Maryam's nameless ship had sailed before.

It had made the journey from Asphodel to Tolomontera, and since been beached on different parts of the island. Yet on all those instances it had been sailed by a Watch crew, not her own. And while today was not the first time that the Orels took to the water – they'd gone fishing at the edge of Allazei Bay twice over the last week – this would be the first real journey undertaken by the Izvoric crew manning her ship.

And it began here, under her hand. Besides the wooden wheel in the glass captain's cabin was a lever of Tratheke brass that Maryam's fingers had closed around. It connected to a wheel inside a pedestal, and had three grades: Dead, Maintain, Rise. She tightened her grip, enjoying the coolness against her skin, but then held back a moment.

"Together?" she asked.

Her sister traced gratitude against the veil, and a hand emerged from her chest to settle over hers. Together they pushed up the lever. Out of Dead, through Maintain and into Rise. She felt a shiver go through the ship as the aether engine woke beneath her feet and the skimmer pushed off the docks as if moved by some invisible hand. It kept moving, and some part of her felt like she was flying – for she had not fallen, so what else could she be doing?

She let the ship gain speed, keeping a hand on the wheel, until a look to the side told her she was about as far out as Fort Seneca up on the heights. Then she slowly turned west degree by degree to follow along the edge of Port Allazei. She could see some of the others moving across the deck, and in the cabin above her was Old Horvat, but if she kept her eyes on the darkness it was easy to feel as if it were just the two of them and the sea.

"It feels strange," Hooks emerged to tell her, standing hidden in the dead angle of the cabin. "Like we are leaving a trail in the aether."

"Skimming the seas, empty and not," Maryam murmured thoughtfully.

In a few minutes she would have to adjust towards the north, so they might pass the shadowed silhouettes of Clinkercourt and then the mounds of the Nests as they sailed into Allazei's other bay, but they still had time.

For now, she moved the lever back down to Maintain and let the aether engine below go steady. This wasn't a race, and while she checked on the nautical charts with her sextant and longview – the Grand Orrery, being always lit and unmoving, made sighting quite easy around these parts – she had chosen a trip where there should be no real dangers. Unless they drifted much too close to the city, there wouldn't be so much as a reef or shallow anywhere near their route.

The excitement only faded so much even as the minutes stretched out, leaving her excitedly twitchy when there was a knock on the cabin door. Hooks was gone in a heartbeat, telling her who it was before she turned. Maryam gestured for her guest to enter, Silumko closing the door behind him with an admiring noise at the craftsmanship of it.

"My thanks for allowing me a look at the entrails," Silumko said. "Yours is a beautiful skimmer."

She dismissed the thanks with a wave. It had been an easy enough request to indulge, and since Izel was busy in the Workshop having someone with tinker training along on the first proper training run had been well worth letting Silumko sniff around belowdecks.

"Owning it has been a burden in some ways, but it promises to be an even greater boon," Maryam said. "The Tratheke shipbuilders were not halfhearted in their work."

"I would expect not," Silumko said. "Few shipbuilders outside the great powers ever get to bring to life Antediluvian designs, it must have been the honor of a lifetime."

She glanced at him in surprise.

"You don't think the design was Asphodelian?"

"To some small degree, perhaps, but it has all the telltale marks of an Antediluvian design built by their own tools," Silumko said.

Maryam's brow rose.

"Which are?"

"Your engine produces almost no heat and very little internal friction, which makes it suitable for long voyages in the way modern aether engines are not," he said.

"I expect being built mostly out of Tratheke brass also helps with that," she noted.

"Less than you might think," Silumko told her. "The largest hurdle in catching up to the First Empire isn't actually materials or theory, it's precision. More sophisticated aether engines require the kind of precision work modern tools are still incapable of, which limits how large we can make them without catastrophic rates of malfunction."

"The Republics build their own aether engines using modern tooling," she pointed out.

"And despite over a century of trying they've not been able to build skimmer warships," he replied. "They can't make engines large enough to carry cannons and soldiers in sufficient numbers. Their leading lights are trying to get around the limitation by disproving Makena's Theorem and making an engine whose capacity scales exponentially to the physical size, but they're not anywhere near succeeding."

He cleared his throat.

"Don't get me wrong, your own engine is no miracle child: it's larger yet less powerful than the average would be for an Antediluvian skimmer this size. I suspect the real draw of the design is engine efficiency – you could keep it running for days without downtime, if not weeks. Metaphorically speaking, your horse is built not for sprinting but endurance."

Maryam cocked her head to the side. She did not consider that trait a flaw, considering her ship would still outsail most everything not another skimmer when reaching top speed. Returning to Juska would be no small journey, so she would rather have a sturdy engine than one she could squeeze another ten knots out of.

"You seem to enjoy this sort of talk more than I expected," she admitted.

"For a Mask, you mean," Silumko said, leaning against the brass corner between glass walls.

Where Hooks had been not so long ago, before his presence chased her off.

"Considering your interests, I would expect you to have joined the Umuthi Society instead," Maryam said.

"My grounding in mechanics, aether and otherwise, is nowhere as broad as a tinker's would be," Silumko told her. "But there was never much of a choice for me, besides. It was not them who extended me the offer."

"The Krypteia lent you a hand back home," she guessed.

"My circumstances in Malan intersected with a Watch investigation," Silumko simply said.

No one came to Scholomance without having earned a few ghosts, Maryam knew. She knew better than to keep poking at his.

"I do not regret taking their offer, Khaimov," he told her, misreading the silence. "I am promised to necessary work. I expect Tristan's own recruitment was not so different from mine."

"The Masks do seem to like their boys with a few scores to settle," Maryam replied, confirming nothing.

"Like the Navigators prefer their initiates to have burned bridges behind them," he shrugged. "Your guild likes new blood without competing loyalties, while the Krypteia prefers pupils loyal to causes rather than to persons. It makes agents harder to suborn."

She blinked in surprise.

"Huh," she got out. "You're a lot more open about Mask going-ons than I'm used to."

"I'm not meant for the parts of the Krypteia that are supposed to stay out of sight," he shrugged. "I expect Tristan was, before the… incident."

"That's a word for that," Maryam amusedly said.

"Unexpected is another," Silumko said. "Never thought he had it in him. It'll be difficult to keep a low profile now, though I suppose given your brigade's tendencies it was something of a lost cause anyway."

"We've made too many waves too early in the year," Maryam acknowledged. "Though we've taken measures to calm that down."

He laughed, as if she had been joking, then paused when he realized she had not.

"Are you perhaps unaware," Silumko said, "that the Thirteenth is the only brigade to try attempting both the hunt and the delve? If you wanted to stay out of gossip, a tactical mistake was made."

We didn't have a choice, Maryam almost said, but bit her tongue. Better that people think them glory hounds rather than get a glimpse of their true troubles. Even nominally friendly captains might move to secure leverage over the Unluckies if they got a sniff of something usable – that was just the way the game was played, at Scholomance. And Silumko was no exception to that rule, no matter how friendly. Maryam cleared her throat.

"We'll be sailing to Rhodon Bay before turning back, feel free to stay on deck and take in the sights if you wish," she said.

"I'll endeavor to stay out of your crew's way," Silumko nodded.

Without need for a stronger hint he withdrew from the cabin, leaving Maryam to the wheel – she adjusted a degree to the north, then set the wheel and stepped away. Popping her head out, she found Bolic and caught his eye. A gesture had him coming her way.

"Take the wheel," she said. "I need to speak with Song."

"She just went belowdecks," he told her as he slipped in, taking the wheel without hesitation.

And why wouldn't he? The engine lever aside, the wheel was not all that different from any other ship's and he was a sailor by trade. The deck wasn't crowded – she spied Koval the Younger hiding in the empty gun turret, winking at him and getting a grin back – but it was alive, with Old Horvat seated as a lookout on the second level of the cabin while Koval the Elder stood near the prow. It felt good, to see the ship filled by something other than a hired Watch crew.

Maryam was almost reluctant to head down, though when she did Song was not difficult to find. The Navigator nearly tripped over her as she was coming out of the engine room.

"There you are," Maryam said. "What were you doing?"

"Making sure our Mask friend did not leave anything in the room," Song said. "As far as I can tell, he did not."

Maybe a more trusting woman would have told her captain there'd be no need for it. Maryam did not.

"Appreciated," she replied instead. "He's a friendly one, but he is a Mask."

"It is only reasonable to keep an eye on guests," Song said. "Did you need something?"

"We're less than ten minutes out from Rhodon Bay, I wanted to watch it come into view with you," she said.

"Angharad did describe it as beautiful," Song said, then flicked a glance towards upstairs. "This seems to have gone well."

"We're not back yet," Maryam grunted, then shook it off. "But yes. Another run like this, maybe two, and I think they'd be ready for a trip to Kofoni. After that…"

"Soriada and a real market town," Song completed. "It was a very clever idea to send them out trading, Maryam. Especially if you begin importing luxuries like tea and silk."

Both could be bought in Allazei, but for anything but the cheapest quality the prices were robbery. Even slightly less obvious robbery would see her land a tidy profit.

"It wasn't mine," she admitted. "Bolic brought it up first."

"The pirate," Song said, frowning. "And former smuggler, you said?"

A little rich of her to disapprove of piracy, Maryam thought, considering a great many Tianxi traders weren't above indulging in a spot of it out in the Pastel Sea.

"He's been warned off the idea of smuggling," Maryam told her. "Don't worry, I was… firm."

Hooks traced amusement against the veil.

"You will still need to keep an eye on him," Song opined. "He talks like a man used to being his own captain."

"Thankfully, I've got some of those to spare," Maryam steadily replied. "Come on, we've spent long enough down here."

It was a few more minutes before they were past the looming silhouettes of the crumbled warehouses now known as the Nests, but once they were the sight was breathtaking. Though there were waves, they were small enough that the Orrery above was perfectly reflected on the water. It was as if they were sailing through Port Allazei's whirling stars, and Maryam wished she could have trailed a hand through the gold sphere's reflection without falling overboard.

There was laughter at her side, and she turned to find an amused Song. Unless her friend had become a mind reader over the last few minutes, she saw no obvious reason for it.

"What is it?"

"I think," Song mused, "that Angharad is soon to ask you a favor. Best you start considering what you'll ask for it."

In the end, the surprise ended up being that not a damn thing went wrong.

She'd take it.

--

Angharad had intended to settle the matter on firstday, but she found that arranging the meeting was not unlike herding cats: it had to wait as far as terceday noon.

It had occurred to her, belatedly, that the courtesy she would extend to Lindiwe Sarru was in truth owed to everyone she had requested to join hands with her over the conquest of the Steel list. Shalini was long informed and she had addressed the matter with Salvador in private – and found him entirely indifferent at the change of the plans – so she could keep the meeting relatively small. The guest list was still far from insignificant: Musa Shange, Alizia Salas, Tall Bibek and of course Lindiwe.

The Crocodilian served well enough as a meeting place. It had good but affordable fare, so Angharad would be able to buy everyone a meal as an apology without digging too deep into her purse. Between new clothes, powder and equipment she had spent quite a bit of her savings lately. The gains from the forge had been needed for greater work.

She arrived a quarter hour early, expecting to be first but finding that Tall Bibek and Alizia Salas were already seated in a corner. Alizia was laughing quite a bit, leaning forward and tucking back her hair while guzzling down the mediocre house cider as if it were the elixir of long life. Bibek's eyes followed the curve of her neck every time she did.

Angharad swallowed a grin and went up to the counter to order, stretching out the process as long as she could. They were both still startled when she arrived with a large jug of the broadly acceptable wheat beer the tavern offered, having entirely failed to notice her approach even though she'd been in the room for the better part of ten minutes now.

"Angharad!" Bibek coughed into his hand. "Is it that time already?"

"Just about," she agreed.

His eyes flicked to the jug she'd brought.

"Beer," he said, a statement inflected like a question. "I've run out. I'll go order some."

He almost fled out of his seat. Angharad daintily sat across from Alizia, who had suddenly found the wall to be the most fascinating thing. Waiting until Tall Bibek was out of earshot, Angharad let out an airy giggle and tucked back her braids. Alizia flipped her the finger without missing a beat.

"Like you're one to talk, Tredegar," Alizia scathingly replied. "I've seen you around Miss Double Pistols."

She grabbed onto parts of her anatomy that were definitely not pistols as she said this. Angharad cocked an eyebrow, pouring herself a cup of beer as she rose above the petty insinuation that admittedly impressive double pistols were all it took to draw her interest.

"How… tall is he, do you think?" she instead wondered, which some unkind souls might interpret as retaliation.

"I will end you," Alizia swore.

"Does he make you feel like you could walk on air?" Angharad asked with a shit-eating grin.

Alizia groaned, as if physically wounded.

"I can't believe people find you charming," she complained.

"And yet," Angharad smugly said.

The other woman drained the rest of her cider, then frowned.

"Wait, scratch all that," she said. "I'm angry with you."

Angharad's brow rose.

"For the belated meeting?" she asked. "I would have held it yesterday, but neither Bibek nor Lindiwe were available."

"Not that," Alizia dismissed. "Guadalupe's still furious with you lot for costing us the Kang bounty, and she's not exactly wrong."

The hippogriff had been a bounty set by Professor Kang? Ah, Angharad thought. That explained why they had wanted to kill it without leaving a mark: Kang liked to stuff lemures and would probably have paid significantly more for a corpse without a visible wound. Admittedly, an adult hippogriff with its wings extended would have made an impressive sight down in the man's crypt. Not that the Thirteenth's presence had been the reason the hunt went wrong, as far as Angharad was concerned.

"Guadalupe de Tovar picked a fight with a hippogriff within earshot of a sleeping briarid," she flatly replied. "I expect that had we not been present the briarid would have fallen on the Second Brigade by complete surprise, and without a crippling wound to slow it down."

She let it hang implied what she thought the outcome of that fight would be.

"There's no guarantee it would have come after us if it weren't in a frenzy because of your fight," Alizia countered. "They're bullies by nature, they don't fight peer opponents unless they can avoid it."

"I would dispute that a hippogriff is a peer opponent," Angharad frowned. "Agile and sharp-clawed it might be but the briarid can kill with a single good blow. Regardless, it is a lemure. A single shout by a human throat would have been enough to incur its attention."

"You really believe that," Alizia said, studying her face.

"I do," Angharad firmly replied. "I do not expect thanks, but neither will I shoulder blame for a mess I do not believe to have been of our making."

The other woman grimaced.

"I don't think you're right," Alizia said, then raised a hand to forestall answer, "but maybe you're not wrong either. Look, either way it's bad blood between our brigades. I'd rather bleed out the humors before it sours the flesh for good."

Angharad diplomatically decided to keep her opinions about Lierganen medicine to herself. At least Alizia hadn't involved leeches in the metaphor, which was more than some cutters could claim.

"I am listening."

"Throw my captain a bone," Alizia suggested. "You and your crew have been cooking up something, the entire camp knows it. It's not like moving in all those barrels was subtle."

"We have a plan in the works," Angharad acknowledged.

"Cut us in, whatever it is," Alizia said. "Nothing clears the slate better than a common victory."

Agreement was halfway to Angharad's lips before she paused. She looked at Alizia properly then, not as she would a comrade but as she would study a fellow lady on a society evening. She read the expectant cast of Alizia Salas' body, how the Lierganen thought agreement was a given. How the conversation, after its sudden turn, had not exactly felt rehearsed but… aimed, perhaps.

And she would not say she knew Alizia all that well, but the other woman had never struck her as an intriguer. Perhaps because she wasn't, and while the tactics here might be all Alizia Salas the plan was Guadalupe de Tovar's.

"That does not seem unreasonable," Angharad said.

"But," Alizia said, eyes narrowing.

Angharad spared a silent apology to Tristan for what she was about to do.

"You might be aware," she delicately said, "that one of my comrades is having a difficult week."

"Shit," Alizia muttered. "You think your Mask would…"

She mimed a shot, and then pouring from a vial. That one decision, Angharad thought, would be haunting Tristan for years to come. She could sympathize.

"I think agreeing to your request before consulting my companions would be unwise," Angharad said. "But I will bring the proposal to them, and we are looking for blades."

Alizia glanced back, finding that Bibek was making his way back with a jug, and slowly nodded.

"Let's talk again later," she said. "It can wait."

Angharad simply inclined her head in agreement. Tall Bibek had barely poured himself a cup by the time the others strolled in. Musa and Lindiwe made for a striking pair, she thought, though their friendliness was of the politely distant sort. Lindiwe's brigade, the Tenth, was stacked with legacy students from free companies and closely allied to the Ninth's foremost rivals. They came to the table after a small detour to the counter, bearing a carafe of drinkable Tolomontera wine and a jug of the most expensive brew the Crocodilian sold. Some sort of Izcalli maize beer.

The ensuing round of greetings was amiable, as was only to be expected. Meetings with all of them present had few precedents, but as the heads of some of the leading slaying crews of the Acallar they'd all had dealings with one another. Avoiding stepping on each other's toes over Steel list targets had been common sense, as was trading spars and tactics during the training days.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Angharad herself had found her hand-to-hand much improved from regular sparring with Tall Bibek. As a former votary he'd been trained to fight as bahjanh, a barehanded fighter, to avoid some sort of religious proscription. There was much to learn from a man expected to face swords and spears with only his fists and she rather hoped to continue the arrangement going forward.

In the present, Angharad flagged the server and made it clear the meal was on her before someone else could beat her to the gesture. The man disappeared back into the kitchen with the orders within a minute. Even so early in the day the Crocodilian ran briskly, so it should not take long. After everyone settled down with their drinks, Angharad cleared her throat and claimed their attention. She had, after all, been the one to call for the meeting.

"I expect most of you already know what I must say, but it should be said nonetheless," she said. "While I sought to gather all here to organize a plan to clear the Steel list, the situation has changed."

"Misery Square must be given answer," Musa flatly agreed.

There was a rumble of approval from Alizia, but little from the others. Bibek's brigade had chosen to pursue the exploration instead, while Lindiwe's own brigade has abstained from both enterprises. It was the latter whose face darkened at what Angharad yet to say, though she must have known it was coming.

"So you're calling it quits," Lindiwe Sarru harshly said. "Not even bothering with a token effort."

She had never been going to take that well. One of the dead was from her slaying crew, and if the other leading forces of their year stopped going after Steel list lemures to focus on something else then it was all but certain the Acallar would not be fed enough to bring them back.

"I have little choice in the matter," Angharad said. "A complication come from my possession by a mara has seen the Marshal temporarily bar me from the returning to the Acallar."

That earned her a few curious looks, and one difficult to parse from Lindiwe, but thankfully it was not usually considered acceptable table conversation to ask someone about the wounds in their souls.

"I still endorse the idea in principle," Tall Bibek noted. "We can return to it once our current business has been settled."

"And how long will that take?" Lindiwe challenged. "As I hear it, the hunt is stalling while the exploration was predicted by Colonel Cao to be the work of months. If all your crews turn to Flint and Iron fights the glory offered up won't make a dent, not quickly enough to save the next heads on the chopping block."

"Those fellows did die, Sarru," Alizia said. "It is praiseworthy to seek to bring them back, but hardly owed. Steel list hunts are not a trifling matter, and we are not your workhorses in the quest to undo old mistakes."

"You embraced a greater risk than a Steel hunt, Alizia," Lindiwe retorted. "The dantesvara could kill half the creatures on that list without batting an eye. And for what prize, an early test and a pat on the back? It is choosing convenience over the life of fellow Skiritai."

Angharad's fingers clenched under the table, because in truth she agreed. The trouble was that Lindiwe was the only one here to have lost someone from their crew, and she was not presenting her case with an eye to convincing the others. She wasn't trying to, either. Maybe she thought it a lost cause, the Pereduri thought, and so had not even bothered to try. Angharad was not sure she was wrong.

No one had come here today interested in changing their mind.

"-my sympathies, but we are cabalists as well as Militants," Tall Bibek said. "My duty is to the Eighth before it is to the dead – there is no way to bring any of them back should they fall."

"And how would like the sound of that song, Bibek, if it was one of yours on the line?" Lindiwe bit out.

"I would hate it," he replied. "As I expect you do. But the Wheel spins without pause or mercy and we are all carried along. I will hold no grudge over the same answer if our situations come to be reversed."

"We are not a militia," Musa Shange lightly added. "If you want to mobilize the strength of guildsmen for your purposes, Sarru, make an offer. Otherwise all you are doing is begging with a sneer."

The look on Lindiwe's face was positively murderous, so Angharad cleared her throat again before the situation could get out of hand. She reached below the table, to the satchel she had brought, and set it down on the table to some interested looks.

"I spent much of the break planning ways to kill the creatures of the Steel list," Angharad said. "Though I am not well placed to use what I gathered, I can at least pass it on to those who are."

She removed the anatomy scrolls and her journal of notes from the bag, putting them on the table and meeting Lindiwe's gaze straight.

"I wish I had more to offer," she said.

The other woman's stare dipped between her and the papers, anger and practicality warring across her face. Anger won.

"I take no alms from you, Tredegar," she said. "Salas has all the faith of Liergan's bastard heirs and a Shange will be a Shange, but I expected better from you at least."

"I have told you-" Angharad stiffly began.

"Talk is talk," Lindiwe said. "Your choices reveal the truth of you, despite the way you put on a show of virtue. You-"

She was interrupted by the return of the server – one of the owner's kinsmen – and of a cook from the kitchen, carrying various plates and bowls. Lindiwe's ordered soup was the first set down, but she sneered and pushed away her chair to rise to her feet.

"I have lost my appetite," she said, and walked away without another word.

The pair carrying plates traded awkward looks, but set down the remaining food anyway and excused themselves as quickly as they could without looking unseemly. The remaining Skiritai held silent for a moment, Lindiwe's angry departure yet ringing loud, then Alizia suddenly flicked Bibek's arm.

"Why didn't you get a vaguely bigoted insult?" she complained.

"It's tricky, insulting the Someshwar," Tall Bibek told her. "Landing such a blow would require a majority of the nation to agree we are all Someshwari for the full length of a conversation, and if you ever manage that we'll crown you maharana."

With the ice broken, chatter resumed. Musa politely asked if he could have a look at her notes and she acceded, seeing no reason to refuse. He carefully paged through, brow rising as he did.

"You were thorough," Musa said. "Most suggested tactics seem sensible to me, though perhaps overly varied."

"No single crew would have the means to carry them out," Angharad agreed. "There is a reason I reached out to you all."

"Sarru will get over it," Alizia assured her. "She's just angry she can't bully us all into doing her a favor."

Bibek sipped at his ale.

"Much of her anger, I expect, comes from having had a solution to her troubles dangled before her and then taken away," he said. "All while she is powerless to prevent it."

Musa snorted, smirking around his cup of maize beer.

"Well, that and that," he said, gesturing at Angharad as he repeated the word.

"Pardon?" she blinked.

"Got any plans after this, Tredegar?" Alizia grinned. "That's a flattering shirt bundled inside that jerkin. Very strategic ruffles."

"I recognize the coat, but is that new hose?" Bibek asked.

"Silk stockings, too," Musa said still smirking. "How is dear Shalini, these days?"

Angharad sipped at her ale, resisting the urge to pull her coat closer together. She did not owe these hyenas an answer. And while she owned nicer clothes, the coat had felt like the right choice since when she'd first met Shalini she had been wearing it. The rest had merely been picked to draw the eye to the right places.

"How is the fish, Bibek?" she asked. "It looks good."

And like hyenas they all cackled away at her.

Their group did not rush the meal but neither did they order a second round of drinks, and Angharad was not quite distracted enough by her afternoon plans to miss how Bibek suddenly developed a need to visit one of the nice Templeward Street bakeries after Alizia mentioned intending a visit to the clockwork shop there to get her watch looked at. Angharad liked to think she was above petty retaliation, and that she did not refrain from pointing this out merely because she wanted to get somewhere early.

Though she did.

Within minutes Angharad was waiting by the door of the Rainsparrow, idling away with watchful eyes, and she smiled when she caught sight of Shalini turning the corner. She was early too, and quite the sight in those flattering pale orange skirts Angharad had only seen her in the once before. She had not paired them with a cloak, this time, but some manner of elegant shawl. Angharad met her halfway and a moment was spared for them to look each other up, both stares lingering.

"Mistress Goel," she lightly said. "Good afternoon."

"Lady Tredegar," Shalini playfully replied. "Am I to finally find out the shape of my afternoon?"

Angharad smiled, offering her arm, and was soon rewarded with a warm armful of gunslinger for her courtesy.

"Did you know," she said, "that the waters of Rhodon Bay at this time of the day reflect the Orrery so perfectly one can map the stars on the water's surface?"

Shalini's brow rose.

"I did not," she said. "How do you? I didn't think any of us had made it so close to the Old Canals yet."

"Not on foot," Angharad agreed. "But I've acquaintances of means. Come, let me show you what Allazei can look like when we can spare the time to find it lovely."

And she gently tugged Shalini towards the docks and the waiting ship there. The impressed look on her companion's face had her patting herself on the back for the idea – this was absolutely worth owing Maryam a favor for.

--

The streets of Port Allazei felt a little more like home, now, and that was not a compliment.

Tristan had walked the streets and alleys of the Murk knowing that safety was set in the balance's swing: did he look easy to rob, wealthy enough to be worth the risk? Had one of the Trench press-gangs raised their fees enough that wearing a knife was no longer enough deterrent from a grab, did that coterie tough like the look of his hat enough to risk demanding it? The Murk was not anarchy, these threats were not everywhere always, but they could always be there. Even on the most finely lit of streets, there was always a chance.

And now Port Allazei was beginning to have that same reek to it. Because now some people knew Tristan Abrascal by sight, and not even his tricorn was enough to hide that distinctive golden streak in his hair completely. He had a recognizable mark and a reputation, as well as a brigade hunting him: twice this week he had caught sight of one of the Nineteenth following him. So far always when he had the Thirteenth along, but he did not have them with him now.

Yet there was no helping it: it was fourthday already, so tomorrow he would be leaving for Lamb Hill again. If Tristan was to get his work in town done, it must be tonight.

He went carefully about it. Had himself seen on Regnant Avenue, sniffing around some of the weapon shops, then disappeared in an alley and stayed out of sight while heading where he really needed to go. He had an address, and he'd cased the place twice already. He just needed to pull the trigger and break in. Yet as he moved eastward uneasiness stayed with him like a warm breath against the back of his neck, and Tristan had not lived this long by ignoring his instincts.

Once he'd reached the warehouses east of the docks, not so far from where he had once tried to sneak into Lord Asher's supposed room, he took a sudden hard right and climbed over an alley wall. He landed softly on the other side, slipping through a ruin to climb up the side of a crumbled roof and press himself down against the worn tiles. He went still, softly blowing out his breath and holding it while he cocked his ear.

Soft footsteps echoed in the alley he'd just climbed out of. One?

"He noticed."

A woman's voice. Izcalli accent.

"He is Krypteia," a man replied.

Lierganen, he assessed. He could only hazard a guess as from where, the accent was too mild. Not Sacromonte.

"I bet he's hiding somewhere close," the Izcalli said. "It's what serfs do when caught running, bury their heads and hope the storm rolls right past them."

His stomach clenched. If they were methodical about it, the pair would find him. It was just a matter of time. He'd not had long to pick his perch, it was not all that deeply hidden. He had to move, to find an angle and- there was a faint caw in the distance. His hunters paused and he tensed like a coil as the flap of wings neared. Tristan almost choked at the sight of what was approaching, for there was no mistaking that bird. Too-huge and touched with white, Sakkas landed atop the roof barely an inch away from Tristan's head, peering down into the alley.

"Ana," the Lierganen slowly said. "Is it me, or is that bird looking at us?"

Someone spat.

"It looks like the one described in the papers," the Izcalli said. "The one their northerner witch rides to see through its eyes and feed on cats."

To what now? Where would they even – Cressida. Manes, if she was going to sell partly falsified dossiers on the Unluckies she could at least make the misinformation less unflattering. It had been Mephistofeline trying to eat Sakkas, not the other way around, and what had Maryam done to earn this?

"Then they are tracking us," the Lierganen grunted out. "Either he's got reinforcements on the way or he's already slipped away. Either way we have to pull back."

Sakkas squawked at them plaintively. A beat passed.

"Should we… feed it?" the Izcalli woman asked.

"What? Why?"

"I don't want it to eat a fucking cat, Valantin," she defensively replied. "I like cats!"

"That's not- don't believe everything you hear, Anayeli," Valantin said. "The witch doesn't really eat cats."

A pause.

"We should feed it just in case," Anayeli seriously said.

Tristan listened as the Izcalli was dragged away by the other, complaining, and quietly exhaled. Shit. That'd been close. Unless he was gravely mistaken, these two had been Anayeli of Teskatlan and Valantin Mercador. Two of the remaining members of the Nineteenth, and they had snuck up on him well enough he'd barely even noticed. If Sakkas' arrival had not distracted them, they might well have found him. He let out a soft, relieved curse and stroked the great magpie's feathers. He warbled in approval.

"I'll get you a bowl of blueberries," he promised. "Two, even."

He sagged back against the roof. It was too risky to make an attempt on Commander Quenmach's home tonight – there was no guarantee these two were the only members of the Nineteenth Brigade out and about, or that he'd make it out unharmed again if they caught his scent a second time. No, best to withdraw back to the cottage. There was always next week.

At least the slaughterhouse around Lamb Hill was making the trip up Arsay Avenue safer, drawing in lemures by the shovelful as it was. Blowing out a breath, Tristan rose and-

Sakkas took flight, which was not unusual, but how the magpie stopped two rooftops away and warbled again was. Evidently the bird wanted to be followed, and Tristan did owe him one. He went along on foot, careful to stay out of sight, and found himself guided towards the seawall. A crumbled section of it, with a bench overlooking the sea and what he suspected Sakkas had truly wanted him to find: the girl sitting on it.

Even in the half-shadow cast by the warehouses he recognized her: the braid under a net was distinctive, as were the glasses. Ishanvi Kapadia, Song's tagalong on the delve who wanted to elbow her way into the Thirteenth. What was she doing here alone at this time of the evening? Wondering what it was about her that interested Sakkas, he silently approached – from behind and the left, at a slight angle. Which was how he saw it.

The pistol was on the bench besides her, and Kapadia was Not Looking at it in that way you only could when the awareness of an object was branded into you. She was staring out into the dark with red-rimmed eyes under the spectacles, like someone trying to muster up their nerve. Well, shit. That was… The temptation was there to walk away, none of this was his business, but the girl had done Maryam a good turn. A good turn that'd become a rope around his neck, but that wasn't on her was it?

So he approached.

Some believed that sneaking was simply a matter of moving slowly and carefully, but that was the amateur's take – a snail's pace minimized noise and movement, but it was also rolling the dice that the target's attention would remain away from you the whole time. People were not statues. No, the trick was to move up to the very boundary of the rapidity that drew the eye and stick to it, something that had to be learned through practice.

Not that Tristan would have needed to dust off his best to sneak up on Ishanvi Kapadia at the moment, the girl was halfway into a trance.

Once he was close up and behind, keeping an eye on her shoulders for movement, it was just a matter of sleight of hand. Slap the right side of the bench, causing her to twitch up in startlement and as she turned right he idly snatched the pistol with his left hand while she looked up into his winning smile.

"Those seaside benches a prime brooding ground," he told her as he hid the gun behind his back, leaning against the back of the bench. "Good on you for finding out so early in Scholomance tenure, you're ahead of the curve."

Kapadia blinked at him through her glasses.

"You're Tristan Abrascal," Ishanvi slowly said. "From the Thirteenth."

He used the cover of her speaking to undo the cocking of the gun, then discreetly angled the pistol to pour the ball into his palm.

"Sacromonte, in fact, but I am a member of the Thirteenth Brigade," he casually replied, tucking away the lead ball under pretense of adjusting his cloak while pouring the powder onto the ground.

The angle he'd picked was uncomfortable for her, forcing her to crane her neck while looking up at him, so while she turned right to do so more comfortably he slid behind her to the left and during that moment where she had to reverse course dropped onto the bench besides her. In half a beat she realized he should be sitting on her gun, at which point he smiled pleasantly and handed it to her.

"Bad habit to leave that out," he told her. "So, Maryam tells me you're up to things unwise."

As kind a word as could be mustered for someone having gone into the Lugar Vacio. Interesting, though, that Song and Maryam thought her largely recovered from the experience and now here she was as the edge of the city demonstrating very much the opposite. What had happened? Kapadia cleared her throat.

"Well met," she said, straightening and pitching her voice in the Arthashastra cadence. "I have heard-"

"I admire a good workover, Kapadia, I really do," Tristan told her. "But that you're trying the Laurel diplomat handbook on me right now is impressive only in the worst of ways."

The girl stilled.

"I'm not sure what you're implying," she said.

He put a finger gun to his temple, shot.

"Never seen someone blow their brains out before," Tristan idly told her. "Bit too much of a rich man's death for the Murk. Mostly it was hangings we got, but those can get… messy if you don't know what you're doing. The clever ones went for rat poison."

It was one of those lovely Sacromonte ironies. Rat poison was sold cheap in the right shops, because the infanzones wanted to keep the vermin numbers under control so they wouldn't spill out into their part of the city. And the poison did kill rats, in the end. Tristan suspected the nobles cared little what kind it got rid of.

Ishanvi Kapadia sat stiff as a board, jaw clenched.

"You mistake me, Abrascal," she said. "I-"

"You're ashamed," he said, leaning back into the bench. "Don't bother. If you're dead in an hour, how could what I think of you possibly matter? Shame's for the living."

"I wasn't going to kill myself," Ishanvi hissed. "I was just- fuck off, Abrascal. I don't even know you, why would I want to talk to you about this?"

Ah, already much better than the Laurel treatment. Zenzele got away with it because of Malani manners, but the girl had earned no such tolerance from him.

"I'm a marginally better listener than the barrel of your gun," he told her.

"It was just a thought," Kapadia insisted. "I wasn't really going to do it."

And she believed that, he thought. Or at least believed that she believed that. If only the facts agreed.

"Then why did you go somewhere no one would be able to stop you if you did it?" he asked.

She stopped, swallowed. He saw it sink in that she had gone to an isolated place with a loaded gun, for reasons that must be hard to justify now that she was truly thinking about them.

"I," she said, then licked her lips. "I wasn't."

That last assertion almost bore a question mark, by the end, and it was hardly more than a whisper. Tristan looked out at sea, let a moment pass as Ishanvi Kapadia's eyes turned red and she bit at the inside of her cheek like she wanted to tear a chunk out. He'd never seen someone hang onto a sob by biting down on it before. After ten seconds, he judged she should be past acknowledgement and beginning to spiral. Now to start up again.

"You went to the Lugar Vacio, last week," Tristan said. "Or one of the others."

"The Carcel Abierta," she croaked out. "They told me it's the easiest."

"The greed room," he said, then whistled low. "No one's tried it in our year. It offers everything you want, right? Its game is to make it so that you never want to leave, so you try to sever your own rope."

The Open Gaol, a prison without a lock because it did not need one.

"Every stray desire granted," Ishanvi said. "Books, power, sex, money. It builds a story of a life where you get it all, and you know that if you leave it'll all be lost forever."

While Tristan would not have put books first on that list, he could respect that sex had only come in third. Much better than the other way around.

"Sounds harrowing," he said. "But you don't sound all that broken up about it."

As Song and Maryam had said. Rough at the delve meeting, but composed again when they set out to truly explore.

"Everything felt cheap and scarce and… not enough," Ishanvi said, biting her lip, "but it faded with time. I have more memory of lack than plenty."

She swallowed.

"And it went well, so I knew I could handle another."

Oh, Manes. Tristan looked up at the sky, then sighed. It had itched away at him, the question of how someone might be able to skip a year of Scholomance. What would make up for losing a boon, the yield of a god's morsel? Now he knew: brute forcing the equivalent. Going through every horror pit nestled in the belly of Scholomance, every room like the Lugar Vacio, until your soul was even more finely tempered than if you had spent a year there.

"Your promotion track," he said. "It requires you doing all the rooms, doesn't it?"

Song hadn't been able to find the records of that track when she went looking, later learning they got pulled out of the Galleries library on the same day Ishanvi Kapadia had her permission slip signed by the garrison. Now he understood why Colonel Cao would have given that order.

"Four," Ishanvi murmured. "Only four."

Only. This fucking fool.

"When?"

"Yesterday," Ishanvi admitted, eyes closed.

"Which one?" he gently asked.

She hesitated.

"After the Carcel Abierta," Ishanvi said, "I thought I would be prepared. That the similarity would make it easier."

It took him a second to parse the implication.

"You went to the joy room," Tristan evenly said.

"It made sense," Ishanvi insisted. "What is joy, if not desires fulfilled? My soul was already tempered to that sort of taint, it should have been the easiest for me to weather."

Professor Sasan had once told them that the Jardin Palido, the joy room, had gone out of use because too many students had killed themselves after using it. Say what you would about Ishanvi Kapadia, he thought, but her hubris was the match of any Unluckies'.

"What was it like?" he made himself ask.

A long silence answered him.

"Not like the Carcel at all," she whispered. "The Carcel was… weight. It was like not wanting to get up from the table because the banquet will be finished the moment you do. Even when you get too full you want to stay, even when you're about to burst. But you can tell, deep down, that it's false. Because that is the ploy, the knowledge that if you wake from the dream it all disappears."

Ishanvi swallowed. Her eyes were open and wide now, the white showing, and she looked flushed.

"Sometimes I'm not sure if the Jardin was real and this is a nightmare," she whispered hoarsely. "Is this a fear room, one where everything slowly goes wrong and broken? Do I just need to wake up?"

She did not look down at her pistol, but her fingers tightened around it.

"It doesn't feel like the room fixed anything," Ishanvi insisted. "It just… it didn't rot, like everything here does. How can rot be what makes this real? How can it be the only thing that makes this real?"

Her words tore at the air like a knife, echoing against the rocks. He let the sound die, and with it the fervor that had gone through her limbs. She sagged against the bench.

"Your life in the joy room," Tristan said. "You were never sad there?"

She frowned.

"No, I was," Ishanvi said. "But it didn't swallow everything. It was a color on the painting."

"How neat," he said.

"Neat?"

He nodded.

"A life where grief is a touch of blue to make the joys stand out," Tristan said. "A pinch of salt on a dessert."

"It wasn't muted," Ishanvi frowned. "I felt sorrow."

"Oh, so it was worse than that," he said. "It sounds like it was orderly. Like you could frame your grief and put it up on the wall, instead of it being a gnawing pit. A hole that claws and drags you as you try to leave it, and when you come out on the other side there's only so much left of the person that fell in."

"It wasn't like that," Ishanvi defended.

"Did you get angry, in that life?" Tristan asked.

"Of course!"

"But then it paid off, didn't it?" he knowingly said. "Your enemies were cast down, the injustices ended."

Ishanvi did not answer. That said quite enough.

"Did you make mistakes?"

"Of course," she said. "Many."

"Ah," he said. "But did you grow from them? Did they make you better?"

She licked her lips.

"That's normal," Ishanvi said, tone hesitant.

"Is it?" he wondered. "I've found most of my mistakes tend to be just mistakes. For every lesson to be dug up there's a hundred times I embarrassed myself for no gain or found I was ignorant or slow or lesser to someone else in some way."

He scoffed.

"Mistakes are not some ordained stepladder to success. Sometimes you just fuck up and you should have known better and you did it anyway, but you weren't thinking."

No, you were just pulling a trigger to shoot someone that wasn't there, that wasn't even a person so much as an idea. He forced himself to stop gritting his teeth,

"If you're lucky you get to live with a scar," Tristan said. "And there's no lesson to be learned from luck, Ishanvi. It's just a roll of the dice."

Ishanvi's fingers clenched.

"That sounds ugly," she bit out.

"Oh, I won't try to sell you that old lie," Tristan mused. "That there is grace in adversity, that games without stakes are meaningless and that true beauty must be ephemeral. If there was any justice in the world we would all be fat and rich and immortal. But there isn't justice, Ishanvi. There's us and the dark and what we make of it – which is mostly cruelty, but that's on nobody's heads but ours."

He laughed.

"But that life you described, it sounds like you were the only real thing in it," he said. "Like everything else was an accessory to the joy of Ishanvi Kapadia."

He glanced at her.

"And I think you know that," he said.

She glanced at him.

"Do I?" she tiredly said.

"I asked an acquaintance of mine about the House of Autumn," Tristan said. "What it means to be trained as a scribe there."

"And what did Shalini Goel tell you?" she scoffed.

"That the scribes are furniture," he said. "A few become teachers, but that's rare. Most are glorified servants for their entire life, learned attendants to the highborn students who come to the House."

He paused.

"Some, apparently, get loaned out to noble families or temples as librarians and archivists," he said. "Most of the time, that is not considered a reward."

She scoffed at him.

"You got some Ramayan house retainer who's never even set foot in Varaveda to talk a minute about a place you've never seen," Ishanvi scorned, "and now you understand who I am? I thought Krypteia were meant to be convincing."

"Oh, I don't understand anything about you," Tristan softly said. "Where you're from, though? That's a different story. Every place under firmament has its own ladder, but I suspect the dirt under the bottom rung always tastes a little bit the same, no matter where you are."

He smiled.

"I don't know you, Kapadia, but I know what it's like to bite your tongue when your betters speak," Tristan said. "To scuttle around their feet, hoping not to draw their gaze. To know there's one set of rules for you and another for them."

"And?" she asked.

"The spite your teeth clenched on, at the House of Autumn," he said. "Was it orderly?'

Silence.

"Did it pay off?"

Still silence. His smile widened and widened, until it was thin enough to cut.

"Did you learn from it?"

Yet silence. He chuckled, looking at the distance.

"Yeah, me neither," Tristan said. "The world doesn't hand you those, Kapadia. You want meaning?"

He shrugged.

"I'm no sage to tell you where to find it, but I'll say it: you won't find a thimble of it in the lie the Jardin Palido crafted for you. The only thing that room knows is what you want to hear."

Silence still, though eventually she shivered. Not from the cold, as he'd first thought, but from something scuttling up her sleeve and up her collar. He watched with fascination as the little creature peeked up. It was barely the size of a thumb and goose white, four legs and at the end of slender neck a head that was little lotus flower not quite fully blooming. The petals shivered and there was a small chittering sound, which had Ishanvi half-heartedly smiling.

That, he thought, was no lemure or lares he had ever heard of. And wasn't that fascinating? What did F- his stomach clenched and he looked away from nothing. Not now.

"You are not someone I wanted to have this conversation with," she said.

He snorted.

"I wouldn't want to have this conversation with me either," Tristan sympathized. "Bad luck all around."

"No, that is a good thing," she muttered. "It's not a nightmare, but neither is it a dream. You are… unexpected."

Not something she would dream up in a room, he translated. Which meant she might not be in a room at all.

"Thank you," she finally said, scratching the little flower head affectionately. "For intervening."

The creature chittered in pleasure and got out of the collar to flip belly up, requesting further scratches.

"Well, a friend brought me here," he said. "Although he's been-"

There was a loud cackle-call and Sakkas swooped down from the nearest rooftop, sounding belatedly triumphant, and he was- oh, fucking Manes. Sakkas hadn't cared about the girl at all, he'd wanted Tristan to flush out the little creature so he could eat it. That feathery asshole. He swatted at his magpie, Sakkas cackle-calling in protest as he flew back.

"Shoo," Tristan said. "Shoo, bad Sakkas, bad."

The magpie called out plaintively as it retreated, but at least it did retreat. He turned to back to find an utterly baffled Ishanvi Kapadia staring at him. He cleared his throat.

"See?" he said. "Scholomance wouldn't have added that."

"Did you name your pet magpie after Sakkas the Lecturer?" she disbelievingly asked.

"It does seem that way, doesn't it?" he mused. "Come, Kapadia, we're going for a walk."

She slowly rose to her feet.

"I feel like I should refuse on principle, but where?"

"Eastward a bit, to the hospital."

She looked him up and down.

"You're not wounded."

"No," he said. "But you are. So we're going to have a pleasant walk there, so you can tell the physicians an encounter with an aether intellect harmed your mind and you're to remain under observation for the night."

Ishanvi tried to refuse, so he gently opened her palm and pressed the bullet he'd taken into it.

She did not refuse again.