Chapter 7

People could be funny about death, Tristan thought.

Dozens died in Sacromonte’s gutters every day and no one batted an eye, but if you tossed forty bodies on pyres and made people look at them suddenly it was the greatest tragedy in the world. Watching Isabel Ruesta bawling her eyes out the thief held back from rolling his own. Her admirers were already flocking to offer her sweet words of consolation, though he noticed they looked shaken too. That was the thing with nobles: they’d lived such pretty lives it never really sunk in that they were always just one mistake away from dying. They thought they were important, that the world should somehow care, but Tristan knew better. Your life only ever really mattered to yourself.

“I think she might truly be grieving,” Fortuna said, peering over his shoulder.

He snorted.

“Sure she is,” he murmured. “Her chance to marry her rich cousin just went up in smoke.”

Literally. Maybe one of the blackcloaks would be nice enough to help her pick out the right column. Keeping the amusement off his face, he flicked a glance backwards when footsteps creaked on ash-strewn mud. Yong’s black hair, tousled by warm breeze, was absent-mindedly pressed aside as the older man approached with a grimace.

“Thought I was done smelling this after leaving Tianxia,” Yong said, then spat to the side.

It was a hellish sight, the thief thought, the burning red glow and thick smoke swirling around them. It was what he thought Pandemonium might look like, that great monstrous city of devils in the far east. All the evils in the world, kept sealed inside Hell’s capital by the arms of the Watch. It had all felt very far away, once, but not so now that he’d left Sacromonte for this strange shore. Shivering despite the heat, the thief spoke to fill the silence.

“So you’ve been in wars,” Tristan said.

“It’s Tianxia, boy,” Yong snorted. “There’s always a fucking war on.”

So the word went. The republics making up Tianxia were famous for their squabbles, be they mercantile or military. Only the rough business of driving out the Imperial Someshwar had ever succeeded at getting them to set aside their enmities for more than a season.

“Killed some folk, didn’t get killed back,” the Tianxi continued. “As good as career as a soldier gets.”

His hand, Tristan saw, was inching towards the flask of drink in his coat pocket. It stopped when he noticed the thief’s stare.

“Anyhow,” Yong brusquely said, “they’re burning the bodies naked. Means the equipment is still around here somewhere.”

Tristan inclined his head.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

He didn’t make promises and the former soldier didn’t ask for any. Neither was fool enough to think getting caught stealing from the Watch would end in anything but summary execution. The show of sorrow was coming to an end, besides, Isabel Ruesta sniffling as her admirers swore she would be safe and her maids wiped her cheeks with soft handkerchiefs. Tristan saw most of the others were still milling about uncertainly, waiting among the ashes of the dead for a welcome that had yet to arrive. There were only a few blackcloaks tending to the pyres and they cared little for talk, while no one had quite dared approach those standing near a set of storehouses further up the beach.

A few enterprising souls shook the surprise before the rest, though. Ju and Lan, who’d failed to secure a place in Tupoc Xical’s crew despite heavy courting, were looking around for something. Either the rest of the blackcloaks – Tristan counted only a dozen, way too few for an outpost this large – or the same potential loot Yong had sniffed out. They earned unfriendly looks from the watchmen standing guard when they tried to casually approach the storehouses, almost making the thief smile. They might have been rats of a finer coat than he, but to the Watch they were rats still. Counting that situation as in hand, he moved out through the smoke.

In passing he found Tupoc Xical and his little band standing unusually close to a pyre, hiding one of them from sight with their bodies. The Asphodel noble with the acne, Acanthe something or other. Tristan watched them carefully, trying to make out what they were doing, but did not dare linger when he was seen. The Aztlan had shaken him down for painkillers on the boat, having recognized the box Tristan had stolen from Alvareno’s Dosages. The implied threat of having it revealed that he was going around carrying a poisoner’s kit had been enough for Tristan to pay up, but the matter was not finished. People who twisted your arm for payment always came calling again.

That crew was too dangerous to tangle with for now, but who knew how the trials would go? Patience was the key to many a lock.

The thief edged around the fires, taking a longer look around as the rest of the people began spreading out in their impatience. The Watch’s foothold on the island was no great fortress, only a couple of long stone storehouses that must have served as both storage and dormitories. Old lamplights cast a dim glow all around, the dirty lanterns hanging off them burning cheap oil. There was a sloping watchtower past the storehouses that overlooked the bay, the muzzle of three cannons peeking out from its top, but aside from these there was little here but docks, pyres and a muddy beach.

The docks weren’t even much to talk about, just a stretch of half-rotten wood jutting out into the water. Only two ships the size of the Bluebell would have been able to dock at the same time and only one to unload. Sailors were now bringing out crates from the cog’s belly, moving them towards the storehouses, and it was plain there would not have been room for a second crew to do the same. Instinct nagging away at him, the thief drifted closer to have a look at the crates being moved – though not close enough to earn suspicion.

“We’ve seen that crate before,” Fortuna suddenly pointed out.

He knew exactly which one she meant. The same crate the poor girl who’d turned into a Saint had tossed him into when she came out swinging, spilling seeds everywhere. It’d only been roughly fixed, tarp nailed onto wood to prevent further spills, and so had a distinctive look. As far as he could tell most of the crates being taken out were from the same part of the hold, and that had him curious. The Watch was bringing out cheap seeds, the kind from plants not grown in Glare light and so carrying none of that light within them. None but darklings and the poor ate anything made of that unless they had a choice.

“It can’t be meant for the blackcloaks,” he muttered. “There’s no natural Glare on the island, only the lights they brought. They should be eating only proper food to stave off Gloam sickness, not this shit.”

“They took out those boxes full of trinkets too,” Fortuna noted.

And yet, as far as he could tell, none of the crates that’d held muskets, blackpowder or military rations. This place was not, he deduced, truly the seat of the Watch garrison on the island. Only an outpost used to herd those who took the yearly trials. That and one more thing. His thoughts were interrupted by another’s approach, and there was no mistaking whose: Sarai, clad in the grey dress and veils that hid her from head to toe, was unlike anyone else come out of the Bluebell. Tristan did not move away when she came to stand by his side, as their last trade had been profitable to both. He was not averse to continuing the relation.

“I believe you’re the only other to have come looking at the crates,” Sarai said. “Those smiling twins came close, but only looking for grave goods.”

The thief snorted.

“No point in that,” he told her. “Either the blackcloaks will let us help ourselves openly or now’s the worst time to be trying.”

If there was anything he and Yong decided they absolutely needed, he’d wait until there were fewer people around to steal it.

“Practical,” Sarai approved. “But what has you looking at the crates?”

He hummed, not turning to meet the copper mask around her eyes. It would give him nothing.

“What has you doing the same?” Tristan retorted.

“We’ve been told that Captain Crestina’s only a few minutes out,” Sarai easily said. “I came to warn you.”

Half a lie. She was counting the crates too, the thief had noticed. But it’d been useful what she said, so he gave a little too.

“This isn’t where the real Watch garrison is posted,” he said. “Crates full of arms and rations are still in the cog. They must have a fort elsewhere on the coast the Bluebell will be sailing for.”

It was hard to tell, with the veils, but he thought she might have smiled.

“The sailors chattered about a town called Three Pines back on the ship,” the othered shared. “This can’t be it, so we are in agreement.”

He nodded. The two of them stood there, counting the crates, for a long stretch of silence. Only when it became clear the sailors would take nothing else out of the cog was Sarai stirred to speak again.

“You must have figured out what this place is really about,” she finally said.

Tristan weighed his options. If she was counting, then so had she. There was not much to lose by speaking his mind.

“It’s a trade post,” the thief said. “Or something like it. Crates of black seeds and trinkets? There’s darklings here on the island and the Watch trades with them.”

“Trinkets,” Sarai slowly said, as if trying out the word. “Yes, that is a good way to call them. Glass and mirrors and kettles.”

He glanced her way, but there was no reading the woman beneath the veils.

“The Malani love to use trinkets up north,” she said. “They bribe lowland kings with them to win rights to slaves and copper. They’ll trade the kings everything out of Malan, really, save for the one thing the blackcloaks aren’t trading here either.”

“Muskets,” Tristan quietly said.

“That is so,” Sarai agreed, the faintest touch of a strange accent touching her voice, then turned his way. “I counted fourteen crates. You?”

“The same.”

“Then we know there are hundreds. Likely more than a thousand.”

Tristan grimly nodded. Seeds didn’t keep forever and, if fourteen crates of them were to be sown soon, then there must be enough darklings on the island to sow them. That was troubling, even though Tristan was no sneering Redeemer to believe all darklings at best a step removed from beasts. He’d rubbed elbows with their kind in the worst of the city’s slums, near the old mines where many dwelled. Tristan had found them a strange folk, but not so different from other men. Yet here the Watch was taking great care to keep muskets out of their hands and that was a telling thing.

“Has to be cults,” the thief said. “The old stories say that the island’s called the Dominion of Lost Things because the Watch throws away all sorts of old evils on these shores to be lost forever.”

“Cults would be a greater concern than simple lemures,” Sarai replied. “They’ll go out of their way to hunt us.”

Darklings who worshipped the bloody-handed gods of the Old Night were rightly feared by all civilized peoples of Vesper, as their cults sought a great many things but blood was always one of them.

“There’s a reason only fools and the desperate take these trials,” Tristan said.

She turned to shoot him a look which, even under the veil, he could tell was amused.

“And which are you, Tristan?”

He offered her a winning smile.

“You underestimate me, Sarai,” he drawled. “I might lay claim to both.”

She cocked her head to the side.

“That act you put on is surprisingly charming,” Sarai said. “It must have taken you years to polish.”

Surprise stole the words out of his mouth. His belly clenched in discomfort as Fortuna guffawed, leaning against his shoulder.

“Oh, we should keep that one,” the goddess decided. “Make it happen, Tristan.”

He was saved from answering by a ruckus in the distance: as he’d been forewarned, Captain Crestina was returning. They parted without another word, Sarai’s last still hanging in the air between them, and he drifted through the columns of smoke. Yong joined him halfway, the two of them following the press of trial-takers gathering as the blackcloaks rode in. The watchmen numbered a dozen, all riding sure-footed Abrian ponies and armed to the teeth. Wrapped in the heavy back cloaks that’d earned the Watch its oldest sobriquet they carried muskets, sabers and paired pistols with powder gourds hanging off their saddles.

“They look ready to fight a war,” Yong muttered, and Tristan could only agree.

A rider guided her mount away from the rest, barking out an order that saw half the company heading towards the storehouses while she pulled down a black scarf to reveal the tanned features and curly hair of a born Sacromontan. Reining in her panting horse, she cast a look that was halfway to a glare at the crowd before spitting to the side. The infanzones wrinkled their noses as the sight almost as one. The thief, on the other hand, grew wary. He could almost smell the anger boiling under that still-calm façade.

“Welcome to the Dominion of Lost Things,” the blackcloak announced. “I am Captain Crestina Elvir, the officer appointed to command of this outpost by grace of the Conclave. You may refer to me as either captain or ma’am.”

Tristan knew little of the Watch’s workings, for the order delighted in secrecy, but the difference between the Conclave and the free companies was common knowledge. If the companies were the branches of the tree, largely independent armies and fleets roaming Vesper to take contracts as they would, then the Conclave was the trunk. It ruled the Watch’s fortresses, ran its tribunals and conducted its diplomacy. Captain Crestina, if she had been appointed by it, was not answerable to anyone else. It was a veiled warning to any noble who might think to make demands of her, Tristan figured. By the silence that followed her words it had duly been heard.

“You will have heard by now that the first wave of trial-takers met misfortune,” Captain Crestina said. “I can confirm that all forty of them are dead.”

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No sobs followed, not even out of Ruesta, but a great deal of unease spread. Tristan shared in it.

“May I ask what happened to them, captain?” one of the infanzones called out.

Lady Villazur, he noted. Of the Sacromontan nobles, she most seemed to be taking the dangers seriously.

“They decided to set out early and were ambushed by cultists of the Red Eye about half a day from here,” the watchwoman plainly said. “Some would have made it, if the fighting hadn’t woken up an airavatan.”

That didn’t get much a reaction out of anyone except the Ramayans, who faces betrayed fear and surprise. Noticing the confusion of most the crowd, the captain elaborated.

“A heliodoran beast,” she said, and that got gasps.

Abuela had made him read several books on lares lemures, most of them about the creatures native to the shores of the Trebian Sea, but ‘heliodoran beasts’ had come up in one of the more fantastical works. More common in the Imperial Someshwar, Tristan recalled, they could grow large as houses if they were old enough. He’d never seen a drawing, but they were said to be horned creatures possessed of many eyes and great strength.

“It killed most everyone and wandered off after chewing on a few corpses,” Captain Crestina said. “The good news for you lot is that with a full belly it won’t be on the prowl for more. It might even have gone back to sleep by.”

“And the bad news?” Tupoc Xical asked.

“The Red Eye cult is all riled up, boy,” she replied. “They lost near a full warband and brought back no sacrifices to show for it. They’ll be out in force looking to make up for that. My men and I just cleared their scouts all the way to the High Road, but from here on out you’re on you own.”

Then she looked viciously amused.

“Of course, there’s now a graveyard’s worth of blood spilled on the road north,” Captain Crestina added. “So if I were you I’d first worry about the scavengers that will draw out.”