Chapter 6

“To join the court of cats,” Tristan hummed, “is most easily done.”

There were exactly forty-two people down in the Old Playhouse, barring himself and Tredegar. Of these ten were servants, which he suspected would not count as people according to many of those folk in fine black cloaks chatting beneath pavilions. The guests he’d get back to later, because it was worth picking out the strong and the weak, but Tristan could already tell the servants were a thread worth pulling at.

None of them wore livery, so they weren’t in the service of nobles. Neither did they wear black, so they shouldn’t be Watch – unless they were currently not on shift and looking to make a few silvers on the side by playing servant to students. Most blackcloaks would balk, he figured, pride offended by taking orders from wealthy children, but in a garrison of the size needed to hold Port Allazei there ought to be at least twenty willing to take that in the teeth for the money.

Only it couldn’t be that, because playing servant was one thing but cooking was another. That food, those drinks, they had to come from somewhere. Soldiers with a side racket wouldn’t be able to deliver an evening like this even if they organized. And they wouldn’t have had long to organize anyway, because why would they even try to before students arrived and the opportunity came up? Scholomance had been closed for centuries.

The thief followed those neatly dressed men and women with his eyes, leaning in the shade of a tree cast in Orrery light. Down below Tredegar circled around the last ring and traded greetings with guests. Tristan picked a wild rose and pulled at the petals one by one, Fortuna amusing herself by alternating ‘hates you’ and ‘loves you not’. Tristan couldn’t see someone leading the servants yet, but he could already tell this was no ramshackle outfit.

A blonde woman behind the pavilion was counting bottles as they left the crates, keeping a tally and giving instructions about how full the cups going out should be. The two slender Aztlan men by the food – same nose and eyes, brothers? – were not only cutting and passing the pigeon pies and pastries but keeping an eye on whether or not the grilled cutlets were still warm. It was not their first time hosting a party like this.

So what in the Manes were trained servants without an obvious master doing on Tolomontera?

“Hate you,” Fortuna happily called out as he pulled the last petal.

She brushed off her spotless dress, only now beginning to pay attention to her surroundings.

“Your Pereduri’s been noticed by the hosts,” she noted. “And why are we hiding up here, anyway? You should be down there dazzling people with my wit.”

Tristan’s gaze left the small Someshwari servant taking away the cloak one of the guests – a dark-haired woman who had no sleeves on her overcoat, turning it into some sort of doublet, but wore a wine-red undershirt with cowl sleeves that was so long it emerged past the belted as a sort of skirt. Watch fashion was only marginally more respectable than the noble kind.

“So I can see who has been waiting for Tredegar to arrive,” he said.

He parsed through the crowd, looking for the right kind of attention. Not passing curiosity or flicked glances but, in a word, recognition. Someone down there was waiting for Angharad Tredegar, and no matter how good you were you still needed to look to know someone was there. So Tristan looked for them in turn, sifting through the guests as Angharad Tredegar began to speak with their hosts.

Bored, he counted. That smirking pair? Making fun of her clothes. One was promising, he – ah, no, it was Tredegar’s ass and legs the man kept looking at. Sex and thus. But that Someshwari man with the contrasting brass spectacles and bulging arms who was discreetly writing into a notebook, now there was a suspect. He was looking as much at the hosts as Tredegar, but it was worth investigating. A second sweep gave him no one else, sadly, although – huh, how long had that Malani been eating the same prawn?

The one with the belt of colored beads and the golden bangles around her arms. There were three large Cathayan prawns in the bronze vessel she had been handed and only one was eaten, the others forever being nibbled on at an angle that just so happened to let her study Tredegar discreetly. And after a heartbeat the Malani flicked a look his way – surprised, he only barely ducked behind the tree in time.

“Contract,” Fortuna said, confirming his first thought. “And with a prickly bastard, too. He’s looking for me.”

“Can he find you?” Tristan whispered back in alarm.

“As if,” she snorted. “There’s so many gods in here it would be like picking a nipple out from a pile of tits.”

Though he had once spent two months working at a brothel Tristan Abrascal had never seen a ‘pile of tits’ and counted himself lucky in that regard. Sounded ghastly. Yet knowing that to react would only encourage the goddess, he ignored the words beyond the useful information conveyed.

“Is she still looking?” he asked.

Fortuna hummed, picking at her sleeve.

“No, but I think she’s keeping an eye on the stairs,” she replied.

So the Malani was still trying to learn who had been looking at her. Spy, Tristan decided. Or at least someone with training in the craft. It might be he had found his first fellow Krypteia student.

“It is a good thing I never intended to use them, then,” Tristan said.

The lodges didn’t fill the entire ring on every tier, more along the lines of two thirds – as was only sensible, if this had truly been a playhouse once. No one wanted to watch a play from seats situated behind the actors. Tristan doubled back to the other end of the ring he was on, keeping away from torchlight and carefully avoiding ever looking in the contractor’s direction, until he had reached the edge just by the stairs leading above.

There he had to sneak behind the pavilion where the man with the guest book still waited, but the Lierganen looked abjectly bored and half asleep. A wall had prevented passage, once, but it had long ago crumbled and as Tristan peered over the edge he found that below was a nook of bushes and grass but also something more: three wooden outhouses. There were green lanterns by them, perhaps to mark their location.

The thief checked to see if anyone was around, and when not took the opportunity offered. He lowered himself atop the roof of the leftmost outhouse, then leaped down into a bush with only muffled sounds. It turned out to be thornier than anticipated, but the Watch cloak and coat were mercifully thick and the cloth was hard to tear. Good quality, that, Tristan mused as he rolled out and began brushing off twigs and leaves. Tugging his collar back into place, he casually walked out and took in the layout.

The party had a simple enough layout: stage, food tables, drink tables and a surfeit of chatting princelings. Nothing arduous to navigate, the trick would be positioning himself so he could keep an eye on Tredegar and the marks in play without being too obvious about it. Tristan began eyeing the food tables speculatively, wondering if there might be time for pigeon pie or one of those – huh, were those cutlets beef? They certainly smelled like it.

That couldn’t be right, though.

“Sleeping God, I cannot have had that much wine.”

The thief’s gaze was ripped away from the cutlets and onto the source of a familiar voice. Zenzele Duma looked much healthier than the last time Tristan had seen him, the eye he had lost in Cantica now replaced by a false one the same color as Tupoc Xical’s. Nice. Malani did have a knack for being theatrically vengeful. The lordling wore the formal uniform, fitted to him and with some golden locks of rope thrown in around the shoulders.

Sergeant Andres hadn’t offered those, so there must be other cloth shops in the port. Another mark for the servants here not being watchmen.

“Tristan,” Zenzele Duma said. “Is that you?”

“Zenzele,” the thief said, then gestured for him to get closer.

Looking worried, the Malani leaned in.

“I don’t suppose,” Tristan asked, “that you would happen to know where those grilled cutlets are from?”

“I,” Zenzele began, taken aback, then paused. “No?”

“Unfortunate,” the thief muttered, then cocked an eyebrow. “Not even if you, you know…”

He gestured vaguely, implying contract without mentioning anything of the sort.

“I am not sure there is anyone in all of Vesper that feels strongly enough about grilled cutlets for that to work,” the lordling replied.

He was, Tristan saw, fighting back a smile. Which was fair but also missing the point. Those cutlets were beef, not pork. Pigs and chickens you could raise in a ruin like Port Allazei – practically speaking the Murk was a ruin and both were common there – but cows needed grazing lands and those cutlets smelled fresh. The meat could be imported, of course, but how costly would that be on an island closed to trade ships?

No, most likely another part of Tolomontera was inhabited. Somewhere with decent land for cattle that must also be easily defensible, because there were bound to be some pretty nasty lemures on the island and the Watch wouldn’t bleed their own garrison for fresh milk and meat. They could have gotten both from goats without half this trouble. If it’s the Watch behind this at all. Was there a colony somewhere out there, another Cantica? Hopefully with fewer slaves and devils this time.

He would have to look into it. Until then, best distract Zenzele.

“I thought Malani were all about cattle,” Tristan said. “Isn’t the name of your coinage derived from-”

“The words sound similar, but they do not have the same root,” Zenzele flatly replied. “You are, evidently, attempting to distract me.”

Still inconveniently perceptive, then. That hadn’t stopped being a pain. A pause, then the Malani came closer and even lowered his voice.

“Were you even invited?” the nobleman asked in a whisper.

Not worried or irritated, that face, but scandalously eager. The thief did not mind throwing him a bone.

“The world is an invitation, Zenzele,” Tristan airily replied. “Though if you’ll excuse me, I need to take care of something.”

If he was going to be skulking the rest of the evening and leaving early, he best help himself to a meal first. Zenzele’s lips were twitching as he casually waved the man goodbye, getting a nod back. Keeping to the edge of the crowd, avoiding anything more elaborate than nods and smiles, Tristan sought out with his eyes both the Someshwari wearing spectacles and the Malani with the bead belt.

The former was by a small garden table, fumbling his attempts to fake eating a croquetas while trying to discreetly write in his little notebook. He was still watching Tredegar, but the sight of him accidentally dropping the same croqueta on a page for the second time had the Sacromontan somewhat reconsidering how much of a threat he might be.

That notebook better not be full of dreamy drawings of Angharad, or Tristan was going to have to break his legs – for wasting his time, if nothing else.

As for the Malani, it took longer to find her. She was, the thief found, positioned much as he was: on the edge and looking in. He forced himself to look right past her when he found her, lest her contract be drawn his way again, and then helped himself to the nearest plated food to justify standing where he was. It was a bronze vessel with three peeled Cathayan prawns – each long and thick as a finger – marinated in reddish sauce.

She’d chosen such a good spot to stand in earlier he had moved in the same without realizing. She was definitely suspicious. Tristan took a tentative bite of the prawn and found the taste strangely sugary. Until the spices hit, a heartbeat later, and then his mouth was aflame. Gods, it was even spicier than Old Town chorizo. It was like eating a torch only it didn’t have the decency to go out. He put the prawn back and discreetly coughed into his fist.

Fortuna, seeing the expression on his face, began cackling.

“You look like they’re making you swallow hot coals,” she said. “Start moving around a little and it could pass as a fresh form of dance. One, two, three, four, to the left and-”

“A cup of water, sir?”

He’d not even noticed the man approaching with a tray of cups, distracted by both an intangible hyena and the very fires of Hell he had foolishly allowed entry into his mouth. Lierganen, he immediately thought, early thirties. Curly brown hair and blue eyes, fit but not muscled and the callouses of work but not killing work. The thief put on a smile, coughing again.

“Please,” he got out.

He took the offered cup, slowly drinking. Merciful relief.

“You may well have saved my life,” he seriously said.

“All in a day’s work,” the other man replied.

Taking a second look now that he was no longer dying, Tristan saw what he missed on the first pass. Rings around the stranger’s eyes, only half-hidden by powdery cosmetics, and the edge of a tattoo under the man’s left sleeve. Tristan could not make out the whole of it but could hazard a guess from what he saw. Green ink, a rearing horse and a rider holding what should be a sword – Old Saraya’s arms, which was a common tattoo on their sailors.

The man did not look like a sailor, but it might just be common practice in that region and the thief had simply only ever met Sarayan that were sailors. Either way, the conversation was as good a hook to get into it with one of the servants as he was likely to get. Sympathy, he decided, would serve best as the opening line.

“You look like someone whose shift has been going on for six hours too long,” Tristan noted.

The man snorted.

“Try ten,” he said, then cocked an eyebrow. “Sacromonte?”

Tristan knew that accent, the way it softened z into s, and it confirmed the tattoo’s hint.

“Born and raised,” the thief said. “If I don’t miss my mark, you’re Sarayan.”

“From the Queen of Cities herself,” he proudly said.

Not that anyone but the inhabitants of Old Saraya still called their capital that. When the Grand Canal broke back in the Century of Crowns, the city built at one end of it had withered on the vine. Nowadays the Malani had seized the lands on the other end and sometimes made noise about clearing the waterway, but with Sacromonte willing to make war over the matter nothing ever came of it. The Six had spent centuries bullying their Sarayan rivals into irrelevance, they would not tolerate a resurgence.

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“You’re a long way from home,” Tristan said, draining the rest of the cup.

The Sarayan asked for it silently and set it on the edge of his drinks tray.

“Not as far as you,” the man snorted. “Though I take your meaning; this is a little further out than the Islas Reales.”

Ah, Sarayans. Centuries since their island empire had turned to dust and still they called the island chains closest to their shore the Royal Isles. Old Saraya was no longer even a kingdom, but to hear them talk you’d think they were the Second Empire come again.

“It has been a strange few years,” the man admitted, then offered his hand to clasp. “Arnau.”

“Ferrando,” Tristan replied without batting an eye, shaking it.

It was simply the first name that had come to mind, but now that it was out… It’d be foolish, but the notion was simply too sweet to resist.

“Ferrando Villazar,” the thief winning smiled.

If Ferranda came at him with that rapier of hers he would just have to trade information for mercy.

“Well met,” Arnau replied, then rubbed the bridge of his nose with a groan.

“Should I leave you to rest?” Tristan asked.

Using the tired for information was always a coin toss and he was not yet so pressed for time he must forge on here.

“Please don’t,” the man said. “As long as I’m talking with a guest they’ll not get on my case for not making the rounds.”

“Rough boss?” he casually asked.

“She’s been working us to the bone,” Arnau grunted. “Thinks a success tonight means all those little Watch pricks are going to keep hiring us through the year.”

So definitely not a watchman himself, Tristan noted. As he’d thought, the servants were not blackcloaks. And they seemed to be running their own enterprise. Did the Watch allow others property rights on their island? Odd.

“No offense meant,” the Sarayan hurried to add. “You just don’t seem like…”

“I was brought along by exactly such a little Watch prick, don’t you worry,” Tristan grinned, then let the amusement bleed away and sighed. “You’re not the only one working. I’m supposed to find out a pair of names, but I honestly have no idea how.”

A lie, but servants always knew more than they showed. If Arnau could let him get answers without having his face known, Tristan would prefer that route.

“Try me,” Arnau said. “Which two?”

Ah, a bite. Tristan’s hand left the cover of his cloak, discreetly indicating the Someshwari with the wiry spectacles.

“No idea,” the Sarayan admitted. “The second?”

He now pointed the Malani with the colored beads belt and the golden bangles.

“Captain Imani Langa,” Arnau immediately said. “Eleventh Brigade.”

“That was quick,” Tristan said, not hiding his surprise.