Chapter 68

It was infuriating that he’d not immediately gone to her when he arrived, and thus only fitting he suffer the consequences of this slight. Maryam kicked his ankle: boot tip right on the bone, and not skimping on the swing either.

“Ow, ow ow Maryam what in the Manes-”

The second thing she did was hug Tristan’s scrawny frame until his ribs were nigh creaking. The Sacromontan went stiff as a board, for a moment, then unwound like a breath released. Enough to rest his chin on her head while she buried her face into his shoulders. He smelled liked grapes, for some inexplicable reason, but that was not enough to ruin this.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

“I’m not sure how I’m meant to reply to ‘mwah wah bwah’,” the prick informed her. “Is this some foreign cant?”

Maryam took her face off his coat long enough to glare and kept it there when asking her question this time.

“Where have you been?” she repeated.

“Broadening my horizons,” Tristan replied. “I learned a thing or two of cannonry.”

“I don’t see why you’d want to,” she said. “They’re too heavy for you to throw.”

“I could throw a cannon,” he argued, almost sounding miffed.

“I’m not even sure you could throw a cannon ball,” she honestly told him.

“Well, that’s what the cannon is for isn’t it?” he muttered. “Those things are bloody solid stone, Maryam, they weigh a ton.”

Someone cleared their throat. Tristan had not lost weight since his disappearance, not that she could easily tell anymore, and for once he wasn’t covered in bruises. That did not mean, however, that he was unharmed.

“You cut your face,” Maryam frowned, looking up at the red line beneath his eye. “Did you fight someone?”

That did not tend to go well for him.

“This from someone I found napping in a knockoff Meadow during the middle of the day,” Tristan replied, eyebrows raised. “What have we been up to at night, Khaimov?”

Dreaming of being strangled and eaten alive, she thought. Not that he needed to know that. Someone cleared their throat louder.

“You’d know if you had been around,” she reproached, stepping away to cross her arms. “You couldn’t have sent a letter?”

“I ran out of ink,” he drily replied. “It must have all gone to those rings around your eyes, given how dark those got. Did you even sleep a full night since I’ve been gone?”

That was irrelevant. Besides, she’d hardly been sleeping even when he was there.

“Please,” she huffed, “I-”

A loud bang. The two jumped and turned, finding an irritated Song holding the pistol whose handle she had just smacked against her writing desk. Angharad was sitting on the Tianxi’s bed, hand on her cane as she tried very hard not to be amused. The pair had the good sense to wake her up the moment they knew Tristan had returned, at least, unlike the thief in question. He’d left her in the garden for an hour while he sat down here, the fool! He ignored her glare at the reminder of his sin, only adding to the tally.

“As has already been mentioned it is pleasure to have you back, Tristan,” Song evenly said. “Maryam, have a cup of tea.”

“I don’t feel like tea,” she muttered.

Song Ren turned a very calm smile on her.

“Have it anyway.”

Maryam eyed her for a moment, then decided that she was a diplomat at heart and capable of compromise. She only filled the bottom of the cup and made sure to dip one of the flaky tea cakes in it before scarfing it down, however, because insults were also part of diplomacy. Song looked like someone had just messily spat on the carpet, which went some way in evening the scales.

“I also am happy you returned, Tristan,” Angharad volunteered.

“It is even gladder news that you came back largely unharmed,” Song added. “Given the lack of word from yourself and Officer Hage, I admit to some concern over your situation.”

In the Song Ren dialect, that meant she had been laying out patterns and schedules for the search parties. Maryam nibbled at the sugary tea cake. It was hours yet from the evening meal, but the more she ate the more she found she was starving. Considering she had not skimped on breakfast, that had unfortunate implications. Hooks was drawing on her, preparing for tonight. It won’t save you.

“Not unwarranted,” Tristan said. “As it happens, I spent most of the week prisoner of the Trade Assembly.”

“You what?” Maryam said, choking on her mouthful.

“I escaped,” he dismissed, like he’s not been abducted.

Busy coughing into her fist, she was not able to answer as she should. This was starting to get worse than the bruises. How many times was he going to get kidnapped in a year? Gods, Maryam was going to have to learn a tracking Sign wasn’t she? Those were awful, conceptual to the bone with almost no direct Gloam manipulation. She had never met a single signifier who actually enjoyed using tracking Signs, it was like walking around with strings tied to your hair that got caught up in everything.

“I had some help from Hage, whose disappearance I can explain,” Tristan continued, “He went to ground after Locke and Keys attempted to kill him.”

Angharad sucked in a breath.

“Why?” she asked. “That is good as an act of war against the Watch.”

Which meant either they were not afraid of the rooks or that had reason to believe the Watch would be too busy to retaliate. Neither boded well. It occurred to Maryam she had yet to hear the results of Angharad’s infiltration, or what she and Song had been up to this afternoon. Her side eye at the Pereduri was cut short before it could bear fruit, however.

“Start from the beginning,” Song ordered. “Leave nothing out.”

Tristan spun his tale, beginning with the revelation that the Yellow Earth was backing the magnates then journeying through becoming a hostage trained by Tianxi artillerymen, escaping with Hage’s help and then returning to interrogate Hector Anaidon only to run into Locke and Keys to bloody results. Maryam was down three biscuits and an actual cup of tea by the time he’d finished, while Song had filled two pages with notes. Angharad was the first to break the silence, face serious.

“That you escaped at all is noteworthy,” she said. “That you did so without killing anyone is laudable.”

Tristan coughed into his fist, seemingly surprised. Maryam’s lips twitched. Sincerity was one of his blind spots, she had found, and Angharad wore hers like a coat.

“It is,” Song agreed, her tone was absent-minded. “Do not take my distraction as chiding. It is only that the news you bring fit oddly with some of what we’ve learned.”

Maryam blinked. Oh, good, she could finally ask what Angharad had-

“I attended an initiation ritual of the cult of the Odyssean last eve,” Angharad said. “The priestess leading the rite, Lady Doukas, spoke of the cult’s support of the noble coup that will be taking place in four days.”

Tristan blinked. So did Maryam, for whom this was equally news. Doukas, Doukas… Was that the one Tristan had caught fucking a servant in a closet? Well, that was one way to throw people off your scent. Song was unsurprised, clearly having heard all this before.

“Huh,” Tristan exhaled. “Hector implied the cult was playing both sides, but that seems like a strong commitment to the side of the ministers. I’ve seen nothing implying to me they run similar rites for the magnates.”

“That is noteworthy,” Song said. “But not as much as Hage’s assertion there is no infernal forge.”

“What about it?” Tristan asked.

“He’s wrong,” Maryam told him. “Angharad found one.”

Before she could ask him if he was certain he was the Mask in this brigade, the woman in question spoke up.

“I am not entirely certain of that,” Angharad said.

Maryam frowned at her. Why the quibbling now?

“As someone who saw such a forge in a layer back on Tolomontera, I assure you your description matches,” Maryam told her.

A strange expression flicked across the Pereduri’s face – anger, regret, something like… rue? And it was gone in a heartbeat, almost fast enough for Maryam to wonder if she had imagined it.

“That part I do not doubt, Maryam,” Angharad replied. “But I did wonder, after first seeing the device, how exactly word of its existence spread around in the first place. Lord Menander did not know what it was, so it cannot be his work.”

That was a fair point, in truth. But there were ways.

“One of his guests,” Maryam suggested. “You said he’d brought others to the crypt before you, showing off his treasures. Someone must have had a loose tongue.”

“Ah,” Tristan muttered. “I see her point. Why spread rumors if you recognized the forge? Either you covet it, and thus do not want Lord Drakos to know what it is, or you intend to wield that knowledge against him and thus spreading the secret across the entire capital would make your leverage unusable.”

But if no one benefited from the news being out and the secret was well kept, how had it come to be spread? Maryam put it together a second later.

“Officer Hage’s right that Locke and Keys spread rumors about the presence of an infernal forge to justify their presence on Asphodel,” she slowly said. “Only they thought the rumors were false, when by coincidence they happened to be true.”

Which explained why everyone but the devils was looking for that forge, as they would be convinced everyone was chasing a false trail they’d laid themselves. That was almost worth a laugh, if not for the way the pair apparently went around snapping the necks of useful witnesses while hunting whoever it was they were after.

“But the devils were correct that the harpoon has something to do with the cult of the Odyssean, at least,” Song cut in, staring down at her notes. “A worrying picture begins to emerge.”

Right, Anaidon had confessed that this ‘Ecclesiast’ had ordered him to smuggle the harpoon into the city using his family’s warehouse. Odds were the Ecclesiast had also been the one to use it to punch into the Hated One’s prison.

“The cult’s running a game on this country,” Tristan said. “And I think we put together quite a bit of what’s afoot but we are…”

“Drowning in the details,” Maryam suggested.

“That,” he replied, flashing her smile.

Gods, it was good to have him back.

“Then let us lay them out in proper order,” Song said, a stubborn set to her jaw and a piece of chalk somehow already in her hand. “I already have a slate in the room, we can put it to purpose.”

“Allow me,” Tristan said.

He reached for the chalk but Song withheld it.

“Not you,” she said. “Angharad?”

The Pereduri eyed them both, confused, but gallantly took the chalk when Song passed it to her. A beat passed, gray eyes staying on her until Tristan’s lips finally twitched. So did Maryam’s, who had caught on before he did.

“You think my handwriting’s too sloppy,” he accused.

“If I wanted a headache, I would drink mercury,” Song primly replied. “Now, without further distractions, let us proceed.”

“Magnates first,” Maryam said. “That’s where all the details go contradictory.”

In that if the cult of the Odyssean was backing the nobles, why in Hell was it also in bed with the Yellow Earth and the Trade Assembly? Angharad shrugged and Song did not object, so their expert on the matter began speaking.

“To resume the position of the magnates,” Tristan said. “They are preparing a coup with weapons smuggled into the capital from Tratheke Valley, which we know courtesy of Song and Angharad-”

Song waved him away, but Angharad was visibly pleased at the acknowledgement. As she should be, it took keen eyes and hands to undo a false bottom like the one the Pereduri had taken the cyphered journal Song deciphered from.

“That ring of magnates intends on arming workers and sailors to seize Fort Archelean, then the capital itself. They have Yellow Earth backing, both material and political, and supposedly a promise from Tianxia to sponsor Asphodel as a sister-republic.”

He paused.

“The magnates have been spreading around word that some leashed god is killing ‘malcontents’ on behalf of the Lord Rector, but we have no evidence that’s true.”

Angharad cleared her throat.

“I may have some insight on the process of those deaths,” she said.

The ceremony she described after – even throwing in the bits about the cult’s hierarchy at Song’s invitation – was not all that grim by Maryam’s standards but it was most definitely a breach of the Iscariot Accords. Bleeding a god to buy the deaths of your enemies was the sort of thing the Watch hanged you for. After putting you to the question for names.

“That’s useful to know,” Tristan noted. “And makes it seem rather likely the cult of the Odyssean was actually given names of those reluctant to join the revolution so they can be thrown into the death pile along with all the other people getting offed by the Odyssean’s jolly boys.”

Not the most inspired of tactics, Maryam thought, but it was likely to work if only because it would be difficult for anyone to believe the Trade Assembly had a leashed god assassin. If they did, why not knock off the ministers instead of their own reluctant workers? The answer was simple enough: they didn’t have a leashed god assassin. Their allies in the cult did, and they weren’t going to kill the membership of the other coup they were apparently running.

“Like your patron under the Kassa, this Temenos,” Angharad recalled.

“Like Temenos,” he agreed. “Who was very skeptical of the sales pitch from the Kassa about signing up to overthrow the Lord Rector and then got a visit from the leashed god. One that would have killed him if I were not present.”

Something he had never adequately explained, Maryam thought. The Thirteenth was currently assuming the leashed god was the same assassin the Nineteenth was pursuing and thus had the same signature – no witnesses, a single cut to the back of the neck – and that begged the question of why the bound god appeared while Tristan was still in that house. Even more so of why the thief had been invisible to it until he stepped in.

But that was not the thrust of their talk tonight, so Maryam joined in the others in turning an expectant look on Song. Their captain eventually sighed.

“My family is far estranged from the grand policies formed in the halls of the Ministry of Rites,” she reminded them. “Even before the Dimming we were not all that influential.”

The stares did not waver, so the Tianxi pinched the bridge of her nose.

“That said, I expect that if the magnates seizing the capital and the Lordsport it might be enough for the Ten Republics to offer their support regardless of whether or not it truly was promised through the Yellow Earth. Securing the shipyards would be worth the risk of war exploding across the Trebian Sea.”

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Angharad wrote ‘Magnates’ on the slate belatedly, then added Yellow Earth and Tianxia in smaller script beneath. In even smaller script she added ‘Cult of the Odyssean’ with a question mark.

“Then we have the ministers,” Maryam said. “They have Lord Gule among their ranks, which means some degree of Malani support. Their candidate for the throne is, at least nominally, Minister Apollonia Floros.”

Who in all these plots had not been mentioned as a participant even once. Was she truly a woman with clean hands like her old pupil the Lord Rector believed or had she simply slipped past the Thirteenth’s investigations? Were the Ecclesiast not noted to be a man by several sources, Maryam would have been tempted to bet it was Floros behind the veil. She still half-did. The known Ecclesiast might just be a fake, and Floros run everything from behind the curtain.

“That coup,” Angharad noted, “is backed by the cult of Odyssean in a rather more straightforward manner than that of the magnates.”

“They run it, maybe,” Tristan objected. “But the rank-and-file of that coup is too large to all be part of the cult. Besides, Gule told you the edges of the cult don’t know anything about what’s really going on. My guess is the cult took the reins of what was already a brewing coup around Apollonia Floros.”

“That…” Angharad began, then stopped. “That is not impossible. It might explain the sudden turn the cult took towards western nobles, bringing in key members of that incipient coup when they took it over.”

That and why no one in the cult seemed to care that whatever strange rituals were going on, they were unleashing lemures across Tratheke Valley. If all the main noble backers came from the other parts of the island, what did they care what happened to the heartlands? Foolish, considering the vast majority of Asphodel’s grain came from that breadbasket, but many lords would march right past the edge of the cliff if you dangled a pretty enough prize. Angharad finished writing ‘Malan’ and ‘Cult of the Odyssean?’ under ministers, Song speaking up the moment she tied off the last letter.

“As the cult of Odyssean is in the two columns, I would say it warrants being added to the slate as a third party,” the silver-eyed captain said. “One who has intentions separate of the other two.”

There was no objection, so Angharad did. Song leaned in.

“You told me, Angharad, that Lord Gule hinted at tensions within the ranks of the cult.”

“He seemed to believe it inevitable that after Apollonia Floros took the throne, cultists would begin turning on each other,” she said. “It is why he sought my services as a champion.”

Meaning the cult was more of a loose alliance under a god, bound by the priesthood, than a movement with a shared ambition. Considering the Odyssean was a ruthless, treacherous prick in the stories that wasn’t exactly a surprise. The god Oduromai might be a later coat of paint on the old tales, Maryam could easily understand why people preferred praying to him rather than Ol’ Knife-in-the-Back.

Older didn’t always mean better.

“I think Lord Gule has been had,” Song told them bluntly. “I believe that whoever this Ecclesiast is, they’ve never had any intention that the ministerial coup should succeed and they have been playing everyone from the start.”