Chapter 50

Her mornings on Asphodel had become routine, if not rote.

(What is on the seventh page of the leftmost book? Maryam asked. Angharad rose to her feet, walked the hall two doors down and entered the bedroom. There were four books on the bed. She flipped open the leftmost to the requested page. It was a small journal, and that page held nothing but a sequence of inked numbers: seven, nineteen, three hundred and two, one.)

Letting out a long breath, Angharad opened her eyes and found an expectant Maryam looking at her from across the table, steel tip pen at the ready.

“Leftmost book, seventh page,” she said. “Seven, nineteen, three hundred and two, one.”

It had been one of the more interesting discoveries that everything she saw in a vision was temporarily fixed in her mind, near impossible to forget for at least a day afterwards. Maryam hummed, jotting down what had been said, then went down the hallway to check. She came back smiling.

“It is correct,” the pale-skinned woman happily announced. “And it was not knowledge I personally possessed, as Song was the one to write these down.”

Angharad slowly nodded.

“So the knowledge within my vision is not dependent on that of the people in my presence,” she said.

Which was for the best. Mind-reading was not forbidden under the Iscariot Accords, but it was mandatory to report and register. Maryam snorted.

“That is one test pointing in that direction,” she said. “I’m not willing to confidently repeat what you just said until at least another seven point the same way.”

While Angharad appreciated the thoroughness and would hardly oppose it when it was being put to work in her service, she was not trying to establish the limits of her contract up to some obscure Akelarre standard. As far as she was concerned, a truth had been learned. Another touch of color on the painting taking shape, establishing that her contract lent her true foresight and did not simply borrow from the minds around it to guess.

Angharad had believed this already proven, but Maryam insisted that the visions could not be treated as simply larger glimpses. It had almost irked her, a first, but now she was coming around to the notion. There was something… different about the visions. The glimpses felt like exactly that, a quick look at what lay ahead. Angharad remained apart from them. The visions, however, felt raw in a way that blurred the boundary between dream and material.

Almost as if she lived them, though admittedly not as deeply as she had that first time on the Dominion.

The Izvorica finished jotting down her notes, then carefully blew at the ink ‘til it dried before closing the journal. Angharad waited patiently until she was done, then silently inquired as to whether they were done.

“I would not mind practicing your tell,” Maryam said, “but I believe we might run late if we do.”

“My affairs are already packed and aboard the coach,” Angharad told her, “but it might be for the best to end this now anyhow.”

The Black House coachman would be taking her to the northwestern ward – not on an official Watch coach, mind you, a rented one – and there the carriage that Lord Cleon had recommended her would be waiting for the longer trip out to the country. It would be two days of traveling by road to the Eirenos estate, and she was meant to stay at least two nights there before returning. Lord Cleon was to receive guests for a small soiree, but she would be arriving the day before that so he might show her the estate and they could go on a hunt together.

Given that the moment they left Tratheke the beautiful First Empire roads of the capital would be a thing of the past, to leave a little early could not hurt. The roads in Tratheke Valley were said to be bad enough that carriages habitually carried spare wheels and axles. Would that Angharad could ride a horse instead. She would tire after an hour or two, she expected, but she was barred from this regardless as her slow but steady recovery had to be hidden from the society she was joining.

It was her troubles that made her fine bait for the cult of the Golden Ram, though the more the Thirteenth discovered the more it seemed like that name might have become a façade for something darker.

“I need to prepare my own affairs for the trip back to the Rows anyhow,” Maryam said.

“Bringing flowers to the brackstone wall, I hear,” Angharad said.

And not entirely succeeding at hiding her skepticism, by the amused look on the other woman’s face.

“Not just any flowers, Asphodel crowns,” she replied. “They’ve a large place in the tale of the god Oduromai and echo strangely in the aether. If I can match that echo to whatever lies behind the shrine…”

“Then you could put a name to the imprisoned spirit,” Angharad finished, inclining her head in acknowledgement. “Even failing to match would be information, in a way.”

“Assuming I can feel anything through the brackstone,” Maryam said. “It is not a given.”

At least she would be safe even if her Signs turned on her again, Angharad thought. Captain Wen was heading out with her, as he had with the archives. She was beginning to wonder if the large Tianxi might not have decided on a favorite after all. They parted ways cordially, the noblewoman combing through her room one last time to ensure she had not forgotten anything.

She was about ready to believe so when there was a small knock against the doorway. She turned half-expecting Song to be there, but it was her uncle. Osian Tredegar came dressed in his fine blacks, smiling, and after she silently invited him in he closed the door. Not a simple goodbye, then.

“Word has come from the palace that our delegation will be taken to the shipyard tomorrow,” he plainly said. “Myself and three others, all covenanters.”

She slowly nodded.

“Is a tinker from the Deuteronomicon to accompany you?” Angharad asked.

Among the Umuthi Society, those were the men and women who studied aetheric machinery – and thus were most likely to recognize an infernal forge should they encounter one down there. Half-grimacing, Osian nodded.

“A Savant and a Laurel as well,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow at the last, until her uncle explained the woman in question was a cryptoglyph scholar. An Antediluvian shipyard was likely to be full of inscriptions in the First Empire’s scientific language, some of which might shed light on its original purpose.

“I wish you luck,” Angharad said, lowering her head.

She was not sure whether she ought to rejoice of or dread his visit to the shipyard and the news he would bring on his return.

“They can only keep us drugged for so long,” Uncle Osian quietly said. “It will give us a better idea of how close the entrance to the shipyard is to the capital.”

And the shipyard was to be where the infernal engine lay. Perhaps. It was not known for certain there was an infernal engine on Asphodel in the first place. Yet recent news had improved the odds in Angharad’s eyes. Twice now members of the Thirteenth had run into Lord Locke and Lady Keys in places they should not be, while Hage – a devil of some age – had passed down a stern warning to avoid angering them.

If the pair were ancient devils themselves, or at least Lady Keys as the one Tristan reported to be of unusual strength, then there must be a reason for their presence on Asphodel. She could think of few greater prizes for an annealed devil than an infernal forge, for their like endless font of lives but a helping pair of hands away. More worryingly, it might mean competing with an ancient devil for that prize.

Not a prospect Angharad was likely to survive at the moment.

“It will be all right, Angie,” her uncle said, squeezing her shoulder. “We approach answers with every step.”

The kindness in his eyes burned. She had kept the Thirteenth away from the machinations of the Lefthand House, for now, but she had already dragged Osian Tredegar deep into their net. Oh, he had involved himself of his own will but deep down Angharad knew she had wielded her own life like a knife to force him. The same reason he was helping her was why he deserved better.

Part of her resented that something was holding her back from taking the risks she needed to see her father out of Tintavel, but that anger smacked of shame. Her uncle had spent decades rising up the ranks of the Watch then put the work of a lifetime on the line for her. To help her save a man he did not even like. Angharad was not blind, the two were never close.

Uncle Osian did it all for love of her. How could there be honor in this, in making a good man ruin his life? There wasn’t. That was the hard truth of it, she admitted to herself. There was not a speck of honor in any of it, no matter how much she pulled and twisted the facts to try and make it otherwise.

“Imani Langa,” she blurted out.

Osian Tredegar blinked.

“She is the ufudu,” Angharad admitted.

“The captain of the Eleventh Brigade?” her uncle frowned.

She nodded.

“I do not think my visit to the country will see me in danger,” she said, “but the Sleeping God alone knows. Should I pass…”

“I will ensure she does not outlive you long,” Osian Tredegar calmly said.

There was not a hint of doubt in his eyes as he spoke the words. She believed him. Angharad passed a hand through her hair, biting her lip. That was not what she had meant.

“See to yourself first,” Angharad quietly replied. “Please. Use it however you can to remove yourself from this pit I dragged you into.”

“You did no such thing,” Osian denied.

Her lips thinned.

“In my heart, I am still the lady of Llanw Hall,” Angharad admitted. “I played at it with all the other nobleborn islanders, the lot of us crowding room and table pretending as if it were a salon and we were all rulers in the making. It felt…”

She grimaced.

“It felt like my right, to make the decisions I have,” she said. “Whatever I must to free my father. I thought I was being a lady, making the hard calls Mother so often spoke of. The costs to everyone around me were regrettable, but not regretted.”

Her uncle listened in silence, face inscrutable. She rubbed her forehead.

“But I am not lady of Llanw Hall,” Angharad said, though the words felt like molten iron. “And what I thought a lady’s refrain now sounds like the wailing of a child.”

An honorable woman would not have let it all turn out like this. Like some… endless twisting knot, a rope dragging ever more people into the pit. She had made bargains, cut corners, all because it felt hopeless to struggle otherwise. And for what? A liar’s promises. Bait she swallowed down to the last drop no matter how bitter the taste grew.

“It has not been a year since you watched it all burn, Angharad,” her uncle gently said. “You are… I do not expect you to embrace it so quickly, the black. It was not a life you sought. I did, as a young man, and still it took me time.”

She closed her eyes. He did not understand, not really. Could not. Osian Tredegar saw in her his sister’s ghost and loved the shade too much to glimpse through it at what his niece had become. The Fisher had chided Angharad, once, for clinging to the victories of a child while fighting a woman’s battles. And while the spirit was ancient and cruel, a tyrant of the Old Night, in its own mad way it saw things clearly.

It was time to grow up. Her debts were no one else’s to settle.

She kissed her uncle on the cheek, bade him goodbye and left him stand there troubled. Another regret, but the only words she had to soothe him were lies. The Thirteenth were waiting for her in the courtyard, chatting by the coach. Maryam and Tristan trading barbs, Song eyeing them amusedly. They were… They stood in the light of the Tratheke morning like a lit hearth, and Angharad a stranger. One of her own making.

“Tredegar, are you taking up lurking? Don’t put me out of a job, I need the salary.”

She answered Tristan’s teasing by approaching, the thief studying her face seriously as she did. Debts to settle, Angharad reminded herself. How stiff was her pride, that she must chew on it for months before she could swallow? Stiff enough she nodded at Tristan and shook a surprised Maryam’s hand before finally turning to Song. She breathed in.

“When I asked you about the death of Isabel Ruesta,” Angharad said, “I walked into that room having decided on the answer. For that, I apologize.”

Silver eyes met her own.

“Apology accepted,” Song Ren finally said.

The noblewoman stiffly inclined her head.

“When I return from the country,” Angharad continued, “I would ask you again.”

Her captain gave a slow, measured nod back.

“I await that conversation, then,” she simply said.

They left it at that. Debts to settle, Angharad thought again as she climbed onto the coach and the door was closed behind her. It had not felt good, swallowing her pride. She wished it had, that virtue would be sweet on the tongue, but it hadn’t.

But neither had treason, and she would sleep better after this.

—

Song had come to the rector’s palace to personally report matters best not put to paper, expecting the trip there and back to take up most of the time involved, but that had been foolish optimism on her part.

Lord Rector Evander, upon being informed that Song was to run down a lead concerning a potential second brackstone shrine, had made a snap decision. That was why, an hour and change after entering the palace, Song Ren was being glared at by Prefect Nestor – commander of the palace lictors, the Lord Rector’s personal guards among them. It was unfair of the man to be turning that ire her way when Song had spent the better part of half an hour trying to deny his king.

It was, unfortunately, difficult enough to refuse the Lord Rector anything even when he did not have something passingly resembling a valid point.

“Nestor, make your peace with it,” Evander Palliades advised. “My mind is made up.”

The commander of the lictors grit his teeth.

“At least let me send a whole squad with you,” he said.

Lord Rector Evander, dark eyes glittering with amusement, turned to Song with a cocked eyebrow. Would that she could strangle him. He knew exactly what she was doing, foisting off the answer on her.

“This is meant to be a discreet investigation, prefect,” she said. “Twenty heavily armed lictors surrounding us at all times would be too conspicuous.”

The glare deepened, still turned on her. He could not afford to be angry at his master so Song was paying the price on their behalf.

“Two guards are too few,” Prefect Nestor said. “Since your brigade has failed to find the assassin, Captain Ren, it -”

Enough.

“My brigade is not contracted to find your assassin,” Song icily replied. “If the lictors are incapable of doing so, hire a Watch team to make up for your incompetence – another team, as mine is already on contract.”

“Watch your tone, girl,” the prefect warned.

“Watch your words, prefect,” she flatly retorted. “I have tolerated, in the spirit of cooperation between Asphodel and the Conclave, the throne’s constant impositions on my brigade’s contracted duties. Yet there are limits.”

She smiled blandly.

“Further interference will force me to consider the throne of Asphodel in breach of contract, and thus any obligations on the Thirteenth Brigade’s part voided. We can withdraw to the Lordsport by day’s end, if you would like.”

The older man gritted his teeth, looking like he wanted nothing more than to start snarling, but he had to know that he had no real grounds to complain on – he had been out of line. Instead he looked askance to the Lord Rector, whose eyebrow remained cocked.

“I spoke in haste,” Prefect Nestor reluctantly said. “Yet it remains that His Excellency descending into an unsavory part of the city with only yourself and two guards as escort is an entirely unnecessary risk.”

“I agree,” Song said, to his surprise. “While I concede that the throne has a vested interest in what is being investigated, I would prefer an observer to accompany me instead. As I have repeatedly stated.”

She turned a cold gaze on Lord Rector Evander, who idly waved her irritation away.

“The matter in question is of importance to House Palliades and must remain secret,” the bespectacled young man said. “I will not bring in another soul when all that is required of me is to walk down a street and listen while Captain Song asks a few questions. It would be irresponsible of me.”

Prefect Nestor looked like he shared Song’s opinion, which was that the irresponsibility in play was Evander Palliades putting himself in a situation where the bullet put in his skull would become the opening shot of a civil war over his succession, but he could no more argue than her. He was a retainer, not someone who could question his master over the affairs of his own house.

And House Palliades had a right to keep the matter of the brackstone shrines and aether seal secret, Watch bylaws guaranteed it. Song had checked. Thrice, in different languages, to see if there might be any wiggle room using a different translation. Unfortunately, the Laurels were very thorough in their work.

“Most of the traveling will be done by coach,” Song offered. “And there is no reason that a larger force could not be waiting inside the ward to escort him back in greater numbers, so long as it remains covert.”

Much of the heat gone out of his eyes, though not all, Prefect Nestor curtly nodded.

“I will arrange that immediately,” he said. “Your Excellency, Captain Ren, please excuse me.”

She simply nodded, while Lord Rector Evander smiled and leaned over to share a few quiet words before letting the old prefect leave. The look he turned on her afterwards almost seemed approving, the warmth in those dark eyes making her a little uncomfortable.

“You handled yourself well,” Evander Palliades said. “Captain Duan would be pleased, I’m sure. Nestor’s a tough old hound, half the reason I picked him as prefect is that he is too stubborn to be bent.”

“He is also correct regarding this entire affair,” Song flatly replied. “It is an unnecessary risk, and while I acknowledge that you have a right to attend I do not believe the reasons you gave for it are your true ones.”

He leaned back into his seat, lips twitching for some strange reason. Had he somehow failed to grasp that she was implying him to be a selfish prick complicating her life for the sake of his petty whims? He had demonstrated not to be a dimwit in other regards, which made his reaction all the more baffling.

“The last few days have been smothering,” he acknowledged. “I cannot so much as walk down a hall without a full squad of lictors behind and ahead of me.”

“My sympathies,” Song blandly said. “Unfortunately, your inclination to use my brigade a means to escape your situation puts us in the position of being responsible for your life even as you carelessly risk it.”

“It is our lictor escorts that would be responsible,” he denied.

Song flatly stared him down until he coughed and looked away. If Evander Palliades was killed while tagging along on a Watch investigation, it would be puerile to pretend that the blackcloaks would not get the lion’s share of the blame whether lictors were present or not. It was not at all unlikely that the Watch would end up blamed for the ensuing civil war as well.

While strictly speaking getting the Lord Rector killed on her watch would not end their contract with the throne Asphodel, thus failing the yearly test, Song suspected such a thing might… detrimentally affect the Thirteenth’s performance assessment.

“I’m not unaware that you would be made liable for my decision, should some catastrophe strike,” the Lord Rector admitted, and straightened in his seat. “I will obey your orders in the field, Captain Song, and find a way to make it up to you.”

The informally spoken, almost teasing last part had her flushing in irritation.

“You will dress as a merchant,” she ordered. “You will not speak unless I allow it, and your escorts will obey my orders until your life is demonstrably in danger.”

He nodded, smiling, and the warm satisfaction it brought was purely that of a daughter of Tianxia subjecting a despot to the rightful yoke of law.

“Then, while I continue to protest, I reluctantly agree to your accompanying me to the site in question,” Song said.

“Capital,” Evander amiably replied. “Where is this site, anyhow? You did not clarify beyond the northeastern ward.”

He paused, coughing into his fist.

“Will we be passing through the ‘Reeking Rows’?”

He said those words, she observed with some amusement, much in the same tone her sisters used to talk about that shrine to the White-Tailed Consort in the woods a few hours away from their home. Scandalized fascination. She cleared her throat.

“We will not,” she said.

She would not have thought his face one suited to pouting, between the stubble and the angular features, but some might have called the expression on his face endearing.

“Though we will come close,” she added, and he lit up. “I take it you have not visited that part of the city often?”

“Try never,” he replied. “It was the first Palliades rector who ordered that district’s consolidation, so it has long been a source of curiosity to me. I’ve not had opportunity to visit the ward before.”

“You’ve never set foot there?” she asked, honestly surprised.

Disreputable or not, it contained almost a quarter of his capital.

“First I was too young, then under regency,” he said. “And after I took the crown, the first few years were… difficult. Lady Floros prepared me to reign, but Palliades or not I did not command the respect she does. It was as if the machinery of state had rusted overnight, and every failure had my name written on it.”

“You seem to have grown beyond those beginnings,” Song honestly said.

While his rule was weak, it was not through any particular failing of his own and he was taking steps to remedy this – indeed, his success seemed to be why his enemies were growing bolder. Song felt a twinge of guilt at keeping from Evander that his suspicions were correct, that there was a coup brewing under his feet and the Council of Ministers was up to its neck in it, but she ruthlessly rubbed it out.

There could be no good kings and the Watch did not take sides.

“That is what I owe my name and my people,” he said, smiling wanly. “It does not leave room for much else, but my father liked to say that duty is not a verse but refrain – it will return so long as we keep singing, and what else is there but to sing?”

It was easier when you thought of kings as distant figures on towering thrones, Song thought. Before you saw what lay under the crown and the dragon robe, the flesh and bones. The kings of the Feichu Tian did not get tired or wistful, did not sound determined to filially live up to their legacy. They did not sound like they were drowning in their own reign.

It changed nothing, she reminded herself.

And yet half a smile fought its way through Song’s better judgment, as she cleared her throat and drew him out of the soft melancholy he’d fallen into.

“To answer your earlier question in full,” she said, “we are to visit a paying establishment.”

“A tavern?” he asked, cocking his head to the side.

“They do serve wine, I hear,” she noted, “but I expect that is not the main draw.”

“An eatery?”

Her smile widened.

“Have you ever been in a brothel before, Your Excellency?”

By the way he choked, she would hazard he had not.

—

It was the first day of the investigation, so Tristan took the time to case the place. To ask around, spend a few coppers and get a feel for it.

The Kassa family’s workshop on Chancery Lane was not a single edifice but three of them, tightly clustered together and effectively occupying an overlarge city block. Two of those buildings, large one-story squares with a tall ceiling and a flat roofs covered with gas lamps, where their weavers turned the wool imported from the mountains into the cloth shipped out to the Lordsport. From there it was headed mostly towards southern Izcalli, Tristan learned.

Asphodel wool was considered of lesser quality and was thus sold at more affordable prices, often undyed. Cheap clothing was attractive to the Izcalli lords bordering Tianxia and the Someshwar, who always had fresh serfs to clothe and no great desire to dress them expensively. It was a common enough sort of trade for small Trebian islands, though often Tianxi and Someshwari traders stepped in as middlemen to fill their pockets.

Profits cared little for irony.

The two squares had been turned into one large building, the space between them walled in with cheaper stone than the Antediluvian sort while the separating walls were knocked down to make of them a single large floor. Not so with the third edifice, a three-story building pressed against the side of the others that had been turned into dormitories for the workers – with the nice, windowed upper floor reserved for foremen and overseers.

The alley door that the Brazen Chariot had mentioned was a narrow slice of street between the Kassa workshop and rented warehouses, a back entrance that should lead directly to the workshop floor. Had the assassin been unable to secure a bed in the dormitories, or perhaps been afraid that in a crowd someone was bound to talk? That might be it, if Song was correct and that illusory contract had to be consciously used – those tattoos were distinctive, and sleep would have revealed her true face for anyone caring to look.

Satisfied he had the layout of the place comfortably settled in his mind’s eye, Tristan began making more pointed inquiries. Was the Kassa workshop hiring? What kind of workers, what were the wages, who should be sought to get a foot in? There were taverns close, cheap enough they were meant to cater to the workers and not the whipmen, and there he found fertile grounds for answers so long as he spent some coin on drink or food.

“The Kassa are always hiring,” a wan-faced barmaid told him. “But not for the good wages you’re looking for, boy. Those weavers are locked up in contracts so tight not even Old Dragfoot could hammer them open, the Kassa keep that in-house. They only take fullers and traveling men.”

Tristan swallowed a mouthful of watery stew, forcing himself not to grimace. Watch meals had spoiled him.

“Do they full with bats or feet?” he asked.

“They’re traditional, so it’s feet in the piss for you,” she chuckled.

Not ideal. He wasn’t too proud to spend hours stepping on woolen cloth in a tub full of human piss, but the stink would be hard to wash off. Not ideal to sneak around after.

“And the traveling men?”

“They’ll work you to the bone,” the waitress warned. “Not just warehouse work, but riding the coaches and filling in everything that needs to be filled. You might just end up stepping in the piss anyway, for lesser pay.”

Ah, Tristan thought, but it also sounds like work that’ll get me in everywhere. He pretended to heed her advice, made sure to tip her as well as the fresh migrant he was pretending to be could, then moved on to another haunt. He slipped in with a wave of hammer-men from a larger workshop down the road, waiting until they’d had a few beers with their meal to ingratiate himself with further drinks and ask his questions.

“Don’t know who told you Kassa would take you, but they were full of shit,” a big man called Pantelis laughed. “They only hire by recommendation, even their traveling men – had trouble a few years back with a fire they blamed the Anastos for, now they’re careful as cats.”

“Try the Euripis warehouses, down on Charon Street,” his wife advised. “They take in Sacromontans, and the pay’s shit but it comes with a bed and one meal a day.”

The next crowd told him much the same, though they warned one of the Euripis foremen liked pretty boys and did not like it when they refused. When he asked about how one might get recommended to the Kassa, the answers were not promising.

The author’s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Work a year or two for them at their northwest warehouses,” he was told. “Or have a cousin inside.”

He picked a particularly drunk woman to ask about bribes, counting on her not remembering his face in a few hours, and was told it wouldn’t work.

“If you’re caught taking coin they slice you,” she said. “No one’ll risk it for some nobody like you, kid.”

She was likely right, unless he offered a suspiciously large bribe that might just get him outed anyway.

Fortunately, through the mass of largely useless dross he’d gathered through hours of this he found one useful detail: the Kassa warehouses in the northwest were in bed with the local basileia. And, more importantly for him, that relationship was close enough that recommendations handed out by said basileia – no one could tell him the name – were enough to get you in.

That, Tristan decided, sounded like an angle he could work.

—

Irritating as it was to have the Lord Rector foisted onto her for the trip, at least Evander did not waste time getting ready.

By the turn of the hour they’d left the palace, smuggled out with their two lictor minders on the supply lift, and boarded a coach. Forty lictors would be following in a fleet of coaches after a delay, but Song intended to be done with the investigation long before they could ruin her efforts blundering about.

The two hard-faced men accompanying them screamed ‘soldier’ even out of lictor’s uniform between the blades, the scars and the ramrod straight posture, but Song was hoping they would be taken as hired guards for a wealthy young man trying out the seedier side of Tratheke. Lord Rector Evander, despite wearing clothes in muted colors and no jewelry – even his spectacles had been changed for a set with smaller lenses and a cheaper iron mount – could not pass as anything but ‘well bred’.

It was nothing he could help: soft hands, well-kept hair and the easy confidence of man who’d never had to lower his eyes in his life were not something that could be hidden by a change of clothes. His barely hidden enthusiasm and curiosity were, but Song saw no point in asking. On the contrary, better he marked as a young master out on an adventure than anything needing deeper thought.

If atrocious price gouging on the wine and room were the worst they had to suffer today, she would count herself lucky.

In a drab brown doublet and workman’s trousers, his hair kept under a cap, Evander Palliades looked at the run-down streets of the Reeking Rows’ approach as if they were the most interesting thing he’d ever seen. Song kept close, hand near her blade, and watched him as he eyed streaks of filth on alley walls not with disgust but curiosity. She shot him a dubious look.

“I had read myrmekes ate such things,” the Lord Rector said. “I wonder if it is the Rows that drove off local lares.”

Song hummed.

“I have not seen stray dogs or rats here,” she acknowledged. “But that is not so rare in the poorer districts of any city.”

Anything went into the cookpot, when you grew hungry enough.

“Tratheke has little vermin compared to the other cities of Asphodel,” Evander told her. “Most of the city is stone or brass, it repels many insects.”

And with them the creatures that fed on them, presumably. Song had not fallen behind on her Teratology readings so knew every animal to be part of an intricate cycle – a part of that cycle could not be yanked out without consequences rippling out.

“I expect the smell around here would drive off men as well, if they could leave,” Song mused.

He glanced at her through his spectacles.

“You disapprove of the arrangement?”

She frowned.

“You do not?”

“It was done for sensible reasons, which have not changed,” the Lord Rector informed her.

“It sensibly ruined a quarter of your capital, or near enough,” Song replied.

“Those trades have to go somewhere,” Evander said. “It cannot be either of the southern wards, and what use is there in moving them northwest instead? There is no machine there to blow the air upwards.”

“The air only became poisonous because of the concentration of trades,” she said. “If you dispersed them across the city-”

“Then I have districts up in arms about their homes suddenly smelling like tanneries and slaughterhouses,” he said. “The dye workshops used to be in the southwestern ward, Song, and there were riots during summer when it went too long without raining. The fumes from the heat were deadly to children.”

“And your solution to this is making a district where the desperate are forced to work knowing their lungs rot for it?” she replied, unimpressed. “The entire ward might well be uninhabitable if not for the Antediluvian wind machine.”

Whatever those great rotating blades were truly for, in practice they blew the reek upwards.

“The edge of the district connects to two major avenues and the broadest canal in Tratheke,” Evander said. “The trades are clustered there because the ward is far from where the goods are headed and those are the easiest paths to remedy this.”

“An argument that matters much to the magnates owning those slaughterhouses,” she said, “but I expect rather less to those dying in them. The latter are your subjects as well, Lord Rector.”

“And what is your solution, then?” he replied in irritation.

“Spread out the trades within the whole northeastern district,” she said. “Keep only the worst near the machine. Air in the Rows will thin out and the ward becomes inhabitable again, which will draw people back into the empty districts.”

“That would mean reclaiming the ward,” he said. “Which means patrols and clearing out the lemures, thus expanding the lictors. Which is expensive. Then for there to be a wide movement of populace I would need to either offer a bounty to families moving here, expensive, or force them to move – tyrannical and still expensive. It means refurbishing the streets, the lamps, the lesser canals. It means bringing magistrates to settle disputes and collect royal rents.”

He scoffed.

“What you suggest is the founding of a colony town within Tratheke,” Evander said.

Song nodded, for that was entirely true. She only knew so much of the unique structures of this ruin-city, but the bare numbers of it she had considered before speaking.

“An endeavor that would take years, significant coin and much effort,” she agreed. “It would also ease the crowding of the southern wards, bring in revenue through taxes and royal rents as well as drain the recruitment pool of your basileias.”

She paused.

“But, most important of all,” Song pointedly said, “you would cease to tacitly endorse the poisoning of your own subjects less than an hour’s walk away from your own palace.”

His eyes narrowed.

“Even if I could spare the coin for that – which, between bringing the lictors up to strength and restoring a First Empire shipyard, I assure you I do not – it would not matter,” he said. “Such a great investment would not be solely mine to decide, it must be approved by the Council of Ministers.”

Song frowned. That, admittedly, she had not considered.

“And they would not allow you to spend that much improving Tratheke when the current state of affairs suits them better,” she said.

“They would see it as gilding the Palliades reputation with the people and strengthening my grip on the city, neither of which they will let me spend a copper on if they could prevent it,” he flatly said. “There are checks on my power. Lawful and not, for if you imagine for a moment the Trade Assembly would not pour a fortune into that district colony to steal it out from under me you are being most naïve.”

If they can better serve the people than the throne, they would be right to, Song thought. A king’s power first sought to preserve itself, then doled out kindness like crumbs. Only authority issued by citizens and answerable to them could truly be relied on to observe their dignity.

“The power of thrones is always contested,” Song simply said.

He looked at her through those brass spectacles, dark eyes flat.

“Your republics war on each other constantly through mercenaries, squabbling over farmland and profits,” Evander Palliades said. “The children of your bureaucrats are nearly guaranteed to win such offices, your elections are awash with gold and blood, even your famous Luminary lottery is rigged so that the three most powerful republics always win.”

His brow rose.

“It seems to me that a republic is not a remedy so much as a different set of troubles.”

“Tianxia is no less troubled by evils than any other land,” Song acknowledged, to his visible surprise.

“But?”

“But when our rulers fail to end these evils, they are removed and replaced by those who will,” Song said. “Without needing to wait out a lifetime or wage a civil war. We are a method, not a result.”

“Results are what matters to a nation,” the Lord Rector dismissed. “The rest is wind.”

Song looked around her, at the dying district.

“As you say, Your Excellency,” she replied.