Chapter 27

A secret, Abuela had taught Tristan, always whispered twice.

The first was the secret reaching your ear, the hidden thing unearthed. The second was the whisper of what a man had thought worth wielding a spade to bury, what it said of them they would keep away from prying eyes. He thought of that, as Lieutenant Vasanti called up her soldiers and introduced him as their fresh meat, a new helper in their work to unearth the tower’s secrets who would soon be joined by three more. He thought of it and smiled at the strangers, because the blackcloaks were bringing him to find out the pillar’s secrets but it was not them he truly wanted.

He was going to find out what that Watch had buried here and why they’d buried it.

And once he had had, once he heard the second whisper and he saw the whole of the mosaic instead of a hundred pieces, then he would decide where to slide the knife.

—

The first act he took come morning was sowing the seed Beatris had given him.

“And she told you this in person?” Isabel pressed.

“Last night,” he said. “And as a parting gift to us both, Lady Ruesta, she told me we share a trouble.”

The dark-haired infanzona smiled, and Tristan wondered how long it had taken her to craft this one: friendly but not overly inviting, just a touch cheerful and naïve. Even without the contract Tredegar would have tripped all over her boots around Isabel Ruesta.

“And what would that be?”

Tristan feigned wiping his lips, enough to hide how them from watchers.

“Remund Cerdan,” he said.

Isabel’s smiled widened.

“It is very kind of you to be so concerned,” she said, “but though taken with me he has not been-”

“My sister lost her hands to his contract,” Tristan lied. “He’s a shit and you don’t want to marry him any more than I want him to make it through this trial.”

Oh, the thief thought as he watched Isabel Ruesta’s face shift seamlessly from slightly touched to cool pleasantness. A schemer’s face, but he would wager not her true one. It was just another sort of play she put on, changing role for every stage. She was the most dangerous sort of the snake: the kind that did not announce the venomous fangs with bright colors.

“I did think you were just a little too convenient to simply be a rat,” Isabel mildly said. “Revenge, however, is an expensive business. Which coterie sponsored you?”

“What would that matter to you?” Tristan shrugged.

“Won’t you indulge me?” she asked, batting her eyes.

Was she using her contract? He could not tell if she was. The thought angered him regardless.

“No.”

She looked more amused than miffed.

“So we share a trouble,” Isabel acknowledged. “What do you propose to do about it?”

“Poor choice of words,” Tristan noted, to a quirk of her lips. “And today? Nothing. I have business here in the Old Fort. I need two things from you: a recounting of the venture in the maze and for you to find a place where I might corner him.”

“You want me to spy for you,” Isabel lightly said.

“Spy is such an ugly word,” the thief noted. “Which is fitting given that we are arranging your fiancé’s murder.”

The mask of pleasantness cracked. That, at last, had touched a nerve.

“We are not,” Lady Isabel Ruesta coldly laid out, “engaged.”

“Nor will you ever be, if we help each other,” Tristan smiled back, all charm and friendliness.

From the corner of his eye he saw Angharad Tredegar approaching their table and he cocked an eyebrow at the infanzona. They could not speak long without suspicion, or easily again without causing the same.

“Agreed,” Isabel murmured.

Would she betray him, Tristan wondered? Too early to tell, but only a fool would discount the possibility when faced with such a snake. More likely, though, she would keep this secret in her pocket in case it might ever be of use in getting her home to the life she did not want to leave behind. The thief waited until Tredegar joined them, then made quickly his excuses to leave. He now had eyes in their crew and an accomplice for what was to come.

That was one piece of the mosaic in hand: now he must collect the rest.

—

Talking his comrades into joining Lieutenant Vasanti’s efforts had not been difficult: they were all eager at the thought of getting the Watch’s help and protection. What Tristan had not expected was for the Watch itself to argue over Vasanti’s decision. It was very much the case, though, and after spending so long tiptoeing around the blackcloaks Tristan found it rather lovely to see them tear into each other like this.

“- against every rule,” Lieutenant Wen insisted. “We have a clear set of duties overseeing the second trial and using its takers as labor undeniably goes against them.”

“Oh look,” Lieutenant Vasanti drawled, “the boy has an opinion on rules. That’s nice. In thirty years, I might even start giving a shit about what you think.”

They weren’t even hiding this, the thief gleefully thought. All three of them were in the kitchen, in sight of everyone, and more than a few watchmen were looking at the scene.

“You’ll be dead in thirty years, crone,” the Tianxi snarled.

“And what a relief it will be,” Vasanti replied, “to finally be beyond the reach of your whining.”

Tristan knew better than to get involved. The Watch was clannish, like a tightly knit coterie, and no matter how at odds the pair got they were sure to band together against an outsider. Instead he sat in his seat, moving as little as he could, and tried very hard not to grin at how red in the face Lieutenant Wen had gone.

“I will kick this up to Captain Tozi if I have to,” Wen threatened.

The large Tianxi lieutenant had always been so sure in his power until now, so willing to toy with all of them. Tristan found that seeing the man’s jaw clench and his eyes flash with anger was good for morale. He’d keep this moment in mind, next time Wen threatened to hammer an entire bucket’s worth of nails into his body.

“The same Captain Tozi you told she’s only been picked for the Academy because she’s nobleborn?” Lieutenant Vasanti replied. “Do wait until I’m in the room to try it, at my age there’s only so many good laughs left ahead of me.”

Lieutenant Wen gritted his teeth.

“Commander Artal-”

“Won’t care what happens outside Three Pines so long as it doesn’t splash his boots,” Vasanti cut in, unimpressed. “He’s just here to pretty up his record before a committee bid.”

The old Someshwari shook her head, as if disappointed.

“Besides, this is all far away,” she said. “In the Old Fort, Wen, I am the senior lieutenant. Do you remember what that means?”

The Tianxi’s face tightened.

“You haven’t run a goddamn thing, Vasanti,” he said. “It’s all been me while you’ve holed up in the pillar with your favorites and-”

“It means,” Lieutenant Vasanti coldly interrupted, “that I am your superior. And your superior has just ordered you to shut the fuck up, so you had best get to it.”

Lieutenant Wen’s face went even redder, which Tristan had not thought possible, and he closed his mouth. He stalked away, not bothering to hide his fury, and the old woman snorted at the sight.

“There’s only so far a pristine combat record will get you, kid, with a mouth like yours,” she said, then sighed. “And you, rat, keep that smirk off your face.”

“I am not smirking,” Tristan said. “And you are not looking at my face.”

Lieutenant Vasanti turned an irritated eye on him.

“I have a fine nose for conceit,” she said. “You positively reek of it.”

“I’ll try to trade for an earlier bath ticket,” Tristan easily replied.

The irritation in her eyes grew.

“Go gather your little band,” she said. “Wen’s going to be a right pain for the rest of the year, so you had better be worth the trouble.”

—

The northwestern bastion was Lieutenant Vasanti’s private kingdom.

That much became clear within moments as five blackcloaks gathered to her like chicks to their mother, coming to around the table by the telescope while looking all eager and polite. The four of them – Francho, Vanesa, Maryam and Tristan himself – were escorted up the stairs by the same middle-aged Someshwari woman Tristan had first thought to be the Vasanti last night. She was, in fact, called Sergeant Ovya.

She also had it in for him.

“I don’t suppose,” the sergeant asked, “that you have any notion of why I’ve ordered to write ‘I will load my pistol properly, like a grown woman’ a hundred times with a charcoal pen?”

“None whatsoever,” Tristan lied.

The Someshwari leaned closer.

“When you inevitably piss her off,” Ovya whispered, “I’ll be sure to ask to be the one to cane you.”

Best nip that in the bud, he decided.

“Sergeant,” Tristan replied, pitching his voice loud and feigning indignation, “that would be quite inappropriate, given your authority over me.”

Surprise flickered across her face a moment, the confusion. At least until she’d noticed he had spoken loud enough to be heard by all the watchmen at the table, several of which were now frowning at her. They’ll remember this if you try to wiggle your way into delivering a caning, he thought. Trying to beat a younger man for refusing her unseemly advances was the kind of thing that would darken her reputation permanently, so odds were she would back off. Sergeant Ovya glared at him.

“You can find your way to the table, I am sure,” she coldly said, then strode away.

There was a moment of silence, then behind him Maryam sighed.

“I’d assumed you talked your way into the good graces of the lieutenant,” she said, “but why is that beginning to feel like optimism?”

“I applied the full breadth of my charms,” Tristan defended.

“Oh dear,” Francho wheezed out. “Where did you even find a cliff to jump off from?”

“Stop teasing him, you two,” Vanesa chided.

She sent a smile his way.

“I’m sure he has angered no more than half of these fine folk,” she added.

Betrayal on all sides, Tristan amusedly thought. Making sport of him seemed to put a little life back in Vanesa’s pale face, so he let it pass without retort. The four of them made their way to the table, where Lieutenant Vasanti was fiddling with a scroll. She shot them an impatient glance.

“Did you go for a stroll first?” she complained. “Come closer, I don’t have all day.”

Which was factually untrue, Tristan thought, but he chose silence. If you kept putting your hand in the crocodile’s mouth, no matter how lucky you were eventually you lost the hand. Vasanti’s eyes swept through the four of them.

“How much did you actually figure out about this place?” she asked, then frowned. “Never mind, I don’t actually care. Let us keep this simple.”

She pointed upwards, at the great golden aetheric machine mimicking the stars and casting its glow on all of the massive cavern.

“The Antediluvians built this place and the pillar that connects the ceiling and floor of this cavern,” she said. “Sometime after, likely beginning as early as the Old Night, devils began building the rest of this place – namely the maze of ruins and the Old Fort.”

Lieutenant Vasanti paused.

“That’s intriguing, but we don’t like the devils here,” she said. “Why do we not like the devils, Biter?”

“It is Bitor, ma’am,” a young man with the Sacramontan look reminded her.

She did not acknowledge his answer in the slightest, which must have been common because he went on without even a sigh and no one looked surprised.

“We do not like the devils here because they sabotaged the iron gates leading inside the pillar,” Bitor dutifully said. “We have found parts of what was almost certainly a mechanism to open them in the basement of the Old Fort.”

Francho cleared his throat, earning a look from Vasanti. She did not insult him, to Tristan’s surprise, not even when the old scholar dipped into a wet cough before he could speak.

“Did the devils tinker with the aetheric machine?” he asked.

She nodded approvingly.

“One of the questions we seek answers for,” Lieutenant Vasanti said. “One of my predecessors blew his way into the pillar, but our progress has since stopped. Some of what was found, however, implies that there are controls for the machine somewhere near the top of the pillar. It is entirely possible the devils got that far and are responsible for the current ‘laws’ enforced by the aetheric device.”

The very underpinnings of the Trial of Ruins, Tristan thought. The reason why they could venture into the maze and take tests: the gods could not harm humans unless terms were first agreed on, only each other, and they could not leave their seats of power. The devils also brought hundreds of shrines and built a fort around the gate to the pillar, the thief thought. What is it they were trying to achieve? He was still missing too many pieces to begin making out the pattern.

“Do we have any notion of why this place was so important to them?” he asked. “They spent many years and much effort on this cavern.”

Lieutenant Vasanti considered him.

“You might not know this, given your youth and lacking education, but it is not uncommon for devils to sabotage or destroy the finest works of the First Empire,” she said. “We have no reason to believe this is any different.”

Liar, Tristan thought. There was a glimpse of the second whisper: Lieutenant Vasanti believed she knew why it was the devils cared about this place and she did not want it known. Known by us, or by everyone? He would have to find out of the other blackcloaks were also being kept in the dark. His instincts had him suspecting they would be. If it was something she could use to get more men and resources, she already would have. It was being kept quiet, perhaps by more than just her.

How many hands were on this spade?

“Good to know,” Tristan smiled. “I take it you have something in mind for us to aid in?”

Lieutenant Vasanti unrolled the scroll she had been fiddling with, spreading it out on the table. It was a drawn schematic of the pillar, Tristan saw, or at least a small part of it. He easily recognized the room where he had almost been shot last night and the stairs on its side, leading up to an intersection. On one side the stairs led to an intricately drawn chamber centered around a complicated machine, while on the other they rose to what looked like a dead end – save for a side door marked as a word in Samratrava he did not know the meaning of. The Someshwari officer tapped a finger on the machine-room.

“There are mechanism in there that respond to Gloam and what might be instructions for their use that we have not deciphered,” Lieutenant Vasanti said. “I haven’t been able to talk a Navigator into coming here, so the girl who can use Signs will have to do.”

She paused, turning to Francho.

“How are you with cryptoglyphs?” she asked.

“My language studies centered on cants, but I am familiar with the Naukratian glyphs,” the old professor toothlessly smiled.

Tristan kept his confusion off his face. He knew what cants were – darkling languages, supposedly descended from the single original tongue the Antediluvians had spoken – but had no notion of what these cryptoglyphs might be.

“Then you’ll be taking a look,” Vasanti said. “The best I managed to get is Luisa here, who is only familiar with one of the Second Empire codexes. She will be your assistant.”

He leaned closed to Maryam.

“Cryptoglyphs?”

“First Empire scientific language,” she murmured back. “Signs are based on it.”

So Francho was familiar with some of the glyphs, while Luisa – a young woman with short blond hair, looking a little nervous – had only read a ‘codex’. The difference between someone who knew the letters and someone who had read a list of words, perhaps? He would make inquiries with Francho when they had the time. However short their exchange, it had caught Lieutenant Vasanti’s attention.

“Stop chattering,” the old woman warned. “Now, for the last two of you I have something else in mind. We’ll be going for a look at the central shaft, then we can discuss what I want from you.”

That did not sound so bad, at least until Tristan saw the grim looks on the faces of the blackcloaks.

—

One of the watchmen, a stout man with unfortunate acne, had to carry Vanesa up the ladder tied to his back.

Much as Tristan would have liked to be allowed to roam inside the pillar, he did not even get to see the machine-room where Maryam and Francho were taken away to. Instead Lieutenant Vasanti led him and Vanesa up the narrow stairs, at a slow pace accommodating of the crutches. They took a right at the crossroads and continued up for another flight, leading right to the dead end the drawings had laid out. Only they had not shown why it was a dead end, a detail that would have been worth the mention.

Someone had buried the last stretch of stairs below massive slabs of stone. A few of the stones were shattered and there were scorch marks on them and the walls, but the effort must have been aborted for it was well shy of anything like a doorway.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

“Why stop?” he asked Lieutenant Vasanti, flicking a look at the slabs.

“There were concerns that the amount of powder it’d get through would bring the ceiling down on our heads,” she told him. “That and one of our contractors found out there’s a layer of metal at the back.”

“The door was welded shut?” Tristan breathed out.

“The devils did not want anyone to get past those stairs,” Lieutenant Vasanti said. “They are not creatures prone to half-measures.”

He let out a low whistle. The devils, he thought, were at the heart of this mystery. They had built the maze, built the fort, and gone to great lengths to keep people from being able to enter the pillar before abandoning the Old Fort to the blackcloaks. The secret they care about is in the pillar, he decided. Exactly like the Watch, they had centered their entire presence on the Dominion of Lost Things around what existed in this cavern. Is it all about the golden machine above us? Not, it shouldn’t be. If the devils had been able to get up there, as Lieutenant Vasanti clearly believed, then they would have been able to destroy the Antediluvian machine.

There would have been no need to prevent entrance through the gates or block stairs with stone and steel.

“I don’t see the door shown on your scroll,” Vanesa called out from a few steps down. “It should be around here.”

“There’s a trick to it,” the lieutenant replied, black cloak brushing past Tristan and she came down.

The old Someshwari leaned close to the wall, then pressed her thumbs against a spot. There was a small click, then the stone popped open and the outline of a door swung out half an inch. The lieutenant stepped back and opened it all the way, inviting them to look. It wouldn’t exactly be accurate to call what he saw room, as that would imply it was usable. It was not.

What Tristan was looking it as was a vertical stone shaft at least two miles long that was positively filled with ticking, shifting cogs and wheel. At a central pillar there seemed to be something like a twisting rope made of steel, if rope could be thicker than a carriage. The racket was deafening whenever he put his head through the open door but when he pulled it back out it faded to something more sufferable. So that’s why no one heard the shot last night, he thought. The Ancient built the pillar so it wouldn’t fill their cavern with noise.

Others had more practical interests,

“That,” Vanesa said, leaning on her crutch, “is an overgrown tension engine.”

Lieutenant Vasanti nodded.

“I believe the same,” she admitted. “My guess is that it is part of one of those near-perpetuating engines the Antediluvians loved slapping inside everything – it might provide the power behind the entire shifting machinery in the ceiling.”

“It should have nothing to do with the iron gates, then,” Vanesa opined.

“Not exactly true,” the watchwoman said. “See over there?”

The Someshwari pointed a finger past the threshold, through the mess of steel, and Tristan frowned as he tried to make out what she indicated.

“I can’t make out anything,” Vanesa admitted.

“A door,” the thief said. “About half a level beneath us, there’s an opening in the wall.”

“Maintenance access, like this one,” Lieutenant Vasanti said. “We used a longview to get a better look and we are certain that room connects to others. It might lead us to a way to open the gates.”

Tristan eyed her skeptically. That sounded rather like wishful thinking. Taking in the riot of moving steel inside, the way cogs went up and down and wheels scythed through, he could see why the devils had not bothered to bury this door: no one could go through it without being crushed or rent apart.

“Have you tried to access it from the outside?” he asked. “Shouldn’t be too hard to figure out the corresponding location, then you could blow your way in like this one.”

“We made the attempt,” Lieutenant Vasanti curtly replied. “Three barrels of blackpowder did nothing but scratch the stone. The only reason we were able to force in our way the first time was that there was a crack in the pillar.”

“Then how have you tried to reach the room?” the thief frowned.

Lieutenant Vasanti raised an eyebrow. No, he thought. Surely she couldn’t mean…

“You sent people into that, didn’t you?” he said, pointing at the moving steel.

“Two,” the Someshwari acknowledged. “Volunteers. One lived long enough to come out but the wounds took her in the night.”

“And you haven’t tried since,” Tristan deduced. “If the body count gets too high, the commander in charge of the island will step in.”

The blackcloaks were likely willing enough to let Lieutenant Vasanti molder here so long as that was all she did, but if she started getting their soldiers killed that was another story.

“I was not forbidden to continue the research,” the old woman said, “but I was ordered to find a better avenue than just feeding people to the shaft.”

Vanesa let out a little noise of comprehension.

“So that’s why you have the telescope,” she said. “You’re marking down how the mobile moves above and trying to match it to movements here. You are looking for a safe path through.”

“Clever,” the Someshwari praised. “We have kept extensive records. I am from the aetheric branch of the Umuthi Society, so I will admit that causal mechanics are not my specialty. A clockmaker, however, might see catch I would not.”

“It would be my pleasure to take a look,” Vanesa said. “Not quite as exciting as working with one’s hands to solve the puzzle, but I suppose my days for that are past.”

She did not need to reach for her missing eye, or need to.

“I suppose I should begin to head down now,” the old clockmaker sighed. “It will take long enough.”

“Take the chair in the room downstairs,” Lieutenant Vasanti told her. “I’ll have the records brought to you.”

Vanesa thanked her kindly, and warily began the journey down. Tristan waited for her to be too far to overheard before speaking up.

“How far did you get mapping out the patterns?”

Lieutenant Vasanti grimaced, then spat to the side.

“Some,” she said, “but not as much as I need to justify another attempt. At exactly three past midday every day there is a sequence that repeats, but near the end of the path through there’s a random variable. We haven’t been able to narrow down what causes the differences.”