Chapter 8

“Lay them out, you fiend,” Tristan challenged. “You can’t possibly have picked up that many knaves twice in a r-”

Yayauhqui of the Twenty-Ninth Brigade, also known as Yaq, laid down his cards. First a knave of Clubs, then one of Cups and finally a third of Coins. The scarred Izcalli stretched out the reveal, obviously enjoying himself, and the moment the last knave hit the table uproarious laughter erupted along with Tristan’s loud imprecations. Maryam watched with half a smile, listening as the thief bemoaned how Yaq ‘didn’t even have the decency to cheat’ while robbing them blind.

“If I keep losing, I’ll have to dig into my tinkering funds,” Izel mourned, sliding his coppers across the table.

He rose and bent forward rather than extending his arm fully when doing so. Izel moved the bandaged limb as little as possible, and still occasionally winced when shifting in his seat pulled at his body. A shallow wound, the physician said, and Izel had been lucky enough the bullet ripped flesh but no muscle. Eyebrows were raised when the tinker refused poppy for the pain, but Maryam had not been among those surprised. Izcalli warrior societies tolerated the use of soporifics, but they looked down on the use of painkillers.

Angharad was the only one to have folded early this round and thus avoided being robbed, the Pereduri noblewoman doing the best of the players after Yaq. She had made a small but noticeable profit and still looked so genuinely baffled by this Maryam very much doubted she was using her contract.

The cards were picked up and Tristan began to shuffle, Maryam looking away. She could feel how Hooks itched to sit and play with them, but she had no taste for it personally. She was mostly busy keeping her foot from tapping, her teeth from gnawing at her lip. It had been at least twenty minutes since the sergeant told them of Song’s arrival, was that too long? Was it a bad sign? It was like an itch under her fingernails, how everything about keeping Izvoric out of shackles was in someone else’s hands.

Good hands, she told herself. Song would see it through, she would not let Maryam down.

Closing her eyes, she forced herself to breathe. In and out. Maryam leaned her head back against the wall. She had propped herself up against the wall opposite the entrance, drumming her fingers against her arms as she fought down the urge to keep glancing at the door. Surely the talks must be finished by now? The wood of her own fingers brushed harshly against her sleeve, grain catching against the cloth, and she angrily pushed up from the wall long enough to place her hands behind her back.

Sometimes she forgot about the prosthetics for hours, even a whole day. It then surprised her when she remembered she had lost those phalanges, and though she did not regret why the fresh pang of loss that came with every remembrance was… unpleasant. How long would it take, she wondered, before she stopped expecting her hand to be whole when she looked? She could only hope it was not as many years as she had lived before losing the fingers.

The door was suddenly wrenched open and in a heartbeat Maryam was entirely off the wall, shoulders tensing as she watched the Someshwari sergeant from earlier walk in. The man’s oiled-up curly beard shone in the lantern light as he cast them a disinterested gaze, clearing his throat before stepping aside to allow the person behind him to enter.

Song Ren, Maryam thought as she took in the other woman for the first time in over two months, looked exhausted. Maryam was something of a maven when it came to lackluster sleep and she doubted her Song had slept a whole night in weeks. Hers was the kind of tired that had settled deep in the bone, that could not be washed away with a good nap and tucking in early. The rest of the Thirteenth hastened to their feet, like children caught sneaking candied dates, and after a moment Yaq did as well.

“I thought about leaving you all in here,” Song noted, “but it isn’t my turn to cook tonight, and I don’t deserve to be punished.”

Maryam sought silver eyes and found them, her friend holding the gaze and giving a shallow nod. Relief flooded her. Of course Song had come through. She hated slavery as well, she wouldn’t let Maryam’s people get dragged back onto that ship to be beaten and cut and strung up. Exhaling, she felt a knot in her stomach loosen. They weren’t going to die. She was not going to fail them.

By the time her hands had ceased shaking, Song was thanking ‘Warrant Officer Yayauhqui’ for his aid, informing him there were no longer any demands on his time today and that she would be contacting his captain tomorrow to settle any remaining matters between their brigades. The tall Izcalli nodded back, still silent – though he was not mute, he had spoken a few words during the game – and was gone after trading a few firm handshakes.

Maryam was drawn out of her daze by a faint touch on her sleeve. Looking up, she found gray eyes and a smile waiting.

“See, Song had it in hand,” Tristan murmured. “They’ll be all right.”

Maryam nodded. She had known Song would do her best, of course, but the stakes… And Maryam was not all that conversant in the laws, Watch and otherwise, that might have applied to the matter. She had not known, not for sure, and uncertainty ever hewed closer to fear than hope.

“It will not have been for nothing,” she murmured back. “I must find out the butcher’s bill.”

Coin, favors, apologies? She would ask though not before Song was properly welcomed back. Her friend seemed on the ragged edge so Maryam kept it light, merely pulling her in for a short embrace, and by the time the rest of the Thirteenth was through with her the Tianxi seemed slightly less disheveled. She had missed them too.

“Come,” Song told them. “I need to wet my throat and the rest of you need to hear about what is happening.”

Maryam felt wretched, but she still had to speak up.

“Song, I must-”

“Your countrymen will be answering questions from harbor officers for a while yet,” her captain said. “We have time to spare for a cup of tea.”

Pushing down her irritation, Maryam nodded. It was a short, brisk walk to the Rainsparrow Hostel with none of them inclined to idle chatter given the serious look on Song’s face. The eating hall at the back of the hostel was open, its dusty drapes and moth-eaten tapestries a less than appetizing sight despite the smell of fresh bread filling the room. Tristan and Izel went to the kitchen counter, coming back with two pots and assorted cups while the rest of them settled at a long table near the corner.

They got a few curious looks, mostly from fresh faces. With all the new students coming into the town the Rainsparrow was filled to the brim again, so even its lackluster eating hall was half full at this time of the afternoon. Pots were poured out, Maryam taking a sniff of the tea and finding it must be the end of a batch. The drink smelled heavily of lemon, which the cooks of the Rainsparrow added to the large cauldron of tea they kept out back when the leaves at the bottom began to turn tasteless.

That Song did not even bother to sneer down at her cup before wetting her lips was a sign they were not yet out of the woods.

“The killing of the four soldiers was declared legitimate by Commander Salimata Bouare, the officer the garrison sent to adjudicate the matter,” Song told them. “There will be no consequence for their deaths, not even a fine.”

Maryam straightened in her seat, blowing at her steaming cup. Good news. Better than she had hoped for, but then blood money was not as common in these parts as she was used to. Song turned to Izel.

“The wound you suffered was also waved away, unfortunately,” she said. “There will be no reparations.”

“I had not planned on asking for any,” Izel shrugged, then winced.

He should have taken the poppy, Maryam thought. For someone who had fled from the likes of the Jaguar Society, Izel held a surprising amount of their customs in esteem.

“And my people?” Maryam asked.

“The Watch declined to pass judgement on the legality of the paper you made Morcant sign,” Song said, “but they also refuse to compel your countrymen to return to bondage.”

She breathed in. That was… well, Maryam had threatened the man before too many witnesses to have a right to hope for better than that, she supposed. Refusing to return her people was manumission in practice, anyhow. Slavery only existed so long as the Malani were there to enforce it, whatever their laws might say.

“Thank you,” she sincerely said.

“Don’t thank me too quickly,” Song replied with a grimace. “It nearly slipped through my fingers, would have if not for some unexpected help. Are any of you familiar with a girl by the name of Ishanvi Kapadia? She is Arthashastra Society, on the history track.”

Quick shakes of the head from Tristan and Angharad, all their gazes then lingering on Izel. He shook his head as well, after a moment.

“I will not claim to know every second-year Laurel, but I would hazard her to be a new face,” he said. “I can tell you Kapadia is a northern surname, common in the Raj of Dragada and the eastern end of the Towers Coast.”

Maryam only knew so much of the Imperial Someshwar’s lay, but she dimly recalled Dragada being one of the larger kingdoms inside it, situated to the northeast and sharing a border with both the ocean and the Desolation. Song hummed.

“Either way, Commander Salimara was inclined to simply nullify the contract and keep the Watch out of the matter until Ishanvi Kapadia provided a legal argument against it,” she said. “A favor is owed, and she intends to seek us out during the Misery Square gathering.”

“That leaves me some time to go digging,” Tristan idly said. “I’ll see what I can find.”

“I can ask around the College crowd as well,” Izel volunteered.

Song spared them a half-smile.

“I would appreciate it,” she said, then the smile went away. “There are further complications. The first is that while your countrymen might be no longer be slaves, Maryam, neither are they currently allowed to stay on Tolomontera.”

Maryam winced. She should have thought of that, given how tightly the Watch controlled who could actually enter the city beyond the harbor.

“Where are they meant to go?” she asked. “Dropping them off in some random Trebian port is good as killing them, Song.”

Or enslaving them again. All it would take was one word to the Morcant ship about the destination and its captain could sail there to appeal to the local rulers about taking back the ‘stolen property’.

“We have been granted a few days of grace, and it may be possible to have your people admitted to Tolomontera,” Song said. “I do not know how or for what, but I will be heading out to the Galleries to make inquiries as soon as I can spare the time.”

Maryam nodded, suppressing the spark of guilt at the thought of keeping an obviously exhausted Song working. No one else could enter the Galleries, and if there was anywhere in Allazei that would have answers it was the private library of the Stripes. Which left a smaller but no less pressing problem. Maryam cleared her throat.

“Until then, they will need a place for to sleep,” she quietly said. “I know it isn’t what we rent the Rainsparrow room for, but if I may ask-”

“Yes,” Izel immediately said.

Tristan waved the matter away, as if his agreement had been a sure thing, and Song gravely nodded. Only Angharad did not answer, startling when she realized Maryam was looking at her.

“Of course,” Angharad said, sounding faintly surprised at needing to be asked. “By freeing them they became our responsibility, it is our duty to provide hearth and protection.”

Maryam breathed out slowly, slumping into her seat. She passed a hand through her hair, hiding her face with her arm. What would she have done, if some of them refused? She didn’t know. Never before had the abysmal state of her finances been such a concern – she simply could not afford to support five people, not on the coin she still had. It wasn’t that she thought her friends would refuse, that she thought so little of them, just that they had the power to if they wanted. And powerlessness was always a fearful thing.

“Thank you,” she croaked out. “All of you.”

They were kind enough not to say anything about the redness around her eyes when she brought her arms down.

“The second complication,” Song continued, “is Nkosinathi Morcant himself.”

“Yes,” Angharad said, face hardening. “Given that the prominent house he comes from, his shameful behavior I witnessed was surprising.”

Maryam’s fingers clenched like a spasm, wood scratching against wood.

“There is nothing surprising about that,” she coldly said.

Hooks roiled on her shoulder, bleeding agreement out in the aether. Her sister might not recall home the way Maryam did, not exactly, but she remembered enough. Brown eyes found hers, Angharad suddenly looking wary. And Maryam was angry, just not at her.

“The Morcant, Angharad, are the worst of the slavers,” she hissed.

She forced herself to calm, at least enough she could speak without choking on her own spite.

“The first slavers that came with Malani ships bought slaves as slaves were sold by the markets. Then came those from the colony-towns, and they also took captures and prisoners.”

Warriors, criminals, vagrants. But only those who fought them, or those who dwelled on the territory they had built their colonies on. Maryam’s teeth ground at the thought.

“Last came the Morcant and we came to call them the zeljezari, the ironmen.”

Angharad listened, unblinking and still as stone.

“The Morcant didn’t care about the laws,” Maryam said. “Anyone’s laws. They took, take, children and kinsmen as they like, emptied entire fucking villages. If you melted down every iron shackle the Morcant brought across the sea, you could reforge the Broken Gates.”

The Pereduri sat stiff in her seat, and stiffly she nodded.

“I meant no offence, Maryam,” she said.

“You don’t offend me,” Maryam tiredly replied. “That the world would expect better of anyone wearing the gray seal on their clothes is what I cannot quite swallow. That by putting a sea between them and their evil they are known as a prominent house instead of the living curse that they are.”

She thought better of the word curse a heartbeat later, wincing, and found Song’s face blank. Their captain cleared her throat.

“Misdeeds aside, House Morcant of Port Cadwyn is one of the wealthiest houses in Peredur,” Song said.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Angharad snorted in derision, to everyone’s surprise. Song cocked an eyebrow at her, inviting an explanation.

“Well, I suppose it depends on how you measure wealth,” Angharad conceded. “By land and property, the Morcant do not even make it into the ten greatest houses of Peredur. All their wealth comes from trade.”

Maryam blinked. Where else was wealth supposed to come from? Volcesta had subsisted off its orchards and cattle, but it was the tolls on the high road trade that had filled her father’s coffers.

“That’s worse, Angharad,” Tristan quietly said. “I understand what you mean – trade comes and goes while land keeps – but being a trading house means the Morcant have their wealth in gold instead of holdings. They might be poorer than the houses you’re thinking of as a sum whole, but they might well have more coin at hand.”

Angharad cocked her head to the side, slowly nodding. It occurred to Maryam, then, that land in Malan must be entirely leaseholds. That owning it meant rent for nobles, instead of just an inheritance fee. It was not unheard of as a practice in the lowlands of her birth, just… greedy. The thought that even as she sat here Volcesta might have been turned into renting lands put a touch a frost to her voice as she spoke up.

“So they’re rich,” Maryam said. “That only gets you so far in Scholomance. In a few months coin in this town will be worth less than pouch carrying it.”

It might do work before that, admittedly, but not as much with second years. Those students had been taught that, come the later months of the school year, being owed a favor by another brigade would be worth more than a pocketful of gold.

“Rich is only half the issue,” Song said. “Nathi Morcant has a contract that allows him to heal.”

Maryam clenched like a fist.

“You’re sure?” she forced out.

Song nodded.

“And more,” she continued. “I could not get a full read, but the contract seems to be about changing flesh and not merely healing. It is done at the cost of drawing on someone else’s…”

She paused there, turning to another.

“Angharad, do you happen to know what ‘ubunjalo’ means?”

The dark-skinned noble looked surprised.

“Now that is an old-fashioned concept,” Angharad said. “The most accurate translation in Antigua would be ‘vital essence’, I would think. It is best understood as everything that makes a person a person, but the notion has fallen in disuse. I have never seen the word used outside the Madness of King Issay.”

One of the Great Works of the Kingdom of Malan, Maryam recalled, the nine books they made every child read during their four years of mandated schooling as the isikole. The last of them was about the High Queen’s unification of Malan, and she sometimes wondered if a tenth would one day be added to chronicle the bloody empire the Isles was forging across the oceans.

“It is what he draws to affect flesh,” Song told them. “I would need a longer look at his contract to understand the limitations and the price, but healing is already bad enough.”

“He will be rolling in favors, if he can serve as a second Lady Knit,” Maryam darkly agreed.

And favors, as she had so recently thought, were worth quite a lot in Scholomance.

“There will be limits to what he can take and distribute,” Izel said. “Even if the price exacted is steep, no contract would offer such power without constraints.”

“Agreed,” Tristan frowned. “Healing contracts are already rare, that he could do even more than that implies the god in question operates from a different angle.”

Song drummed her fingers against the table.