Chapter 28

Tristan could not figure out how to make the damn folded ladder work, so he ended up bleating like a lost goat for half an hour before one of the watchmen on patrol heard him.

It was another ten minutes after that of Lieutenant Vasanti and her minions asking him through shouts to describe the device in detail then failing to get it work. In the end one of the blackcloaks just threw him a rope ladder, giving up the machinery for a lost cause. It was only watchmen when he came down, with one exception: Maryam. It was a dangerous habit to start seeing what you wanted to see, so the thief did not let himself believe it was relief he saw in those blue eyes. They had chosen trust, but there was no guarantee that would last beyond the trials they were undertaking.

The given hint that she had aimed from the start at cooperation in a greater undertaking was to be set aside. Then future was a foreign land, not to be relied upon. The dark-haired woman strode through the throng of blackcloaks, some of them snickering, and for a heartbeat it looked like she was going to embrace him.

Instead she slapped his hat down against his chest.

“There,” Maryam said. “I tried to sell it, but it was such a raggedy thing I could find no takers.”

“Blind and a poor haggler, then,” Tristan mused, setting it back on his head. “It’s a lucky thing I made it back. What would you do without me?”

“Luck,” she said. “When the pebble stays stuck in your boot after the shake, is that what you call it?”

A sigh, but not hers. Lieutenant Vasanti wrinkled her nose at them.

“I don’t know what this is,” she said wiggling a finger in their direction, “but it’s putting me off dinner. Cease immediately.”

The thief tossed the lieutenant a carved stone button. She caught it, rather spry for her age.

“It’s a key,” he told her. “Best to get a few muskets pointed at the door before using it, though. There’s a god on the other side and he simply cannot wait to have someone over for dinner.”

The old woman looked nonplussed.

“That’s what salt munitions are for,” she said. “Good work, boy.”

“I live for your praise,” Tristan drily replied.

Lieutenant Vasanti wanted a detailed report, but he told her he wanted a physician first so as a compromise he got to tell her about his misadventures while the garrison doctor saw to his broken finger. To his surprise, she seemed to care little about the god. It was the room with the tiles she was most interested in, demanding he describe it several times while taking notes, and one more detail besides: the metal rod with the alloy brand at the end. That she cared about so much she asked he draw the brand from memory. Tristan did, charcoal pen scratching against cheap paper.

“It might not be exactly that,” he warned. “I only saw it in passing.”

She hummed, eyes on the drawing as she only half-listened.

“What is it about the brand that interests you so much?” he asked.

To his surprise, she deigned to answer. He had expected a cutting comment and a dismissal.

“People tend to think of the Antediluvians as a nation of living gods, shaping the world to their whim, but that was only true for the First Empire’s ruling class,” Lieutenant Vasanti said. “Someone had to clean the dust off the wonders and keep the cogs turning.”

The urge to fiddle with the splint the physician had put around his broken finger was near overwhelming, but he forced himself to think instead. The man was gone back to the barracks, if the splint snapped he was on his own.

“The rod was some kind of tool, then,” Tristan deduced, cocking his head to the side.

“The greats of the First Empire could all manipulate aether much like Navigators can shape the Gloam,” Vasanti told him. “Their servants, though, were not so gifted. So how does a living god avoid having to get their own carriage working when the thing runs on aether?”

“By making tools that can affect the aether,” he said.

“That’s what that brand is, boy,” Lieutenant Vasanti said, not hiding her excitement. “It is our way to get one of the machines working without the need for a Navigator. If we are lucky, it will have been crafted for the tiles and let us open the front gate heedless of Hell’s sabotage.”

The burst of enthusiasm waned, however, and with it the lieutenant’s willingness to indulge his curiosity. She left him to his seat, telling him he was no longer needed for the afternoon, and went to consult with her band of followers. Tristan watched her back getting further and further away, considering how furious she would be should she ever learn he’d held back in his report.

He had not told her of the second stone button in his pocket, or the green glass door.

With Vasanti’s departure others were finally free to approach. Maryam and Vanesa both joined him at the table, the latter helped onto the seat by his pale-skinned accomplice. They seemed in a fine mood, Vanesa in particular. He quickly learned his survival was not the only reason.

“Everyone has been pulled off the sky-watching,” Vanesa told him. “The lieutenant wants us studying mechanisms around the tiles on the iron gates. She believes they are some sort of combination lock.”

The old clockmaker, as it turned out, preferred steel to figures. She was glad to be back on the gates instead of continuing to match the ceiling machine’s movements to that of the inner cogs.

“Francho and I are still on the machine, but she is no longer insistent I start pushing Gloam at it like a toddler throwing a ball,” Maryam said. “I do not suppose you know why?”

“I might have found a tool that can serve in your place,” Tristan said.

“Good news,” Vanesa enthused. “Once it is brought down-”

“It is behind a locked gate guarded by a monstrous old god that tried to eat me,” he told her.

“Ah,” Vanesa muttered. “That puts something of a damper on things, admittedly.”

Tristan scraped together a meal for the three of them out of what lay around the kitchen, mostly dried fruits and bread, but soon enough the pair’s break was at an end. They still had work to do for Lieutenant Vasanti, unlike him. Vanesa was the first to head back, giving them a knowing smile. Tristan supposed that the amount of plotting in dark corners the two of them did was not helping with that misunderstanding. When Maryam spoke, though, it immediately claimed his full attention.

“The use of your contract was too obvious not to be caught this time,” she said. “Already rumors are getting around, and your timely throw against the gravebird has not been forgot. You might want to get ahead of this before speculation grows wild.”

Before someone ascribed him the power to stop cogs with a thought, predict the future and maybe also fly, she meant. Nothing got so out of hand as rumors about contracts: back home there were so many tales about what the legacy contracts of the Six could do that if all were true the nobles would be more divine than their own gods. Thankfully Tristan had a lie ready for this, the same he had been using for years when the need was forced on him.

“Telekinesis,” he said without batting an eye. “I can move small objects with some degree of strength, but I have difficulties with control and there is often backlash.”

Maryam cocked an eyebrow at him. His answer had been a little too quick to be believable.

“A lie,” Tristan shrugged. “But the effects are similar enough it would be difficult to argue otherwise.”

“It does sound like the kind of contract with a minor god a man of no background might obtain,” she admitted after a moment.

It took genuine effort not to flinch when Fortuna slammed her fist on the table – which made not a sound and did not shake it, as it was only on his flesh she could feign to touch – and she leaned forward with flashing eyes, pointing an accusing finger at an unseeing Maryam.

“Minor?” she shrieked. “Minor?”

The goddess shook her finger angrily.

“How dare you, Maryam Khaimov,” she snarled. “I was going to sell you to her on the cheap, Tristan, but this… heresy cannot be brooked. You must defeat her in single combat. Avenge my honor, and be a brute about it.”

The thief sipped at his cup of water, smiling.

“Have I told you I like your tresses?” he asked Maryam. “They suit you well.”

She slowly blinked.

“Treachery,” Fortuna sputtered, stumbling back in shock. “Stop that, Tristan, stop that right now.”

“You have very good taste in boots,” he told Maryam.

She squinted at him.

“Are you…” she slowly said. “Are you using me to anger your god?”

The grey-eyed man simply smiled and complimented her dress, Fortuna’s indignant shouting like a soothing lullaby.

—

Tristan spent most of the afternoon trying very hard not to fiddle with his broken finger, drinking dandelion tea and considering what he should do.

It was only a matter of time, he figured, until Lieutenant Vasanti tried again to be rid of him by sending him through the stone door. He could not be sure that the god would be lying there in wait, but it did seem likely: how long had it been since the entity last had an opportunity to feed? Worse, it did not seem to be affected by the ‘laws’ the aetheric machine above was subjecting the gods of the maze to. It had certainly not been shy in trying to gobble him up.

No, the more he thought about it the more likely it seemed that the lieutenant would send him in. Vasanti wouldn’t use blackcloaks, no matter her talk of salt munitions, for the same simple reason she had not kept sending people to cross the same lethal machinery Tristan barely survived: if too many got killed, there would be consequences she could not afford. As the thief did not fancy his chances against the god even if he was sent in to, he would need to make other arrangements.

First, he needed a sword hand. He and Maryam worked very well as a pair, but it could not be denied they were not the finest of fighters. Tristan knew of one man with the required capacity for violence and that he still trusted more than most in the Trial of Ruins. The real question was this: had they made enough progress along this path that Yong would consider them a better bet than continuing with the maze? After wrestling with the question for some time, sketching arguments for either side, he finally decided an answer could not be had until the crews returned tonight.

If they returned tonight, he corrected as the hours stretched out.

It was now late in the afternoon, and it was possible that some of the crews had got far enough in the maze that they would prefer to spend the night there rather than double back. Tristan was not afraid of anyone passing the second this trial early, for it would be impossible for any single crew to have ten victors and they had all taken different paths.

It was becoming clear, however, that he was running out of time for his other affairs. He had neglected vengeance in the name of more immediate dangers, but now that there was a light at the end of that tunnel he could turn his attention back to the business: Tristan had no intention of allowing the Cerdan brothers or Cozme Aflor to live. The deal he had struck with Isabel should buy him the opening he needed, but he needed for the crews to return to the Old Fort before he could slither his way in. It was that understanding that had him keeping an eye out for any return until at last his patience was rewarded.

More or less.

Lord Augusto Cerdan, looking quite haggard, stumbled into the Old Fort come early evening. The infanzon looked as if he had been thrown down the side of a mountain, boasting such an extensive collection of scrapes and bruises that the broken arm no longer stood out. The worst was a nasty rip going down the side of his now-broken nose to halfway down his throat. The skin had been scraped off by something raw, and though it was not a dangerous wound it was one that would be disfiguring for months. He began calling for the Watch physician within moments of entering, quite loudly – Tristan noted with amusement that the doctor in question pointedly took his time doing up his buttons before moving to answer – and was soon being seen to in the kitchen.

Lieutenant Vasanti had released everyone for the evening, so it was not Tristan alone who came out to the courtyard to have a look at the infanzon’s bruises being cleaned with alcohol. Maryam drifted close, as if by coincidence, and leaned against the wall by his side.

“Alone and wounded,” she idly said. “Lord Augusto must be feeling rather exposed.”

Tristan knew little of the people of what the Malani called the northern colonies, the Triglau. Oh, islanders called them fierce savages who fought garbed in steel and raided settlements from the back of their hardy mountain ponies, but if you believed the Malani every war they had ever fought had been against hateful villains while the brave people of the Isles only ever reluctantly took up arms for the common good. You had to take the Malani with a grain of salt, for all that they rarely lied.

Looking at the way those blue eyes were watching Augusto Cerdan, though – like a hunter watching a stag, measuring it for the knife – he thought there might be some truth to the stories out of the Isles. That was not the stare of someone who balked at the thought of violence, who saw anything wrong with the lay of Vesper being decided by the cut of a blade.

Tristan supposed he should have been put off by the sight, but he was not. How could he be when he’d seen eyes like those all his life, saw them every time he looked in a mirror? People like Angharad Tredegar, like Augusto Cerdan or even Vanesa, they thought of violence as an intrusion. A break in the default state of peace. They had lived all their life behind the walls of the garden where laws mattered and served to protect, never grasping that beyond the wall violence was the law. You took from those who could not protect and kept what you could protect from those who would take it: that was the truth of Vesper, to a rat.

Triglau, Tristan thought as he watched those pale blue eyes, must not have been so different.

“Very,” he finally agreed, looking away. “So much that I think him unlikely to leave the fort for some time.”

And while in here, protected by sanctuary, Tristan would not risk killing the infanzon. The risks were too great when both lieutenants in command of the fort had it out for him.

“He will have to come out sooner or later,” Maryam murmured.

“He is bound to the trials,” Tristan pointed. “To return home as anything but a peace concession in the making, he must survive his brother and Isabel Ruesta. If there is to be a list, he would be last.”

“So the younger must come first,” she murmured.

The thief was somewhat impressed she had caught that. Remund Cerdan must indeed come before an attempt on Cozme Aflor could be made.

His two enemies under Tredegar were the hardest to get at, by virtue of the mirror-dancer being their protector, but with Isabel out to get Remund killed he would have someone interfering on his behalf. More importantly, it would force Cozme to move. After that, the man would have two choices: either he swallowed his pride and went to Augusto, to get at least one Cerdan home and hope it would be enough, or he cut ties with House Cerdan entirely and tried for the Watch as a refuge. If he went to Augusto he became easier to get at, as Tupoc Xical had all the loyalty of a jackal, and if Cozme aimed for the Watch then Tristan would have the entire third trial to get to him.

“There are plans in the works,” he said.

“Very sinister,” Maryam praised. “Have you considered growing a beard so you might stroke it?”

“Ha,” Fortuna snorted from behind him. “He wishes.”

The Lady of Long Odds had entirely forgot her sworn enmity of a few hours ago, as was her way, and was not merrily siding against him once more. The thief rolled his eyes.

“Come,” he said. “Let us see what our good friend Lord Augusto has to say.”

—

The eldest Cerdan was not only inclined to talk but rather vigorously friendly.

He spun a tale of woe, telling all four of them – Vanesa and Francho, curious, also joined them at the table – of the many indignities he had suffered since Angharad Tredegar’s false accusations forced him to make common cause with the bandit Tupoc Xical. Going with the Aztlan had been what he wanted, he assured them.

“She even got to Lord Ishaan, you see,” Augusto told them. “A nice enough man but very gullible. He had no chance at all against as skilled a trickster as Lady Angharad.”

Tristan had known heads of cabbage more skilled at trickery than Angharad Tredegar, but he smiled encouragingly instead of laughing in the man’s face. He need not look around to see the obvious fabrication had found no takers: the Pereduri was widely respected. The infanzon told them of Tupoc being a slave driver with no regard for rank, of Felis being insolent and insubordinate while Aines was useless. However obtuse, Augusto soon realized that insulting the married pair everyone here had spent the first trial with won him no friends.

He immediately changed tack, focusing on the shrines and the gods.

The infanzon revealed nothing that Tristan had not already heard from Lan, save when it came to today’s events. Tupoc’s crew had made very fine progress after crossing a broken bridge, Augusto recounted, but then been forced to go underground and wait for some time before they were let into some kind of crystal labyrinth. In there had been illusions and attacks, until the entire thing collapsed onto their heads. Augusto has narrowly survived, buried alive but falling through a crevasse. From there he had stumbled into some manner of empty crypt and found a path back to the Old Fort.

“I now hold the knowledge of a safe route deep into the maze,” Augusto told them. “There is but a single shrine on the way, and I have defeated the god’s test: I stand before you a victor.”

He was, in fact, sitting. And carefully avoiding giving any specifics about the shrine he had beaten, enough that Tristan suspected he was either lying or it has been mortifyingly easy to defeat. It was when, between two boasts of knowing a crucial path, Augusto half-heartedly apologized for sending Tristan away from his group during the Trial of Lines – the thief was informed that Tredegar had insisted and convinced the others, so Augusto’s hand had been forced – that Tristan realized what the noble was after.

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“Why,” Augusto nonchalantly said, “I expect that the path is so easy even the five of us could reach the end of the maze using it.”

The man was in the market for a delving crew, preferably full of expendables and under his captaincy. Tristan could only wonder if it was desperation or arrogance that had the infanzon thinking there was anyone left that might want to go under him.

“How impressive,” Maryam mildly said.

As he did about half the time he glanced her way, Augusto smothered a moue of disgust at the paleness of her skin.

“Indeed,” the eldest Cerdan agreed. “But it is my duty as an infanzon to provide for others.”

Francho almost choked on the water he had been drinking. He coughed under Augusto’s suspicious eye.

“The cough simply won’t leave me,” the toothless old man said. “I did not mean to interrupt, my lord, do go on.”

“Oh, but I have talked quite enough I think,” Augusto said. “What is it that the four of you have been doing, if not seeking to pass the trial? I saw the blackcloaks made some sort of discovery.”

Lieutenant Vasanti had yet to manage to get the folded ladder to unfold, but the rope ladder was easy enough to see.

“We have been given tasks by Lieutenant Vasanti to advance the Watch’s interests in this place,” Tristan replied. “Secrecy is paramount, I am sure you understand.”

He glanced at the others, who looked willing enough to follow his lead in this.

“Of course,” Augusto said, frowning when no one else added anything. “Though I imagine you will be free by tomorrow?”

“That is not for us to determine, my lord,” Tristan said. “We are in the service of the Old Fort’s commanding officer until released.”

The bruised noble looked at the others, seeking someone who might contradict what had been said, but instead only got silence. Looking miffed but knowing better than to push his luck when his position was so weak and a Watch lieutenant was involved, Augusto gave way. He changed the subject, returning to complaints about his old crew. Tristan thought there might be a purpose to it, at first, but eventually came to realize that the noble mostly wanted to vent.

Maryam and Francho excused themselves before long, but the thief forced himself to remain in case anything of use was revealed. Vanesa, he suspected, simply pitied him enough to suffer through the whining.

“Both of the Aztlan are as wild animals,” Augusto told them. “Xical is from Izcalli, so that was only to be expected, but Ocotlan is no better even after a lifetime under enlightened rule.”

Ocotlan’s tattoos and build marked him as legbreaker for the Menor Mano, one of the largest coteries in Sacromonte, so Tristan was thoroughly unsurprised. The Mano liked their enforcers brutal.

“Life in the Murk can be very difficult,” Vanesa said. “Not all who resort to violence enjoy it, Lord Augusto.”

“That man does,” Augusto haughtily replied. “He spent much time boasting of the work he had done for his ‘patrons’, bloody stories that had him grinning and chuckling. He proudly told me of beating a man to death before his son and of drowning another in a waste bucket.”

That sounded about right, the thief thought, and his interest waned entirely. What did he care of an infanzon’s shock at the true face of the city his ilk so liked to claim having turned into a paradise? Augusto Cerdan would have gone his entire life without caring a whit about what took place in the Murk every day, if he had not been told of it. In truth he still cared nothing, Tristan knew, and only used the talk of savagery as a way to complain of his former companions. If he somehow survived the Dominion and returned to the Cerdan, the infanzon would forget everything he had learned in matter of hours.

The thing with mud was that when you were a noble you had servants to wipe it off your boots.

“- and he bragged of having done work for his patrons even after they had decided to send him off to these cursed trials,” Augusto bit out. “Breaking the leg of some-”

Vanesa might be willing to indulge the fool, but Tristan’s patience ran out. He feigned having been called by Maryam and went her way, sending the clockmaker an apologetic glance that she did not notice. Was she truly interested in the Cerdan’s words? Surely she could not be as spellbound as she looked. Vanesa was too kind for her own good, he thought not for the first time. The older of the Cerdan brothers certainly seemed pleased at having such a willing audience, almost eager to answer her questions.

Tristan might have pitied him for being so obviously starved of regard, had he not been a Cerdan.

The man was of that accursed house, however, so instead the thief put it out of his mind and went to attend to one of the secrets he’d dug up. Keeping one of the stone buttons he had taken in the pillar was not much different from keeping a key behind Lieutenant Vasanti’s back, in practice, as he could do little with the object but open a door. It was a way to get to the secrets, not a bearer of secrets itself. For him, anyway.

Francho, who could listen to the voices in stone, would find it otherwise.

The old man was not hard to find: he was napping in his bedroll, snoring quite loudly. Tristan almost felt bad about waking him up, but the sooner he had answers the sooner he could begin to sketch out the end of this trial. The toothless professor smacked his lips as he was gently shaken awake, eyes unseeing for a moment before he woke entirely.

“Trist-” he began, then fell into a fit of coughing.

The thief waited for them to end, then caught the man’s eye.

“You will have a hard time having a good night’s sleep, if you nap for too long,” he said as he pressed the stone button into the man’s hand.

Francho’s eyes widened but he caught on quick.

“That is true, I suppose,” the old man said. “Perhaps I should go for a walk. Any suggestions?”

‘Where is this from?’

“As long as it’s not up in the pillar,” Tristan said, feigning a small laugh. “The god there would not make for fine company.”

“Not much of an answer,” Francho snorted. “Should I ask the lieutenant?”

‘Does Vasanti know about this?’

“Surely not,” Tristan said. “She might take it as advances.”