Chapter 9

They’d not left the campsite for half an hour before it got worse.

“We agreed to pool our men together, Ferranda,” Augusto Cerdan shouted. “You would go back on your word?”

“I gave no word,” Lady Ferranda Villazur evenly replied, “and go back on nothing. If you assumed, Cerdan, that is on your head alone.”

The eldest of the Cerdan brothers was the one barking the loudest but he was not the one Angharad was wary of. Twice now Remund had tried to catch Cozme Aflor’s eye, to give him a silent order, and only the retainer’s obstinate pretence he had not noticed was preventing that disaster in the making. Isabel had retreated behind her maids, wisely so, but the rest of the infanzones were at each other’s throats: Lady Ferranda and her hired huntsman Sanale standing on one side, the Cerdans and their retainers on the other.

The Cerdan valet, Gascon, had pulled a pistol out of his blue-and-red livery and his impressive moustache bristled with his masters’ anger. Lord Augusto had not drawn his sword, for all the red flush of his face, but his younger brother’s left hand was kept under his cloak and to Angharad’s eye the stance spoke of his holding either a pistol or a knife. Master Cozme, the real fighter of the lot, had pointedly refrained from reaching for a weapon but Lady Ferranda still kept a hand on the grip of the slender sword at her hip. She must be feeling the weight of the numbers arrayed against her.

“Turn on us now and we will remember it, Villazur,” Remund sneered. “It is all of your house that will feel the displeasure of the Cerdan.”

Angharad’s teeth clenched. That, she thought, was a step too far. By the open disgust on Song’s face and the blankness on Brun’s, she was not the only one to think as much. Lady Ferranda’s eyes went cold.

“Watch your tongue, you viperous brat,” she said. “If you threaten my kin again, I swear by the Manes there will be blood.”

Remund smiled, triumph in his eyes.

“See, I told you she was against us,” the Cerdan announced to all. “For all we know she was the one who killed that Tianxi peasant. What if she comes back to attack us in the night? We can’t afford to let her loose.”

Angharad had been reluctant to step in, for the affairs of the infanzones were theirs to settle, but when Remund’s claim was answered by the sound of Ferranda Villazur unsheathing her rapier she knew the time for such courtesy was past. She cleared her throat, shoulders tensing.

“You have made a grave accusation, Lord Remund,” Angharad stated. “Kindly either prove or withdraw it.”

The infanzon’s dark eyes swept the crowd, but as he did his face reddened. The Cerdan had made few friends and none now cared to back the youngest’s wild accusation. Remund tugged at his blue doublet’s high collar, nervousness seeping into his eyes as it sunk in he might be short of defenders.

“You are here at our sufferance, Tredegar,” he began. “You-”

Brun took a measured step closer to Angharad’s side, hand on his hatchet. The sight of it had Remund trailing off.

“I would like to hear your proof as well, Lord Remund,” Brun said.

The weight of Song’s silver eyes burned against the side of Angharad’s face for a long moment, before the Tianxi idly took a step closer to them both. She did not reach for her musket but the implication was clear.

“My brother spoke in anger and shamed himself,” Augusto Cerdan suddenly cut in. “He never meant to impugn Lady Ferranda’s reputation.”

Remund’s face twisted in fury, as much turned on his now-smiling brother as Angharad herself. She met his gaze, unimpressed. Though it was true that the company assembled at the beginning of the trial had ended, and so the oath not to do violence on one another as well, Lady Ferranda had given them no reason to bare steel.

“Do you withdraw your accusation, Remund?” the fair-haired Villazur bit out.

Movement to the side as Isabel strode past her maids, shaking her head.

“Of course he does, Ferranda, do not be silly,” Isabel said. “You know how men’s tempers are, he was only angered you would leave us so. I’m sure he is most sorry.”

A pause.

“Naturally,” Remund said, after a beat. “It is as Isabel says.”

And so, Angharad noted, he was spared from having to recant and apologize with his own words. Cleverly done, if Isabel’s intent was to spare him further humiliation, but the Pereduri’s lips thinned. One’s honour should not be left in another’s hands. The ploy reminded her all too much of the tales Mother had told her of the High Queen’s court, of courtiers confessing to the misdeeds of their izinduna patrons so that those hallowed personages’ honour would not be stained. It was a base sort of cleverness, one she had not expected of Isabel. She is only trying to keep the peace, Angharad decided. That is a laudable thing.

“Then we have nothing else to say to each other,” Lady Ferranda stiffly replied, sheathing her blade. “It is best we part ways swiftly.”

“If you prefer,” Augusto Cerdan shrugged. “A shame Remund’s manners were so poor as to drive you away.”

Angharad’s jaw clenched. Was there anything in all of Vesper that would have the brothers cease pricking one another? Ferranda bad curt goodbyes to her fellow infanzones, even to Isabel, and ignored their attendants entirely. She grew warmer only when coming over towards the others, kindly bidding farewell to Song and Brun before turning to Angharad herself.

“Your help was most appreciated, my lady,” Ferranda said, laying hand on her heart and bowing slightly.

Angharad was not familiar with the gesture but mimicked it easily enough.

“It was nothing,” she replied.

“It was not,” Ferranda firmly said, “and I will not forget it. I hope we may meet again come the Trial of Ruins and share a road for a time.”

“I look forward to it,” Angharad said, meaning every word, but cocked her heat to the side. “I mean no slight, but are you quite certain you two should set out alone?”

“I have long prepared for these trials, my lady,” the other woman said. “Believe me when I say I am certain indeed.”

“Then I will not wish you luck you ill need,” Angharad smiled, “but may the God’s blessing go with you.”

Ferranda looked startled.

“You are a Universalist?”

“As are most Pereduri,” Angharad agreed. “The Redeemers never made many converts among us.”

The faiths might have the same source and believe in the same Sleeping God, but the hardline beliefs of the Redeemers had always made her uncomfortable. Their insistence that Vesper was the test of the God and he gave neither blessing nor succour, that devils and hollows were inherent instruments of evil, struck her as wretched. The Universalist creed, that the Sleeping God had divided himself into all save devils and all would return to him when he woke to be judged for their deeds, felt like a kinder and deeper truth.

Not that a Sacromontan would know much of either creed. Their city was in the old heartlands of the Second Empire, the cradle of the Orthodoxy. The Lierganen had spread their faith far and wide, converting most of the known world, but since Malan had been only a distant province of the empire it had been spared the imposition of the imperial creed. Not that the Orthodoxy was so orthodox, these days. Tianxia and the Someshwar both claimed to be the seat of the faith since the fall of Tarteso, occasionally going to war over it.

“I should have guessed from the lack of haughty sermons,” Ferranda snorted, but her amusement soon faded.

It was replaced by a flicker of hesitation before the blonde’s expression firmed.

“A word of warning,” she spoke in a whisper. “Isabel has already lost what she came to this island for, and will now look to other prizes.”

“I do not understand,” Angharad frowned.

“You are not a choice she ever intends to make,” Lady Ferranda said, not unkindly.

Without further ceremony, the other woman offered her a nod and decisively broke away. Angharad was left trying not to gape, as much from her flirtation with Isabel having been caught on to as by how out of the black the warning was. And unnecessary. She hardly expected marriage out of a liaison that had yet to even begin and had not even found it in her to daydream of being joined in the Watch by the lovely infanzona. Isabel did not seem well-suited to such a life. No, their affair – should it bloom – would end with the trials and remain only a fond memory. It was kind of Lady Ferranda to try to protect her feelings, but she had no undue expectations to be wounded by. Angharad was still wrestling with the suddenness of it all when Song and Brun joined her.

“A very polite woman,” Brun said, glancing at the departing pair.

He sounded approving. Lady Ferranda and her hired man were heading east, Angharad saw, towards the road that supposedly led all the way to the mountains and the second trial awaiting within them. The Trial of Ruins, it was called. The Cerdans had several times implied it was some sort of maze.

“And clever,” Song mused. “She waited until everyone else was gone to part ways with us.”

Angharad glanced at her.

“You believe she wants others to think she is still with our group,” she slowly said.

“A lone pair would be vulnerable,” Song said. “But less so if no one knows they went off on their own.”

Vulnerable to who, Angharad could have asked, but she knew the answer. She simply did not want to consider it.

“Then you suspect, as she must, that the murderer did not act alone,” she murmured. “That there are those among us who would hunt other trial-takers.”

“I suspect the same,” Brun frankly said. “And while I have no proof, it occurs to me that Tupoc Xical was pleased our great company parted ways on such poor terms.”

“He also went hard after that man Tristan,” Song noted. “Not without grounds, but it did feed the fires just when they were beginning to cool.”

Angharad grimaced. She was not unaware she had acted poorly there, also casting the blame on the apprentice physician. It was only sensible that when an oath-breaking killing was had one should look at where honour had proved loosest, but she could admit to herself that was not the sole reason she’d spoken. It had been so deeply embarrassing, to find the man she’d thought a kind soul standing over a beaten woman with a debt collector’s weapon in hand. It’d felt like he had taken advantage of her, back on the ship, and wounded pride had moved her lips. Her father had always admonished her over lessons of law, saying that justice could spring only from clear mind and cold heart.

Would that she had listened to him, instead of laughing that she would find a wife to run Llanw Hall’s estate for her just as Mother had found a husband. She could not quite shake the Sacromontan’s sharp retort. You are attempting to do me violence right now, he had said, and had he been wrong? Angharad had not bared a blade but an accusation before the others was almost as dangerous. It gnawed at her, that while respecting the letter of her oath she might well have violated the spirit. And for wounded pride, of all things. She had felt guilty enough to accept when Isabel brought up the notion of keeping the physician in the fold.

“I added to the flames myself,” Angharad admitted. “It was ill-done, and I do not know if I owe him apology but there should be some redress.”

Another debt to mark, one of the many she seemed to be accruing these days. Like a drunken vagrant, she racked up accounts wherever she drifted to. What she would not give to be home again, where it had all made sense and her life had been a well-lit road ahead of her instead of the darkened trail she was now stumbling down.

“I would not say he’s earned so much,” Song said, “but that is your decision to make.”

Angharad sighed, forcing herself to set aside the pointless thoughts.

“Tupoc is dangerous,” she finally agreed. “He recruited fighters for a reason, and though I do not know whether he would hunt others outright I do not believe he would balk at violence should he meet us.”

“They went east, towards the woods,” Brun said. “Of all the groups we should be the least likely to run into his.”

True enough, as they were headed northwest towards the long aqueduct known as the High Road. For what Angharad did not yet know, as the infanzones had been tight-lipped about their plans, but she would soon learn. She had been told they were not far from the structure, a mere half hour of walk. Lady Ferranda’s departure and the tenor of it having left a pall on them all, at first the mood was grim when they set out on their journey again. Angharad took the vanguard with Cozme Aflor once more, leaving the back to Song and Gascon. Brun, she saw with a thread of amusement, was chatting with Isabel’s redheaded maid again. They seemed quite charmed by one another.

Isabel herself stood between the Cerdans, a pleasant smile on her face as the three conversed. Angharad could only wonder whether at how genuine it might be, given how much more sharply the brothers had begun sniping at each other since the beginning of the trial. She kept her eyes ahead, however, looking for threats as the light of the great lantern Cozme carried swept the grounds before them. Her companion at the front was not one for silences, so it was not long before he spoke up.

“Shame how it turned out in camp,” Cozme idly said. “We could have used them.”

“It does feel like our company’s ranks have grown thin,” she said. “I regret my hand in that.”

Cozme snorted.

“Don’t think it’s a reproach, Lady Tredegar,” the older man said. “I’m not sure that Tristan boy cut the other rat’s throat, but he was a little too slick for my tastes. Always up to something. I won’t mourn leaving him behind.”

The greying retainer sighed.

“Yong, now? That was a loss,” he said. “Wish I knew what made him leave.”

“He was a skilled marksman,” Angharad slowly agreed, “but why such esteem? You are a fair shot yourself.”

“You know that knot he had on top of his head?” Cozme said, gesturing towards the back of his own.

Angharad nodded.

“It’s the way men from Caishen do their hair when they go soldiering,” he said. “I’ve worked with some of them before and they’re hard men. some of the finest in Vesper.”

Angharad’s lessons on Tianxia had involved learning the Ten Republics by rote, but it took her a moment to place which one Caishen was.

“The city is near the borders with Izcalli and the Someshwar,” she said. “I was taught there is hardly a season there without skirmishing.”

“More than skirmishes, sometimes,” Cozme told her. “About twenty years ago the raj of Kurin decided he wanted to claim a slice of the lowlands, so Caishen mustered militia and mercenaries to turn him back. Only it turned into a rough stalemate, so a pack of Sunflower Lords led warbands over the border to attack both under banner of flower war.”

“That sounds…” Angharad began, looking for the right word. “Messy.”

“It was that,” Cozme grunted. “Bloody as all Hell too, and it took most a decade before the bleeding stopped.”

“Caishen won?” she asked.

“The Kurin troops shelled an old temple trying to push out the Izcalli, only they broke something they shouldn’t have and a horde of old gods came howling out,” he said. “They started killing everything so the Watch stepped in and told everyone to go home until they cleaned up the mess.”

It was for good reason that the blackcloaks were given the authority to force temporary truces under the Iscariot Accords, Angharad thought. Not even the most bloodthirsty of the Sunflower Lords wanted the devastation of the Succession Wars to come again, those ruinous days when entire kingdoms were swallowed up by the Gloam as the great powers fought tooth and nail to succeed Liergan’s hegemony.

“You believe this Yong fought in the conflict, then,” Angharad guessed.

“He has a veteran’s way about him and he’s in his forties,” Cozme replied. “I can’t be sure but I’d bet coin on it.”

Angharad saw no need to doubt her companion, their regular conversations having revealed that his fifty some years in Sacromonte left him learned in many matters. Not in the way a noble would be, a proper education, but in the manner of a skilled retainer. Useful knowledge, gathered on the ground.

“Sacromonte does seem to attract all sorts,” Angharad said. “You met these Caishen soldiers in the service of House Cerdan, I take it?”

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“I used to work under Lord Lorient, the boys’ uncle,” Cozme said, tone wistful.

He shook his head.

“Not Lord Cerdan himself, one of his younger brothers,” he elaborated. “He ran the house’s affairs in Feria District for a few years and we used hired hands there. The war in Caishen was just over, so the port was flush with penniless mercenaries come to the City for work.”

Angharad found herself approving of the Cerdan generosity in employing such luckless men, a reminder that the brothers were not the sum whole of House Cerdan. The eastern ports of the Isles often found themselves flush with destitute souls from Izcalli when one its constant wars went badly for a Sunflower Lord, but Malan did not treat the exiles as kindly. Most of them ended up press-ganged into the High Queen’s navy or used as labour for the great shipyards.

The two of them kept up lively talk throughout the walk, the noblewoman finding Master Cozme to be as pleasant company as ever. It was obvious the older man missed his days spent serving Lord Lorient and was hoping to return to the man’s service after the trials. Why he was no longer under Lorient Cerdan was something Cozme remained vague about, though Angharad suspected he had made a blunder of some kind. Joining the trials to protect the Cerdan brothers must have been his way of expiating the mistake, a worthy redress.

Honour was not the sole province of nobles, Angharad reminded herself.

Finding the High Road proved easy enough, near the end, for the structure loomed tall above the plains. At least thirty feet tall, the aqueduct was a long stretch of arches going into the distance – first through plains, and likely even through the distant woods beyond them. Perhaps, Angharad thought, all the way to the mountains. The stone was weather-worn and smooth, she saw as she approached, and though there was no trace of where it once would have carried water to rain must still gather atop it: at the foot of where the arches began, the ground was a mess of stinking mud. The noblewoman stopped at the edge, wrinkling her nose.

“First Empire work, do you think?” Brun asked, coming to stand by her side.