Chapter 59

It was for the best.

By morning tomorrow Maryam would arrive at Black House, and with the signifier’s return the secret Song had kept would finally out. Evander Palliades would be told of the coup brewing beneath his feet and, inevitably, that Song had kept silent on the matter even when looking him in the eye. She was not sure what she expected from that yet, but a sense of betrayal on his part would not be unwarranted.

It would not be a clean break, but it would be a break – and that, as she kept thinking, was for the best.

She chewed on that thought even as the carriage shook beneath her, catching a loose stone. Evander himself seemed pensive this afternoon, something she had learned to recognize as him practicing a speech inside his mind. As well he should, for from what she had been told he would have to give no fewer than four speeches today.

Landing Day was a feast day particular to Asphodel, and far removed enough from the timing of traditional seasonal festivals that its root might well be genuine. The claim was that, on this day centuries ago, King Oduromai first made shore on the isle. While for most the people of Asphodel the sole celebration was that the temples of Oduromai gifted meals of wine and meat to all who attended the feasts thrown by the priesthood, the nobles had their own custom.

In Tratheke that custom was for a mighty feast to be thrown by the Lord Rector for all the descendants of King Oduromai and his officers in the same district where the great temple of the deity sat, the Collegium. As all the ruling dynasties of Asphodel had claimed descent from King Oduromai in the flesh as means of legitimacy, they took the king’s seat in such celebrations and were expected to foot the bill for such celebrations.

Which were not inexpensive, as centuries of royal houses needing to awe their nobles into submission had made the affair increasingly elaborate and extravagant.

There was a knock on the side of the carriage, the lictor besides the driver leaning close to the window to address them.

“We will be arriving momentarily, Your Excellency.”

Evander Palliades stirred out of his thoughts, straightening.

“Thank you, lieutenant,” he replied. “As you will.”

He was sharply dressed today, Song thought not for the first time. A high-collared gray doublet in brocade with elaborate golden scrollwork was paired with an equally high-collared brown overcoat whose scrollwork perfectly matched. Hose and netherstock in gray flattered his claves, ending in slender calfskin shoes, and he wore no jewelry save for the heavy gold chain hanging on his neck. Freshly shaved and his glasses polished, he cut a fine figure whose clothing somewhat evoked a sea captain’s stylings.

His feathered bicorn certainly was not being born to protect from any rain.

Song tugged at her collar, for she was not dressed poorly today either. Though her formal clothing should have sufficed, Evander had insisted on providing clothes as a gesture of appreciating for Song attending the Landing Day festivities as his escort. She would have declined, if not for the tempting promise that the provided clothes would have provisions made to hide weapons. Surely that made the gift equipment, she told herself. Said equipment happened to have the shape of a splendid white, black and golden gown tailored to her, coincidentally. Still, it lived up to the promises: neither of the gown’s two layers impeded her movement, the skirts were slender and made with running in mind.

The waistline around the hip was ridged to give the illusion of a belt, but also so that she could keep a knife hidden in a fold of the cloth as well as three powder charges and shots. On the side of her skirts, hidden by braided golden rope, was an opening through which she could draw the pistol holstered at her hip. There had, unfortunately, been no way for her to carry her jian. She’d asked Angharad’s help to put her hair up in a high bun kept in place by a small golden cloth but also golden needle with a butterfly-shaped head. A gift from Mother, who had told her it was only a gold coating over steel but no lesser for it.

The change in hairstyle kept drawing Evander’s eyes to the bare nape of her neck, which she chose not to notice.

“It suits you,” the problem in question quietly said.

“It would have been an egregious waste of coin if it did not,” Song told him.

His lips twitched.

“I must wonder at how little you must be complimented, for you to be so terrible at taking compliments,” Evander said, tone teasing.

“Was that a compliment?” she drily replied. “I could not tell.”

His eyes caught hers through the spectacles.

“You look stunning,” he said. “It is an effort not to stare.”

Ugh. Did he have to be so genuine about it? Song looked away, pleased that the cosmetics hiding the last of her black eye should be hiding the heat on her cheeks.

“Thank you,” she forced out, then turned to cock an eyebrow at him.

See, she silently said. I have no trouble taking compliments, Palliades.

“Masterfully done,” Evander replied, not batting an eye.

He was clearly making sport of her, his face much too serious. This island’s veritable epidemic of planned regicide was, Song Ren mused, perhaps not entirely unwarranted. Before she could decide on a way to put him in his place that did not sound like it had been dreamed up by a drunken Pingyang Zong, the carriage began to slow. The Lord Rector was out first, and offered her his hand in stepping down on the pavement. Song accepted, purely to avoid the risk of her hidden knife making noise.

As he withdrew the warm touch, she looked up at the den of debauchery where the Landing Day feast was to take place this evening. No edifice in the Collegium was left empty, considering the absurd worth of even a speck of room in that part of the capital, but this one came closer to most: the four-story building, an elongated oval of brass, was almost entirely a water reservoir. Antediluvian machinery inside pumped and sucked out water that, beneath the streets, helped the canals of Tratheke flush and flow. It was on the roof of that edifice the feast would take place, a place that was normally inaccessible and for which a temporary lift had been built on the side wall.

Song did not walk in with the Lord Rector of Asphodel, merely as one of his party. The lift, an intricate mass of pulleys and metal, was of clear Tianxi make and operated by some of Song’s countrymen – not a ringing endorsement of Asphodelian engineering, but perhaps less likely to get someone killed. Being of the Lord Rector’s party meant that unlike other guests they were not politely frisked by the lictors to ensure they bore no weapons.

Nobles would and no doubt would complain, but less so when told that the precaution and the inaccessible nature of the roof meant that the feast would not be swarming with lictors – merely a dozen on the roof, spread around.

Emerging upstairs with Evander, a pair of lictors and a happily humming Perfect Nestor gave her a glimpse of why the location had been chosen – though not before she noted with approval that, as at the bottom of the lift, a pair of lictors checked the guests for weapons. The Landing Feast was an inevitable pit of nautically inspired décor, she’d been told, but this year was almost impressive: with a bit of clever piping the water from the reservoirs below had been brought to the roof so that it could be turned into a makeshift island chain.

Platforms of varying sizes – most only six feet by six, others large enough to serve as a feats tables or a dance floor – had been decorated with shapes in silk, evoking not only trees and mountains but many of the cities mentioned in the Oduromeia. Brass passages connected everything, and the water was not as deep as it looked: Song’s eyes could see through the trick employed, which was painting the roof blue to give the illusion of depth.

Knee length at the deepest, she figured, which was still impressive for a roof that had been a smooth surface of brass two months ago.

Taking in the furnishings had her eyes off Evander for a moment, long enough that when she returned the man who’d been smiling in the carriage was gone and Lord Rector Palliades stood in his place. An easy smile and cold eyes, smooth manners paired with knowing just a little too much – she’d seen him like that before, after the play when he mingled, but never before had the difference seemed quite so stark. Not my trouble, Song reminded herself.

He got to work and Song followed in his shadow with the pair of lictors who’d come up with her. Much of the Tratheke Valley nobility was here, but there were also some who claimed descent from King Oduromai and his crew from further out. Lord Cordyles and Lord Arkol, Angharad’s frequent companions, as well as the inevitable Minister Apollonia Floros. The stern, unsmiling older woman had arguably a better claim to royal blood than Evander.

That might just get her killed before the years was out. A failed coup always saw the traitors turn on each other like jackals.

There were maybe sixty nobles on the roof, a dozen lictors and at least as many servants handling drinks and food. Prefect Nestor discreetly pointed her to a structure on the opposite side of the roof, a bronze house that was meant to represent Asphodel – and could, she was informed, serve as a safe place to stash the Lord Rector if an attempt was made on his life. She resisted the urge to reminder the old man that she was not contracted to safeguard Evander Palliades, only use her contract on his behalf. He’d forget in a moment anyhow, best to let him nod along.

Her eyes did linger on the servants, while Lord Rector Palliades rose on a dais and made his first speech of the night. None had contracts, and neither did any of the lictors. Among the nobles, only contracts she had already seen – there were few new guests, and none with either boon or contract. That bled some tension out of her and she let her gaze wander.

The guests had been herded at the feet of the dais, a crowd of nobles in rich dress and varying degrees of nautical accuracy. Song wondered if the captain Lady Doukas alleged descent from would have been amused at the row of egg-sized gold anchors she wore as a necklace making press up a very generous necklace. Perhaps they would have been proud, that their descendants could indulge in such pointless pageantry and not become impoverished for it.

Either way, there was only so long she could look at peacocks without tiring of it. Her attention wandered, then she stilled. Across the street, on a roofless tower adorned by half a dozen ships’ figureheads, a figure sat and watched them. A man with black hair ruffled by the wind, crowned in flowery gold and purple. His eyes were a burning blue, an oil fire in azure, and on his lap lay a jagged sword of bronze. His clothes were… a sailor’s leathers, one moment, then the purple robes of some ancient king.

He pointed a finger upwards, silent.

Song swallowed and respectfully bowed her head to the god Oduromai. By the time she raised her head he was gone.

“Asphodelians claim it brings good luck when he shows himself.”

Song recognized the voice, and it almost had her reaching for her knife as she turned. Lord Locke and Lady Keys looked the same as when she had first met them in the palace: a tall, thin woman with austere features under spectacles and a portly man with a mustache beneath which twitched a jolly smile. The clothes had changed – they were in matching red and white tonight – but neither the smiles nor the lurking, almost nonchalant sense of malice around them had dimmed.

Song was on the side of the dais, close to a lictor but not so close she would be overheard. It was still highly unsettling she had not caught either of them leaving the crowd to join her. That they did not care they might risk offending the Lord Rector by chatting during his speech, however, she was less surprised.

“Come now, dear,” Lady Keys chuckled. “Our good friend Captain Ren knows better than to put stock into such superstitions.”

“It is no superstition to be wary of the powers behind the curtains,” Song cautiously replied.

She had never introduced herself to them as a member of the Watch or a brigade’s captain. Hage’s stern warning to keep the pair smiling and avoid meddling in their business was kept close in her thoughts.

“They can never resist taking a peek past the cloth,” Lord Keys told her, balancing what had to be entire serving place of crab legs on one hand.

He was freely helping himself too it, too. The plump man took a bite, letting out a little moan of pleasure.

“Amada you must try the crab. It is almost as delectable as you.”

“You know I dislike eating any creature with a shell, dear,” the tall woman said, winking at Song as she said it. “I’ve always held great sympathy with their kind.”

The Tianxi swallowed. The Thirteenth had been suspecting her of being a devil for some time. Confirmation or some kind of game being played?

“Manifold apologies, darling, I’d forgot,” Lord Locke mused, taking another bite and barley chewing before it disappeared down his gullet. “Asphodelian cuisine does have its limits, I am sad to admit. It might be for the best we will be departing soon.”

“Will you? I am sad to hear that,” Song lied.

“Oh, our little adventure in these parts will soon come to… a natural end,” Lady Keys idly replied.

The following chuckle was all too sinister.

“We still need to pick up a souvenir,” Lord Locke enthusiastically said, “but we have seen most of the sights on the isle.”

Song’s eyes narrowed. Were they hinting at the infernal forge? Was that why the devil and her helper had come to these shores?

“Did anything catch your eye?” she risked.

“I’d pocket an entire principality if I could,” the jolly man mused, thumbing his mustache. “But I expect I will have to settle for something regional.”

“One can never go wrong with the nautical,” Lady Keys opined. “But I must say, Lady Song, that I am surprised.”

She tensed.

“Why is that?”

“Is the Lord Rector not your escort?”

“He is,” Song warily said.

“Ah,” Lord Locke said, flicking a glance into the crowd to her right. “In that case, I must agree with my dearest – it does seem a mite ungrateful on your part to then allow his brutal murder.”

Song turned to follow his look, and found among the crowd a man in servant’s livery who was removing a pistol from under his serving platter – some short, stubby thing. He raise his hand to aim it at Evander, the lady behind him noticing and gasping, but Song was quicker. Her own pistol was in hand, aimed, and she fired first.

The body dropped. The crowd screamed.

Fear and surprise washed over Song like a tide: in and through, receding back into itself. Hand on the chisel. Her hands moved, calm and sure, reloading the pistol without need for thought. Evander leapt down from the dais, taking cover down in the water behind it. Lictors were drawing weapons. There would be more than one, of that she was sure.

How many?

Shouts behind, hoarse. Lictors dying and her gaze strayed long enough to see the billowing explosion – flesh and wood strewn, a mass of smoke. They had blown the lift and now the nobles were turning into beasts, screaming and tripping over themselves as they scattered like a flock of birds. She found Prefect Nestor, caught his eye.

“Get him out,” she shouted, gesturing at the brass house.

The old man looked startled, as if he could not understand what was happening, but what he saw on her face steadied him. The iron went back into his spine and he leapt down the dais, onto the water behind, where Evander had taken cover. They would make a run for it, Song thought, and soon.

She moved past the standing Locke and Key, yet grinning devils’ grins and eating crab. Through the nobles that were shouting and elbowing each other, stepping on the backs of the fallen in their haste to get away from the danger to – nowhere. The enemy was here, and as Song leapt up onto the dais she found them.

Song blinked, saw it all as she sucked in a breath.

Flicker. A man, dark-haired in servant’s livery. A short and stubby pistol, cobbled together. Aimed at the edge of the dais, from where Evander and the lictors would run out. Her hand moved without thought, arm steady and the trigger clicked. Snap, smoke, the man’s face a red ruin and he spun and fell. Fresh screams, but she was not listening.

The dead man’s face crumbled beyond the killing wound, falling apart in flakes. Some kind of ash? It was an Izcalli beneath, with a swath teeth filed to a point.

Click, snap: Song threw herself down, the bullet whizzed past her – tore a hole in her skirts. She hit the wooden dais hard, chin bouncing off, but grit her teeth and snatched out her knife. Boots on wood, another servant climbing up with a knife in hand but Song was already moving. She shouted, slamming into the assassin just as she reached the apex of the climb, and they tumbled down onto brass.

The killer tried to plunged the dagger into her back but she rammed the point of her elbow in the creased of her opponent’s. A swallowed moan of pain and Song slammed her forehead into the nose, feeling it break. Her skin came off wet with blood and sticking, too-warm flakes. The woman was dazed, and that was enough. She rammed her knife her throat, gored her messily, and rose while ripping it out.

That made three. How many more? There were dead lictors by the lift, but others had muskets and there were only so many assassins. Two more dead on the ground, one fighting, and –

HUI YU, the golden letters spelled out above the woman’s head.

The contractor pulled the trigger on her musket, but she missed. The shot only skimmed past Evander’s shoulder, though it burst through Prefect Nestor’s chest and he dropped. The two remaining lictors put themselves between him and the killer, dragging him along, but the contractor was reloading.

Song moved. Through the scrabbling, squalid crowd drowning in the weight of the rich clothes and jewels, through water touched with swirls like red ink, past a fallen lictor whose throat was cut – she dipped low, awkwardly dragging the dead man’s sword out of his sheath. Heavier than she was used to, shorter. Yet the weight of steel in her hand was like the weight of certainty.

She caught a reflection of herself in the water, a heartbeat before her foot broke that reddening mirror. So did the killer, and she pivoted with her musket held high. Reloaded, finger on the trigger. And for a moment Song, skirts heavy around her feet as she held a dead man’s sword, looked death in the eye.

Death blinked first.

She saw it come down through the arm, the twitch before the trigger pull. She moved low, right and heat licked at her face and she was half deaf but then she was in. She slashed, quick and brutal to the neck, but the contractor caught her wrist. Song rammed a knife in her side but caught mostly cloth, for she’d been kicked in the belly. She tumbled backward long enough for the assassin to pull out a long knife.

“You again,” the stranger snarled.

“We will not,” Song replied, “meet thrice.”

A flash of hate led the steel and Song parried – too slow, from this misbegotten sword, but the weight and thickness had the knife slapped back further. In the water, with skirts, Song had all the elegance of a drunk but the killer moved as quicksilver. A feint had her parrying air and then the assassin’s blade was slicing at her shoulder, caught in the padding.

Hand on the– Song snarled, leaping at the assassin. She was not in the business of elegant deaths. Sword and knife dropped in the water, Song slamming the killer’s head against the border of a brass island as her throat was squeezed until she felt it would snap. She bit the killer’s wrist until she tasted red and was slammed in the water for it.

Under the tide, not even silver eyes saw clear.

She fought against the killer’s grasp keeping her down, kicking and screaming, but the other woman was strong. Song felt her hair come loose, her fine gown turn into a coffin and – and she reached back, groping blindly, until she found her mother’s gift. Her fingers closed around it as Hui Yui pressed her against the bottom, the assassin’s reflection-distorted face just above the water line.

Under gold there was steel, and the steel pin was what killed the assassin when Song rammed it in her neck.

She ripped free of the twitching grip, kicking the gurgling assassin down, and gasped free air. Her knife was by the edge of island, glittering in the Asphodelian light, and she made sure she would not prove a liar: it went into the contractor’s heart, and she twisted it to make sure. Gasping, exhausted, Song dragged herself onto solid ground as plumes of red spread in the water. A hand came for her and she almost stabbed it, but the lictor stepped back warily.

“Your pistol, ma’am,” he said, presenting her with it.

She took it, and reached in her dress to find her last powder charge was dry. The leather it was in had not let the water through. Relieved, she reloaded even as the lictor cleared his throat.

“The Lord Rector is safe and the assassins are dead, ma’am,” he told her. “You got the last of them.”

Song wearily got up. The words brought no relief, for she could not help as if something was missing. Like she had forgotten something. Dead bodies, nobles not yet sure whether to be relieved. Only a handful of lictors left. Song slid the bullet into the barrel of her gun.

“How were they going to live?” she murmured.

“Ma’am?” the lictor asked.

They’d blown the lift at the start to keep reinforcement from coming up and Evander from going down. But how were they going to leave, afterwards? Were they even intending do? She began to walk towards the brass house without quite knowing why. The lictor followed, mercifully silent. The Obsidian Order were assassins, but they were also cultists. Had they been intending to sacrifice themselves for the kill the entire time?

If they had, then their plan had been too weak. The moment Evander got to safety and barricaded himself they were finished, for eventually enough of the crowd would slip loose the shackles of fear and realize the killers did not even number ten. She was mere feet away from the door of the house now, and doubt was like an itch. Why had they not prepared for the possibility that…

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“Oh,” Song breathed out.

They had.

And Oduromai, god of sailors and heroes but most of all patron of Asphodel, had even told her where to look. She looked above the house, where the god had pointed. Where a man in servant’s livery was finishing his work: positioning a barrel of powder on the roof, a small lamp already in hand. Song met those eyes and was flashed a grin of partially filed teeth.

“Too late,” the assassin said, and lit the wick.

Breathe in, breathe out. Steady.

Song raised her pistol and pulled the trigger.

“You missed, Tianxi,” the man laughed. “Bless be She, and carry me on her wings to the deathless lands.”

“I don’t miss,” Song Ren said.

And he realized it when he looked down: that she had not been aiming for the him or the lamp but the wick. Snarling he reached for the lamp, trying to set the barrel directly aflame, but she’d bought the lictor long enough. They were well-drilled soldiers, skilled at arm. The musket shot took the assassin in the chest, and he tumbled past the edge of the house. And the edge of this entire edifice, screaming as he fell.

Song panted, letting her pistol face the floor at last.

“There,” she said. “That was the last of them.”

—

The inside of the brass house was sparse. A table, a pair of seats and stretcher.

Song had been allowed in only after the lictors swept roof one more time and dropped the powder barrel in water. Now the scared and bloodied nobles were being brought down from here with ropes and ladders while a sea of lictors flooded the roof. In here, however, she was alone save for a lamp and Evander Palliades. His soldiers had flatly refused to let him leave the house, afraid there might be another ambush waiting for him in the street.

“It did cut skin a little,” Evander told her, picking at her shoulder with a wet cloth.

Song swallowed a hiss of pain, sitting on the table. She’d not felt it with the fight in her, or even after, but the cut being dabbed at was quite unpleasant.

“I’ve had worse,” she said. “Leave it alone, would you?”

He humphed at her.

“Even small wounds can take badly,” he said.

Still, he did as she’d asked. Outside the walls, she thought, were most likely the cooling corpses of an entire cell of the Obsidian Order. There had been ten of them in whole, that were caught at least. As she watched Evander brush back his hair, folding the cloth before placing it back in the medicine kit, it occurred to her she would not escort him again.

Tristan had reported finding a contract with the Order, and those assassins were dead. In particular the contractor who could fool eyes, who was the reason Song had been requested as an escort in the first place. It meant, she thought, that tonight might well be the last time she saw Evander Palliades before leaving Asphodel. At most once more, when the contract was fulfilled.

Which meant she could give the Yellow Earth what little outdated information she had and then, truthfully, tell them she would no longer have access to the palace. She could be free of them as well, in the process. It was soon done, she realized. She would soon be gone from this isle, and the feeling was so liberating she felt like a giddy child.

“Song?”

She met his gaze and swallowed, then pushed off the table. He rose to his feet as well.

“I suppose you should report to Black House,” Evander acknowledged.

And she did go to the door. To lock it. She turned to find his eyes gone wide. She was too tired still to be smooth or seductive, so instead she crossed the distance between them – he stepped back, until he was pressed against the wall and their noses were almost touching. She had solved it all without anyone bleeding, Song thought. She was allowed to take some pleasure from the world.

He was the one to kiss her, glasses knocking against her nose as he threaded a hand through her loose hair and she moaned against warm, soft lips. He had such slender and artful fingers, it stoked embers in her belly. They parted ways only when they were out of breath.

“I,” he swallowed. “Are you sure?”

She drew back, and almost laughed at the disappointment on his face. After all she had only done it to turn around.

“You’ll have to help me take the gown off,” she said, looking over her shoulder.

The look that put in his eyes had her belly clenching, and a heartbeat later his mouth was on her neck as he pulled her against him.

It took them forever to get the dress off, but at no point did she complain.

—

It’d take days before the last of the drugs left her, but finally Maryam back in the capital.

To her surprise, even as the Watch carriages rolled into the courtyard of Black House a glance through the shutters – mercifully open, after all that time in a box – revealed the delegation were not the only ones returning that morning. There was already a carriage in there, four servants in Watch livery wrestling with the giant serpentine head strapped to its back.

The dangling twin retractable crests going up its nose told her she was most likely looking at the head of a Ladonite dragon, who pressed out those crests when they blew fire. Something about the gases involved? Maryam’s interest in teratology did not run deep.

Confirming her guess was the man standing by the struggling servants, a long-haired Izcalli with perfectly partitioned hair and matching round earrings. Tupoc Xical was more interested in heckling them than helping, apparently, and he spared a look their way when the carriage doors open. His brow rose when he saw Maryam emerge, gaze sliding over the rest of the delegation.

“Khaimov,” he amiably called out. “You managed not to melt your brain in my absence, I see. Shame, it would have made for fine humor going forward.”

Captain Cervantes raised an eyebrow at his word, but someone who did not know either of them could take that for banter between comrades. Commander Osian Tredegar, though, knew better. The tall Pereduri swung his bag over his shoulder and, ignoring the majority of the vacant courtyard, walked up straight to Tupoc. In front of the Izcalli he paused, then let out a noise of impatience. Tupoc’s face went blank.

“Sir,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“Are you blind?” Osian Tredegar asked. “You are standing in my way to the door. Move aside, boy.”

The Izcalli’s gaze moved across the empty courtyard grounds, through the detour Commander Tredegar had taken so Tupoc would stand between him and the door. There was an unkind chortle from the Deuteronomicon tinker while Maryam simply folded her arms and enjoyed the play being put on for her. To Tupoc’s honor, though was a slight tightening around his eyes he managed to put on a smile.

“Of course,” he said, moving out of the superior officer’s way. “My apologies.”

“You should pay closer attention to your surroundings,” Osian Tredegar mildly said. “It will do wonders for your life expectancy.”

Attaining a level of pettiness that what Maryam could only yet aspire to, the commander still made sure to shoulder Tupoc on his way to the door. Tupoc could probably have ducked, she thought, but he must have decided that taking his lumps and let Angharad’s occasionally delightful uncle get his way. The rest of the delegation filed out of the courtyard after Commander Tredegar, Captain Cervantes pausing by Maryam to remind her that while she was not expected to report directly to Chilaca there would be a general debrief tonight she was expected to attend.

“Don’t play around for too long,” she then added, glancing at Tupoc. “Your captain should have heard of your arrival by now.”

Maryam simply nodded, matching gazes with the Izcalli, and after the last of the delegation left she cocked an eyebrow at him.

“Xical,” she belatedly replied. “Alone, I see. Already got your cabal killed?”

“Only the one,” he shrugged. “Acceptable Losses lived up to her name.”

Maryam paused, startled into silence. And while there were condolences on the tip of her tongue, Tupoc had spoken of the death so casually she could not bring herself to speak them. One did not bare their neck to a leopard unless they wanted to get bitten.

“So does the Death Brigade,” she said instead. “Finally found something for the Fourth to be the best at, I see.”

The Izcalli turned pale eyes on her, face expressionless, and though he hardly moved she could almost taste the violence in the air. She itched to have a hatchet in hand, or at least a fourth ring, but going for either would have been showing weakness. Suddenly he grinned, and the suffocating tension was gone like morning mist.

“Cold,” he appreciatively said. “I’ll have to remember that one.”

Maryam only grunted.

“That is your Ladonite dragon, I take it?” she asked, gesturing at the head.

It must have not have been as heavy as it looked, given that four servants were capable of taking it down without anyone getting crushed. She’d confess to some curiosity about where they were going to stash that. Not the stables, surely? It would scare the horses. Then again this was a Watch estate, odds were it had been built with the notion of storing the corpses of giant lemures in mind.

It’d certainly explain why the front gates were so unnecessarily large,