Chapter 30

On the other side of the gate waited not a test but a tunnel.

Narrow and damp it led them up for fifteen minutes, occasionally at so strong an upwards tilt that some of them slid on the smooth stone and tumbled back into others. It was a relief when they emerged into open grounds, entering some sort of strange water garden. It looked like a large pond with islands of stone tracing a path across, but the waters turned out to be fathomlessly deep. And the path itself was occasionally chancy path, as they soon realized that the ‘islands’ were in fact the top of pillars reaching up from the deeps – and that some had been eaten away at by the water.

When one toppled Lady Acanthe fell into the water, beginning to sink almost immediately.

Had Master Cozme and Shalini not dragged her out she might well have drowned. More worrying still was what that Acanthe Phos assured them she was a skilled swimmer, only the water had been unnaturally ‘heavy’. She’d compared it to trying to swim through molasses.

They were all glad to be rid of the place, all the more when the last island brought them to a dilapidated First Empire highway that, aside from the occasional loose stone, presented no danger at all. Two opportunities to take a left off the highway led straight into dead ends, one of them a strange black stone shrine whose closed door was thankfully received, and after a second hour’s worth of walking they reached the top of plunging stairs. The end of the highway was broad enough for nearly all of them to have a look at the distant silhouette of the temple-fortress, which awed most into silence.

Some of them, anyway.

“I don’t care what the blackcloaks claim, that is not a temple,” Zenzele Duma announced. “Fly a flag on it and all that’s missing is Izcalli footpads to shoot at.”

“I’ll rustle up a flag if you can get Xical to stand still,” Lady Ferranda offered.

Angharad was not amused, because it would have been beneath one of her breeding to snort at such low-brow humor.

She had merely been clearing her throat.

Truly, however, Zenzele had a point. Ferranda had described their destination as a ‘temple-fortress’, but what Angharad beheld leaned distinctly towards the latter word. Stairs so roughly carved they were barely noticeable went down an abrupt slope for at least a few hundred feet until they reached the bottom of a cauldron. Or so it seemed, for on all sides hundreds of shattered shrines stacked onto one another formed incomprehensible: it was a cacophony of broken faiths, a wall whose every brick was the ghost of some ancient promise.

It troubled Angharad, looking at it too long. The sheer amount of shrines reaching up to the sky, a tombstone of silenced laments drenched in the golden light of the firmament above. This was a graveyard of spirits, and its utter silence was more menacing than any chorus of wails.

Rising from the center of the cauldron’s bottom rose the promised temple-fortress. It was not in the shape of the modern fortresses – stars and angles and bastions – or even of older keeps with towers and tall curtains walls. Instead it was a thing of tiers, full red walls shaped like circles interlocking like a haphazard pile of plates balancing one way and the other. There were eight levels and almost twice as many circles of varying size, the broadest and highest at the bottom and narrowing as they rose. At the summit of the very highest tier a small tower in the same red stone stood, leading to a narrow stone bridge that connected to the top of the surrounding cliffs.

The way forward, presumably to the Toll Road that Ferranda had claimed was the very last stretch of the maze.

“I’ve seen that kind of stone before,” Shalini Goel shared. “My family comes from south of Mahabhara, and the cities on the shore of the Arama River use it for everything.”

Angharad knew at least one of those names: Mahabhara was one of the great powers inside the Imperial Someshwar, their rajas usually wrestling with those of Varaveda and lesser rivals for who was to claim the Maharaja’s scepter – and with it the authority to rule over all of the Imperial Someshwar, at least in name. Someshwari were a famously fractious lot.

“I thought you were Ramayan,” Yong said.

“I am,” she assured him. “The Goel are merchants, when we expanded into Ramaya a branch of the family settled accordingly. I was born there myself.”

Ah, Angharad thought. The nature of the ties between Lord Ishaan’s house and the commonborn Goel was at last made clear. The merchants must have sought the help and protection of local nobles when settling there, as was only proper. Even more proper was such ties resulting in the Goel providing a fosterling and attendant to someone of the Nair line, tightening the bonds between nobles and a wealthy subject. It was important, Father had always told her, to remain on good terms with the wealthy living on your lands.

“Fascinating,” Lord Remund cut in, his tone indicating he thought it anything but. “If we might perhaps attend to the fortress before us?”

“It is useful information,” Brun mildly replied. “It means the god within might be of the Someshwar.”

“I do not recall asking for your-” Remund began, so Angharad stepped in.

Clearing her throat, she raised her voice over his.

“We should get moving,” the noblewoman said. “The stairs seem dangerous so we will have to be careful going down.”

They’d had enough of a rest gawking, so her suggestion was taken without argument. No one wanted to spend too long out here when there was still a murderer hiding among them, much less be stuck spending a night out. Lord Zenzele took the lead, Lady Ferranda volunteering to go behind him. The pair had stood together on the same unstable pillar earlier, narrowly keeping it from toppling by shifting their weight, and taken to each other since. Angharad hardly thought their griefs were the same – Zenzele had lost his lover and his aunt, while Ferranda only a close retainer – but that grief was shared could not be denied. Friendships had been made of less. She herself followed behind Ferranda, Lord Ishaan in turn claiming the space behind her.

“What a noble vanguard we have,” Yong drily said.

There were some laughs, so Angharad was somewhat relieved when Yaretzi volunteered to be next before Shalini could step in. She had not noticed earlier, but it was true that the nobleborn among them tended to take the lead. The captaincies had come at an end, however, and now an unthinking assumption of leadership was not without risks. There was hardly a trace left of the old crews in how the group held themselves, relying on such a structure would be a mistake.

However difficult the stairs looked, they were significantly worse in practice. Not only were they narrow – too much to fit her entire boot on – they were short, many and winding. Angharad had to be careful with every step, never lapsing in attention, and the absence of anything like a railing was discomforting. If someone fell, there was absolutely nothing to hold them back. At least half a mile of such labor, surrounded by the creeping cliffsides, would be exhausting work. By unspoken agreement they began taking breaks regularly, spread out across different sections of the stairs, and one such pause was when Lord Ishaan approached her.

“It occurs to me,” the chubby-cheeked man said, “that we have had little occasion to talk since Aines’ body was discovered.”

The angle he stood at hid his scar, bringing back a shadow of the soft look he’d had when the trials began. Angharad considered him. Learning from Lady Ferranda that he had planned to send five of them into what was quite possibly their death – not only Tupoc and Ocotlan but also the underserving, Lan and Aines and Felis – had not endeared him to her. Nor had that she had been headed for a deeper part of the maze instead of the end and the man had not meant to inform her as much. No, that last part was unfair. She was merely assuming, he might have planned otherwise.

But it had not gone unnoticed by Angharad that few people who joined Lord Ishaan and Shalini’s crew ever seemed to want to stay there.

“We have not,” she acknowledged. “Events dictated otherwise.”

“Elections do tend to be rowdy business,” he smiled.

The way it tugged at his cheeks revealed a hint of the scar, like a face peeking out from beneath a mask.

“Have you given any thought to the third trial?” he continued.

She hid her surprise.

“The Trial of Weeds? I must confess to my attention has remained on our present tribulations.”

“It might be wise to begin thinking ahead,” Lord Ishaan advised her. “Many who are now your allies will depart once they reach sanctuary, returning to Sacromonte.”

“That is true,” she cautiously agreed, “but as I know little of the nature of the third trial I cannot say if that will be a disadvantage.”

Besides, Song intended to become part of the Watch and the same was true of Brun. Without the infanzones at her side there should be nothing preventing the three of them from making common cause for the Trial of Weeds. It was Lord Ishaan, on the contrary, who looked exposed to her eye. Who still stood by him, save for Shalini?

“It is rarely an advantage to be alone,” Ishaan said, then shrugged. “I would not urge to you an early decision, but keep in mind that Shalini and I would be glad to have you with us when the time comes.”

A polite non-answer was already on the tip of her tongue, but Angharad stopped herself. She had a real look at the other noble instead, at the worn stance and the sleepless lines that could be seen even on the half of his face he showed. Ishaan Nair did not look so sinister to her, in that moment, just a man who was tired and feeling the edge of the pit creeping ever closer.

“You have to know it has a bad look,” she quietly said. “They do not talk ill of you, Lord Ishaan, but they do leave.”

He sighed, passing a hand through his hair.

“I know,” Ishaan said. “It is…”

The Someshwari hesitated.

“I suppose you will learn eventually,” Ishaan finally said. “Unspoken rules only go so far. Shalini’s contract has… drawbacks.”

Angharad could not reveal she had once glimpsed the gunslinger putting two shots in Tupoc’s eye faster than the blink of an eye without revealing details of her own contract, but Shalini’s supernatural skill with pistols was no secret.

“They are not visible,” she admitted.

“They would not be, where you’ve seen her use it,” Ishaan said. “But out here it is another story. I shall avoid details, but it might be said that when she uses the contract it sometimes draws… attention.”

She paused, the implications of that word sinking in.

“Spirits?”

“Gods, lares, lemures,” he agreed. “Maybe even those who use Signs. Out here in the maze, it has mostly drawn the eye of remnants – the echoes of dead gods. You should have encountered a few.”

Only one, but that had been memorable enough. Yaretzi would have fallen off the ledge had Angharad not caught her by the collar when the screeching thing appeared.

“Refraining from using the contract would put an end to the risks,” she carefully said.

One must always tread lightly, when speaking of contracts. Ishaan grimaced, his expression resigned. As if expecting scorn.

“It would be the wise choice, if she could make it,” he said. “There is a reason we chose to seek out the Watch, Lady Angharad. Both our contracts would benefit from the lessons they have to teach.”

She cannot control when she uses the contract, Angharad realized. Or not always, which was near as damning. So every time Shalini used her contract it sent up a flare for any creature looming and she could not promise she would cease sending them up. Sleeping God, no wonder their crew kept bleeding people. Especially here in the maze, where the cause and effect would be even more obvious than during the Trial of Lines. Neither were being outright malicious, Angharad thought, but it was no wonder that so few had supported Lord Ishaan during the earlier debates. It might not have been out of malice, but he had still put their lives at risk.

Yet what else was he to do, abandon the childhood friend he had come here with?

The colder part of her, the one her father had taught, whispered that he might well have been sending Tupoc’s entire crew to their deaths simply so there would be fewer options besides staying with his own. Had everyone gathered back at the Old Fort tonight and Angharad learned that Ishaan’s gate led to the end of the maze, she would almost certainly have negotiated for their crews to ally and return together. And in a way, she thought, the Someshwari had gotten what he wanted – they were all going forward as a single crew.

Yet he had not gotten what he needed: Ishaan had no authority here, and if Shalini’s contract began causing trouble the pair were certain to be cast out. Perhaps even violently. All because there was only a single gate that could be used, so any claim he might have had to it being ‘his’ was little more than wind.

“You might have made steadier allies had you revealed it from the start,” she said.

“We would have had no allies at all,” he replied, shaking his head. “Better to have them for a time than never.”

Much as she disliked the approach, she was not certain he was wrong. And he had not lied, she would give him that. It did not make up for his condemning five trial-takers to die. As if sensing her disapproval, he turned fully – light caught the scarred side of his face as it faced her at last, coloring half as if it were a different one entirely.

“There is more to say,” he told her. “But perhaps this is not the time and place.”

“Perhaps not,” Angharad replied, inclining her head.

They left it at that, resuming their way down the stairs. Only it could not have been more than a minute or two before she caught a flicker of movement behind her – she had been betrayed, Angharad thought. He was to be rid of her as he had wanted with Tupoc, suffering no other former captain and… and then she realized that Ishaan was not attacking her but falling.

On her.

Shouting, he tumbled forward and in a snap decision Angharad glimpsed ahead.

(The man on her back, the two of them rolling down, scything through Ferranda’s legs from behind as she fell off the stairs and screamed-)

As a girl, Angharad had once spent six months taught by grim-faced and tattooed man from Uthukile who had claimed to be the Prince of Black Hill. His lessons had all been about what he had called ‘the gale-game’. The Low Isle was under constant siege by storms, he’d told her, sea and wind carving ever deeper grooves into its bluffs and canyons. From those constant companions the people of the Low Isle had learned lessons. Mother’s take on the teaching had been simpler: he is here to teach you how to fall, she’d said. Into the calm, Angharad thought, bending forward as Ishaan hit her back.

The worst mistake you could make was to fight the gale. The gale always won.

Chin tucked, arms up, and Angharad embraced the fall: enough that even as Ishaan hit the stairs she kept falling forward. There was shouting but she ignored it, turning with the fall and making a roll out of it. Stone bit at her back for the merest heartbeat, but she twisted forward and finished the tumble. Her boots hit the stone, pain tingling up her legs, and for half a dozen feet she skidded down the narrow stairs with gritted teeth. Her left leg came forward a bit but not before she slowed, her momentum slowly grinding to a halt until she was left half-crouched and now far past both Ferranda and Zenzele – who had gotten out of the way without her even noticing.

Panting, Angharad rose to her full height and brushed off her shoulders.

“I fall, I stand,” she told the wind, as her teacher had taught her. “Try again if you dare.”

She did not speak Matabele, for all that the Uthukile dialect had the same root as Umoya, so she was not entirely sure that was truly what the words meant. Prince had been a profligate liar, and the only time she had told Father the words he’d choked and instructed her never to repeat them in front of guests. Yet there was something satisfying about speaking the words, she thought. Almost like a victory prayer. That sliver of satisfaction was short-lived, however, as shouting from above forced her to turn that way.

Both Zenzele and Ferranda seemed fine but Ishaan was hurt, she saw as she carefully climbed back. He was cradling his arm and bruised across the face. He was also not the source of the shouting.

“I saw you push him,” Shalini insisted, pistol out.

“I wasn’t anywhere near him,” Yaretzi bit back. “Am I to be called a killer because he saw fit to trip?”

Someone stepped in between them, but by virtue of it being Tupoc Xical it was the opposite of reassuring.

“Yaretzi is right,” the Izcalli mused. “I’m sure her being a killer is entirely unrelated to Nair being a clumsy fool.”

The pistol moved off the first Aztlan to the other, which Angharad knew was the moment Shalini lost the crowd. Tupoc was despised, and she suspected only one more incident away from being turned on, but pointing that muzzle at more than one person had made Shalini look overwrought, out of control. It had cost her credibility and as no one else seemed to have caught what happened credibility would be what decided the contest. Even as Angharad bit her teeth and wondered how to intervene – Shalini must be wrong, what could Yaretzi possibly gain from attacking Ishaan? – the claimed victim spoke up by himself.

“Pistol down, Shalini,” Ishaan said, getting to his feet with a wince. “I felt something push my back, but I suppose it could have been the wind.”

There was a breeze, however faint. The other Someshwari looked conflicted, but eventually she noticed the unfriendly looks her waving around a weapon was drawing. With gritted teeth she put away the pistol, and there was a slight adjustment to the order of descent. Yaretzi went behind Angharad, warily eyeing the pair from Ramaya, and the climb down resumed with a broader gap between climbers than ever. No one wanted to earn another accusation.

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It still took them the better part of an hour to get at the bottom after that.

From down there the temple-fortress seemed even more towering. Natural stone, touched with red lichen, led them to massive open bronze gates. There were some small ponds of stale water they went around, but soon enough they all gathered before the handful of steps leading into the temple. There was some hesitation, but the walk to the gates had been rest enough and none wanted to spend the day waiting out here. They ventured up the stairs cautiously, past the red stone of the floor and onto the cavernous hall within.

Lamps hung from barely-seen rafters, casting slices of yellowing light on walls dripping with tapestries and trophies. There seemed to be no rhyme nor reason to what hung there. Angharad saw children’s toys side by side with ornate silver bucklers, then a musket besides what she suspected to be a Pereduri fertility necklace. Ivory tusks, jewels, blades – all of them placed over spans of wool, linen and silks that depicted everything from wars to the Sleeping God’s grace descending upon the unworthy. The scale of it should have brought out awe, but somehow Angharad could not help but feel as if she were looking at some magpie’s trove.

At the end of the hall they were treading awaited an audience room, lit by the same hanging lamps, and on the raised dais at the center the noblewoman first saw the spirit they were to bargain with. A vividly colorful bird the size of a carriage – a peafowl whose tailfeathers were tucked in – bore on its back a golden cradle, which held the desiccated shape of a man in red silks. Neither spirit nor mount moved as their group approached the threshold of the gate. Angharad, breathing in, crossed it first and offered a respectful bow to the desiccated spirit.

“Honored elder, I greet you,” she said.

There was a long moment of silence, then the bird let out a cackle.

“Lower, child,” the spirit said. “He has not answered anyone in a great many years.”

The peafowl spirit’s eyes were bright blue and wide open, staring down at her with amusement. Angharad swallowed.

“Honored elder, I greet you,” she tried.

The bird sniffed.

“Are you ignoring my master?” it demanded.

Angharad swallowed again, unsure how to answer, until the bird began cackling.

“That’s fine,” the peafowl hiccupped. “He’s dead.”

A soft curse in Samratrava from behind her, which rather echoed how she was feeling, then Lord Ishaan was at her side and bowing through a wince. His arm must still hurt. He said something in the same tongue, which had the peafowl spirit preening and nodding – and so the corpse atop its back shaking around.

“She’s a mayura, Lady Tredegar,” Ishaan then told her in Antigua. “Not exactly a god, since they do not come alone. They are-”

“The finest divine mounts to ever exist,” the spirit cackled, striking a pose as her tailfeathers snapped open in a dazzling display. “Behold my greatness!”

A moment passed. There was nothing spiritual about the plumage the Pereduri was looking at, as far as she could tell.

“They are very nice feathers,” Angharad finally said.

The peafowl preened, shuffling back and forth on her spindly legs.

“They serve as the mounts of victory gods,” Ishaan mildly said. “When surviving their riders they are known to grow… eccentric.”

She glanced sideways at him.

“Victory gods?”

“When a great victory is won a god is sometimes born of it,” the Someshwari told her. “They are all children of the Six-Headed One, but have will of their own.”

“They get them out of defeats as well.”

Angharad turned, seeing Yong had approached while she was distracted.

“Some crawling thing came out of the fields at Diecai, a few weeks after,” the Tianxi told her. “The Watch had a free company waiting to kill it.”

“I had not heard, though I see no reason to disbelieve a veteran of the Kuril Dance,” Ishaan politely said before his attention returned to her. “I was taught it is not so uncommon phenomenon across the span of Vesper but that my people’s ties to the deeper truths of the Orthodoxy makes it more frequent where we rule.”

The dark-skinned noble could almost hear the echo of four dozen acrimonious religious wars – fought and yet to be – in that last sentence. The Sleeping God was a blessing in more ways than one. Angharad’s eyes slid back to the peafowl, who to her faint surprise did not seem all that put off with the tangent unrelated to her. She was, the Pereduri thought, listening to them almost eagerly.

“Am I to understand, noble elder, that this temple is now yours?” she asked.

“That’s right,” the peafowl happily said. “The Greedy One slurped up Kshetra’s insides, but instead of getting its hands on this place the claim passed down to me.”

Angharad glanced at Ishaan to see if the name brought up anything, but he sighed.

“It literally means ‘tract of land’,” he murmured. “There are more minor gods with that name than there are lords in Izcalli.”

Ah. She supposed not every battle happened to be fought in a place that bore a proper name. It seemed odd, however, for a minor spirit to have earned such a grand temple. Her momentary distraction was rewarded by another person stepping in, though Song joining them before the spirit was most welcome.

“The Greedy One,” Song repeated. “It is a most fearsome name – would you tell us of your divine foe, mighty god?”

The peafowl preened again, easily flattered. Angharad was beginning to feel a little guilty about this.

“It’s not a real god,” the mayura contemptuously said. “It did not come of the Golden Egg like we did, taking shape from nothing. It was forged long ago, by the-”

The spirit suddenly stopped.

“Nononono,” she said. “I keep forgetting: questions only at a price. To go forward, to learn, you must take my tests!”

The mayura skipped around the dais, beak pecking at things unseen. Before Angharad could even begin to consider what that was about, cascades of blue and green silk fell down from the ceiling in waves. Fluttering curtains surrounded them on all sides, and the spirit made happy noises.

“Supplicants,” she said. “You have come to the temple of the great Kshetra!”

She shook her back a bit, the desiccated corpse in the cradle jerking around. Should one squint, its arm might have done something akin to a wave. Morbid.

“A crossroads stands before you,” the peafowl announced. “At the summit of this holy place waits the path that will take you to the end of this maze.”

Behind her, golden light coursed down the blue silk like rivers. It traced a silhouette, resembling the shape of the temple-fortress as they had beheld it outside. Six ‘plates’ were haphazardly stacked atop one another, each delineated as its own section – including the hall where they now stood, at the very bottom of the stack. From the tower at the summit a strand of gold unfolded, leading into a curl whose meaning was unclear.