Chapter 78

The gods liked a laugh.

Black House’s location just outside the Collegium had once been a subtle slight by the Lords Rector but it had now become the reason the Watch headquarters in Tratheke hadn’t dropped in a hole. It had suffered attacks, but besides some broken windows and doors there was hardly a mark on Black House while most of the city’s heart was gone, disappeared into the dark below.

Tristan had read the reports, and despite how much worse it had seemed in the moment the corpse-god had only shattered about third of the Collegium grounds while breaking out. But, as was to be expected of a gaping hole in the ground over a cavern, the sinkhole had then continued to widen. Five days had passed, but word had it that this morning a street had still fallen with hardly any warning.

Not that he’d gotten to see any of it. He’d been unconscious the better part of a day after his little jaunt across the void, and woken up blind after – and with Fortuna nowhere in sight. That’d not even been the worst of it, for Song and Angharad had needed to pull out his fingernails. The odd nacre they had turned into was fusing with his flesh, turning into something like claws. As for the locks of his hair that had turned into solid gold, cutting them off had not been difficult.

Only a streak of his hair had then turned golden, and no number of dye bottles or haircuts could change that. A dangerous thing, for a thief to have such a recognizable mark.

He’d still been blind when their day and a half as ‘guests’ of the palace ended, but at least he could dimly make out Fortuna’s words by then. He’d been better off than Maryam, anyway, who only emerged from her feverish slumber to erupt in fits of screaming mania. When they were finally allowed back in the city the Thirteenth was whisked away by the Watch, shoved into a carriage that’d rolled down one of the few streets still connecting Fort Archelean to the city and then kept inside Black House.

Endless hours of debriefing ensued as the senior officers in the capital tried to get a handle on what exactly had happened and, once it was established it shouldn’t cost them anything, what they could get out of Asphodel for it. At least by the third day he could see again – and see Fortuna as well – while Maryam only woke up groggy instead of screaming. Lieutenant Mitra had assured them she would live, though she would need to purge herself regularly until she could return to Scholomance – where a ritual would stabilize her for good.

Tristan almost envied her the sleep for everyone wanted a piece of them, of what they had done, and that meant his waking hours were swallowed up by the demands of diplomats. Captain Wen, thankfully, proved a bulwark against Brigadier Chilaca’s wildest ideas as well their main source of news about what was going on in the city.

“The civil war’s been averted,” Wen told them as early as the fourth day. “Apollonia Floros being held prisoner cut the grass under the feet of the ministers. The valley nobles rushed to reinforce Palliades and together with the lictors they were able to take back the Lordsport this morning.”

Asphodel’s largest port had until then been in the hands of the rebel magnates who, after two thirds of their fighting men died either storming Fort Archelean or from the god’s rising, retreated to the Lordsport and seized it from the men of House Cordyles. They’d dug in, perhaps hoping for reinforcements or relief by foreign allies, but the Lord Rector had put an end to that.

It’d only been a matter of time, Tristan knew. The Lordsport wasn’t meant to be held against a force coming from the capital, its defenses were pointed at the sea.

“What happened to the rebels?” he asked.

“They refused the terms of surrender offered,” Wen said. “No quarter was given.”

His jaw clenched. Ming and Dandan had been mercenaries, in the end. Their death was fair, as much as any death was fair. But the others… the Kassa traveling men, Damon from the warehouse. Phoebe and Pollos, even Rhea. Had any of them made it out? He hoped so. Some must have thrown down their arms and faded back into the streets instead of letting themselves be talked into marching on the Lordsport.

But he knew, deep down, that most of them would be dead. All because the magnates had thought they should be the wealthy men ruling over the commons instead of the other set. It had been the Ecclesiast behind it all, Tristan tried to tell himself, but it rang hollow. The Ecclesiast had used the rebellion but it was the magnates who’d schemed it. No one had been to benefit from it besides those rich merchants, and now no one at all was to gain – not even them.

The only thing worse than a victorious revolution was a failed one.

“And the Cordyles flotilla?” Angharad asked.

“The remaining ships were last seen sacking fishing villages on the eastern coast,” Captain Wen said. “Our best guess is they’re gathering supplies before turning pirate.”

It was maddening, being stuck inside Black House while the capital was still a smoking wreck one wrong step away from riots, but Tristan admitted to himself it might be for the best. From his temporary seat in the southeastern ward Evander Palliades had overseen the reclamation of Tratheke and the Lordsport, and the moment he had them he began cleaning house.

And he wasn’t half-hearted about it, either.

Gallows and a headsman’s block were raised in the southwestern ward, fed a steady supply of corpses at every hour of the day and night while crowds came to jeer at the hated traitors, eventually growing bored enough with the spectacle that they only showed up when the death of a well-known name was announced in advance by the lictors.

Cultists and the leading figures of the traitor lictors hanged, while the rebel magnates and nobles were beheaded. For those latter types, death was far from the worse of it: word in the street was that Palliades had confiscated so much property from the families he’d be able to rebuild Tratheke twice if he sold it.

More quietly, the rank-and-file of both rebellions were put in irons until they could be sent off to their new fate – rowers in the Lord Rector’s galleys or working in the mines of Arke. Ten-year sentences, which in either case would be a death sentence for most of them. Galleymen were treated like slaves by most captains and Tristan had never known a mine that did not take a kickback of corpses in exchange for yielding its wealth.

Only a few souls were spared the axe and the noose, their fates up in the air until the grand ceremony Evander Palliades had announced at the week’s end – a celebration of the heroes of the ‘Three Risings’, where honors were to be distributed and the debatable notion of Palliades being victorious hammered in until there could be no more argument. Until that day Lady Apollonia Floros, Ambassador Gule and Lord Cleon Eirenos, as well as most of fence-sitting nobles who’d joined the rebellion at the last moment, were being held in Fort Archelean.

“Think he’ll kill Floros?” he asked Song on one of her rare breaks.

It had not escaped the Thirteenth’s notice that, despite opportunities otherwise, the Lord Rector had not met her in person since that long night. Even so she likely understood the man better than anyone else in black.

“I don’t know,” Song admitted. “It would be best for House Palliades if he did, else her descendants might rise to challenge his, but he won’t want to.”

“Her name’s being dragged through the mud,” Tristan noted. “That might neuter her enough for sparing.”

The people’s understanding of the Three Risings had been rather more unflattering to the rebels than the truth. The most popular story out there was that Apollonia Floros and Maria Anastos – the most powerful of the provably involved magnates – had been offered rule of Asphodel by the mad god known as the ‘Newborn’, some ancient deity of death and madness. The rebels had conspired to free it from its prison, only to turn on each other when they succeeded.

The use of the name ‘Newborn’ would have been a hint as to the source even if the temples of Oduromai weren’t outright preaching the tale. Not that the Lord Rector had wasted any time in sending men out to further vilify the rebels while praising how the loyal lictors and Watch agents had put down the Newborn.

Not that there’d been a need to tell the city of the latter. Apparently half of Tratheke had seen Maryam slay the Newborn, which had in a night’s span turned her into the most famous woman in the capital. That might well be true of the entire country by year’s end.

“Much depends on how strong he believes his position is,” Song finally said. “The western nobles fell in line, but the east is still being difficult – simply because they haven’t proclaimed a Lord Rector of their own does not mean they won’t.”

Tristan figured that the last thing Asphodel needed was a civil war, but it might not be beyond some ambitious fools to hear of the ravaging of Tratheke and the damages on the Lordsport then decide these meant the Palliades had grown weak enough to overthrow. They might not even be wrong, he grimly thought. The Collegium had not been as densely peopled as the southern wards, but losing such a large chunk the capital’s inhabited grounds had still meant the death of thousands.

Casualties were still difficult to assess, Wen had told them, because with entire neighborhoods gone it was hard to get an accurate tally. Tratheke was said to hold as many as eighty thousand souls within its walls and Tristan would not be surprised if a tenth of those souls had died to either the fighting or the sinkhole. A blow like that would take decades to recover from.

Either way, that was the business of Asphodel and little of his. Tristan soon found that he had the most free time of the Thirteenth, for even now that the interrogation was largely over Song and Angharad kept getting dragged back into officer meetings so they could contribute their ‘perspective’. Maryam and Hooks were still sleeping two thirds of their days away, and according to Lieutenant Mitra would for some time yet. The fever had lowered, and she no longer sweated through her sheets when he sat by her bedside.

Mitra had called what the sisters did ‘surgery by tooth and bludgeon’, sounding fascinated, which had Tristan firmly insisting that the Khaimovs obey their instructions of bed rest when they woke and demanded to be taken up the roof to have a look at the city. He even went as far as crossing the line by enlisting Song, which they rightfully treated as a heinous betrayal. Their captain was perfectioning her disappointed stare, which had already been a formidable thing.

Thankfully, he had something to while away the hours while the sister slept.

The rooms were in the guest wing of Black House, which while larger and nicer than what was reserved for lower officers also happened to be isolated from the rest of the grounds. And while the door itself was locked there was no guard at the door, because it was being kept quiet that the survivors of the Nineteenth Brigade had been put under house arrest.

Tristan began with the room to the left, rapping his knuckles against it.

“Are you decent?”

A moment, then there was a sigh.

“Again?”

“Again,” Tristan agreed.

“I am,” Cressida Barboza said in the tone of someone being marched to the gallows.

“That’d be-”

“- a first,” Cressida said with him, mimicking his voice in a high-pitched tone. “Die. That wasn’t even funny the first time.”

“That’s why it keeps getting funnier every time I do it,” Tristan happily replied.

And she’d learned that unless she went along with the joke, he would walk away and leave her to her boredom. The thief fished out the key he’d borrowed from the serving staff – which they would eventually realize had gone missing – and unlocked the door, waiting a beat before he opened it. Cressida was seated in a padded armchair like a brooding tyrant, wearing a coat and frilly green dressing gown which, along with the bare feet, had likely been meant to shock him at first.

After the sight failed to elicit embarrassment or raging lust – hah! – in him, he suspected she’d kept it up out of laziness. Her entire room was the kind of disorderly that would set Song twitching: bed unmade, clothes all over the floor, a half-eaten plate on the table with a book next to it. Her poison bag was open and several vials on the shelf. Tristan had been mentally marking the heights, and they kept slightly lowering every day.

She was liver-tempering, taking a little poison every day so her body would grow immune.

“Why do you darken my doorstep, Abrascal?” she sneered.

He brought up the first of the packages he carried, a cloth-wrapped book, and her eyes lit up. She then mastered her enthusiasm, raising her nose.

“Leave it on the table,” she said.

“It’s a nice book. I’m not leaving it next to…” Tristan paused, took a sniff. “Day-old pork and rice.”

“The Tianxi’s really getting to you, huh,” Cressida amusedly said.

He pointedly set down the book on her commode, ignoring the undergarments and chest wrappings adorning it.

“If she learns I enabled someone to spill sauce on an atlas that old, she may have me shot,” Tristan replied.

Finally doing away with the posturing, Cressida rose and padded across the room to take the cloth off the book. She quickly paged through the beginning, then stopped when she found – he leaned over to take a look, glimpsing what looked like a stretch of the Meridian Road. Interesting, that. The grand imperial highway linking Sacromonte to the obscured heart of Old Liergan was of interest to many, font of wealth that it was, but it was so well-policed by the Six that the Watch presence on it was supposedly quite limited. Mind you, that was the version that the Six put out. It might be worth asking the Watch what the real numbers were. Cressida snapped the book shut before he could get a better look.

“I would thank you,” she said, “but as always that production at the start burnt the gratitude out of me.”

“A mightily short candle, that gratitude,” he drawled.

Her eyes dipped to his other package and she leaned in, sniffing.

“Honeycakes?”

“Not for you,” he chided.

She tried glaring, but when his brow only rose in answer she retreated back to her armchair. She crossed her legs, then her arms, and looked exasperated for some reason.

“What did I do now?” he asked.

“You’re really not interested in the slightest, are you?” she sighed.

Ah, so the leg-crossing had been showing her bare legs on purpose. Why? Tristan cocked his head to the side.

“You’re trying to sleep with me to incite sentimentality,” he said.

“That and there’s worse ways to pass the time,” she said. “But I can take a hint.”

Why was only half the answer, he decided. Why now? Ah. It took a moment to parse through the possible suspects.

“Tupoc visited you,” he said.

“This lock does not hold me unless I let it,” Cressida acknowledged. “He had interesting things to say.”

Including, no doubt, that Hage had arrived at Black House late last night. Which meant the fate of the Nineteenth was about to be settled for good.

“He offered you a place in the Fourth?” Tristan asked, genuinely curious.

For a moment she looked as if she was weighing the price she should ask for, before deciding her bargaining position was not strong enough for that.

“If I live to return to Tolomontera,” she said. “He wants to fill his brigade back up to four.”

The Fourth Brigade was looking rather dented, at the moment, with both Acceptable Losses and Velaphi dead. Add to that how Alejandra Torrero’s forearm had needed amputation and it was only natural he would seek to bolster his numbers.

“If your involvement with the Ivory Library remains quiet, you could have better prospects,” he noted.

“Are you offering?” she said, batting her eyes.

He snorted back, hiding his genuine opinion on the prospect. Namely that Maryam would surely kill her, a thought that was not unfond.

“No, I thought not,” Cressida said. “It’s not me you’re eyeing.”

Tristan shrugged. Seeing he would give her nothing more, she pressed on.

“He seems a decent commander, and this way I am spared taking another test,” she said.

The Nineteenth’s contract had been marked as unfulfilled by the Lord Rector’s office, to his amusement. The Eleventh and the Thirteenth had joined the Fourth as marked fulfilled on what he figured was a collection of technicalities and the horrible look it would be for Evander Palliades to turn on the blackcloaks after they’d saved his city.

“But it all rests on my living through the month.”

The implied question hung heavy between them. Tristan kept his face calm, leaning back against the commode.

“Why?” he asked.

To her honor, she did not pretend to misunderstand what he was asking.

“The money,” Cressida frankly said. “And the potential to milk Tozi for favors if she rose high enough she was able to pull on family connections again.”

He’d ask her why she wanted the money, but they both knew she’d lie.

“Convince me you’re not going to be a problem,” Tristan said, crossing his arms.

“I will be the first suspect in anything happening to you from now on,” she said. “It would be in my best interest to warn and help you against foes to avoid having fingers pointed at me.”

“I’d have leverage over you,” Tristan said. “Which is power. But it would also mean I have leverage over you.”

Something that, in their common trade, was traditionally remedied by cutting a throat and burning the evidence.

“It’s not leverage I can remove,” Cressida pointed out. “Assuming you go to Hage with the deal Tozi originally took, the Krypteia still has knowledge of my indiscretion. It’ll be in my files. As long as you don’t use it to constantly twist my arm, I don’t achieve anything all that useful by killing you.”

Which was, Tristan would concede, a fair point. One he had considered himself, but that she would think of it without him offering so much as a hint made it twice as salient.

“You don’t regret anything,” he finally said.

Her brow rose, but those brown eyes stayed calm.

“I regret incorrectly assessing the situation,” Cressida Barboza. “Your caliber and Tozi’s. How far the others would push after encountering failure, the strength of the Ivory Library’s grip on them. I regret plenty, Tristan.”

Just not what I wanted you to regret, he thought. Nothing about the act of selling him like cattle sparked unease in her. That would make her a fine Mask, after loyalty in the Watch was branded on her back. It just made her someone he could never, ever trust. He made himself breathe out.

“I liked you, when we first met,” Tristan told her.

She looked startled.

“I liked you as well,” Cressida said, then reluctantly added. “You are not the worst company.”

“That fondness made if feel personal when you turned on me,” he said.

A fleck of something like pity passed in her eyes. For his naivety, his sentimentality? Before she could decide on her answer, he pushed himself off the commode.

“But it wasn’t, on your end,” Tristan said. “Only business.”

“I am glad you can see that,” she said in a guarded tone.

Looking for a trap. There wasn’t. He wondered if he could see the pity in his eyes, at the world she had chosen to live in. One built entirely on transaction, on gain and loss. The Law of Rats stripped of even its meager kindnesses. A rat waited to be cornered, before biting. Only cats hunted for sport. Cressida Barboza would make a better Mask than he, Tristan suspected. Or at least one better suited to many of the black works ahead.

But, at the end of the day, Tristan would rather have nightmares than live one.

“I’ll see you around, Cressida,” he said.

She only called out when his hand reached the door.

“What will you do?” the Mask asked.

He paused.

“I have no reason to answer you,” the Mask replied.

He closed the door behind him, locked it. It felt like too large and too thin a barrier all at once.

Tristan blinked as he saw the hallway – or rather, didn’t, for the world had gone black and… he breathed out when his vision swam, black turning to gray as he found someone leaning against the wall. Fanning herself with some ostentatious thing made of peacock feathers was Fortuna.

It still happened, sometimes, that when she focused her attention on him the world become eerily similar to what he’d seen that night. Black and white and gray, and he just knew that if he pulled deep enough he’d be able to see the – putting a hand on the wall to hold himself up, Tristan pushed down the nausea. Fuck. Even eyes closed it spun, there was nothing to do but wait it out.

Fortuna squeezed his arm in affection, waiting with him in silence until the worse had passed. He opened his eyes to an entirely normal hallway, save for the goddess standing in it. She had put away the Asphodelian dress for one rather similar to Tredegar’s on the night of the Three Risings, though naturally in scarlet. She’d even worn a saber at her hip, before his profuse and continued mockery forced her to cease.

“She likes you more than she let on, that girl,” Fortuna said.

Her guess, or divine insight? The former, he wagered. Fortuna, despite what he had glimpsed when she rode his soul, did not strike him as overly burdened with the latter. Tristan shrugged.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said.

A cat would be a cat, and that was all there was to it. Trust was rarer than gold, so it ought to be spent even more prudently. There were more deserving souls than Cressida Barboza, who he must admit did not disappoint because of who she was so much as because she was not who he would have liked her to be. In the end, he was the source of his own disappointment.

Fortuna sighed, angling down her fan.

“You should go bicker with Maryam,” she advised. “Her sister does funny things with soup.”

Like throwing it at him.

“After,” he muttered, eyeing the other door.

Fortuna hummed.

“Well, he’s fine too.”

His brow rose.

“You approve?”

“He sent me a prayer of thanks for saving all of Asphodel,” she preened. “Clearly he is a most discerning young man.”

He rolled his eyes at her. Tristan had expected change, after that lunatic stroll they took together. How could he not, when he had come so close to sainthood? He still had the physical marks of the beginning changes, put away in an iron box. And there had been other changes.

Tristan had a feel for it now, the way her power coursed through him all the time. Not in a way that would let him pull on it for a trick, but he focused he could feel the… tides in the odds, so to speak. When a situation became more and more unusual. Yet Fortuna herself had not become any different. It was only to be expected, since the nature of gods could not truly change, but some part of him had…

Well, it didn’t matter. If the sole difference in her speeches was that she now talked about prayers and added a duty to build her a peerless temple to her list of wild demands he could live with it. And if some part of him suspected that this was just the beginning, that the one thing in his life he could always count on had been irremediably changed, then he could dismiss that as fear talking.

He hoped.

“We’ll see,” Tristan replied.

He paused, then rolled his eyes at her again just to be sure she saw. Ignoring her offended squawking, he knocked on Izel Coyac’s door. A muted ‘come in’ reached his ears, so he did. Izel’s room had much the same layout as Cressida’s, save that it had a window at the back – though one that could not be opened higher than a thumb’s height. How both treated the area, though, stood in stark contrast.

Izel had his clothes folded on the shelf in neat piles, while the rest of his affairs were so cleanly put away Tristan would have thought no one inhabited the room. The sole touch of disorder was around the writing desk, over which he was currently bending. A chest full of small metal parts lay open, and several leather sheaths full of tools that went from simple to outlandish. Izel himself was staring down at the insides of a small bronze case through a handheld magnifying lens, delicately adjusting something with small pincers.

“Sit,” the tinker said without turning. “I am almost done.”

Tristan hopped onto his commode, which unlike the last was mercifully free of chest wrappings. Izel, tongue peeking out the corner of his mouth, pushed something into place that let out a small click and he straightened with a pleased look.

“Now, if I am not mistaken-”

He withdrew the pincers and closed the case, pressing on the button atop it. The quiet but audible sound of ticking needles was heard. Tristan’s eyes widened, for he had not recognized the piece from a distance.

“Already?” he asked.

The Izcalli put down the handheld magnifying glass and turned a smile on him, eyes ringed.

“I may have stayed up late,” Izel admitted. “It is a fascinating work – it is rare for Lierganen gearwork to impress me, but the artisan who made this was highly skilled. Vanesa, you said the name was?”

Tristan swallowed.

“Vanesa of Sacromonte,” he quietly agreed.

“I do not have the tools or pieces to replace the glass here,” Izel said, tapping the surface of the casing, “but the clockwork has been fixed and I should have the face in working order by evening’s end.”

His fingers clenched.

“Thank you,” Tristan said.

Izel dismissed the words with a wave.

“Any halfway decent tinker in Port Allazei could do the same,” he said, then grimaced. “Besides, I was a contributor to its wrecking. It is the least I can do.”

The least he could would have cost Tristan a tidy sum of gold coming from anyone else, the thief thought. There was a reason he had accepted, despite his misgivings, when Izel heard him carrying the scraps in a pouch and spontaneously offered.

“It wasn’t,” Tristan disagreed, “but hopefully this can serve as something of a salary.”

He produced a wrapped cloth, his second, and rose to offer it to Izel – who hastily rose to meet him halfway. The tinker tore open the wrapping and practically inhaled one of the three honeycakes, letting out a moan that had Tristan suppressing a snicker.

“Howw are theshe sho good?” Izel uttered, through a mouthful.

Tristan did not actually like them all that much, but it was always good for a laugh to watch the Izcalli massacre a plate of these. Izel swallowed, reaching for a second, then stopped himself.

“No,” he muttered. “Make them last.”

He put the pastries down on the desk.

“On the other hand,” Izel said, “it’d be a waste not to eat them while they’re still warm.”

So disappeared half of another honeycake, though Izel then guiltily glanced his way and set down the other half. He coughed into his fist.

“Would you like some?” the Izcalli reluctantly offered.

“Well,” Tristan smiled, “if you’re offering…”

He let them man despair for a good three seconds before sparing him. They chatted, for Izel was in a fine mood despite being under arrest. He was, Tristan suspected, relieved all the business with the Ivory Library was finally out of his hands.

“How is Cressida?” Izel finally asked.

“As she ever is,” Tristan replied.

He grimaced.

“She grows on you,” Izel assured him. “It just takes a while for her to pull the thorns.”

“That may be,” Tristan politely replied.

He cocked an eyebrow.

“Had any visitors since we last spoke?”

“Someone – I assume Xical – passed by this morning to slip an eerily well-inked depiction of me getting drawn and quartered under the door,” Izel shared.

Tristan closed his eyes and, with much effort, did not actually laugh.

“Bait is apparently a fine drawing hand,” he got out.

“That would explain it,” Izel drawled. “I’m guessing a senior Mask has arrived?”

“Officer Hage,” Tristan said. “Late last night.”

Izel nodded.

“I’ve already prepared my confession, though I expect we’ll be interrogated nonetheless,” he said.

Tristan eyed him, watching for deceit.

“I offered Tozi a deal,” he idly said.

Izel snorted.

“And then she tried to kill you,” he said. “By most standards, Tristan, that is considered declining the terms offered.”

“And for that, you killed her,” Tristan said. “Arguably you held up your end.”

Izel leaned back into his seat.

“It’s not that I don’t understand what you’re offering, Tristan,” he said. “But I’m not interested in buying a pardon with anyone’s blood, not even Tozi’s. That is the very sort of thinking that led me to obeying the Ivory Library in the first place.”

He gritted his teeth.

“It’s the very sort of thinking I enlisted to leave behind,” Izel said. “But then when you fear something you bring it with you everywhere, don’t you? My father told me that, once. And he is many things, but a fool is not one of them.”

“Confessing,” Tristan said, “will see you placed in Krypteia custody. Assuming you are not sold back to your enemies in Izcalli, you would be assigned to some dangerous wasteland at the edge of the world.”

Possibly Hell. Or the Someshwar’s border with the Desolation, which some argued was worse.

“I took oaths when I enlisted,” Izel gently said. “There is no arguing that I broke them.”

The thief hummed.

“I don’t care about the oaths,” he said.

Izel blinked.

“I, uh,” he said. “That is your prerogative.”

“It is,” Tristan agreed. “I am irked, Izel, because you are forgetting the most important part.”

“I am?”

“Indeed,” he nodded. “The Watch will get its due either way, but what about me? Am I not the most wounded party?”

Izel paused.

“I do not own much,” he said. “But once in custody I can will it to you to-”

“Paltry recompense,” Tristan said. “No, I’ll get my money’s worth out of you Coyac.”

He leaned in.

“Two years, at least.”

“I beg your pardon?” Izel said.

“Two years of tinker’s work,” Tristan said, then wagged his finger. “And don’t you think about shorting me on this. There’ll be no confession, else how are you to deliver?”

“Abrascal,” the other man said, tone disbelieving, “are you trying to bully me into joining the Thirteenth Brigade?”

Tristan smiled charmingly.

“That’s not important,” he said. “The real question is this-”

He leaned in, lowered his voice so Izel would have to do the same.

“Is it working?”

Izel’s face blanked for a moment, then he let out a startled laugh.

“It’s kind of you,” he said. “But your captain-”

Tristan reached into his pocket and slapped down the contents on the table. It was a folded paper.

“And this is?”

“Your transfer papers,” he said. “Signed by Captain Song Ren.”

Who had needed some talking into this, but less than he had figured would be needed. Izel had apparently tried to warn her of what was going on while they were both at Black House, which raised him in her esteem. The Izcalli paused.

“It would be trouble for you,” he said. “Khaimov detests me.”

“She holds you in contempt,” Tristan said, “because of what you did do.”

She was not a forgiving one, his Maryam. He rather liked it that way.

“She could set the contempt aside for the same reason,” he continued. “Unless, of course, scorn is too high a barrier for you to overcome.”

Izel swallowed.

“And Tredegar?”

“She’s developed something a sweet tooth for redemption, these days,” Tristan said. “Angharad Tredegar is not the kind of woman to look down on someone trying to do better.”

Not when she was still desperately trying to dig her way out of the trap she’d fallen into. That favor she’d asked of him was most revealing.

“It seems you’ve thought of everything,” Izel finally said.

There was a faint bitterness to the tone.

“I won’t force your hand,” Tristan said. “If you want to throw yourself on a pyre, Izel, I won’t stop you.”

He rose to his feet.

“But it won’t do me any good to watch you burn,” he said. “I don’t think it’d do anyone any good, really, except those you are inconvenient to. And I don’t consider myself one of them.”

He scanned Izel’s face, found it almost blank. The other man, he decided was not yet convinced.

“Think about it,” Tristan said. “Hage can wait.”

Izel did not answer until he was at the door.

“Why?”

Tristan turned, leaning his back against the door.

“Because you’re trying,” he quietly said. “Because you tried, because I think you’ll still be trying tomorrow. And the truth is I’ve done things I’m not proud of, Izel.”

His fingers tightened around the tile that wasn’t there.

“So I’d like to think that trying matters,” Tristan said.

And he left Izel Coyac to his silence. The door closed on the tinker’s heavy face, Tristan taking a breath to steady himself. The absence welcoming him was what gave it away.

Fortuna was not here, and there were only so many reasons she wouldn’t be.

“Walk with me.”

Hage’s face was expressionless, for the devil refrained from moving his shell into an expression. Tristan hid his unease and followed the old Mask, away from the guest wing. He did not bother to ask how much of that Hage had heard: devilkind had much finer senses than men, a door barely made a difference if they were close enough. The old devil led him through stairs and halls, Tristan making out their destination only a minute in, the gardens atop Black House. The view of the city, in the afternoon light, was a bleak one. A corpse with ragged hole in the chest.

Hage did not seem to mind, sitting on one of the benches. Tristan remained standing.

“So now I get to hear the verdict,” the thief said, forcing nonchalance.

“Consider this,” Hage said.

The devil waited a beat, folding his fingers.

“The Krypteia has, within the Watch, power and authority that in some ways trumps even that of the Conclave with little oversight but that which it consents to,” Hage said. “A Mask granted a commission by our own order has the right to order the detainment, interrogation and under some circumstances even the death of fellow watchmen with no consideration to rank or years of service. We are allowed to lie to our superiors, give false testimony before tribunals and with sufficient justification break most laws of the Watch.”

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Hage’s eyes found him.

“How does one check such men, Tristan?” he asked.

“You can’t,” he said. “Not really.”

Because the first thing the Masks would do was compromise any branch of the Watch meant to check them.

“Which means the burden of checking the Krypteia rests on the shoulders of the Krypteia,” Hage said. “An enterprise doomed to failure, should the order be monolithic.”

“So the order’s fractured,” Tristan quietly said. “And some pieces are looking at the others instead of the enemy.”

He frowned.

“And you’re part of the section that…”

“Winnows out the unsuitable,” Hage evenly said.

He shivered at the matter-of-fact tone.

“It is not a fair or clean process, blowing out the chaff,” the devil said. “But it is necessary. Making such provisions significantly cut down on abuses of power after we implemented them across the Krypteia.”

“You kill anyone who looks like they could turn into a problem down the line,” Tristan said. “Gods. So if I’d killed the entire Nineteenth, even if I found a way that didn’t break Watch rules…”

“I would have snapped your neck,” Hage said, not shying away from the truth in the slightest.

Tristan could respect the honesty, if nothing else.

“And Cressida?” he asked.

“She has one strike on her account,” the devil said. “This will be made known to her.”

“But you won’t kill her,” Tristan slowly said, “because she was doing it for gold, and you think she’d do less damage if she went bad after climbing up the ranks.”

“Greed is manageable,” Hage said. “It can be burned out, with the proper lessons. The propensity to systematically murder apparent threats when feeling cornered is not so salvageable.”

Tristan’s jaw clenched.

“Why don’t I get a strike?”

“Because Nerei taught you too well,” the devil said. “You are a skilled enough liar to hide instability unless confronted with genuine pressure – that is one of the reasons Asher allowed the Ivory Library to hound you so. It is, indeed, why we sent the Nineteenth to Asphodel knowing they were being leveraged to move against you.”

Tristan forced himself to calm, to consider the angles. And there were only so many reasons for the Krypteia to take such a hard line with him from the start.

“Abuela’s a winnower as well, isn’t she?” he asked. “That’s why I don’t get a strike. Because you think she taught me to see through the usual tripwires.”

“She has done so with some of her previous apprentices,” Hage said. “We now handle her pupils with particular care.”

“Lucky me,” Tristan bitterly said.

“Do not think yourself unique,” the devil said. “Did you think something like Scholomance, where students are initiated into the covenants holding our greatest secrets as a matter of fact instead of after years of observation, would ever be tolerated by the Krypteia without thorough vetting of those involved?”

He breathed in sharply.

“I’m not the only one getting tested,” Tristan said.

And didn’t that explain quite a few things?

“You will all be tested at one time or another,” Hage easily said. “But you, at least, have answered a question for me.”

“And what would that be?” Tristan asked.

“Is there anything of you that would not fit under the mask?” Hage said.

He swallowed.

“Is there?”

And the devil smiled, teeth and teeth and teeth as far as the eye could see.

“There are few among my kind who are my elder, Tristan,” Hage said. “Some argue that makes me of a different breed but I am a devil still, and always will be. All cages can be broken save that of my own nature.”

Silence held.

“But we try,” Hage softly said. “We do. And I’d like to think it matters, just the same as you.”

—

It had been a deliberate choice to have the ceremony on the edge of the Collegium, at the newly named Victory Square.

It’d once been a sprawling garden adjoining a row of expensive shops but the sinkhole had eaten a third of the garden, much of the rest sliding into the dark over the following days, and most the shops had burned down. Instead the space had become a large plaza of sorts, about the length of a street and made broader by bringing down some the remaining buildings. Thousands could squeeze in there now and as many in the adjoining streets, but as far as Song was concerned the impressive part was the wooden terrasse overlooking the square.

The brass framework delineating the Collegium, which had once held up its enormous panels of glass, had been used anew. The frame was thoroughly scaffolded so a tall wooden platform could be raised to tower over the gathered crowd in the square. A temporary structure, though Song suspected in time it would be turned into something more permanent. Regardless, its very existence was meant to be a statement: Tratheke might have been wounded, but from that injury the people of Asphodel could build new wonders.

Evander was not content with merely solidifying the position of House Palliades, he was seeding hope for the years to come.

“I found him. Second level, third room from the left.”

Song tore her gaze away from the square, turning to Tristan. The door to the balcony she was standing on had been left open and his footsteps were quiet, so she’d had no notion of his return. The Mask, despite her best efforts, still looked inexplicably wrinkled even wearing a freshly pressed formal uniform. The Malani tricorn he’d insisted on wearing against all advice was tucked under his arm.

“Guards?” Song asked.

“He wasn’t allowed to bring any in here,” Tristan said. “One attendant, currently making tea.”

Song’s brow rose. All of the guests of honor for the day’s ceremony were being hosted in what had once been a grand tailor’s shop, one of the capital’s finest dressmakers. Its large number of salons and fitting rooms, meant to receive wealthy patrons, had made it a natural fit to hold the souls the Lord Rector wanted to honor until it was time for them to join him on the terrasse.

What this shop didn’t have, though, was facilities to make tea. Had the ambassador’s attendant brought their own tea kettle? The thought seemed absurd.

“Then the only obstacle would be the lictors in the halls,” she said.

“They don’t seem to have instructions to stop us wandering around,” Tristan noted. “I asked Angharad to test the waters by visiting Lord Saon and they did not intervene.”

Song hummed. Angharad had mentioned getting along well with several of the younger scions of House Saon when she’d gone to the country, and along with House Pisenor those nobles had earned much acclaim by leading the charge in reinforcing the Lord Rector after the Three Risings. Given the… complicated position of House Eirenos at the moment and how House Iphine had been up to its neck in the ministerial coup, those two houses were poised to become the first of the valley lords.

Their presence at the ceremony meant that Evander recognized as much and wanted to publicly bind them to him. No doubt they’d each be tossed some of the Iphine lands as a reward while Evander kept the choicest cuts for House Palliades.

“Then I will head there directly,” Song made herself say.

“He locked his door,” Tristan said. “I’m guessing to avoid exactly that.”

Song’s lips thinned in anger. Then the gray-eyed man flourished his wrist with highly unnecessary theater, producing a small silver key.

“Alas,” Tristan smirked, “the lictors didn’t search the owner’s office when they commandeered this place. They didn’t find his private set of keys, which were helpfully numbered to match the doors.”

“I wonder if I should be concerned by the frequency at which I have begun to endorse your crimes,” Song noted, then inclined her head. “Thanks.”

“It’s nothing,” he dismissed. “I would probably have broken in out of curiosity anyhow.”

By which meant boredom, really, since Maryam was currently napping in the room behind them. A healthy precaution given that they would standing out there for at least half an hour and while her fever had broken she found it difficult to stay awake more than a few hours at a time, much less stand.

Song lightly touched his shoulder in thanks regardless, squaring her own before crossing the fitting room. She pretended not to hear Maryam’s snores resound from the sofa, Hooks curiously peeking out of her sister when she passed but not speaking in fear of waking her. Song nodded a goodbye, which was returned, and then she was out in the hall.

Nerves would not serve her, she reminded herself. Hand on the chisel.

There was a pair of lictors guarding the stairs but they said nothing as she passed. One was glaring, though – as was not infrequent from them these days. Word had spread of her drawing Evander down to the city on false pretenses, though opinions seemed split on whether she had done so to avoid his being nabbed by the coup or because she’d meant to sell him to the Yellow Earth before changing her mind at the last moment. You could tell who believed what from the dark looks easily enough.

There was another soldier upstairs, but she was on patrol. Song slowed her stride and let the lictor turn the corner before heading to the third door from the left. She slid in the key and turned, catching the surprise intake of breath within before she entered and closed the door behind her. The second floor did not have balconies, but it did have large windows of Tratheke glass, almost two thirds of a man’s height. They had been opened here, letting in the Glare, and Ambassador Guo stood before it as if framed by the light.

Tu Guo was a tall and stately man in his late fifties, whose mustache and long beard were deeply touched with gray. His old-fashioned hanfu was some of the most exquisite pieces of clothing Song had ever seen. It was not dripping in pearls and gold bangles, as was the fashion among the wealthy and tasteless. Instead every hem of the silken deep blue ensemble – jacket, skirts, the beizi overcoat – was embroidered with poetry in subtle silver thread. Even the hat he wore over his carefully styled hair, a black muslin cap with two oval flaps emerging from the sides, bore that same discreet mark.

Song recognized none of the writing, which likely meant he’d had one of the most fashionable poets of the Republics compose the verses for this very outfit. That, or he was confident enough in his own verses that he could use them without expecting mockery to ensue.

He was also looking rather displeased at her presence in this fitting room, which was not unexpected considering he had ignored even formal requests made through Brigadier Chilaca to meet with him. Not even the Thirteenth’s fine reputation on Asphodel was enough to make the likes of Song Ren someone a man in his position could afford to be acquainted with. A shame she would be forcing the matter. For him, anyway.

“Ambassador Guo,” she greeted in Cathayan.

She could see it in the way his face tensed ever so slightly, how he considered pretending not to see her before conceding to the reality that it would only make him look like a fool. Intelligent brown eyes were turned on her and the man inclined his head ever so slightly.

“Captain Song,” he said.

Captain Ren would have been a line too far, evidently, or even just using her full name.

“I have been meaning to speak with you, ambassador,” she smiled.

He did not smile back.

“I had heard this,” he said. “My duties of these last few weeks did not allow me time for private matters.”

“Duties?” she replied, cocking an eyebrow.

His face darkened. Tianxia had not covered itself in glory in this whole affair, which he well knew.

“As the Lord Rector of Asphodel was informed, captain, the embassy was unaware of this Ai’s evil plot,” he said. “While we acknowledge we have had contact with the local Yellow Earth sect in the past, it was then headed by a reasonable man – who was, we have since learned, murdered by this radical before she attempted this senseless violence.”

So they were pinning everything on Ai and hoping no one would find out the Asphodel sect had been in bed with this magnates’ uprising for years. Her brow rose even further.

“And the promises that this newborn ‘Republic of Asphodel’ would be supported by the fleets of Tianxia?”

“Lies, spoken by a crazed radical who sought to drag the Republics into war against the will of the people,” Ambassador Guo curtly said. “Tianxia has ever been a friend and ally to the Asphodel Rectorate, despite attempts by foreign powers to malign this fruitful relationship.”

Song idly wondered who was the foreign power most exploiting this blunder at the moment – was it Sacromonte, using it as a way to curtail Tianxi influence in what it still saw as its backyard, or the very Watch she served? It would be child’s play for Brigadier Chilaca to push for restrictions on the trade of aetheric engines with Tianxia after the Yellow Earth was caught backing a coup. The ambassador’s sole comfort must be that Malan was in an even worse position, since Ambassador Gule had been taken alive and revealed as a leading figure of the cult.

The tall man looked away.

“This unpleasant subject has put me in a black temper,” Ambassador Guo said. “You must allow me the time to compose myself before we are called to the ceremony.”