Chapter 75

(She pulled the dead man in the way, his flesh taking the sword blow, and ripped the corpse’s pistol free. She aimed a shot at the lictor in the doorway and – a ripple in the air , then her bones began to rattle)

Angharad Tredegar killed the glimpse and let out a shuddering breath. The corner of her eyes stung, her veins felt like there were heated shards of metal shoved in them. They only hurt when she moved, but it was a reminder that there were only so many times she could pull on her contract before it killed her.

Lady Petra Doukas was proving to be something of a problem.

The priestess could only draw shallowly from the spirit she championed, having so far displayed two tricks. One of them had no effect on Angharad: the power that dazed and charmed had run afoul of the Fisher’s pride, as thick a wall as a woman might ask for. It was Lady Doukas’ second trick that she was finding it difficult to get around.

Seven words spoken in prayer to the Odyssean and a pointed finger would lead to a ripple of power that rattled Angharad’s bones inside her body. It lasted no longer than a second and while it hurt… not insignificantly, it did not appear to do actual lasting physical damage.

Which it hardly needed to, given that the pain and shakes nearly always toppled Angharad and if she fell to the ground the fight was lost. Without the cane, which she could not spare the time to head to her left to grab first, it was simply too difficult to get back up without first being shot.

Lady Apollonia Floros had, seemingly, left Angharad in a room with two traitor lictors, a priestess and a pair of still-snacking devils – who did not participate, only spectating and offering the occasional comment from the sideline. Yet from the very first glimpse Angharad had discovered there was a third lictor out in the hall who would rush in should there be noise.

So not three but four opponents, one of which could call on a spirit’s favor but had no true fighting skill besides. It should have been a grim minute’s work, and perhaps if her leg was hale and her dress strapped into place it would be. But while those two hindrances were in the way Angharad could not run and that kept getting her killed.

The problem was simple: she could not cross the room quickly enough to close range without being noticed, and she had only one knife to throw and slay someone by surprise. This was her undoing because the lictors were skilled enough marksmen that if they were allowed to fire two shots, the second usually hit her.

The obvious solution was, then to kill one of them right at the start by throwing the knife.

When she had first attempted this, however, Lady Petra tagged her with the bone-rattler by the time she closed range with the second lictor. Even while on her knees Angharad had managed to kill the second traitor but found herself easy prey for the third as he rushed in. Shot in the head, right between the eyes.

So she changed tack and began killing Petra Doukas as her opening stroke instead. It was quite easy to do so, since the priestess kept striding back and forth while paying little attention as she ranted, but nine glimpses later Angharad found herself gritting her teeth in anger as she struggled to push down on slowly rising anxiety.

The odds were six in nine that one of the lictors in the room would land a shot if she threw the knife at Doukas. Of those six shots only three had been lethal but Angharad was not so arrogant as to believe she could fight off two skilled soldiers while on her knees and bleeding from a shot in the arm or gut. The gut wounds, she suspected, were lethal ones anyhow – just too slow a death to be seen within a glimpse.

As for the three where she had not been shot? It was doable to avoid both bullets, if she baited the shot of the second lictor the right way. But that took fancy footwork and thus time, long enough for the third lictor to enter. Which meant when the three lictors fell upon her she had killed no one but Doukas and she was still unarmed, allowing them to make easy work of her.

Her first instinct, she then decided must have been right: the priestess must be ignored and the bone-rattler weathered long enough to kill the remaining two lictors. After two more failed glimpses, she even refined the attempt into a more specific sequence.

First, kill the lictor on the left with the knife – he was a better marksman. Then, bait the shot from the surprised second lictor. Suffer through the bone-rattling, careful not to leave her tongue under her teeth where she might accidentally bite it off while in the shaking throes and die in a most embarrassing manner.

Then, even though kneeling on shaky legs, she must move on the corpse while the second lictor drew his sword. The dead body would serve as a shield for the first sword blow, and she meanwhile she must draw the dead lictor’s pistol and shoot the third lictor as he opened the door to rush in. That would leave her with only Doukas and a single man to kill, which she believed doable.

Only Angharad instead found she could not even get as far as shooting the third lictor. Instead of blindly using her power at first opportunity, Petra Doukas was proving clever enough to wait until Angharad was aiming the pistol to hit her with the bone-rattler. Which wasted the shot and thus left her stuck with two lictors while she collapsed to her knees.

Angharad had yet to find a way to survive that, and not for lack of trying. Worse was that she was fast approaching the end of her capacity – she had four glimpses left before the bleeding started, she figured, perhaps closer to six or seven if she cut them off early.

Something she would not have known helped avoid burnout had Maryam not studied her contract so thoroughly, which made it all the more unacceptable that Angharad failing to use that very knowledge to keep her benefactor alive. How long had it been since she began glimpsing? It had to be minutes at least. Ten, fifteen, twenty? How long did she have under the armed traitors under Lord Arkol made it to the private archives and killed Maryam?

Fingers were snapped before her face, no less rudely than the last time. Angharad blinked, looking up at an irritated Lady Doukas standing before her. What a waste of well-fitted neckline, she thought.

“Pay attention, girl,” the priestess said. “Gule said he gave you some of the Ram’s blood. What did you do with it?”

Angharad had been so lost in the glimpses she had not noticed the other woman approaching for what seemed to be another attempt at interrogation. That proximity might change things, she thought. Should she try a glimpse and…

A knock on the door had Doukas turning away, gesturing for one of the guards to open it. A lictor entered the room, but not the same fair-haired woman Angharad’s glimpses had familiarized her with. This one she did not recognize, and he entered briskly before snapping off a salute at a surprised Petra Doukas. For all her high rank in the cult, she was not used to being saluted by lictors.

“Lady Doukas,” the man said. “I bring word from Lord Arkol: the barricades in the galleries have been broken through and the soldiers holding them either slain or routed.”

Angharad swallowed, appalled at the death of loyal men holding their oaths but also from a more personal fear. Those barricades had been all that stood between Maryam and the guns that Phaedros Arkol had dedicated to taking her life. She’d run out of time.

“Glad news,” Petra Doukas said. “With this we should hold all of-”

The messenger grimaced, but he seemed afraid to interrupt. The priestess was not so inattentive as to miss it.

“Speak,” Lady Doukas ordered. “What happened?”

“We have yet to seize the private archives, my lady,” he said. “There was not only one blackcloak within but a small company. After running into our advance they retreated inside and locked the door. A ram is being brought to bear, but the door is thick. It may take time.”

Angharad blinked. A company? Song should be down in the city at the moment, settling her accounts with the Yellow Earth. And even if Tristan had found a crack to wriggle through in order to reach Maryam, which was entirely credible, then their pair alone would not be described as a ‘company’. The word ought to mean four at least, but she struggled to think of who else might have made it into the palace.

Perhaps some bodyguards from the Watch delegation, accompanying Brigadier Chilaca as an escort? No, Angharad decided after a moment. If a brigadier were in the palace then the cult’s men on the inside would have known. There would be no keeping a visitor of such high rank quiet for long.

“That Tianxi who keeps killing assassins was seen among them,” the traitor said. “You know, Lady Lead.”

“Song Ren,” Lady Doukas corrected, and the lictor shrugged.

“As you say,” he said. “Anyhow, Lord Arkol says that means it should be the Thirteenth Brigade.”

Petra Doukas cast a look Angharad’s way at that. She got a frown back. What did the priestess know?

“Confused?” the lady smirked. “Don’t be. Our friend Lord Menander was all too eager to reveal what brigade you belong to, Angharad Tredegar.”

The cultists then turned back to the messenger.

“I take it Phaedros wants to use her as leverage to dig them out?”

“Should you be finished interrogating her,” the soldier specified.

Lady Doukas studied her for a moment, perhaps weighing if tacit admission the interrogation was a failure was worth the achievement of helping along in digging out the other blackcloaks, but Angharad cared not for the cult’s games of clout. She straightened in her seat, one of the lictors raising his musket in alarm at the sight until he remembered she was still visibly bound.

“How many blackcloaks?” she asked. “Describe them.”

Petra Doukas blinked in surprise, then looked incredulous.

“You ignore me for a quarter-hour with a dull look on your face and now you want to sing?”

Angharad ignored her, eyes on the messenger. The man glanced at the priestess, who snorted.

“Tell her,” she said. “It might loosen her tongue, and what would she do with the knowledge anyway?”

The man cleared his throat.

“The hollow witch, two Izcalli, two Lierganen, some odd-eyed Malani and Lady Lead.”

Angharad spared half a moment approving of the acclaim Song had rightfully earned by twice saving their host’s life – and what a snappy sobriquet! – before confusion ensued. Maryam, Song and possibly Tristan? The odd-eyed Malani must be Expendable, which implied one of the Izcalli would be Tupoc and thus the second Lierganen most likely the signifier Alejandra Torrero. Yet there seemed to be a second Izcalli along instead of Bait, who was quite noticeably of Someshwari stock.

Then again the man was calling Maryam a hollow, so he was less than reliable. And Bait seemed prone to… maneuvering his way backwards, when the situation allowed, so perhaps the rebels had not had a good look at him.

Which still left Angharad wondering what in damnation the Fourth Brigade was doing up in the palace, much less Song. Had she drawn Evander Palliades down to the city only to then stand him up at the brothel? That would be rude of Song, Angharad chided herself. Not at all amusing, which was why her lips were twitching at the thought of getting Tupoc Xical killed fighting cultists and not the delightfully high-handed way a woman many would call a mistress was treating the king of Asphodel.

Well, Song being Song she had likely left Palliades a polite note informing him of her absence at the brothel so at least he’d not be confused where she went.

“There are seven of them, Tredegar,” Petra Doukas said. “They’re corpses in the making, not something worth smirking about.”

Angharad wiped the amusement off her face. She did not bother to answer her captor, to the woman’s visible frustration.

“And now you go silent again,” Lady Doukas bit out. “You stubborn little…”

The priestess angrily crossed her arms.

“Fine, take her,” she said. “I am done beating my head against the wall.”

And just like that, the last dregs of amusement were gone.

They intended her a hostage, likely threatening her life in exchange for opening the door, but that was of only middling import. She set it aside. What mattered was this: in a matter of moments the lictors would come to untie her so she might be moved and when they did there would be no hiding the knife in her hands.

Angharad looked at the four lictors in the room, at the priestess eyeing her with open dislike, and swallowed. She had not been able to win that fight when they were fewer, one outside the room and she had the element of surprise. Now they were all looking at her, alert and wary. Would she even be able to cut all the way through the rope without them noticing? She did not like her odds.

The messenger took a single step towards her, and in that small movement Angharad saw the beginning of her loss.

It was over, she had taken too long. She had… The Pereduri swallowed spit. She could see how it would go, now. Either she died here, trying to get out, or she was brought as a hostage and that was just a slower death. Whether or not the Thirteenth bargained with Phaedros Arkol, the man would kill them all. He was either the Ecclesiast or deep in the leading cultist’s confidence, and the cult was sure to take any excuse to kill them.

They would not tolerate blackcloaks underhand when their spirit was crawling out of its ancient prison, and this time Apollonia Floros was not there to make them behave.

“Swords out,” Lady Doukas told the advancing lictors. “Crippled or not, rumor has her a fine killer.”

They were all dead, Angharad thought. Her, the Thirteenth, Uncle Osian.

And, she realized in a moment that was like a shard of ice stabbing her heart, it was all because of her. Because Angharad Tredegar was the reason any of them were on this misbegotten island in the first place, wasn’t she? Her uncle had told her: the only reason the Thirteenth had been sent to Asphodel, and sent there so absurdly early in the year, was because she had killed Augusto Cerdan.

That had barred them from Sacromonte, and the Riven Coast contracts as well. To spare her being assassinated, her uncle had once more put his career on the line by hurrying her to the Asphodel test – and in the process Angharad’s righteous anger on the Dominion had dragged the rest of the Thirteenth into the madness now seizing Tratheke. Song, Tristan, Maryam, Osian.

Without her none of them would be here today. None of them would be in the middle of this fucking mad coup that was going to kill them all.

And Osian, oh her kinsman she had killed not once but half a dozen times. First when she confessed to her treachery on Tolomontera, then again on Asphodel when she went behind the delegation’s back to find the infernal forge and again when she had him steal the forge on her behalf and again when he handed it to an agent of the Lefthand House last night so it could be smuggled to the Lordsport so she might kill him again by having him charter the merchant vessel called the Golden Tide to carry it to the nearby isle of Imbrada, where he owned a warehouse.

And, Sleeping God forgive her, all this for what? She was no closer to getting her father out of Tintavel and a bleak laugh escaped from her throat as she realized all this maneuvering to get the infernal forge might well have come to nothing anyway. The Golden Tide had meant to leave with the midnight tide, so it would have been in the Lordsport when the rebel flotilla attacked. It was entirely possible that the ship and the forge with it had sunk to the bottom of the Trebian Sea, which was so fitting an end to this entire madness that she wanted to weep.

If not weep, then at least scream. The Thirteenth was going to die unless she did something about it. Song, Maryam, Tristan – drowned in lead and smoke, fed to a jeering Hated One. Her fingers clenched. But what could she do? She had glimpsed the skirmish again and again only to find fresh failures. Frustration mounted. If not for her leg, for the mara’s lingering scars on her, she could have…

No, Angharad admitted to herself. Even in perfect health, this might have been too much for her. It was one thing to face down a pack of disorganized raiders on the Dominion, another entirely to face hardened soldiers like the traitor lictors who bore modern arms and armor. And they had a priestess with them, one who could draw on her patron at least one dangerous trick.

She tried in her mind to win the same skirmish she had been fighting for what felt like hours, but even crossing the room taking half as long she found the odds remained slim. Little cover, muskets in the hands of men who know how to use them, that despicable bone-rattler.

A blade was not enough. Angharad had lost not because she had too feeble a sword arm but because there were situations that could not be won by the sword. That was why the Lefthand House had hooks in her, why she was dragging almost every soul who had shown her kindness since she left the Dominion to their death.

It was the silence that told her what was happening.

Angharad looked at the lictors advancing towards her blade in hand, at the smirking Petra Doukas, but she was not facing that frozen sight. She was looking down at it. Angharad Tredegar stood on stony shores again, beholding the fate her hands had wrought: a prisoner soon to die, pulling the undeserving with her into the deeps. That was the end of the road she had chosen to walk, the culmination of all her follies.

The Fisher’s line struck at the world and it rippled, the shadowy waters it was writ upon rippling as his hook sunk beneath the surface.

Angharad was not besides the spirit, this time. The line was stretched above her head, and though her trembling limbs dared not turn to look behind she did not need to – not when a breath washed against her back like warm, poisonous wind. Angharad stood before and beneath the Fisher, watching a stolen moment painted on water. He said nothing.

He was the most patient of monsters.

“You must think me a fool,” Angharad said. “I left the Dominion strutting arrogantly, convinced I had learned my lesson. That I had found the bridge between need and honor, that I could walk the line between both.”

Her shoes crinkled against the gray stones of this bleak shore.

“But I had been fooled,” she said.

Song had fooled her, and Ferranda as well. They had fooled her because Angharad had… made a story of her time on the Dominion, in her own mind, and their roles had not been to fool her so she never even cared to consider they might have.

“And I followed this new compass into fresh follies, congratulating myself on my cleverness all the while. Dancing on a meaningless line, picking up fresh strings to be bound by as if they were ribbons for my hair.”

Her fists clenched.

“I told myself it was all right because I was following the rules,” Angharad whispered. “The bounds of honor. And maybe if I had gotten away with it, I might have kept believing that, but I didn’t – and now I look at what I left behind and what I see is… crooked. Unworthy.”

“Your work is crooked, Angharad Tredegar, because your hand is crooked.”

The Fisher’s voice was not a voice: it was the last, desperate scream of a man before they went under the tide, it was the rasp of fire against metal as the last of the lantern oil went.

“I did not break my word,” she insisted.

“Oaths,” the Fisher said, “are ballast. Men stack them and pray it will right the ship of their lives, keeping them from tipping into the black waters.”

He laughed.

“It does not,” he said. “No amount of ballast can steady a man’s nature.”

Angharad breathed out. Why had she expected anything more out of the spirit? It was not a man, with a man’s thoughts and notions. The Fisher did not change or waver or doubt. He would be the Fisher so long as he was anything at all. And that… constancy, it felt like a thorn in her throat now. As much from envy as from anger, for she was no spirit – she did not get to be uncompromising, that was not the world she lived in.

“Shall I throw honor to the wind, then?” she bit out angrily. “Break every oath I ever swore, cut down all who displease me and take whatever I want from whoever I want? Is that your advice, oh great Fisher?”

The spirit considered her words.

“You cannot,” he said. “Your hand is crooked.”

“What does that even mean?” she snarled. “Crooked! What nonsense you-”

The sound she heard then, there was nothing else in the world like it: the sound bones made when teeth cracked them, chewing into flesh. She could almost see it – the large hand holding up one of those wriggling… things he put on his hook, the way those great teeth would go through blood and bone as if it were barely there.

The Fisher chewed and swallowed, swallowed something she did not dare consider even in the depths of her own soul, and Angharad fell to her knees on the rocks. She threw up, violently convulsing, as much from dread as disgust. He ate, he ate… Angharad’s mouth tasted like bile and fear, the gray pebbles of the beach broke her skin as she stayed on her hands and knees panting. Blood cold as seawater.

Stolen novel; please report.

Silence imparted the lesson: one did not raise their voice to the Fisher.

“It means,” the old monster said, “that there is no room for victory in Angharad Tredegar because she filled herself to the brim with ballast. Buried herself in it like a cairn.”

A great head shook.

“And what useless stone it is,” the Fisher said.

Angharad stayed there in the dark, by the water, and the words fell against her back like a lash.

“You swear to the Watch and forsake it.”

Her oaths when sworn in as an officer in black, a student of ruinous Scholomance. Cast aside to buy a path to her father, for all that she hid from that truth behind a shoddy palisade of details.

“You swear yourself to your kin and forsake him.”

Everything for her blood, to get Father out of Tintavel – even consign Uncle Osian to a fate as horrid, spent until there was nothing left to spend. Love a hanging rope tightened by her own hand. Was he not kin as well, her uncle? No less so than Gwydion Tredegar.

“You swear yourself to a warband and forsake them.”

The Thirteenth, whom she had left in anger and returned to only carrying poisoned gifts. Whose days she was willing to darken for the sake of her own desires.

“You swear yourself to necessity and forsake it for principle,” the Fisher scorned, “then you swear to principle and forsake it for necessity.”

Whatever it took, she had sworn in her grief when she could still smell the fire that had devoured her life. Honor, she had sworn to every time she risked her life for strangers. For the undeserving, for the causes of others. Which was it? Which oath mattered?

“Your hand is crooked,” the old monster said, certitude ironclad. “It is a maker of crooked works.”

And why should he not be certain? He dwelled within her, had seen the work of her hands. He was not wrong to call it thus.

“What do you want from me?” she croaked out.

“Nothing,” the Fisher said.

The line pulled taut, ahead of her.

“You are here to receive your due.”

And Angharad screamed.

Screamed as something deep within her leg ripped it up from the inside, scraped it raw. The work of moments and though she wept like a child even after it ended when she touched her leg there was not a drop of blood or even a deformation. But she knew, oh, somehow she knew what the Fisher had done. Bone had become coral.

“Patience,” the Fisher said, “is not forbearance. I have no use for crooked things.”

A dead, headless thing was tossed into the great basket at his side, the one full of wriggling wretches, and implication slithered through her veins like a current of ice. Did he mean that all those things were… Were they all contractors that had disappointed the Fisher so he made them into – oh, Sleeping God ward her from this evil she had invited into herself.

“You changed them,” she heaved out. “The bones of my leg.”

“I began the change,” the Fisher said. “It is not yet settled. Overcome or perish, Angharad Tredegar.”

“Overcome what?” she screamed.

“That which malforms your nature,” the spirit said.

A great hand seized her, fingers gripping the back of her dress and lifting her almost delicately. If it were a tale, Angharad thought, this would be a test. There would be a boon for her, a lesson to learn. But this was not a story. She had let the monster in herself, bound her soul to his power.

Her boon would be for the Fisher not to make her into one of those things.

“Recognize what rules you, daughter of Gwydion,” the Fisher said. “And when you have, answer this true: are you the horse or the rider?”

And he tossed her into the dark waters, like a catch not worth keeping.

Angharad did not fight the dark. She let herself sink. She could not even tell if her eyes were closed or open, only that the coolness of the depths was swallowing her whole and within that nothing the only thing that remained was her. She bore nothing but what she had brought in here with her.

Smoke and screams on the wind. The red ruin of Isabel’s face. Steel and scorn piercing Augusto’s throat. The Thirteenth in that cramped cottage, walls and knives turning on each other. Running away from Imani’s wicked bargain into the layer. Ferranda stiffly parting ways. Tasting her old life at the banquet only to find it sour on the tongue, her uncle’s crushing kindness, Maryam’s rough regard and Song’s atrociously unearned kindness.

Down here there was no one but her, no one to pretend for, so Angharad admitted to the truth: she was running. She had been ever since her world ended. And the answer demanded of her, the one she found was so awful and uncomplicated that she knew it must be true.

Fear. Angharad Tredegar was ruled by fear.

She feared being the kind of woman who would let something like Isabel’s death pass. She feared that Song was still fooling her, that Tristan would be all smiles even while cutting her throat. She feared that there would never truly be an accord between herself and Maryam. She feared that for all her troubles she hadn’t really learned a fucking thing.

She feared being so ungrateful a daughter she would let her father remain in Tintavel. She feared being so terrible a niece she would destroy her uncle for a dim chance at freeing her father. She feared it might be too late to ever be free of the Lefthand House, she feared what it said of her that she would take refuge in the Watch and then betray it.

Fear, fear, fear at every turn. Fear was the wind in her sail, the hand on the wheel, her captain in all but name. And now all those precise compromises had come home to roost. She hadn’t tried to gain anything, Angharad realized, she’d tried to lose nothing. A fool’s errand: you always lost something, every mirror-dancer knew that. You had to kill who you’d been to become who you were.

Angharad’s eyes fluttered open, a screaming ripping itself free of her throat as seawater poured in and smothered it. She was drowning, alone in the depths. The mirror always won, eventually. She should not have forgot.

She was done, she thought. It was finished, and there was a relief in that. In no longer stumbling from one ruinous failure to the next. And in that moment where there was nothing left to lose, at last Angharad found herself free of fear. At last she saw without its scales over her eyes.

And she had brought more than just regrets down here with her, for all her follies.

It’s a choice, to keep count, Song whispered into her ear.

Why should you get anything for air? Maryam demanded.

Uncertainty is surrender, the Marshal chided her.

And beyond them all, an implacable question.

Are you the horse or the rider?

The horse, Angharad thought. She was nothing but a vessel for fear.

But what of it?

If she did not like who she was, must she then remain so? She would kill that girl and become one who suited her better. And to think she had run all the way to Asphodel, when she’d been given the answer months ago in Tolomontera. Why do we study in the shadow of evil, she’d asked her professor. Why put our lives on the line? He’d spoken then of the voice of doubt, of hesitation. Fear in reason’s cloak.

And he had told her what was to be done with it.