Chapter 41

It was a small mark, barely the width of half a palm, but that ‘C/C’ might just get them all killed.

“Trouble,” Lady Angharad Tredegar slowly repeated. “What do you mean?”

Tristan saw the change in the noblewoman, the way her previous sulk immediately turned into a straightened back as she unconsciously made enough room to be able to draw her saber. It was interesting that someone of her birth had learned such a habit – the kind you usually saw in legbreakers and killers who had been in the service of coteries for years, who knew death might come for them at any moment. Someone had tried to kill Angharad Tredegar, he figured, and taken more than one swing at it.

The thief cleared his throat.

“Would you like the short explanation or the long?” he asked.

The Pereduri blinked, as if surprised he would even ask.

“The long, of course,” Angharad seriously said.

“Huh,” Fortuna mused, cocking her head to the side. “No one ever asks for the long explanation. I think something might be wrong with her, Tristan.”

A beat.

“I mean, she just willingly signed up for you talking more to her, she must be a masochist at the very least.”

It was not possible to strangle an incorporeal goddess, Tristan knew. He had tried enough to be certain. Hiding his surprise – Fortuna wasn’t wrong about thew first part at least – the thief cleared his throat again, placing his thoughts in order.

“A lamplight is not a complicated thing to make,” he finally said. “In essence, it is an iron post about twenty feet high – broader at the base, for stability – with a cylinder of grass and iron screwed on atop it. There is an oil reservoir inside and a wick to light.”

Tredegar was, by all appearances, listening quite attentively. As if interested. It began to occur to him that Fortuna might actually be a right, an unsettling prospect at the best of times.

“The oil itself is cheap,” he said. “Almond oil, but they do not need to be Glare-grown – just cut with infused dust or stone. Iron is cheap in Sacromonte because of the Trench, and an iron post is not a complicated to forge, so lamplights are relatively cheap to make and have been for as long as anyone can remember. It is not a popular good to trade in because there is, as far as anyone can tell, no coin to make in it.”

“But,” Angharad said.

Malani nobles were said to have a better eye for coin than most, he recalled. Or at least their lesser branches.

“Enter Chabier Calante,” Tristan said, “to whom the very Prince of Lies is favorably compared in some parts of the Murk.”

The Pereduri’s brown eyes moved to the lamplight by which they stood, finding the ‘C/C’ impressed into the metal. Her brow rose.

“Decades have passed since then and tales have eaten away at the truth of the matter,” Tristan continued, “but some elements always remain: Chabier Calante was a trader, a Trebian merchantman, and by way of what he believed to be an opportunity came into a large number of Pili cannons – the barrels, to be precise.”

Angharad cocked her head to the side.

“I have read of those,” she said. “Tianxi artillery. Powerful but infamously imprecise. Their use cost the Republics several engagements at sea.”

“I doubt the man would have cared,” Tristan said. “But he was tricked anyhow: the reason he got the barrels so cheaply was because they had been miscast. Some sort of thinned junction, it made the bottoms prone to exploding after the second shot. Even worse, the republic he meant to sell these to averted war by way of treaty at the last moment.”

“So he was ruined,” Tredegar said.

She sounded rather approving.

“Most would have been, but Chabier Calante was bold,” Tristan replied. “Around that time, the City was looking to expand its lines of lamplights into the Murk. Chabier had a stroke of inspiration: by sticking the miscast barrels atop a shorter, hollow base of scrap iron, he would be able to build lamplights for a pittance.”

“Surely the quality would be greatly lessened,” Angharad frowned.

Tristan shrugged.

“The story goes that when the contract bids were made to the infanzones, his offered price was almost half that of his competitors,” the thief said. “Chabier’s description of his shorter, squat lamplights as ‘built hardened against the savagery of the commons’ was allegedly found rather charming. They awarded him the contract.”

The noblewoman’s face hardened.

“This borders on corruption,” she severely said. “It is, at the very least, incompetence.”

Tristan wondered what it must be like, to live in a world where either of these things were a real hindrance in holding onto power you were born to.

“Lamplights with that newly minted mark of ‘C/C’ sprouted over about half the Murk the following year,” Tristan said. “All of Soliante, Araturo and Careyar.”

“I do not know these districts,” Angharad told him. “I was lodged in Cortolo and spent some time in Fishmonger’s Quay.”

Tristan let out a little noise of curiosity.

“Cortolo’s one of the nicer parts of the Old Town,” he said. “I’m surprised you were able to get a bed there, most foreigners end up near the ports.”

“My uncle recommended an acquaintance,” Angharad said.

Ah, the blackcloak relation. More likely he had recommended an inn with ties to the Watch, Tristan thought.

“They are districts near the western edge of the city,” he said. “Far from Cortolo, and indeed the eyes of the infanzones. Chabier Calante became very rich from this deal, a man of means, but as the months turned into a year word began trickling in: his lamplights kept blowing up, the top exploding in showers of fire and broken glass.”

Angaharad’s lips thinned. She was, Tristan realized, genuinely angry at the thought of something that had happened in a foreign land decades before she was born.

“It was the parts from the Pili cannons,” Tristan said. “Constant heat warped them, and by doing so turned them into makeshift grenades that blew the top off their own lamplights.”

“What happened after Chabier Calante was arrested?” Tredegar asked.

“He wasn’t,” Tristan mildly said. “Chabier suppressed news a few more years by paying a coterie to frame another for the explosions, which kept him in good odor long enough to marry into a noble house and prepare.”

“Prepare how?” the Pereduri said, sounding baffled.

“By the time it came out his lamplights were essentially a self-inflicted bombardment of Sacromontan streets,” Tristan said, “he had replacements lined up for the pieces whose manufacture just so happened to enrich enough powerful infanzones that not only did he go unpunished, he actually grew richer.”

Angharad Tredegar looked as if she had just been slapped, something that took great effort not to smile at. He could not help it, she was taking it all so personally.

“He should have been hanged,” the noblewoman stiffly said. “And all involved in awarding him the contract stripped of their offices and titles in public disgrace.”

You don’t even notice it, do you? That even in your finer world, you would hang the commoner and let the nobles get away with a slap on the wrist. Tristan could not find it in him to be irked over it. It was the kind of blindness you were born into, as much a defect as a limp or a stutter. Tredegar looked slightly embarrassed by her own outburst, coughing awkwardly.

“This lamplight is one of the repaired pieces, then?” she asked.

Tristan grimaced, for now they got to the bone of it.

“Chabier’s name would not still be cursed for his trick after decades passed had it ended there,” he said. “The replacement pieces, you see, did not work all that well either. The glow of the lamplights tends to wax and wane, and some trouble with the wicks means they can go dark for hours at a time without warning.”

Tredegar was not a slow woman, for all her self-inflicted fettering.

“You said earlier that the glow of these lamplights is perfect,” Tredegar slowly said. “It is not the same as those you know, then?”

“No,” he grimly said. “It is not. The upper half does not look quite the same either, the mark is in a different place.”

He grimaced.

“I think,” Tristan said, “that we are looking at the original cast. Chabier’s first batch.”

“And you said that within a year these pieces exploded,” Tredegar quietly said. “Those in the Murk were used every day?”

He nodded.

“Then even if the people of Cantica light these only the necessary amount to prevent Gloam disease, they should have broken by now,” Tredegar stated, and he was surprised by the certainty in her voice.

Ah, he should not have. Her mother had been some sort of explorer, hadn’t she? No one knew Gloam disease better than those who ventured out into the dark seas.

“There could be other explanations,” he warned. “If the town has only existed for a year or two, for example.”

“It would not have become the crux of the Trial of Weeds were it so recent a creation,” Tredegar noted. “Nor would it have so many established trades on the main street.”

A fair point, he thought as she paused.

“Though I suppose they could have private sources of Glare light,” she said. “Within their own homes. It might be that the use of the lamplights is restricted to the Trial of Weeds.”

“The lamplights are half of what keeps out cultists and lemures,” Tristan disagreed. “The Watch does not seem to be protecting Cantica from raids, by the corpses out front, so they would have used them defensively at least. Besides, think of the costs. Every single family in a small town like this having a private light? It would represent a fortune in coin.”

And Cantica did not seem like a wealthy town.

“I have no notion of the costs involved,” Tredegar admitted. “Much of Peredur is covered by Glare light from the pit above.”

“It’d be cheaper near a pit, like your home or Sacromonte,” Tristan said, “but it would be quite expensive out here on a nowhere island, where all is imported. I doubt even the Watch garrisons on the Dominion have such luxury.”

“Then the people of Cantica ought to be darklings by now, and they are not,” the Pereduri said, her voice gone flinty. “They are hiding something from us.”

It was interesting to witness it, the exact moment when white turned to black in Angharad Tredegar’s mind. Before then the townsfolk had been their hosts, honorable souls deserving of every courtesy. Now they were schemers, looming threats. It would have been easy to mock the woman for it, call it simplicity, but Tristan had seen naivete and this was not it. It was trained mindset, something she had been taught.

Would it not be a useful skill to a noble, being able to decide in a heartbeat that one of your formerly esteemed peers was a hateful foe without taking the betrayal personally?

He was coming around to thinking that Angharad Tredegar was a lot like a thoroughbred trained for the races. Splendid at what she was meant to do – swording people and being mannerly – but somewhat at a loss outside these bounds. Which was only natural: using a racer like a mountain mule was a good way to scrap that very expensive horse. Besides, Tredegar would not be at a loss forever. She was not without cleverness, given time to find her footing she should turn into a singularly dangerous woman.

But for now she was merely very dangerous, so the thief intended to find her a racing course to put that danger to use. What to say, what to hide, what to leverage? Tristan sketched out the angles, then made his decision.

“This cannot be spread around blindly,” Tristan told her. “Some would panic and tip off the townsfolk we are onto them.”

“If we are in danger,” Tredegar said, “we must warn the others.”

The thief feigned hesitation, preparing to concede down to the compromise he had wanted from the start.

“Only those we both agree on,” he offered.

After a heartbeat of hesitation Tredegar nodded. It would serve, given the Malani obsession with keeping their word.

“We need to find out what they are hiding,” the noblewoman said. “What kind of dark pact has kept them from becoming hollows without Glare light.”

“I have a guess as to what might be going on,” Tristan said. “But considering who I believe has the answers, I will need your help.”

Tredegar cocked an eyebrow.

“My help?” she skeptically asked.

He nodded.

“We need to find Tupoc,” Tristan said.

“He despises me,” the noblewoman informed him. “An entirely mutual feeling, I assure you.”

The thief doubted that, in fact – at least on the Izcalli’s side – but now was not the time for that talk. Or ever, really.

“It doesn’t matter,” Tristan said. “Tupoc Xical is not going to answer any question I ask him, because he and I both know that if I press him he will savagely beat me and dump my unconscious body somewhere humiliating.”

Tredegar opened her mouth and then closed it, speechless..

“You, on the other hand,” Tristan continued, “can savagely beat him should he attempt this, which he is equally aware of. That capacity is the required foundation for having any kind of halfway polite conversation with Tupoc Xical.”

The noblewoman squinted at him.

“Tristan,” she said, “are you attempting to use me as some sort of street tough?”

That was absolutely what he was attempting to do, yes. Outright lying to the woman whose entire way of life was bound to the concept of honor seemed a mistake, so he decided on a different angle.

“Be a pal,” Tristan tried. “Do it for justice.”

A heartbeat passed.

“I am not sure whether I should be offended at the implication,” Tredegar muttered, “or relieved that someone is finally asking of me something I know for certain I can do.”

“That uncertainty,” he sagely advised, “is the garden where friendships bloom.”

Angharad did not stab him for that, which was good as agreement in his book.

—

Tupoc Xical, spear assembled and at the ready, loomed over them from the rooftop.

The pale-eyed Izcalli was perched at the edge of the tiles, surveying the streets of Cantica like a hunting cat waiting for the right prey to pounce. Tupoc was bound for the cages and likely the grave unless he found the secret that would spare his life, so it hardly surprised Tristan that the man had decided trying to rustle up votes was a waste of time better spent on getting the lay of the land in Cantica. Indeed, the thief was counting on it. Everyone else, including him, had dabbled elsewhere.

“Good evening,” Tristan cheerfully called out.

The Izcalli sneered down.

“Less so now that you waste part of it,” he said. “Run along, rat.”

A full two seconds passed.

“Lady Tredegar,” Tupoc greeted with a nod.

It was almost impressive how excruciatingly deliberate he had made that pause.

“Your manners are lacking as ever,” Tredegar frostily replied.

“They match the soul they are offered to,” Tupoc drawled.

Insult and compliment all at once, Tristan thought amusedly. How crafty.

“We ask only for a conversation,” the thief said.

“We?” the Izcalli snorted. “How the mighty have fallen, Tredegar. Are you now cowering away in fear of the dark with this one?”

Angharad Tredegar cocked her head to the side.

“Shall we,” she mildly said, “speak of fear, then, Tupoc Xical?”

The eerily perfect man went still, a statue of flesh and blood, and Tristan hid his surprise. Tredegar had something on the man, she must have for him to react this way. How? Nobody had something on Tupoc, the Leopard Society man was like a pile of razor blades fashioned into a man’s shape. Tupoc leapt down from the roof, landing in a smooth crouch that was just close enough to force Tristan to take a step back, but the thief hardly even cared. This was just too delicious.

That Angharad Tredegar, of all people, would come into the power to hold Tupoc’s feet to the fire was enough to make his day.

“Do not waste my time,” Tupoc said. “What do you want?”

Tredegar cleared her throat, turning her gaze to Tristan. This had gone remarkably quickly, the thief mused, and he had not had to suffer nearly as many condescending threats against his life as he had been expecting.

Angharad was already proving a remarkably useful stick to shake at people.

“To trade in secrets,” Tristan said. “You have been looking over Cantica for hours now, Xical. Where is it?”

The noblewoman at his side frowned.

“Where is what?”

Tupoc snorted.

“The place where the bodies are buried,” the Izcalli said. “Where our beloved hosts are keeping their dirty little secrets.”

Tristan cocked an eyebrow.

“And?”

“On the right side of town, near the palisade, they keep large piles of lumber for firewood,” Tupoc said. “Only the wood is old while the tracks that come and go in the mud are fresh.”

“So and underground cellar, most likely,” the thief mused. “They are keeping something down there.”

Tredegar looked uncomfortable.

“I have been told,” she hesitantly said, “that Cantica might be keeping darkling slaves. If such a cellar exists, it might be a gaol of sorts for the disobedient.”

Tristan stilled for a moment, fitting the pieces. If his growing guess about what the people of Cantica actually were proved true, then it was only sensible that hollow slaves would be kept around to work the fields and do the busywork. He had thought that the streets were empty because the townsfolk were keeping away from the trials, but Glare lamplights would force hollows off the streets.

“That would be a boon,” Tupoc said. “Tortured slaves always tell on the masters when given the opportunity, hollows most of all.”

Tredegar, he saw, was struggling between a polite dislike of slavery and her inability to approve of a slave turning on their lawful superior.

“Time to have a look at thar cellar, then,” Tristan said, rolling a shoulder.

“Trade means I get something as well, rat,” Tupoc said.

The thief nodded.

“Your question?”

“No question,” Tupoc said. “I am coming with you, that is my price.”

“No,” Tredegar immediately denied.

Tristan said nothing, which after a heartbeat earned him a glare and a reproachful Tristan from the swordswoman. Mentioning that Tupoc seemed like a splendid scapegoat should anything go wrong with their little trip was unlikely to sway Tredegar, so instead Tristan tried a different approach.

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

“Why do you want to come?” he asked Tupoc. “You could easily trade for us telling you what we learn afterwards instead.”

The Izcalli’s pale eyes narrowed, a grudging look seizing his face. Tupoc recognized the offered branch for what it was – a way to talk himself into coming along – but resented being given at all anything by the likes of Tristan. This was turning, the thief mused, into a most satisfying interlude. Squirm some more, he thought, smiling pleasantly at the other man.

“This trial,” Tupoc said. “There is something wrong about it.”

“There is nothing wrong about being called to account for your own deeds,” Tredegar bit back.

He dismissed that with an irritated gesture.

“I mean in the way it is done,” the Izcalli said. “What prevents any group with half the votes from killing off everyone they dislike regardless of the stated purpose of this trial? It is supposed to weed out the unworthy but it is too easy to rig, even with a way to get out of being killed.”

“Ah,” Tristan exhaled. “You think there is something out to kills us beyond each other.”

“We are forbidden from fighting each other and the townsfolk,” Tupoc said. “But what if there was something else inside the walls with us?”

Something that could walk under the light of the Glare, something that would not reveal itself before it struck. Tristan had slowly but surely come to the same conclusion, but on a larger scale than Tupoc was considering. The Izcalli was yet thinking of this as a hunt when he should have thought of it as a racket.

“Attacks in the night would punish us for lingering too long,” Tredegar quietly said. “Force us to balance the righteousness of executing the deserving and the risks we incur to the innocent in doing so.”

Something the blackcloaks would be most interested in learning about their company before welcoming them into its ranks. Is the hidden rule that hunting the killer during the night gets you spared? It would be a way to preserve talent that had burned too many bridges but might still be useful to the Watch.

A rule to preserve the likes of Tupoc Xical, in other words.

“I want answers, same as you, but that is not why I want to go with you,” Tupoc said. “It occurs to me that my foe might just be tempted into an attack should it look like we are about to uncover Cantica’s secrets.”

Tredegar breathed out.

“That is what you have being doing,” she said. “Standing alone in an attempt to bait them out.”

Ah, Tristan thought. The blinders went both ways. He saw the affairs as a racket, so it had not occurred to him that Tupoc might be trying to outfox the hunter. It was good Tredegar had caught it, for it finally allowed him to understand what exactly it was the Izcalli had been doing all this time.

“He will coming along whether we like it or not,” Tristan told Angharad. “He is dead if he does not find the hidden rule, there is nothing we can do that will be worse than the outcome should he miss that opportunity.”

The noblewoman stared at him for a long moment, face reluctant, but he did not blink. Tredegar sighed.

“Though you will be accompanying us,” she flatly told Tupoc, “you will not be of our company.”

An important distinction to her, he expected. Perhaps she would not be bound to offer him aid in battle if he was not a ‘companion’.

“You are hurting my feelings, Lady Tredegar,” the Izcalli grinned.

“Count your blessings that an oath prevents me from hurting anything more than that, Xical,” she bit back.

And without another word she walked away, leaving the two of them standing face to face.

“Looking for fresh coattails to ride, Tristan?” Tupoc idly asked. “Yong seems to have finally shaken you off of his.”

“I am going to find out what she has on you, Tupoc,” Tristan affably replied, “and walk around this town shouting it at the top of my lungs.”

With the proper courtesies now observed, they hurried to catch up to Tredegar.

—

The piles of lumber were exactly as they had been told: large, old and much too frequently visited to truly be what they pretended to be.

The three were careful to avoid walking in the mud and leave tracks – rather, he and Tupoc were and Tredegar observed the same route without asking why – as they approached. The place was deserted, likely to avoid drawing attention in the first place, but they avoided staying out in the open anyhow. The faster they were done here the better. Though they swept around looking for the expected lookout, none was there to be found.

“We are taking too long,” Tupoc grunted. “Best we start looking for that cellar.”

The part where the lumber was stacked was dry ground, so tracks were not so easily found, but after they began going around testing them Tredegar soon let out a noise of surprise. Her stack was easily moved, lifted one-handed, and though the Pereduri was a strong woman she was not that strong.

It was hollow, glued together, and there was a trap door beneath.

“Promising,” Tristan said.

They moved aside the false pile. Tupoc tried to prevent it from being too obvious they had moved it from a distance, but Tristan suspected that was a lost cause. Secrecy would only be had by speed. Pulling at an iron ring, Tredegar opened the door and revealed a lightless stone chamber below. Tristan knelt at the edge, peering down, and frowned. The stink of human filth was strong, but he saw little aside from bare stone.

“We will have to go down,” he said. “I do not suppose either of you has a lantern?”

“Matches,” Tupoc replied.

It would have to do. There was a small makeshift ladder leading down and down they went one after another, the Izcalli taking the lead. Once Tredegar closed the trapdoor over their heads, Tupoc scratched a match. Flickering light revealed the boundaries of the small chamber they were in: stone on all sides except one, where instead a door of thick iron bars faced them.

“You were right,” Tristan murmured to Angharad. “It is a gaol.”

There was a padlock on the door, the same kind as the cages in the town square, and as they got close the match guttered out. Tupoc scratched another, revealing the dozen darklings laying down on a floor covered by filthy straw and dust. Most were half-naked, all bruised and several look like they had been cut. Or clawed at. Tredegar went stiff with outrage, Tupoc remaining unbothered. Tristan instead studied the prisoners inside, finding that thought most were either asleep or unconscious one woman in rags was look at them with wide eyes.

Blue eyes, he saw, and the sight of that with pale skin had his belly clenching with something unpleasant.