Chapter 33

They left Izel by the bedside, the two of them ending up at the bottom of the stairs from the sheer need to put a physical distance between them and the sight of Song Ren laid up in that bed looking exactly like what had been done to her.

Silence held a moment, Tristan forcing his thoughts to stop spinning while Angharad mastered her temper. Not so different at all, when it came down to it. Absent-mindedly, he ran his tongue against his new tooth. The physicians had only put it in days ago, after they fashioned something that would hold out of his knocked-out tooth, and it still felt almost as strange to his tongue as the hole had. In time he would make something of worth from Yaotl Acatl’s gift: there were all sorts of uses for a hollowed-out tooth.

“Can you find out the names?” Angharad brusquely asked.

“I’ll have them all by the end of the day,” Tristan replied without hesitation.

It’d be trivial, considering this ‘student association’ was an open coterie. He might not have been keeping track of them, but Imani Langa was there to spy on the delve so she certainly would have. And since it was an easy ask he’d barely have to put up anything in trade, too. Angharad nodded, fingers clenched – nails digging into her palms like someone holding on to the sting like it was a lifeboat.

“I thought better of the Eighth,” she bit out.

“The way Song tells it, their Skiritai didn’t step in beyond disarming Ishanvi,” he noted. “It’s the captain and the Laurel that swung their clubs.”

Historian track, the latter. One did not usually expect historian on historian violence to involve wooden clubs, but evidently Scholomance students were a breed apart.

“Almost twenty against two,” Angharad hissed. “Bibek should be ashamed he was even willing to stand in that room.”

She had, Tristan thought, a higher opinion of the moral fiber of Skiritai than he believed warranted. He still remembered Muchen He from the first Forty-Ninth, who had been just as mercenary as the rest. It was only natural, though: the second-year Militants had been and would be put through a crucible that forced them to rely on one another. Some trust and comradery were inevitable. It had been frightening, to realize that the Marshal’s bloody games down in the Acallar were not mere callousness.

The man was force-marching the commitment and loyalty to the Skiritai Guild that would usually come from a decade of service in the black through his brutal death matches. You could not go through five years of something like the Acallar and not feel bound to the Militants, else you would be turning your back on the horrors you went through and those you went through them with.

“The Eighth was slighted first,” Tristan said. “I’m not happy they lent a hand to Morcant, but Song and Maryam picked that fight to begin with. I’m inclined to call it a settled matter and let it go.”

“They beat her, Tristan,” Angharad said, voice cold as ice. “And that poor Kapadia girl too. Settled? I would use that word only when they are laid up in a hospital bed like our own.”

Tristan sighed, looking up.

“The princess, Morcant, Guadalupe de Tovar,” he listed, “the student association, the Lord of Teeth.”

Her eyes came to rest on him, unreadable.

“We already have as many fronts as we do pairs of eyes to watch for them,” Tristan said. “Add another and you can be sure we’ll miss something we’ll regret.”

“What they did,” Angharad said, “was unacceptable.”

She did not, he noted, deny that Guadalupe de Tovar was something of an enemy now. Alizia Salas’ funeral must have made that plain enough. And to think de Tovar is the one I worry the least about on that list. The captain of the Second would be out to knife them, but not to get any of them killed.

“The Eighth didn’t owe us shit,” Tristan disagreed. “If you’re angry with Tall Bibek, that’s your right and I won’t shove my finger in it. But it would be best if you settled the matter with him in private instead of serving up our many enemies helpers in the form of a competent second year brigade.”

Angharad grimaced.

“I had not considered that,” she admitted.

“I understand the urge to settle the score,” Tristan admitted back. “But I’m reluctant to start a feud with a brigade I can’t honestly say was out of line to act as they did.”

He honestly believed the Thirteenth would have gotten even too, if they’d been bullied out of a claim in the delve the way the Eighth had. Maybe not by allying with a slaver’s catspaws, but in some way or another. And the Eighth are one of the few other heavyweight brigades that’s not leaning the way of the Garrison or the free companies.

Given that the Thirteenth was already beginning to feel the squeeze from having no real backing – if they’d been in bed with the First or the Ninth, Morcant would have never dared moved against them this way – the last thing they needed was to set fire to their relations with one of the leading unaligned brigades. Using a fearsome reputation as a deterrent only worked if you did not then go around picking fights with neutral parties.

“I will take up the matter with Bibek in person, then,” Angharad said, grinding her teeth.

Tristan would have preferred she not, but he knew what a line in the sand looked like. She’d already made him concessions, he wasn’t going to bargain his way back out of the bargain he’d already struck.

“We’ll have to get clever with the student association,” he told her instead, dragging the more deserving into the line of fire. “Their numbers are the trouble: they’re a significant chunk of the students involved in the exploration, so if we lay them all out we may draw Colonel Cao down on our head.”

“Then the colonel also ought to intervene in this,” Angharad harshly said, gesturing upstairs.

Where Song and Ishanvi laid in their beds, filled with poppy and drifting in an out. At least the physicians had put them upstairs, not down in the main hall out in the open where anyone could come gawk at Nathi Morcant’s handiwork.

“Were they not her leading group of explorers, recruits she handpicked herself for the work?”

She’d handpicked them to make the exploration a success, Tristan thought. He was less than convinced Chunhua Cao would keep feeding a limping horse the good oats.

“My money is on Cao summoning the delving crews sometime in the next few days to sit them down and arrange a truce,” Tristan said. “Which at first look seems like it’s about preventing this from happening again, but…”

“Would be as much about preventing retaliation that slows down the delve,” Angharad slowly said.

Peace on Cao’s terms would be in the interest of advancing her interests, nothing else.

“It doesn’t matter,” Tristan thinly smiled. “Neither of us is part of the delve, and I won’t be signing onto such a truce. If our friends of the student association want to serve as hired thugs, then they will be treated as such.”

His fingers clenched. He’d wait until tomorrow, until the surprise had stopped feeding the anger, to begin planning. Else he suspected he would be less proportionate in his response than he’d like. He shook his head.

“Rampaging through town won’t get us anywhere, anyhow,” he said. “And we shouldn’t act before Song has decided how she’s moving forward with the delve.”

Angharad grimaced. Like him, she must suspect that such a humiliation would only drive Song to double down on the work. Yet there were only so many ways to make that possible.

“You think she will take Tupoc’s offer?” she asked.

I think she hates Xical but she trusts Alejandra, Tristan thought. And there were arguments in favor of that trust being deserved. Alejandra had been the one to come and tell the three of them about the ambush all the way on Lamb Hill, after the Fourth brought Ishanvi and the rest of the Thirteenth to the hospital. The Akelarre had then sent people for Maryam, spiriting her away to the chapterhouse, but the Fourth had undeniably given their friends aid during a dark time.

“I don’t know,” Tristan admitted. “But if she’s looking to go to war, the Fourth is the right kind of ally for it.”

Reckless, ruthless and with too little moral fiber between the lot to weave even a single sock out of it. Tupoc had made his brigade into the kind of force you threw at a breach in the walls, and while they were an albatross around your neck if you lacked such a need if you did have a breach you needed taken then the Fourth were the best on the market.

“It would not do to step on her plans,” Angharad conceded. “She will have notions of her own as to how we should proceed.”

The tall woman passed a hand through her braids.

“Will you be staying at the Rainsparrow tonight as well?” she asked.

He nodded. All his sources were in town anyway, there was no point in heading back to the cottage tonight. Feeling that Angharad was about to set out, he began pawing at his pockets as if looking for something and put a pained look on his face.

“I must have set down my powder horn upstairs,” he said. “You should go on ahead, I’ll likely be swinging by the Chimerical after this anyhow.”

Angharad laid a hand on his arm, ever so lightly squeezing, before she nodded and walked away. Tristan waited a moment. He did not realize for what until it occurred to him that he’d not found the touch uncomfortable. When, he wondered, had he grown to trust her enough that the thought of being under the hand of a larger, stronger swordswoman with a sharp sense of justice no longer unsettled him? He honestly could not tell.

Shaking off the thought, he put a spring to his steps as he went up the stairs as if it’d allow him to leave the realization behind as well. The physicians had put Song and Ishanvi in neighboring beds, about halfway down the hall, and considering they were the only ones on this level save for the healers they were not exactly difficult to find. He wondered who had pulled a string to arrange that – Captain Wen or Colonel Cao? He’d bet on the latter, if only because the battered faces of Song Ren and Ishanvi Kapadia were a living badge of her little pet enterprise beginning to fall apart.

Izel’s cloak and blade were on the chair by Song’s bed but the man himself was missing – speaking with one of the physicians further down the hall, Tristan found – so the thief moved to claim the still-warm seat. Ishanvi was asleep, downed by the poppy, but Song was not.

She looked up from her half-trance as he approached, eyes sharp despite the drug, but the rest of her… Gods. Her face had swollen, even the parts untouched looking waxy to his eye, but it did little to hide the aftermath of the beating: she was all split skin and bruises, her lower lip bloodied on the left and both eyes blackened. There was a bloody crust near the top of her nose, and a chunk of her hair had been ripped.

The only difference between his friend and someone a coterie had made an example of was that coterie thugs wouldn’t have avoided breaking the nose and limbs. Tristan only realized he was chewing the inside of his cheek when he tasted blood.

“Tristan,” she croaked out.

He slipped into the seat without a word. Silver eyes silently asked why he’d returned.

“I talked Angharad out of feuding with the Eighth,” he said. “But she’ll be taking things up with their Skiritai anyhow. I don’t believe it will escalate.”

It’d fall under a private Skiritai Guild matter rather than a brigade issue, and for all that the Eighth had a grudge Tristan’s assessment was that they did not want a feud either. The reputation of the Unluckies aside, the Eighth fundamentally had the same problem they did: lack of backing. They had to know that if this got bigger then the princelings of either side would be called in, and neither brigade would be eager to turn their personal conflict into skirmishing grounds for the two bigger powers.

Song breathed out shallowly, eyes fluttering.

“Thank you,” she got out. “My fault.”

“You definitely should have dodged at least one of those black eyes,” he made himself say with a put-on grin. “Two is just bad form, Ren.”

She didn’t even chuckle. Well, given the state of her maybe that was for the best.

“Shouldn’t have let Morcant plot,” Song said.

“You couldn’t really do anything else,” Tristan flatly replied. “I made sure of that when I shot the girl.”

And if someone in the Thirteenth should have kept an eye on plots aimed at them it was the fucking Krypteia, but he hadn’t. Because his efforts had been turned on the princess and the hunt but also, he would admit to himself, because part of him had thought that if Maryam was going care so much about her strays then she could handle the consequences of picking them up herself. Even this morning, he would have run a finger against the spine of that thought and found a harsh satisfaction in it.

Looking at the mosaic of brutality made of Song Ren’s face, listening at her pained breathing, that thought felt all too petty.

“On all of us, then,” Song tiredly said.

He grimaced.

“You should rest,” was all he found to say. “I only came up to tell you not to worry, we won’t burn down the town while you’re under.”

“Maryam,” Song said.

“She’s at the chapterhouse,” he informed her.

“I know,” Song impatiently said. “Go see her.”

Tristan’s brow rose.

“I doubt I would be-”

“She got permission, told me to tell you,” Song got out.

His lips thinned.

“I have work tonight,” Tristan said. “It may have to wait.”

“When you could both walk, the fleeing was on both,” Song forced out. “Now she can’t. It’s only on you if you still avoid each other.”

His fists clenched.

“I am not a stray dog,” he said, “to be summoned with a few scraps of attention whenever one feels like giving them.”

“Please,” Song said. “For me.”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

He swallowed a curse. Anything else he could have twisted up in knots, but a simple plea when her face looked like it had been fucking stomped on? No. He’d failed her in averting his eyes from their enemy, he’d not add insult to injury by refusing even a small favor.

“You know I can’t refuse that,” he sighed.

It would have been a chuckle, he thought, if she didn’t start hissing in pain halfway through.

“First victory today,” she rasped.

A better note to leave her on than anything he would have come up with himself, so he did.

—

Lying down in the grass, Maryam looked at the sky.

The gurgle of running water had long wormed itself into her ear so deeply as to become unnoticeable, but she could still hear the rustle of the wind against the leaves. How it brushed against the cattails, threaded through the burgeoning branches of the plum tree, the scattered petals of chrysanthemums. It was soothing, and not just to her mind: the Gloam roiling under her skin slowly smoothed down, bled out along the currents of air and water. Carried away into nothing, as every Meadow was built to do.

Amaru Wayar’s seal had been stripped off her, Lieutenant Rishabh’s impressed muttering about ‘double locking’ another thorn in her thumb even as he and Sergeant Alia dropped her in the garden like a sack of potatoes before going for tea. It’d been hours since then, and though Maryam had heard another few souls coming and going – most in the halls around the courtyard holding the Meadow, a few instead going to rest by the river – she was the last one remaining. Even Hooks was gone, though Maryam could still feel her through their tether.

Whether she intended to or not, Amaru Wayar had imprisoned Maryam’s sister inside her soul. It had not been… comfortable, for either of them. Hooks wanted to be as far as she could from Maryam, at the moment, which was understandable. Another kick aimed at her ribs while she was down, but it was understandable.

How long had she been here? Her mind kept drifting in and out. Her limbs had grown numb; her fingers were cold and her cloak stained with dirt and dew. Her hair was unbound, spread across the green like a crown, and something itched on her cheek but she could not seem to muster the will to scratch it. Above her the Orrery whirred in its forever-cycles, ticking on heedless of the ants huddling beneath its colored lights. And yet, for all this islet of calm, she could still feel eddies beneath her skin. Gloam roiling, bubbling up.

“I would think you asleep, if not for the open eyes.”

Maryam’s ears fought the words like an overeager doorman. They had to elbow their way in, past the river’s whisper and the daze, and only then did she blink. Not at the words but the voice that had spoken them. She wheezed out a breath, moving insensate limbs to push herself up. Her hair fell across her face, tucked back half-heartedly as she found Tristan standing above her. His face was shadowed by the Meadow’s sole lantern, shade crossing his face in a stripe under gray eyes.

Maryam squeezed her eyes shut, bit the inside of her cheek and let the sensations anchor her.

“Tristan,” she managed. “I did not hear you coming.”

Across either stone or grass. His tread had always been quiet, but these days it was light as a cat’s.

“I can return tomorrow, if you need your rest,” he offered.

“No,” Maryam blurted out, then cursed herself.

That’d been too eager. Childish.

“Sit,” she added in a more sedate tone.

He did, tucking in his cloak to shield his trousers as he sat on the grass. He never looked comfortable, out in the green – but then he was more used to paving stones than wood trails, wasn’t he? Gray eyes rested on her, and Maryam reached for something to say but found herself at a loss. After a few beats had passed and her humiliation mounted, Tristan cleared his throat.

“Your gate guards think themselves funny,” he told her. “I had to answer riddles three to enter.”

She sighed, exaggerating it to hide her gratitude for him having taken the first step.

“Rishabh and Alia?” Maryam asked.

“Just so,” he agreed.

“You’re not all that great at riddles,” she noted. “How did you even get in?”

“I only got one out of three, the one that was ripped straight out of Ruina,” Tristan easily said. “But then I pointed out they only required I answer the riddles, not answer them correctly.”

A small chuckle, but still warm breath against her lips. The time he had kindly expended her to gather her graces through that little anecdote had, unfortunately, been wasted. She found herself bereft of graces tonight, left with only teeth to bite.

“I told Song I’d have you put on the visitor list,” she said.

He nodded.

“How long does that keep, anyway?” Tristan idly asked.

“Krypteia get six hours instead of twelve, and if you want a minute more come back with a tribunal mandate,” Maryam automatically replied.

She choked a moment later, realizing what she’d just said, but instead of being offended he was grinning.

“Captain Yue?” he asked.

“It’s the one lesson she teaches first years,” Maryam said, coughing into her fist. “She drilled us on chapterhouse permissions. Stripes get it even worse than you, if that’s any help.”

Academy officers had to be added back to the visitor list after every visit, and would only be allowed in at a precise time. Such policies were set locally, not across the entire guild, and rumor had it that Yue had added that latter part just to spite Stripes that showed up early to visits. Even Song had gotten the runaround when she visited to get Yue’s signature, though she’d been given a more polite version of it than most.

“One must always applaud the Academy getting it worse,” Tristan agreed, “save for our own Song Ren, of course.”

Maryam’s jaw clenched at the name, and the reminder it carried of what had happened today. What had been done to them, to her.

“How are they?” she asked.

“The student association was very careful,” Tristan said, tone clinical. “Not a thing broken on either, though one of Ishanvi’s ribs was almost cracked. Song’s wrist is sprained, which she seems to be angrier about than the black eyes even though those will last thrice as long.”

Because it would keep her from using her rifle, Maryam thought. You needed both hands for that.

“We misread the move on Morcant’s part,” she said, tucking back her hair. “We thought we’d be able to walk away after taking stock of his thugs.”

“It would have been wiser to retreat,” Tristan bluntly agreed. “That said, by taking the beating you’ve now tied his hands in some ways – if he continues to provoke the Thirteenth, he discards the protection that is our recent record. Flicking a hound’s nose once without getting bit is audacity, trying it again is courting a bite.”