Chapter 43

It was a tight squeeze, but Tristan limped out into the alley.

He was third out of the hole in the wall the mayor made trying to murder Tupoc – an admirable undertaking, regardless of one’s politics or stance on people-eating – and the two that had come out ahead were as much keeping an eye on each other as the empty alley they stood in. The first, Lord Zenzele Duma, was cut of typical Malani cloth: tall, dark eyes, wide nose. Yet his cheeks were gaunt from grief and his soft noble features were gainsaid by the recent flint to his stare.

He was unharmed save for a bit of soot on his clothes.

In contrast Tupoc Xical, though as eerily perfect as usual, had suffered from the fight. Ironically not from the devils, two of which he had slain with whoops of joy, but from the volley the cultists had unloaded blindly into the Last Rest: he’d been shot twice, one bullet in his right shoulder near the edge of his breastplate and the other in the opposite thigh. Either should have knocked the man out of the fight but Tristan could see that the shoulder shot, from which Tupoc had casually ripped out the bullet, already looked like it was mending.

Not as quickly as it allegedly had in other circumstances, though. Was it because he had two wounds this time? Can the contract only heal a limited quantity of flesh at a time? Either way, while the Izcalli was steady on his feet he had chewed up limbs and his spear needed two arms to use. No wonder he was keeping a careful eye on Zenzele.

Maryam was next out of the hole in the wall that Mayor Crespin had meant to be in Tupoc’s head – with such a keen eye for popular policies, it was no wonder the devil had been elected mayor – and she coughed from the smoke as he helped her into the street. She’d gotten a bad knock on the head when the devil was tossed into the firing line that Tristan had been a nominal participant in, but her eyes no longer seemed as dazed. She nodded her thanks.

“Your leg?” she rasped out.

“Good enough to walk,” Tristan said.

He’d got a bad roll of the dice when he pulled on his contract to force Cozme Aflor to get stuck on their side of the inferno: a chunk of collapsing ceiling had hit the man’s feet, which had flavored his backlash. The spray of wooden shards from a splintering board had hit mostly flesh, but he’d still had to tie cloth around his leg just above the knee to prevent his trousers being soaked in blood. They had not moved far from the hole in the wall, so when the last of them squeezed through he overheard the talk.

“My thanks for the help,” Cozme panted out, patting his clothes into order.

He he’d lost his musket during the chaos, by the looks of it.

“If you had not tugged me back, that chunk of ceiling would have caught my head.”

Tristan winced, which the older man took as sympathy, but was in truth over the prospect of how vicious his contract backlash would have been over that. The thief nodded back at Cozme, too on the edge to feign deeper companionship.

“We need to move,” Zenzele Duma cut in, voice tense. “I do not see Lady Angharad or the others, which means-”

“We make our own way out,” Tupoc cut in with a drawl. “Obviously.”

It seemed such a petty, pointless offence that Tristan was tempted to dismiss it as Tupoc being habitually unpleasant but the watchfulness of the Izcalli’s eyes revealed that to be a lie. A test, Tristan decided. He’s prodding Zenzele to see how close the man is to drawing on him. By how the Malani’s hand tightened around the grip of his sword, the answer was very close indeed.

“The postern gate is on the west side of town,” Tristan said. “The most direct route takes us through a street just short of the town square, however, so I would suggest cutting across town and circling around the north instead.”

“A longer trip will be more dangerous,” Cozme said.

There was crashing sound to their side as another chunk of ceiling collapsed inside the Last Rest, prompting a furious scream from the mayor and panicked shouting from the cultists still contesting the legitimacy of his election. Maryam cleared her throat.

“Let’s argue further away from that,” she croaked out, pointing at the mess.

Sound advice, which they all took. Heeding the thief’s suggestion of cutting east across town instead of keeping west, where the alleys often turned into dead ends meeting the palisade, the five of them fled. Tupoc took the lead, likely as much to keep his distance from the others as because he preferred the vanguard, and while Maryam kept Cozme distracted Tristan drifted towards the back.

Before he could so much as speak a word, Lord Zenzele Duma frowned down at him.

“You are a headache, did you know?” Zenzele said. “Half the people I speak to think you are a champion in the making, the other half that you are a feckless poison.”

Tristan cocked an eyebrow. Not even a poisoner – which admittedly he was – but poison outright. A bold claim.

“And you?” he asked.

“I am uncertain,” Zenzele grunted. “Which is disconcerting for more reasons than you know.”

Oh? That smelled of a contract, a morsel he might have liked to nibble at in other circumstances. Unfortunately, he must keep to greater concerns.

“I am a rat, that is all,” Tristan shrugged. “But, it seems to me, a rat who might share some interests with you.”

Bait had been set out but Zenzele Duma did not bite it. Instead the Malani noble kept silent, eyes flicking back and forth across thin air as if parsing out the invisible. An ill omen.

“What is it that makes you want to kill Cozme Aflor so very badly?” Zenzele suddenly asked.

Tristan stilled. He had been excruciatingly careful never to be outwardly hostile to the man. Even when he had spoken against Cozme during the discussion in the town square, it had been as part of several – and Yong’s broadsides at him afterwards should have distracted most from remembering it besides. Even now, approaching the Malani, he had not given a name. And Tupoc is the one who tried to get me killed for Jun’s death, so he should be the first guess.

This was the work of a pact, and the thought that one might allow Zenzele Duma to see through his every façade was… uncomfortable. Like learning your shirt had been split open at the back the whole time.

“Guesswork,” Tristan said, forcing his tone to be dismissive.

But he had hesitated for a second too long, he already knew, and Zenzele rolled his eyes.

“You want to use me,” the noble stated. “Send me after Tupoc while you go for him so he cannot intervene.”

That was an unpleasantly accurate read of his intentions.

Tristan swallowed, looking for anything at all on the man’s face he could use but finding no purchase. Zenzele Duma’s grief had been open, his hatreds were known and his recent friendships were obvious, yet the thief found through these nothing at all to move him. The thief looked away, deeply unsettled. Everything he had learned, been taught, told him that Zenzele Dum should be easy to leverage. Instead he was finding that the man’s forthrightness had whittled away every grip, leaving him too slippery to move.

“I owe him a debt,” Tristan reluctantly said. “The bloody kind.”

Zenzele considered that.

“As a servant of the Cerdan or on his own account?”

“Oh, very much his,” Tristan murmured.

Zenzele grunted.

“You do not strike me as man to whom hate comes easy,” the Malani said, rolling a shoulder. “I will presume it was earned.”

He spat to the side, into the mud of the street.

“I want Sarai’s help,” he said. “Wounded or not, he might well kill me otherwise.”

Practical of the man.

“She is no fighter even with Signs,” he warned. “But a distraction can be arranged.”

The noble looked like he wanted to push for more, but Tristan was only willing to promise so much and it must have shown on his face. There were other ways to line up his knife with Cozme Aflor’s back, this was simply the most expedient.

“Fine,” Zenzele said. “Signal me when the time comes.”

Tristan nodded back. However tense the conversation he found that in practice they had barely spent half a street quietly speaking. Tupoc had them turning a corner short two streets short of the piled lumber hiding the gaol, to head straight north as the thief had earlier suggested and no one cared to contest any longer. It was there they first ran into more than the distant sound of musket shots: a dozen slaves, bearing makeshift clubs and field tools, filled the street before them. They turned, faces alarmed, and before anyone could so much as raise a weapon Tupoc stepped forward. He lowered his spear, saying something in the same cant he had used earlier, and it gave the hollows pause.

Their leader, a grey-haired woman with broad shoulders, asked something harshly. Tupoc shrugged, replying, and there were a few more terse exchanges before the hollows began to make room for them to pass through the street.

“Tupoc?” the thief asked.

“I made it known we have fought devils as well,” the Izcalli said. “That earned us some goodwill.”

“They will let us cross?” Cozme asked.

“So they said,” Tupoc cheerfully said. “Though I would keep my weapons in hand, were I you.”

The hollows seemed as wary of them as the other way around, both sides eyeing each other until their group of five had passed the former slaves. The five of them hurried once they were clear, the hollows watching them go. Tupoc gestured for them to slow as soon as they had turned a corner.

“They also let us pass because they are heading for the battle,” the Izcalli said. “Their captain seems to believe that the Red Eye cult is winning.”

“Slaves and savages against a pack of devils?” Cozme skeptically said. “It will be a massacre even with the numbers on their side.”

“There are still sounds of fighting in the distance,” Maryam pointed out. “Something must be evening the scales for there to be no clear victor.”

“We saw the warband that is now attacking Cantica when we made our way here,” Tristan slowly said. “They had a priestess with them, a woman the other cultists seemed to fear.”

“Pacts with old gods are dangerous things,” Tupoc said, tone unusually serious. “That which has no restraint in price yields none in power.”

That last sentence had sounded oddly cadenced, likely a quote. They began moving north again, skirting the edge of town to get around the fighting in the middle, but soon ran into cultists against. One cultist, more specifically, marked with ritual scarification from head to toe and trying to harangue a group of cowering slaves hiding out in the garden behind a house into joining their way. He turned his anger and his spear their way, shouting in some cant, but whatever he might have been about to say was cut short.

Cozme shot him in the gut without missing a beat.

He blew the smoke off his pistol’s barrel as the slaves screamed in fear, some scattering while others flattened themselves behind rows of cabbage.

“That should have been bladework,” Tupoc tightly said. “Someone will have heard you.”

“There are shots all over town,” Cozme dismissed.

“But not from here,” Tristan said. “Let us pick up the pace before someone thinks to question that.”

He slid by Maryam as their strides quickened. She cocked an eyebrow his way and he wasted no time quietly filling her in on the bargain with Zenzele. She grimaced.

“I will not use a Sign on Tupoc,” she murmured. “It is too dangerous.”

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He did not hide his surprise. She had not mentioned him to be dangerous in that regard before.

“That spear of his,” Maryam said, “I saw it go right through a devil’s carapace. I think the head is candlesteel.”

“I have never heard of it,” Tristan admitted.

“Izcalli will not reveal how they make it,” she said, “but supposedly it has something to do with their infamous candles. The material is death on aether – even the solid kind devils are made of – and it’s only marginally kinder to Gloam, so no Signs anywhere near him.”

Considering Leander Galatas had exploded his own arm when a Sign of his broke back on the Bluebell, that seemed wise.

“Any kind of distraction will do,” he whispered.

A moment of hesitation, then she nodded.

“I will not be sticking around,” Maryam informed him. “The moment they fight, I run.”

“I expected no less,” he said. “Besides-”

In the distance there was a burst of fire and light as a burning house collapsed, stopping them in their tracks as the brightness revealed a slice of nightmare near the town square. Screaming devils twined in red string were fighting against others of their kind while scarred cultists in a phalanx kept away more of the creatures from their wildly laughing priestess, whose hands seemed to direct the puppeteered devils. Steel and powder faced a tide of claws and ripped shells, more hollows with makeshift weapons streaming from all sides to throw themselves into the fight.

“You might have been right about taking the long away around,” Cozme conceded into the silence.

“Kind of you to say,” Tristan replied. “But let us-”

For the second time in less than a minute he was interrupted, again by the collapse of a house near the town square. Only that one had not been on fire a moment ago. With a faint whistling sound a second shell fell down, striking the melee at the heart of the town. The impact flattened a devil and turned three men to pulp.

Far to the north the night filled with light as the Watch’s cannons began raining down fire on Cantica.

Why would they, Tristan began to think, but before he finished the question he already had the answer. Maryam had told him that in Three Pines the Watch had some kind of Antediluvian wonder that could see things afar. Of course they had used it after the collapse of the mountain, and used it on Cantica in particular – it was where survivors would be heading. They must already know that the devils broke the terms and that the town was being conquered by the cult of the Red Maw.

The devils had been right, in a way: the Watch had written off the trial for this year. Only they’d been written off with it.

“We need to get out of this cursed town right now,” Cozme hissed.

“Everyone will be rushing to the postern gate now,” Tupoc calmly noted. “It is closest to the town square.”

Meaning going that way was certain death. And looming trouble for Angharad’s crew, if they used that side of the town to circle north towards the meeting point. Which he thought most likely, since the other group would be expecting them to leave through that same gate. That might well turn into a disaster, the thief thought, but it was not one he could do anything about.

“Straight to the front gate,” Tristan said.

The world went bright.

It was a heartbeat before Tristan realized he was on the ground, his ears ringing. The house ahead of him was a shattered, burning wreck and he threw up on the ground. He could barely focus his eyes as he crawled away, limbs trembling. Had he dropped something? His bag was still on his back, but… He saw silhouettes moving, someone helping him up. Maryam, he saw, looking worried.

“-r me?” she was asking. “Tristan?”

“Yeah,” he croaked. “That’s me.”

“You were lucky,” she said. “If that had hit ten feet to the right, you would be pulp.”

“Lucky,” he repeated, rasping out a laugh.

The others were… Tupoc was on his knees but pushing himself up. Cozme seemed fine, though he was looking strangely at Zenzele who… had his sword in hand as he moved behind the Izcalli.

“That,” Zenzele Duma coldly said, “will do.”

He rammed the blade into Tupoc’s back, but the pale-eyed man twisted at the last moment. It was a wound, not a kill, and with a laugh the Izcalli swatted Zenzele’s leg. They fell, wrestling. A curse, and Tristan watched with wide eyes as Cozme Aflor bolted. He cursed in turn, pushing himself off Maryam, and his eye caught a glint of light on metal. His pistol lay where he’d fallen, flames reflecting off it.

Yong’s pistol, the last piece of the bridge had had burned.