Chapter 57

It was not a pleasant surprise to be woken up in the middle of the night and the quality of the ensuing surprises had only since worsened.

“If we go to Captain Wen right now,” Angharad said, “we could have them all in graves by morning.”

Song hissed, trying to push away Maryam as the other woman dabbed at her bruises with a wet cloth. Half of their captain’s face was swollen red and a stripe of cheek skin had been scraped right off. No tooth had cracked, thankfully, but Angharad suspected she would have a hard time speaking for a while. The Pereduri had experience being struck in the mouth often to not be unfamiliar with such injuries.

“No,” Song got out, her tone thick. “Can’t.”

Maryam, losing patience with being pushed off, took the Tianxi’s hand and slapped the wet cloth down on her palm before making her press it against the cheek herself.

“Angharad is right,” Maryam replied, to their shared disbelief. “Just because they didn’t kill you doesn’t mean the Yellow Earth hasn’t crossed a line. We take this to our superiors and guns will come out.”

“Can’t,” Song hissed. “They have something on my brother.”

Angharad swallowed the sympathy on the tip of her tongue. An overflow of that would beg questions she did not dare answer. Maryam looked about to ask Song about the incriminating information, but the noblewoman gave her pause by putting a hand on her arm and shaking her head. They locked eyes, for a moment, and after a sigh Maryam visibly made the decision not to take issue with Angharad having laid a finger on her. She hastily removed her hand anyway.

“Can you tell us what they asked of you?” Angharad tried instead.

The answer to being leveraged over your kin was not to spread around the ugliness that leverage came from. One could, however, try to get around the demands made of them.

Angharad was certainly trying.

“Reports,” Song exhaled. “About coup defenses. They want to keep an eye on it.”

That was passingly clever, she thought. Song Ren stood at the confluence of knowledge about what the Watch, the Lord Rector and the conspirators were up to. No doubt there were souls on Asphodel who could give the Yellow Earth information more on depths about parts specific, but precious few who could give them a better bird eye’s view of the situation.

“All the more reason to cut all their heads off,” Maryam grunted. “Corpses cannot hold anything over your family.”

Much as Angharad agreed with that, Song’s fear was easy to discern. The Pereduri stepped in, taking pity on her swollen mouth.

“If even a single one escapes, the Yellow Earth will have the information and a grudge that ensures they will use it,” Angharad said. “Moving on them now is a risk.”

“Passing information to a pack of mad zealots that beat her face like a carpet is even more of a risk,” Maryam bluntly shot back.

“No,” Song croaked. “It’s bad. My family would be…”

She swallowed.

“Cannot involve the Watch.”

It was a rare thing for Song Ren to present herself as anything but immaculate but in the trembling candlelight of her room, sitting on her bed, she looked like she was coming apart at the seams. Her face bruised – one eye sure to blacken – while her hair had come loose and her forehead looked like it’d been dragged through gravel. Her eye not forced to close by the swelling was wild, wide, and she moved little. Like a girl hoping that if she went still the world would still with her, buying her time enough to think.

Angharad ached to see it. She still remembered what that felt like: she herself had been numb and silent most of the way down to Asithule, when House Madoc had smuggled her in that cart. Even on the first ship out of Malan, she had been half a ghost.

“Need to think,” Song rasped. “Please.”

Angharad shared a look with Maryam. Neither of them were eager to leave her alone, but to interrogate a woman who could hardly talk was pointless. They had as much as they could have of her until the swelling went down. She rose, reluctant.

“We will be close at hand,” Angharad told her.

“And we’ll talk in the morning,” Maryam added.

There was no room for negotiation in that tone. Song only jerkily nodded. The two of them left her to stare at her wall in dying candlelight, loath to leave but with nothing more to offer. Maryam caught her eye out in the hall, passing a hand through brown tresses.

“My room,” the pale woman suggested.

Angharad silently nodded. Maryam lit a lamp before claiming a chair and the noblewoman closed the door behind her.

“I’m half convinced we should go to Wen anyway,” the signifier bluntly opened.

“Once it is in his hands, it is in the blood,” Angharad said.

She got a frown in response, awkward silence spreading between them.

“I don’t know what that means,” Maryam finally said.

Angharad flushed, coughing into her fist. Not a Lierganen saying, then. That would teach her to translate directly from Umoya.

“I mean that we would no longer control where the information ends up,” she clarified. “It may very well make its way to Brigadier Chilaca.”

A man currently locked in a struggle with the Thirteenth over his constant meddling in their contract with the throne of Asphodel. It would be naïve to assume he would not immediately turn such knowledge to his purposes. There was a saying in Malan that a swordmaster killed you with a single cut but a diplomat a hundred. One could be just as ruthless with a pen as with a sword. Maryam cursed.

“Chilaca is a problem,” she admitted. “Did Song brief you on the troubles Tristan is in?”

Angharad shook her head. Her time with her uncle had run late – they had needed to plan a way for her to seize, hide and then smuggle out the infernal forge in Lord Menander’s possession – and by the time she emerged it was to word that Song was napping and not to be disturbed. Napping in anticipation of a late night where she had been savagely beaten, it turned out.

“The bastards from Allazei followed us,” Maryam said, then laid into the tale.

A mere minute in and Angharad was left to wonder why the Nineteenth Brigade were not all currently dangling from gallows, but the revelation that there was another traitor higher up the ranks made it plain why the whole affair had not been brought into the light. At least Tristan had been able to kill one of the traitors, good on him.

“So until we know if Brigadier Chilaca is the traitor, we cannot take the risk of bringing him into this,” Angharad summarized.

“Song’s sure he’s not a member of the Ivory Library, but almost as sure he was bribed to look away from their business,” Maryam added. “Apparently he’s quite corrupt. We need to keep him in the dark until we have some manner of proof.”

That too should fetch the noose, Angharad darkly thought. Yet how could she castigate any rook with shoddy loyalties when she had been charged with treason by the Lefthand House not once but twice? The second time unknowing of her wearing the black, but to be made a sneak twice over on the behalf of ufudu really was quite the surfeit of treason.

“I thought better of Kiran Agrawal than this,” Angharad admitted. “But then I hardly know the man.”

The rest were not disappointments, insofar as she had never held them in particular esteem. She had no admiration for Izel or Captain Tozi, and Cressida Barboza had only ever fetched wariness. There was anger in that one, the kind that gnawed at your bones, and it had turned her into a hound all too eager to bite.

“As far as I’m concerned this should end in the four of them in a locked barn we set on fire,” Maryam grunted, “but Song’s not wrong that Tristan will gain more by pulling out the roots of this Library than just cutting off another questing finger.”

Angharad inclined her head. That was true enough. Getting rid of this Ivory Library would be a greater boon than simply having another batch of their hirelings exiled or slain.

“Thank you for telling me,” she politely said.

Maryam eyed her with a sullen expression.

“It’s worse because you do have good sides,” she brusquely said. “And that makes you an excuse for the rest, part of the pretty tale of themselves Malani put out in the world for others to believe.”

Maryam breathed out through clenched teeth.

“I do not owe you a thing,” Maryam Khaimov sharply stated, as if expecting an argument. “But the axes I have to grind with you are best left buried, at least while we’re all in this mess.”

“I am not sure I understand,” Angharad admitted.

“You’re trying,” Maryam said. “So I’ll try too. That’s all.”

Angharad swallowed.

“I,” she tried, then hesitated.

She was not quite sure what to say.

“Thank you,” she finally settled on.

“Don’t thank me, I’m putting work on your back,” Maryam said, looking away. “Tomorrow morning I’m leaving for the shipyard visit and that’s a week of me in the wind, so it’s all going to be on you.”

The Izvorica groaned, rolling her shoulders.

“You’re going to need to watch our for Song,” she continued. “She was already biting at the inside of her cheek over selling out Palliades when she’d like him with his clothes off, this Yellow Earth business is going to make it all worse.”

“Her family is the chink in the armor,” Angharad quietly agreed, then cleared her throat. “How serious is that affair with the Lord Rector?”

“She’s taken,” Maryam said. “He’s smitten enough I’m pretty sure he’s boning up on calligraphy to impress her. It would all be quite charming, if it was not also a lit powderkeg placed on top of the larger powder barrel pyramid that is this misbegotten capital.”

She paused, then smirked.

“My advice was that it was her republican duty to take him for a ride so thorough she’d ruin him for all noblewomen, but she went into that, you know…”

“When she slams the portcullis down inside her head,” Angharad finished.

It was sometimes eerie to watch, the way Song would smother her turmoil and make herself care only about the immediate. The noblewoman frowned.

“You truly believe tryst is the right idea?” she asked.

“I think half the reason they’re so smitten with each other is that it’s all dreamy sighs and butterflies,” Maryam said. “I expect finding out he farts in his sleep or uses too much tongue will make Evander Palliades less of a delicious forbidden fruit and more of a pretty boy with a crown on. That she’ll have no trouble with.”

“He is not even particularly pretty,” Angharad muttered.

Maryam shot her an amused look.

“I expect he’s a little light on tits for you, yes,” she said with twitching lips, then turned serious. “Just keep an eye on her, please. Keep her from doing something she’ll regret.”

Angharad slowly nodded.

“I could pass word to Tristan as well, if you would like,” she offered.

“Tristan will be fine,” Maryam sighed. “He’s not going to stop until he feels like he has a knife at the throat of anyone that could be a threat to him, but he’s out there swimming in waters he knows well.”

“And yet,” Angharad gently said.

The other woman passed a hand through her hair.

“Tell him to be careful,” Maryam finally said. “Every time we take a look around this city, it’s like some fresh plot had grown out of the stone. Knowing him, he’s apt to trip into a fresh one.”

Angharad snorted, as much at the words as the fond look on the other woman’s face. There was something endearing about the way the two of them had taken to each other, ever since the Dominion. She had envied the bond, for a time, but come to realize it was not the friendship she envied but the trust. The lack was in her, not in them. How could she complain of others being at a distance when she stacked a wall of secrets between herself and the world?

Suddenly disgusted with herself, Angharad pushed off the wall.

“I will pass it along,” she swore, then flicked a glance at the door. “We had best get some sleep, I think.”

Maryam nodded, looking as tired as Angharad felt.

“Good night, Angharad,” the pale woman said.

She swallowed.

“And you, Maryam,” she got out.

Angharad mastered herself enough to leave the room instead of fleeing it. She was a fool, she told herself. For whom but a fool would spend so much time with a brigade she had come to this isle intending to deceive, to use as cover while she stole from the Watch and pawned a foul device to the damned souls of the Lefthand House? If she had kept her distance, if she had made them into strangers…

But not they were not that, not any longer. And part of her balked at the thought of the woman she had just left in her room looking at her with disgust and hostility once more. With the thought of the bleakness it would bring in Song’s eyes, how Tristan would smile while his eyes marked her for the grave. Yet what was she to do, abandon her own father?

There was no graceful way out. Angharad had ensured as much the moment she began to like being part of the Thirteenth Brigade. Sleeping God, the madness of that. Song had shot an ally in the back, Tristan was an avowed thief and Maryam would bury all of Malan under the seat given half a chance!

They deserved better. Her uncle deserved better.

Everyone in this wretched tale did, except for her.

She went to bed, but what little she slept was consumed by dreams of looking in the mirror and finding her face to be a wolf’s.

—

Including Maryam, the Watch delegation numbered six.

Two Umuthi society tinkers, one from each branch of the tree. An Arthashastra scholar specialized in cryptoglyphs, a Stripe who’d served as an officer at the largest Watch shipyard for a decade and second Arthashastra member who was not a scholar but a diplomat. The latter of these, Captain Elena Cervantes, was informally the head of the delegation even though Commander Osian Tredegar outranked her.

She had also spent half a day coaxing Maryam about what she was and was not allowed to do while on the visit so that the Lord Rector would have nothing to hold over the Watch. In truth Maryam had expected the captain to resent her presence being forced onto the delegation at the last moment, but instead she found Cervantes to be rather pleased.

“I asked for a Navigator to be included in the delegation from the start, but the Lord Rector refused us,” she told Maryam. “You are a welcome addition, so long as you do not end up causing a diplomatic incident.”

“I’ll do my best to refrain,” Maryam said. “The trick is to force my way past every door with guards, yes?”

She ended up paying for that with half an hour of being drilled about the legal definition of self-defense, which was too high a cost.

In the early hours of the day they took the Black House coaches to the Collegium, all the way to the fort raised around the bottom of the lift that led to the rector’s palace. There they were met by Majordomo Timon, the head of the Lord Rector’s household, who led them to the physician’s room where they were to be drugged.

As Evander Palliades did not want them to be know the path to the shipyard they would be going under for six hours, after which they would be allowed to wake for a meal and a physician’s checkup at a roadside fort before being put under for another six hours. After that, there would be pause for the night allowing the delegation to recover from the drugs and they would resume the journey in the morning.

The process would repeat until they had reached the shipyard, at which point they would be allowed to study the location under escort. The estimated duration of the journey was seven days: three to reach the entrance, one spent visiting and then three to return to Tratheke. Speculation was rife among the delegation that the Lord Rector was padding the time to throw off those seeking to find the path he was using.

They would be split into two carriages, three on each, while a detachment of lictors and physicians came along in another larger coach.

Maryam had heard worrying things about Lierganen medicine, but the Watch had been allowed to know the composition of the drug and deemed it safe enough for use. A bearded old man handed her a cup to drink and told her to lay down on the bed, where she stared at the ceiling for the better part of a minute wondering why it wasn’t-

–the summer heat was not so suffocating, on the riverbanks, but the heavy robes and red cloak still had her sweating in the sun. Not that Maryam would dare complain, not with all these grim-faced bearded lords and high-collared ladies dripping in gold all standing in silence, watching as the Malani were dragged to the mud.

Seven, men and women, ragged and bruised.

Lords and ladies of the devils from across the sea, not so fine now that they had been grabbed out of their manses and taken far beyond the protection of their cannons. One of them was her age, a boy whose eyes were red from weeping.

Mother raised the ashen effigy, calling out to the dreadmost goddess, to Mother Winter herself, and as her voice rose the first of the Malani was forced face-first into the river. The woman struggled, panicking, but the warrior held her face under the tide and eventually she stopped.

Mother’s voice rose, calling Winter to witness their oaths, and the second lord was-

“It always comes down to death with them, doesn’t it?”

Maryam gasped awake in a carriage, almost striking the man next to her. Osian Tredegar, faced by Captain Cervantes. But what should be the empty seat across from her was filled with a flickering, buzzing silhouette.

The shade, wearing heavy robes and a red cloak. Even the ribbons in her hair were the same.

“What?” she croaked.

“Gods,” the shade said. “It always comes down to death, with them. Taking it, dealing it, warding it away. Everything they are rests on a bed of bones.”

Maryam breathed in, reined in her panic. The others, she saw, were still asleep. The shade spoke quietly, almost a whisper, so whoever drove the carriage would not hear her.

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“What do you want?” she hissed.

“When your eyes close, mine open,” the shade said. “Mother was not as clever as she thought, in the end.”

The thing tugged at a red ribbon, pulling out the knot, and they both watched it flutter down to the floor.

“One cannot bargain with the inevitable,” the shade sighed. “Pay attention, Maryam. Time is running out.”

The carriage shook, hitting a rock, and in that blink of an eye the shade was gone. There was a groan to Maryam’s side as Commander Tredegar woke, sounding nauseated, and after that Cervantes was not far behind. She was groggier than the other when they began taking stock of where they were, but her mind was mostly there.

Their carriage was rolling on a road, bucking against bumps and rocks, but they could not see outside. There were metal shutters, pulled tight, and the doors were sealed and locked. Commander Tredegar busied himself finding the source of fresh air, finding that beneath their benches were compartments with angled holes in them. These holes were angled so that no one inside the carriage would be able to look outside through them, which all agreed was an impressive commitment to secrecy. The most they learned about their surroundings was that sometimes the wheels rolled on rocks that went flying, and dry wood snapped.

Fortunately for them, Maryam was not entirely bound by walls.

The other two blackcloaks moved away from her as she closed her eyes and focused, sending out her nav. The aether around them was not calm, but it was nothing like the wild chaos of Tratheke. There was a single, overwhelming current here – slightly curving, not that it would mean anything in the material. The lack of ‘reefs’ to dash her soul-effigy against had her bold, at first, but she quickly learned better.

If she sent her nav too far out, the current would rip it right out of her.

Neck beaded with sweat, she proceeded with only the utmost caution. Ahead and behind she felt aether emanations, most likely the other blackcloaks and their drivers as well as the coach sent by the Lord Rector. The lictors were ahead, she figured, for there the emanations were stronger there. She didn’t have long, perhaps ten minutes until the carriage came to a halt and Captain Cervantes quietly ordered her to stop.

The carriage slowed and turned, as if pulling in somewhere, and eventually there was a knock on the doors.

“Out, rooks,” a lictor called out as he opened half a dozen locks before opening the door. “Time for your check up.”

They were in some sort of barn, Maryam found as she exited the carriage with the others, or perhaps stables? Dirt and straw beneath their feet, and in the corner the physicians from this morning were waiting. One after another the blackcloaks had their check up, tongues checked for swelling and pulse for having slowed, but there were no complications.

Maryam would have tried to glimpse under the barn doors while they were served meals of porridge, if not for the two lictors standing guard there grimly. She could see torchlight on the other side at least, and hear some talk. They must be inside an Asphodelian fort.

Shortly after she was made to drink the drug again, and under she went.

Would that her sleep had been dreamless, but she had hat horrid nightmare again – the one about being strangled and eaten alive. When she woke hours later, sweating and clutching at her neck, she took the time to calm herself before feeling out the aether again.

The current was just as strong out here, so instead she kept her nav on the carriage ahead – trying to get a feel for their emanations. They sat close enough together, though, that it was hard to tell them apart. Were the aether still as a pond it would be easier, but as things stood she was reading smoke signs in a thunderstorm.

They stopped for the night in what she could only describe a crypt, a stone basement with a locked door where cots were laid out on the ground. They did not even get to enter it while awake, having been carried in while still asleep. In the morning the physicians drugged them again, and-

–the captain pointed his sword, pale teeth bared in a snarl.

“She is a wanted criminal,” the Malani said. “Yield, blackcloak. You have no authority here.”

Maryam swallowed a sob, dragging herself back to her feet. The men in black where only a handful, the Malani were half a hundred with slavering hounds pulling at the leash. They would give her up. She had to run, to try and get ahead again, but she was so fucking hungry.

“I have authority everywhere,” the kindly man said. “Its name is power.”

His fingers traced oily darkness, but a handful of strokes, but Maryam’s breath caught in her throat. DEATH, she read. DEATHDEATHDEATHDEATHDEATH and the Malani they screamed and wailed and wept, the hounds whimpering, and just as suddenly as it had begun it stopped.

“Go back,” the kindly man said. “While you still-

“I think we came to trust him so quickly because he reminded us of Mother.”

Maryam gasped hoarsely. She met the eyes of the shade, who sat starved and pale and ragged. Across from her.