a quick pass,” he said. “First, if I may direct the gentleman to the left…”

He theatrically gestured, Izel rolling his eyes in answer but still following along.

“Those I can name: Ninth Brigade,” Izel said. “Sebastian Camaron’s crew, they came in second last year.”

He said that almost defiantly, like knowing the ranking of one of the literal two brigades above the Unluckies in Academy rankings was an achievement to be lauded. The thief decided to let him have this.

“If the stories about their yearly test are to be trusted,” Tristan said, “Camaron is a fine enough shot to hit rope with a pistol from across a deck and sufficiently charming to talk a pirate princess out of her betrothal.”

“He’s good-looking,” Izel acknowledged. “That always helps.”

They both glanced at Angharad, who shrugged at them.

“Alas, I have not been moved by his looks,” she drily said.

Yes, because that had clearly been what Tristan was implying. Not that as the one in the Thirteenth who had most spoken to the man she might have some insight to share.

“The rest of his cabal are all decent hands at fighting,” Tristan continued. “Their Savant, Claver, is skilled with a cutlass while their Mask-”

Izel cleared his throat questioningly.

“The Mask is the Tianxi,” Tristan shared. “Ruo Xuan Liu. Good with knives, even better with his fists.”

“He irritates Song,” Angharad noted. “Something about the Wendi accent in Cathayan sounding pompous.”

Ruo also acted nobleborn, Tristan thought, which probably had more to do with Song’s dislike of him than his accent. His finger moved to the hooded woman speaking with Ruo.

“Jayati Banerjee,” he said. “Navigator, one of the best in her year. Maryam says she’s haughty but knows several books’ worth of curses. Cousin to the Banerjee in the Third Brigade.”

“That must be awkward,” Izel tried, “given the enmity.”

“Not really,” Tristan said. “They hate each other worse than Chapul and Camaron, he sought out the Third himself after Jayati joined the Ninth.”

He cleared his throat.

“Last is their Skiritai, Musa Shange,” he said, and glanced at Angharad again.

“One of the finest swords among the second year Skiritai,” she volunteered. “I’d say maybe six of us can defeat him reliably.”

“Did you not cripple him using a butter knife?” Izel frowned.

He was saying that, Tristan amusedly thought, like she could not most likely do the same to the two of them facing her together.

“He was angry and unprepared,” Angharad said. “And the grounds were in my favor, besides. Talon school tends to perform best in tight, enclosed spaces – I find him difficult to deal with when I do not have room to maneuver.”

High praise, coming from Angharad. She was not prone to bragging but neither was she shy about her skills.

“They’re a heavy combat brigade,” Tristan summed up. “Better geared for men than monsters, but it’s not a coincidence that their Navigator is also a teratologist and their Savant is a theologist who can fight. Camaron built a crew of door-kickers specialized in the kind of contracts that make you dead or famous before you hit thirty.”

Which fit the mentality of a marshal’s son who knew he would never hold command in Lucierna. It was Watch policy never to let relatives succeed each other in Garrison commands, after a few too many far-flung fortresses had decided to proclaim themselves petty kingdoms. The only way for Sebastian Camaron to ever reach the heights his father had would be to become the head of a famous brigade, preferably one affiliated to Lucierna so he could keep leaning on those connections.

“On the other side of the room,” Tristan said, “we find their sworn rivals, the Third Brigade. Tenth place in the rankings.”

“Their captain is Nenetl Chapul,” Izel recalled. “It’s an Izcalli name, but she does not talk like someone who was raised speaking Centzon.”

Considering she was born in Lucierna, Antigua was a likelier native tongue.

“She is a Garrison princess, like Camaron is a prince,” Tristan said. “Both from Lucierna and they cannot stand each other. She lost half a leg at Misery Square, but…”

All their eyes went to Nenetl Chapul, whose leg had not been put back together by Lady Knit. Instead a simple but stoutly made prosthetic in forged iron replaced the missing limb from shortly below the knee – a temporary measure, Tristan thought. With a tinker in her cabal she was likely to get something personally fitted to her before long.

“She stands on that iron leg if it were flesh,” Angharad quietly said. “Song says her contract might aid her there, but it is still remarkable.”

Nenetl’s contract was a perfect awareness of her body, apparently. Considering she was healing from a missing limb, Tristan considered that something of a mixed blessing – she would never, not for a moment, be allowed to forget what she had lost.

“Nenetl’s a fine sword, but her draw is that she has a knack for tactics,” Tristan said. “Apparently she’s unbeaten in the skirmishes of her Warfare class. She certainly built her brigade for a less direct approach than Camaron’s.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

He pointed at the sullen Someshwari speaking with Nenetl.

“Ritwick Banerjee, the obligatory Navigator,” he said.

Tristan would have to poke around and find out if someone had taken up Ruo on the report about him. It’d be worth reading if they were going to rub elbows going forward.

“He likely saved my life at Misery Square,” Angharad said. “He most definitely spared me injury.”

The thief filed away that debt. Nenetl should know to overplay her hand when calling it in, but Tristan was not nearly as familiar with the way that captain operated as Song was. His fingers clenched. That would be no trouble, if she were there.

“Then you have Jeronimo de Aznarez,” Tristan said, forcefully even. “Skiritai.”

He slid a look to his left.

“He leads one of the slaying crews down in the Acallar,” Angharad agreeably provided. “Sword and dagger man, but he was clearly trained with a spear. He moves oddly with it, though – at a guess he was taught to use it mounted.”

Not unusual, for a man with a noble Lierganen name. Izel frowned, then shook his head.

“I know the last of them socially,” he said. “Awonke Bokang. He’s a powderman, good enough even the Tianxi students take him seriously.”

It was something of a platitude to assume that Tianxi knew their way around blackpowder best, even though the substance was their invention, but there was just enough truth to the old assumption that it’d never faded. Certainly the Sanxing still made munitions that no one else had ever figured out.

“He rigged up a machine that punched through the wall of a cult’s treasure vault last year,” Tristan said. “It got Krypteia attention on account of being relatively quiet.”

By tinker standards, anyway.

“There’s workshop gossip he is contracted,” Izel shared.

“That never made it into Malani dinner circles,” Angharad said. “If it is true, he keeps it quiet.”

“Either way,” Tristan said, “Nenetl Chapul didn’t put together a band of swords: they’re finely tuned clockwork, meant for finesse. In a straight fight against a pure combat brigade they will get chewed up, but given time to prepare they are a heap of trouble.”

Their ranking was also something of a mislead. Had the Third not ended up dragged into the middle of some noble dispute during their Old Saraya contract last year they would have done better, though still probably not broken into the top five. Chapul didn’t seem to consider it much of a priority, which Tristan considered wise. By not getting caught up in the race for the top rank like Camaron was she could pick contracts that got her genuinely useful payouts instead of being stuck chasing Colonel Cao’s fickle approval. He cleared his throat.

“Which brings me to the halfway house between the Third and Ninth, the Second Brigade.”

His finger moved towards the recognizable silhouette of the Guadalupe de Tovar, with her ridiculous red scarf. Royal red, like she was some emperor’s long-lost daughter. Nobles with a de to their name were all old Second Empire bloodlines, but there were limits to what even the pretentious should imply.

“Captain Guadalupe de Tovar, whose distinguishing mark from other well-connected Garrison princelings is that she has a combat-oriented contract and collected the same,” Tristan said. “As usual Song held back on details, but it manifests as a mist that de Tovar can shape and put people to sleep with. It works best on lemures.”

His finger went through the other three members in quick succession.

“Fanyana Khosa, Savant,” he said. “Contracted.”

Though the details on how were scarce. Something subtle.

“Alizia Salas, Skiritai.”

“Leads another slaying crew,” Angharad provided. “And contracted. She can walk on air for short amounts of time.”

“And the last is the obligatory Akelarre,” Tristan finished. “Their calling card as a brigade is the contracts. They’re worse than the Ninth in a brawl and not as flexible as the Third when given time to prepare, but they’re fast on their feet and the contracts let them strike in unusual ways.”

A pause.

“Now, the Second landed fourth place in Stripe rankings last year, right behind us. And because of that de Tovar intensely dislikes Song, which reading between the lines seems fairly mutual,” he said. “Potentially they could be trouble for us.”

“I know Lord Khosa socially,” Angharad volunteered. “I would not say we are friendly, but neither are we unfriendly.”

“Lean on that if you can,” Tristan agreed. “But it’d be ideal to make allies to bolster our position, and since Song’s not keen on taking sides between the Third and the Ninth that means looking at some of the lesser players.”

He first pointed out the Twentieth Brigade first, which besides claiming a respectable seventh place in Stripe rankings stood mostly on account of their captain having twice doubled up on the Guildhouse: the creepy Emain twins made two Akelarre while Short Bibek and a sawblade-wielding Izcalli made two Skiritai. Angharad was not impressed by the Izcalli, claiming Musa ran rings around her whenever they sparred. With that out of the way, Tristan could move to the brigade he truly considered the best pick.

“Runner-up in rank, twelfth place last year, are our friends by the stage.”

He pointed discreetly, and as expected Angharad grimaced when she found who it was. Not that she wouldn’t have known from the ranking alone.

“The Thirty-First Brigade,” she flatly said.

“We’ve got history with Ferranda Villazur and her lot,” Tristan said. “Some parts of it nicer than others, but putting that aside their brigade is one we would gain much from having with us.”

Izel frowned.

“Rong Ma is a deft hand with traps,” he conceded, “but pure Clockwork Cathedral track. What I can make will be more apt in dealing with a lemure.”

“I wasn’t actually comparing tinkers,” Tristan amusedly replied. “Ferranda Villazur is an accomplished huntress in need of muscle, which makes her a good fit for us, but the true draw here is Shalini Goel.”

Angharad breathed in.

“Her contract price,” she said.

Tristan thinly smiled, spelling it out for the somewhat confused Izel.

“Shalini’s contract quickens her reflexes,” he said. “But by using it she becomes a beacon in the aether that draws in lemures of all sorts.”

Izel sucked in a breath.

“Even if that does not draw the dantesvara outright, given how territorial it is the lemures the price attracts might well bait it to us anyway,” the tinker said. “That would be very useful.”

Yes. And as far as Tristan was concerned, being able to dictate the time and place of the engagement was the single most useful thing a contract could grant them when facing this beast. It was the reason he had come ready to push for the pick in the face of Angharad’s inevitable reluctance. Tristan cleared his throat.

“That’s it for the leading brigades, and what I consider our best choice for an ally,” he said. “There’s five more full brigades from our year and many more independents, but no one I would consider a standout.”

A pause.

“Of course, I would be remiss if I did not bring up our most likely potential issue.”

Izel stiffened. Quick on draw, that man, when it came to trouble.

“No,” he said. “Already? It’s barely been two days.”

“I’m afraid so,” Tristan said, tipping his head towards the left of the stage. “The Nineteenth Brigade, under Captain Yaotl Acatl.”

They were spread out among the first years, so difficult to pick out, but the Izcalli princess herself stood out. Izel put his face down in his hands.