Chapter 20

It was nearly eleven when they let him out, not that Tristan knew until he got the watch back.

There had been no window in the room where he was held, and the door was thick enough he could only hear the muted drone of people speaking when he put his ear against the wood. The soldiers had not mistreated him, but their manner had been brisk and unfriendly. Twice a day he’d been handed a meal on a tray and during the evening meal they also emptied his chamber pot and refilled the Glare oil in his sole lamp. Someone with a sense of humor had ensured he was left with a single book to spend his hours on, ‘The Comprehensive Watch Regulations Codex, revised 98 Sails’.

A bookmark had even been left on the page about the punishments for use of force against a fellow member of the order, which had been funny enough Tristan couldn’t even feel annoyed.

“Here,” Lieutenant Mani said, sliding the bundle across the table. “Check everything is there and sigh the release papers.”

She’d already handed back his few personal affairs, which left only his weapons. The thief undid the black cloth – how ruinously expensive dyeing everything in that color would be, if not for the order’s monopoly on Iscariot snails – and methodically put on his weapons. The blackjack and the knife, then the holster and the pistol. Powder and shot had been removed from it, thankfully, as it would play havoc on the steel barrel otherwise. But Tristan could not help but notice that his five powder charges were missing and there was not a bullet in sight. Neither was there any trace of his two vials, the venom and the volcian yew.

He flicked a gaze up at the lieutenant and found her staring back unblinkingly. For a second, he considered not signing. Asking for his vials and ammunitions back instead of taking the petty punishment on the nose. But then it wouldn’t end up with Mani forking up the goods and letting him go with a scowl, would it? She’d draw it out, send for a captain, for additional papers for him to sign. Tristan would end up stuck here for another hour, if not several. No one beat a gambling house at dice, no matter how finely they rolled.

He cut his losses and signed. There was not a flicker of expression on the lieutenant’s face as he did.

“Is there,” Tristan asked, “anybody waiting for me outside?”

He did not truly expect Captain Wen to make the effort and the Thirteenth should be in class, but it was not only them that might be awaiting his release.

“No,” Lieutenant Mani bluntly said. “Neither your brigade nor the princess’s. Off with you, Abrascal.”

No one saw him out. It was not a new thing to him, scorn from those running the law where he dwelled, but the cold stares were no more pleasant for it. Tristan pulled down his tricorn and squared his shoulders, walking out into the street.

It was fourthday morning, so he’d missed the first expedition to Lamb Hill.

He had been isolated enough he couldn’t even overhear gossip about how it went, so he’d have to go digging – later, however. For now the students of both years should still be in Scholomance so there was no point in canvassing opinions. Besides, he thought with a look at the shadows on either end of the street, he was feeling more than a mite exposed. It was doubtful that his trick at the Old Playhouse had dissolved the Nineteenth, meaning he likely had several Skiritai currently after his scalp. Much as it might be his preference, he must avoid moving alone too much until measures could be taken to disarm that danger.

He’d had little to do but think, alone in that room, so when he set out it was with a destination already in mind. Tristan had not thought it worth it to shell out the coin for the records of the members making up the Nineteenth before, given how much the price would eat into his funds, but the time for that hesitation was past. That and he needed to replace the substances he had lost – his Dosage box was low on paralytics and he’d just had his entire stock of volcian yew stolen.

The Chimerical first. He could move out after he’d refilled his arsenal and gained his bearings.

—

Nothing about Hage’s coffeehouse was an accident.

The Chimerical was a front for the Masks, but the old devil still made a tidy sum off being the only coffeehouse in Port Allazei and importing beans for private use by the bag. Having the front door of the Chimerical replaced wouldn’t even have put his ledger in the red for a month, much less repaired, but then that wasn’t the point. Every time someone had to fight to wrench the old door open, as Tristan just had, it slowed them down and gave Hage advanced warning. A tripwire that did not look like one.

Tristan held his breath as a burst air slipped through the open door, avoiding the worst of the smell of bitter beans and berries, but his steps stuttered as he stepped into the shop.

Music was playing.

The Chimerical looked empty, a shadowy place cluttered with curios – floating froggy limbs in jars, a slowly ticking grandfather clock whose pendulum was a crescent moon, a Tianxi wilderness painting that looked like a ravaged battlefield if you half-closed your eyes and over it all the stuffed alligator hanging from the ceiling with its perfectly preserved teeth. Yet never before had Tristan seen the music box on the counter, if it was indeed such a thing.

He had never seen a music box like it: a wooden box inset in bronze and pearl, but the insides were whirling gears and at the heart of it was an incandescent, glowing piece of glass that a thin bronze needle was scratching. There was something terrifying about the machine, as if Tristan was beholding a great sacrilege, and it sang like no box. It was a man’s voice that echoed through the Chimerical, intertwined with a violin.

Together they sang a sad, gentle song.

“I once knew a man in Saraya

A canal-lord, crowned in gold

friends, he said, do you remember

the peace we had of old?

And his army roared like thunder.”

The violin sliced a pause like carve of a knife.

“I once slew a man, in Saraya.”

It was a soft tune, Tristan thought, almost wistful.

“O Father, are you smiling

at the weeds you have sown

or the sickle that we swing?

The reaper man’s own.”

A flicker of movement from the side, Mephistofeline padding out from behind the counter. The fat black cat moved silently, for a creature his size, and approached Tristan with his tail raised.

“I once loved a maid in Jiushen

A scholar, so clever and bold

Saying: beloved, why must we die?

I have found methods-”

Tick. Tristan turned, startled, and found two fingers raising the needle in the music box, folding it away through a clever contraption. Hage stood behind the counter, a tall old man in green jerkin over a high-collared doublet that worked with his feathered beret to making him look almost owl-like.

“Sit,” Hage ordered.

He did even as the devil took a porcelain cup from the shelf and picked up a soft white cloth to begin cleaning its no doubt already pristine insides.

“A sad song,” Tristan said. “I’ve never heard it before.”

“It is old, by men’s reckoning,” Hage simply replied.

Tristan bent to stroke Mephistofeline’s head but before he could the cat hissed and showed him his buttocks, waddling away to hide underneath a bench. It stung oddly, even though the cat threw such fits all the time so he might be appeased with treats. He dragged his stare away. He’d come here for a reason, he reminded himself, not listen to music boxes and play with the cat.

“I’d like to see the menu,” Tristan said.

Hage set down the cup on the shelf, turning to lean his elbows on the counter.

“We’re out,” the devil said.

His jaw clenched. Tristan had known from the start that Hage would disapprove of the way he’d used the dragon snail venom he’d bought in this very coffeehouse. Odds were it’d even been made into an extract below his feet: poison students used the alchemical workshop in the basement to brew and distill all manners of things.

“Nothing harmful,” he stiffly said. “Only paralytics and soporifics.”

“We are,” Hage mildly replied, “out.”

His fingers clenched.

“You can’t be serious,” Tristan said. “Even soporifics?”

“Do you think there is any wisdom, Tristan Abrascal, in handing a child a knife instead of a loaded pistol?” the devil asked.

I am not a child, Tristan did not say, because it would have made him sound like one.

“I’m aware that I went over the line,” he forced out. “I am currently looking to mitigate the damage.”

“As am I,” Hage evenly said.

And even as the devil grabbed the cup again and resumed cleaning it, Tristan realized that his eyes had not left him once since he entered the shop. Observing, tallying. He was not looking at an instructor, right now, but a winnower. And the same hand deftly holding porcelain could crush his windpipe with barely any effort, faster than he could blink. He swallowed.

“As you say,” he stiffly conceded. “How much for the records of the Nineteenth, then?”

The cloth stopped moving.

“Your permission to buy from the Krypteia index has been suspended,” Hage told him.

Under the counter, Tristan’s nails dug into the wood until the rim of them ached, until he feared splinters.

“It’s only information,” he said with forced calm.

“Yes,” Hage agreed. “More dangerous than any of poison. Denied the first, why would you be granted the second?”

“You’re leaving me with nothing to use,” Tristan bit out.

“I am leaving you with the tools you’ve proved worthy of wielding,” Hage said. “You are not forbidden from trading with others, or barred the Chimerical. But I will not put weapons in your hands that you would wield against watchmen.”

A flare of heat in his gut because really? This again? Another Krypteia game that involved walking over him, getting shafted when trying to do something necessary, and he was supposed to just fucking smile?

“Are they?” Tristan harshly said. “Are they actually here to be Watch, Officer Hage?”

He leaned in.

“Because I’m just a student, but Yaotl Acatl looks to me like another plot from up high that I’m expected to let whip my back before bleating out thanks for it. And the moment I actually do something about her, you blacklist me.”

“You did not shoot Yaotl Acatl, boy,” Hage said. “You shot Ahuic of Zapala.”

The devil stared him down.

“Which was within acceptable bounds of violence, considering the circumstances. But you then used a second-class restricted substance on an unarmed, helpless watchwoman.”

He breathed out. Getting angry would get him nowhere.

“A simple gunshot wound would have been fixed within the day,” Tristan flatly stated. “You know that. For something so straightforward Lady Knit would have demanded a minor price. Without the poison, the girl would have been back the day after with every intention of attacking me.”

And he could not expect to fight a grudge-bearing Skiritai with any degree of success. It was one thing to shoot her in the back by surprise when she was fewer than ten feet away, another to actually fight someone qualified to join the Militants. The moment he had wounded the girl, he had needed her gone for good.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“In other words,” Hage calmly said, “you made a severe mistake in judgment, which you now seek to use as justification for debilitatingly poisoning a promising Skiritai Guild inductee not for something she did in fact do, but something she potentially might have done.”

The silence felt damning. Tristan’s teeth clenched, because some of that was true but it was true in a void. Without any consideration to what surrounded it, the reasons he’d actually acted that way. It might have been a mistake, how far he went, but it wasn’t a mistake sprouted out thin air.

“If the Watch offers no protection, what else are we supposed to do but protect ourselves?” Tristan hissed out. “Would anyone have done a thing when Acatl came for us, after we waited for her to take the first blow? Let’s not pretend she didn’t publicly declare her intention to run the Thirteenth out of Scholomance.”

“Yes,” Hage said. “And since this would have involved outside powers in the affairs of Scholomance, this was a punishable overreach. By involving her patron or appealing to the Obscure Committee – a member of which is currently in the city, as you well know – you could have had her sanctioned.”

Of course he said that now, Tristan scorned. The rules were always fair, when you were caught breaking them. Yet somehow never when you needed them enforced. The old devil leaned forward.

“But Yaotl Acatl will not be, because of what you have done. Instead you lost the Watch a skilled recruit because you acted thoughtlessly and then tried to clean up behind yourself by using a poison we usually reserve for putting down elite contractors,” Hage said.

“Your skilled recruit drew a blade on me,” Tristan flatly replied.

The devil slammed the cup he’d been cleaning on the table and it broke with resonant crush – porcelain shards went flying. Tristan killed his flinch and remained very, very still.

“You act,” Hage icily said, “like you are at the mercy of everyone you encounter. Because you are, inside your head. But the reality of it, Tristan Abrascal, is that you have power.”

There was the sound of clicking teeth even though those in Hage’s mouth did not move at all.

“You have been trained,” the old devil said. “You can obtain the personal record of anyone on this isle. You can buy poisons most men do not even know exist. You have ways to bargain favors with Masks scattered across your entire year. You have the backing of a strong brigade and a well-connected patron.”

Hage’s fist clenched, crunching the unseen, and powdered porcelain fell like sand when he opened his hand.

“You were not the weaker party at the Old Playhouse, no matter what you may tell yourself to justify the brutality you wielded against a girl wearing the black,” the devil said. “And if this is how you wield the privileges you have been granted, then they are suspended.”

Hage met his eyes straight.

“No menu. No index.”

Tristan kept his voice calm. He had come here looking to mitigate damage. This was just another instance of it.

“For how long?”

“Until you have proven responsible enough to be handed a knife,” Hage harshly said.

There was no point in calling it unfair. Fair never meant anything. He’d gone too far, and now the Krypteia was hanging him out to dry – to become an example, though of which kind was yet to be determined. There was no fight that could be fought inside this room that would win him anything even if he won, so instead Tristan nodded jerkily and rose to his feet. He would have left without another word, but the devil stopped him.

“It isn’t enough to make the right choice once, boy,” Hage said. “You have to keep making it, else it never meant anything at all.”

Tristan did not answer, for there was nothing to say. It was the kind of warning no one received twice. He’d barely taken a few steps towards the door when the song started again, right where it had stopped.

“-untold

That we might never say goodbye.”

A slash of violin. He could almost see his father’s smile, the effortless way the man had wielded his bow.

“I once slew a maid, in Jiushen.”

The last of the sad, pleading refrain followed him out as the door closed behind him.

“O Father, are you smiling

at the weeds you have sown

or the sickle that we swing?

The reaper man’s own.”

—