Chapter 41

The hunting crew were all sworn to silence over the Lord of Teeth’s lair before they returned to camp. The longer that knowledge was kept quiet, after all, the longer their crew could act unhindered by the others.

Yet Angharad could not say she was surprised when, come evening, there hardly seemed to be a soul on Lamb Hill that did not know of their adventure. To so blatantly break an oath in Peredur would have seen the culprit turned into a pariah – and then likely driven out of polite society by honor duel – but this was not Peredur, and in these parts men often took their promises lightly. Angharad doubted she would ever be entirely comfortable with that, but she was growing used to it. It was not the world as it should be, but it was the world she happened to live in.

“Who do you think talked?” she asked Tristan as they sat by the fire.

Evening had rolled in, as their crew had been disinclined to risk another run up the side of the Nests. They’d riled up creatures on their flight south, it would not be safe to make another attempt. They had turned their eyes to planning tomorrow instead, deciding on the avenues of approach, until even that was put away for dinner.

“Luyanda, for sure,” Tristan noted. “They’re quite fond of the…”

He touched a nostril with a finger and took a loud sniff with the other, which Angharad politely pretended not to be baffled by.

“Ah,” she said.

A beat passed.

“You have no idea what that meant, do you?” Tristan amusedly asked.

“There are elements whose addition would improve my understanding,” Angharad vaguely replied.

Like having any idea what he’d meant. Presumably it was not meant to represent sniffling from the common cold. Snuff, perhaps, but then why not just say tobacco?

“And here I thought you nobles were all about the fancy drugs at parties,” he snorted. “Luyanda’s on butterfly powder, and I believe Tianxi hemp as well. Neither are cheap, at least not out here.”

Ah! Angharad did know of Tianxi hemp, which back home was usually called the ‘birthing bed herb’. Indulging in it when you were not in great pain was considered something of a moral failing, a childish sort of fragility.

“This butterfly powder is inhaled, I take it?” she asked.

“The cheap version is, at any rate,” Tristan replied. “And like Tianxi hemp it’s known to dull the senses, so I can hazard a guess as to why our contracted friend likes to have a stock on hand.”

Angharad’s lips thinned. While the implication here was that Luyanda had taken a bribe to break an oath so they would be able to buy drugs, she decided to reserve judgment at least in part. The birthing bed tea was reputed to help with pain, and she did not know what the use of her contract did to the Malani. The oath-breaking, however, she would not soon forget.

“We could leave them behind when we return tomorrow,” she said.

“All that would accomplish is ensuring they sell the full story to anyone willing to pay, including our actual route and method instead of mere generalities,” Tristan noted. “No, best to keep them on. So long as they’re with us there’ll be a degree of restraint in what goes out – the moment they give away the whole pot, what do the buyers still need an informant for?”

There was an ugly sort of logic to that, Angharad conceded. She did not envy him having to think this way, to measure and cut doses of treachery to split the difference between poison and medicine.

“Besides, I expect at least one other of our recruits joined us while already on another brigade’s take,” he continued, poking at the fire with a stick. “I did not tell Ferranda this, but I actually held back on recruitment until the last moment in part to see what the other brigades would do.”

Angharad cocked her head to the side, tried to see what gain there would be in such a thing. Tristan had earlier claimed it would be because few would sign up with their crew until told of the plan and revealing that plan risked it leaking to the competing crews, but evidently there was more to it than that. How would waiting show the hand of other brigades? The hunting crews had all chosen the paths of their own expeditions by then, made their preparations, so- ah, Angharad thought. There it was.

“You wanted to see if the hunting crews headed north would snap up every reliable gun,” she said. “And when they did not, even though they could have used them, it meant that someone was trying to plant an informant among us. The quality of the remaining candidates good as proved it.”

“You have a decent head for this sort of work,” Tristan praised, tacitly agreeing. “My bet is on Camaron. He’s got the coin and the need to come out ahead in the hunt if he wants to beat Vivek Lahiri this year. Still, I won’t count out Nenetl or the Second. They both have angles to work.”

“You think Camaron is the one who spread word of our success in camp?” she frowned.

“Why not?” Tristan shrugged. “It’s a way to paint a target on our back without tipping his hand. I expect after our early successes he would like us to stumble around for a bit, let him take the lead and emerge as the figure who pulls it all together. The last victory is the one people remember.”

She hummed, inclined to agree now that she thought of it. Camaron had lost out to the First Brigade last year in the rankings, however narrowly, so this year he must bring acclaim to the Ninth or risk ending up second again and cement his reputation as the runner-up. Angharad was not all that well acquainted with Sebastian Camaron, but he did not strike her as the kind of man who tolerated coming in second place twice.

“He won’t act against us openly,” Angharad said. “It would risk pushing us into the First’s camp in their feud.”

Tristan nodded.

“Agreed,” he said. “Though I’d expect fresh sticks in our wheels, should tomorrow’s return trip succeed and we manage to finagle a halfway-usable route to the dantesvara’s territory.”

That was the objective they must pivot towards, now: establishing a route to the Lord of Teeth’s lair that could be used by large force, preferably one that allowed to bring cannons. Easier said than done, even knowing where the monster dwelled.

“Best I take the pulse of the sentiment in camp, then,” Angharad mused.

It would be prudent to find out much of a target was actually on their back before they set out.

“I’ll leave you to your scheming.”

“Use plotting instead, at least,” he complained. “It can have less underhanded meanings.”

“I know what I said,” she cheerily replied.

Angharad patted his shoulder – once, lightly, and the fingers never positioned so she would be able to grasp his shoulder and hinder his movement – before rising, leaving him grumbling by the pit.

While the mood in camp tonight was not exactly celebratory, it was rather hopeful. The leak had the general direction of the Lord of Teeth open knowledge, which despite the standing difficulties in getting there felt like the approach of the end to everyone. There was quite a bit of congratulatory backslapping among hunters for choosing the hunt instead of the delve, which ‘everyone knew’ to be a lethal stalemate over which brigades were now turning on each other.

More than that, the crews that’d not made as much progress on their route as their rivals saw the finding of the dantesvara as return to the starting line for everyone, a second chance. Meanwhile the crews that had done well held comfort in the fact that while Angharad’s crew had located the beast the path they’d taken was dangerous enough they had been forced to flee back to camp. It might yet be that their own expedition would be the one to deliver the final route, and now they knew in which direction to push.

The lack of a strong, decisive advantage in anyone’s hands meant the hunters were still inclined to mingle and the hour after dinner was always when most people were inclined to share a drink and swap tales. Angharad sat at a few fires, making the rounds. She was joined by Shalini to bemoan a shared distaste for rope climbing with Short Bibek at the Twentieth’s camp while Zenzele and Izel joined her in getting an admiring demonstration of Awonke Bokang’s now-famous foldable bridge.

This somehow ended up leading to her officiating as magistrate over the arm-wrestling contest Musa and Jeronimo had talked themselves into. If they’d put half as much effort into the actual wrestling as the taunts there would have been a victor, but instead they struggled for five minutes before calling it a draw to roars of laughter from the crowd.

Despite Sebastian Camaron and Nenetl Chapul detesting each other, their brigades were usually polite to each other – save for the Banerjee cousins on either side, the one from the Third all but spitting on the floor every time he saw the other. Angharad checked on how much drink had been put away by the crowd, then gravitated to a reputable source to scratch her curiosity about that.

“Our Jayati used to be rough on the poor fellow, I’m afraid,” a tastefully drunk Andreu Claver told her all too eagerly. “You are highborn, Tredegar, you know how it can be with main and branch lines when there are competing talents.”

She did not, in fact, as the only branch house of the Tredegar went by the name of Kynith and they hadn’t had anything to do with her kin in generations. There had been some conflict over a manor house and pastures in her great-great-grandmother’s time, to her understanding, that had effectively severed any familial ties. On occasion Angharad wondered if House Kynith had pressed a claim to Llanw Hall or if they had found the attainder of the Tredegar too risky a storm to pitch their tent in.

Still, there was no need to tell Claver any of this so instead she let out a noise that could be construed as agreement if you cared to. The man truly was a treasure trove of gossip when he had a few drinks in him. Angharad would not be surprised if there were some Krypteia student out there with a budget specifically dedicated to keeping him soused.

And with that final piece of entirely crucial information obtained, Angharad could call her work done: she had gathered a decent idea of how the other hunting crews had done today.

Out east the Third and Twentieth brigades had shot ahead of everyone and both had secured a path to the eastern beach of the Old Canals, but it had taken them so long to get there they’d had to withdraw late in the afternoon to avoid being forced to camp out there in the ruins. The Third was in a much better mood about that than the Twentieth, so Angharad suspected they’d found a better route – or at least one they could turn into a better one with the help of some tinkers.

Most of the smaller crews out east had run into obstacles they were unprepared for and been forced to turn back, trickling back into camp in fits and starts. Several had already been back when Angharad’s own crew returned, after all.

As for the pushes straight north they had found success, but within limits.

The Seventeenth had gotten furthest, almost all the way to the canal beach of the easternmost canal, but they were forced to withdraw after their clearing a nest of highly aggressive turtle lares drew the attention of what they believed to be the same hippogriff from the Battle of the Barrels. Lined up in a straight channel of difficult terrain they would have been a buffet for the beast, so they’d been forced to retreat.

The Ninth was stopped not by battle but by a section of the middle canal being a swamp whose murky water went chest-high and was infested with some sort of wormlike snake, an obstacle had they had been unprepared to cross. Two of the brigade’s members had headed into town to buy the materials necessary for a floating bridge, and Musa seemed to believe that once they’d passed the swamp it would be a clean shot to the end of the canal.

So far all the crews seemed intent on continuing to push up their routes, though of course if anyone intended to abandon their old one to nip after the Thirteenth’s heels they were unlikely to say as much to her face. Time would tell.

Angharad still undertook one more visit, though. Once the large productions were over, Angharad idled near the Second Brigade until opportunity arose to join them. As always Guadalupe de Tovar was friendly, if distant, and Lord Khosa was unfailingly polite. Their signifier was exhausted and already retired for the night, but it was not him Angharad had come for. While she had never crossed blades with Muchen He, not even down in the Acallar, there was history there and she wanted the air cleared.

The man was not a fool and he read between the lines easily enough. Muchen offered to walk her back to her tent after she’d drunk a cup with the Second and did not waste time once they were out of earshot.

“I have no intention of ever getting involved with Abrascal again beyond what I must,” Muchen He bluntly said. “I have been strongly advised that doing otherwise will see me sent to catch up with my old captains in the Desolation.”

Well, that was put plainly enough. It saved them both time dancing around.

“I make no accusation,” Angharad clarified. “I only want to be certain where we all stand.”

“And I got recruited by someone that has an axe to grind with him, so you had to ask,” he acknowledged. “I expect Guadalupe has something afoot – she has instructed us to be friendly with the brigade of that yiwu princess she despises – but whatever it is she’s not told me and I don’t expect it’ll cross lines. It’s not that sort of anger.”

“I am pleased to hear it,” Angharad said, then cleared her throat. “I do not believe Tristan to be holding a grudge against you either. The past can be laid to rest.”

“Reassuring,” Muchen smiled, tone ambiguous.

She shook his hand before they parted ways, satisfied with what she had learned. Guadalupe would act against them at some point, but she had not let anger color her judgment. Whatever vengeance was taken would be harmful but not dangerous.

One last talk with the others to share what she had learned, then it was time to sleep. Tomorrow would be a busy day.

—

In a move halfway cunning, Angharad’s hunting crew delayed its departure until eight in the morning.

Not only did it let them all rest longer, it served to tear down pretenses. The other crews set out early, so anyone lingering in camp for an hour past everyone else was remaining because they intended to follow behind them like scavengers. There just weren’t that many other reasons for them to delay setting out for so long.

Only two first-year brigades and a small, mixed crew of independents – all of which had gone eastward yesterday – were brazen enough to have that plan and unskilled enough to be caught at it before even leaving camp. The weight of the scorn aimed at them chased out all but one of the brigades, which stubbornly waited by the entrance of the camp.

They would need to be lost out in the brushlands, Angharad judged, which would add time to their journey. Unfortunately for these audacious vultures, while the Marshal’s decree that there would be no fighting on Lamb Hill on pain of permanent eviction from the camp applied within the palisades it would not apply even a step past them.

A hard drubbing ought to serve as deserved reminder of the costs of such open attempts at poaching the efforts of others. They had neither the numbers nor the skill to resist this.

Their column began to trek down the hill, Angharad and Shalini sharing the vanguard as had become their habit. The mirror-dancer slowed at the sight of the lone student sitting on an upended supply crate near the gates. The man was vaguely familiar, though she could not have named him. A Navigator, by the tunic, so perhaps an acquaintance of Maryam’s? Either way, he seemed more interested in eating an apple and the book on his lap than anything else, so they continued past him.

Onto the wormway they went, walking briskly, and then the world went dark.

Not only for Angharad, either: cries of dismay came from all across the column. Pulling on her contract she glimpsed ahead, finding that she looked untouched from an outside view and so did the others. That and there was no ambush being sprung on them in the next few seconds. While there was some unease, most everyone here was a veteran of some stripe and they were not in immediate danger. After fifteen minutes of tripping over everything they made their way back to Lamb Hill and its relative safety.

The veil on her eyes lifted the very moment she stepped past the palisade.

It was the same for the others, and it did not take an oracle to figure out what had happened. The lone signifier at the entrance had finished his apple, tossed it into the mud, and was reading his book. He glanced up at their arrival, but said nothing.

“Sabotage,” Angharad flatly accused him. “You are using Signs on us.”

The Lierganen set down a ribbon in his book to keep his page before closing it.

“Sabotage is a strong word,” he said. “I’m not-”

“Diego Calante,” Tristan named him. “Akelarre second year. Twenty-Third Brigade. Maryam whipped you in a fight last week.”

“So she did,” Diego easily replied. “This isn’t revenge for that, in case you were wondering. I am being paid an impressive amount of money to keep you fine fellows stuck in camp.”

After last night’s talk Angharad’s mind immediately went to Sebastian Camaron, but she dismissed the thought as quickly as it came. It was too direct an attack to be from the Ninth. Still, whoever had schemed this was clever: Diego Calante was not attacking their crew outright, only using some Sign to obscure their vision, and doing so from within the confines of Lamb Hill only to people who were outside of it. He’d found the line to straddle to be able to curse them without their crew having any right to retaliate.

By the time Angharad thought her way through the rules she had been joined not only by Tristan but also by most of the Thirty-First. The others kept their distance.

“We have no quarrel with you,” Ferranda told him. “This is a provocation most unprovoked.”

“I am acting on behalf of others, not myself,” Diego shrugged. “And will stop the moment the gold does.”

Tristan cocked his head to the side.

“Were you paid to keep quiet about who hired you?” he asked.

The signifier scratched his chin.

“I don’t believe I was, no,” he replied.

Without batting an eye, Tristan flipped him a silver. Diego’s eyes caught the color of the glint and the twitch of his hand aborted: he didn’t even try to catch it. The arbol fell in the mud.

“I’m a man of expensive tastes, Abrascal,” the signifier chided. “Try gold.”

Yet Tristan only smiled, like a man who’d already got what he wanted.

“So you were hired by Yaotl Acatl,” Zenzele said. “No one else would sign an open contract paid in gold.”

Diego Calante grimaced then scowled, irked he’d been caught out, and bent over to pick up the coin as if accepting the fee belatedly. Izel was even faster, though, and put down his boot over it. Calante scowled at him too, but the tinker’s face was icy and the other man backed away with raised hands. Izel snatched the muddy coin, tossed it to Tristan then began stomping up the hill.

“Izel,” she called out. “Where are you going?”

“To ask the Marshal if the truce extends to those who aren’t part of the hunt,” he replied.

As it was obvious they wouldn’t be going anywhere before Calante was dealt with, Angharad told their four independents to set down their packs and rest until it was handled. The general mood was not helped by the way brigade they had failed to drive off earlier was still there, now jeering at them. Izel came back in an even fouler mood, which was answer enough, but she still asked.

“It doesn’t,” he said, “but Diego Calante joined the hunt early this morning so he is protected.”

Angharad eyed the signifier, cocking her head to the side.

“Nothing that can’t be dealt with,” she mused.

“We’ve been warned not to drag him out of camp to break his bones,” Izel added. “We’re not to lay a hand on him, not even to stop him tracing, and Tavarin specifically made mention of you.”

Ah. Well, she could not be the first Pereduri the Marshal had dealt with. Still, she would test whether the threat was an empty one. Angharad’s eyes fluttered as she sank into a vision, allowing herself to drag out Diego Calante onto the street by the collar. He fought, but it was hard to trace a Sign when one’s nose had been freshly broken. They dragged him out onto the street, where a shouting Calante had both his hands cracked – Izel, must have been in a truly foul mood, because he aimed the sole of his boot where it would most hurt on the fingers.

Calante shouted a surrender and was made to crawl away, but Marshal de la Tavarin was at the bottom of the hill in moments and looking none too pleased.

“Evicted,” the old man said. “Your entire crew.”

Angharad slipped out of the vision, clicking her tongue. She found Tristan staring at her with a cocked eyebrow.

“Marshal de la Tavarin means what he says,” she simply told him.

“Unfortunate,” he said. “If he’s going to be heavy-handed, I expect finding out if a paralytic counts as breaching the truce might come at too high cost.”

“I expect it would,” Angharad agreed.

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

Twice over, considering that the Marshal still held Tristan in antipathy and would not hesitate to slap him down given good reason. She could not think of an easy way to prevent him tracing a Sign except for binding his hands, which Izel had already told her was ruled out.

“Then we find another way around,” Izel angrily said. “He’s a signifier, not a god. He has limits.”

“Tracing Signs is tiring,” Ferranda agreed. “Veiling the sights of eleven people repeatedly cannot be easy to maintain: we can outlast him.”

“There is no need to limit our efforts,” Angharad said. “We can post three just outside the palisade to force him to keep the Sign up and then attempt to overcome him in different ways.”

She had plenty of ideas already. None of the independents were eager to volunteer for such a duty, but after Shalini and Tristan put themselves forward they were shamed into drawing lots to add a third. It was, to Angharad’s mild amusement, Luyanda who ‘won’. Sometimes the world provided a justice of sorts without being asked.

While those three sat on the pavement with lookouts watching over them – Ferranda, Zenzele and the independents with their muskets out – Angharad and the two tinkers set to finding out the limits of the Sign. She put herself forward as the test taker, beginning with a Glare-oil lantern aimed right at her eyes while she was blinded. While it did thaw the darkness some, enough to allow her to make out vague shapes, it was a painful sensation and she started to see spots of color rather quickly. It was blinding her a different way.

“Could you describe exactly what that did?” Diego Calante called out. “This is actually very useful research for a Navigator.”

They all ignored him.

“Distance,” Rong Ma suggested. “He does not seem to need line of sight, but some sort of proximity to the signifier might be necessary. If we go far enough, perhaps the Sign will lose its hold.”

“Tie me up with a rope and I will go as far as I can,” Angharad suggested.

Glimpses, which let her see outside of her own body as if looking at herself, would allow her to orient herself somewhat on the way there and back. She just had to ration them carefully. A rope was tied around her waist and Angharad was sent out, but despite walking until the rope was taut there was no thinning of the darkness on her eyes. She came back and proposed tying a rope to the first rope in order to extend the reach. Izel argued against it.

“It’ll likely be useless,” he said. “Odds are it’s a curse laid on you that prevents you seeing light through your eyes and he doesn’t need to do anything after laying that curse. It’s in us until it runs out or it’s lifted, which is why he doesn’t seem distressed in the least that we’ve had three of us sitting out there for the better part of an hour now. It’s not straining him to keep this up because he’s not actually keeping anything up.”

“Should we bring them back in?” she frowned.

“No, no,” Rong Ma immediately said. “We must not. Through them we will learn how long the curse stays on us before it runs out. If it is a reasonable amount of time we could walk out blind, settle in a defensive position and wait out the curse before setting out.”

“Calante’s the weak point,” Izel darkly said. “I say we drop a zhentianlei in his line of sight and make a run for it. He can’t blind us if he’s blind himself.”

That was the word for a phosphorescent grenade, Angharad recalled.

“That might qualify as an attack under Lamb Hill rules,” she noted. “Does either one of you have one those grenades that make smoke instead?”

Both answered in the positive a moment later, Rong then shrugging and letting Izel offer up one of his. The first attempt was promising: Izel scratched a match and moments later a plume of smoke went up, Rong Ma and Angharad running out into cover. Whatever means Calante used to curse them, however, did not need sight. Both she and Rong Ma were soon blind and headed back to camp.

“He was noticeably slower to curse us this time,” Angharad still observed afterwards. “And we were only two. If we were five or six, I am not sure he could get enough of us before we get out of his range.”

“Assuming he has a range,” Rong Ma murmured.

“He does, a Navigator’s logos can only stretch so far,” Izel stated. “It’s a good plan, Angharad, let’s try it.”

They drew on the watchers, mustering six, and used another powder mixture. She cursed when she was blinded before she even finished emerging from the smoke. Yet while Calante had become faster on the draw, she learned moments later that he’d also held his fire. While herself, Izel and Ferranda had all been blinded neither Rong Ma nor the two independents who made up the remainder of the roster had been cursed. So the smoke did work at curtailing him somewhat. Cursing without line of sight must be slower.

“This is very good training,” Diego Calante honestly told them afterwards. “I feel as if I should be paying you for the help, I would never have thought to refine the Sign this way.”

Everyone who did not gesture rudely his way ignored him. They convened in an aside to decide on the next plan.

“Assuming our entire crew rushes out under cover, he should be able to curse no more than half,” Angharad pointed out. “It is a working method.”

“It isn’t,” Ferranda said. “He’s targeting the best fighters in the Thirteenth and Thirty-First while giving the others a pass. It’d be too dangerous to set out, all it takes is one serious lemure and we’ll lose most of the crew. We’d have to get out of his range and wait out the curse.”

“We don’t know how long that curse will last,” Izel grimly said. “At least an hour and a half, so far. If it’s too long then we’ve lost at least today as a working day.”

“If we leave early tomorrow, we can wait him out then proceed with only those hours lost,” Zenzele noted. “The problem is not insurmountable.”

“That is assuming he only keeps using the same Sign,” Rong Ma said. “We have no guarantee of this.”

It would have been a different matter if Diego Calante looked at all tired, but despite regularly cursing them for an hour and change he looked more bored than winded. He must be skilled at such curses, for they seemed easy as breathing to him.

“We should find out the length of the curse before taking a decision,” Angharad grimaced.

She did not like the idea of sitting around until answers happened, but what other option was there? There were reluctant nods of agreement. Once he saw that they had effectively given up, the Navigator raised his voice to inform the independents that should they set out alone or with another brigade they would not be stopped. While none took him up on his offer, Angharad saw the hesitation in their eyes. This crew’s previous success was keeping them from defecting for the moment, but that would not last. If tomorrow the crew was still trapped in camp, there would be a parting of ways.

In the end, the blinding curse lasted for a little over three hours.

“If you pull your smoke trick I’ll go a little more heavy-handed,” Diego Calante ‘helpfully’ informed them. “It should result in closer to four.”

Angharad almost cursed. Four hours was too much. There was barely half an hour left until noon, if they set out early and waited until the curse ran out at four they’d barely get halfway to the dantesvara’s lair before it became wise to turn back. The Orrery never went entirely dark, but past seven most of the moons were gone and the ‘stars’ had a thinner cast. Lemures would come out that preferred to hunt under weak light.

“Today is scrapped,” Shalini grimly announced.

“No,” Tristan mused. “Ultimately, he’s only one man. That is a limitation we hadn’t considered.”

“Meaning?” Ferranda frowned at him.

“Lamb Hill has only one gate, but it has plenty of ways out,” the Mask pointed out. “He can only cover one at a time.”

Angharad breathed in. Yes, that could work. The promontory at the end of Lamb Hill was too high for anything but rappelling down by rope suffice, but the sides were not as high. And, in truth, they had the ropes for the rappelling anyways.

“We’ll need to distract him,” Izel said, then sighed. “He’s keeping closest eye on Angharad and myself. We’ll have to stay in sight the longest.

Only there was another complication.

“I won’t be rappelling down anything,” Jorge Falon, one of the independents, flatly told them. “The risks I agreed to undertake were those of a hunt, not to go down cliffs while a Navigator waits to curse me.”

He was not alone in his refusal, though the other half of the helpers – including Luyanda – were still willing.

“Worth a shot even down to nine,” Tristan noted. “We’ve already found the beast, slimming down our numbers is not entirely a disadvantage.”

Angharad and Izel got a fire started, the crew making a show of stopping for a meal, and they dispersed in detail. One at a time, either faking retiring to a tent, going to relieve themselves or taking care of weapons. Diego Calante relocated closer to them when it became clear they were eating, but that only helped sell the deception. Tristan slipped away first, then Shalini. Luyanda. Rong Ma. Ferranda. It was when Zenzele disappeared that Calante caught on.

Cursing his heart out, he ran to the side palisade that Zenzele was climbing and cursed him as just the Laurel passed over the top, for the first time his hand leaving the inside of his sleeve while tracing trails of Gloam.

That was the best opportunity she’d get, Angharad realized, so she snatched up her saber and ran for it. Izel realized what she was doing a heartbeat later, running after her as they made for the front gate. The last willing independent cursed and got up to do the same, but her cursing caught Calante’s attention. The man ran after them, hand trailing Gloam, and Angharad’s heart thundered against her ribs as she lengthened her stride. She almost lost her footing in the mud and swallowed a curse when Izel did, wiping out in a puddle, but she kept moving.

She’d almost turned the corner into cover when her vision went dark and she shouted in frustration. Fuck.

“Izel?” she shouted.

“He got me,” Izel bitterly called out.

The independent had made it out, but she trekked back instead of risking it alone. She was, at least, friendly enough to help guide Angharad on her return. The Pereduri did not want to keep using her contract if she could avoid it. Sitting down with the others in camp, she sighed. Zenzele had been forced to come back, Izel had never made it out and the girl who’d helped her – Xipil, her name was – sat with them as well. Still, a not insignificant portion of their crew had made it out.

“It is irritating that some of us were forced to stay,” Angharad said, “but the five that made it out should be capable of achieving our basic objective for the day regardless.”

The main work was to find a path through the brushlands that cannons could go through, the prerequisite to getting them anywhere near the Lord of Teeth’s lair. They’d meant that to be the morning’s work, instead scouting for a path that did not skirt the Nests quite so closely during the afternoon, but Angharad would take even a shard of victory after this frustrating start.

Instead, ten minutes later a furious-looking Ferranda trudged back into camp with three at her back: Rong, Shalini and Luyanda. Angharad was instantly on her feet, rushing down, and Ferranda’s teeth were almost audibly grinding.

“They’re waiting for us out on the wormway,” the infanzona said.

Angharad’s lips thinned. There were only so many people ‘they’ could mean.

“The Nineteenth is actively barring our way?” she asked.

Ferranda jerkily nodded.

“I retreated rather than risking a skirmish with four Skiritai.”

Which had been wise of her, though Angharad sympathized with her evident frustration.

“Where is Tristan?” she asked.