Pale Lights

Chapter 171 44

Song waited patiently, her rifle propped up against her shoulder as the shadow moved through the bushes.

The wind was thin today and the Tolomontera winter did not often lead to fog, so there were only minor adjustments needed to her aim as she tracked the movement. Song would never quite get used to the sheer luxury of using only the finest of blackpowder and bullets, she thought. She still relished it as much as she had the first time she was handed a paper cartridge of corned powder for shooting drills.

In Tianxia, a pound of serpentine went for five Mazu silver gudai while a pound of corned went for a full gold zibao – the latter was pegged to the Sacromontan gold rama, so to practice with corned powder was quite literally firing gold at targets.

As if that were not enough she now wielded a state-of-the-art firearm, one of Osian Tredegar's Isibankwa rifles, and though she still felt a pang of sorrow over the fate of her Zangshou musket she could not deny that the rifle did everything her old gun had but better. She'd had to drill ferociously to sand down the time it took to reload, but now that she was back to an acceptable standard the rifle had very much grown on her.

Reading the movement, Song exhaled and squeezed the trigger a heartbeat before the lycosi leaped out of the bushes. Click, snap, a small nudge of the barrel and the lemure's brains went flying red as it tumbled down a corpse, two dozen feet away from Andreu Claver. The Savant turned and blinked, eyeing the dead lemure and then her, then tipped his hat. Song returned it with a nod. The man, if nothing else, had very fine manners.

Angharad, who'd been helping him spread the gravel, hadn't even turned. Had she glimpsed ahead, or simply never doubted?

She set to cleaning and reloading her rifle, eyes scanning the brushlands once more. Song's perch atop the raised stone gave her a fine view of the surroundings, and of the work unfolding at her feet: bags of gravel were being emptied on atop rocky hollows, drains were being dug to divert where the rainwater would gather up and planks hammered into place to make passageways over the terrain where wooden wheels would break or get stuck.

Even though the full span of that work was barely a tenth of the distance to the dantesvara's lair, making it usable would take days and days of work. They had the hands for it, at least. Her bargains had seen to that.

Rifle at the ready, Song allowed herself a sliver of satisfaction as she watched Awonke Bokang order around Shalini and Musa Shange as they ripped out weeds to make room for a drain, reading on their lips how they were trading childish jibes about the meaning of 'hoework'. Closer to her were Zenzele and Tristan, holding down planks for Sebastian Camaron to hammer into place – her Mask kept having to compensate for the slight inaccuracies born of Zenzele's glass eye - while by a half-built ramp Izel sat drinking with a waterskin with Nenetl Chapul and a sweaty Jayati Banerjee.

The haughty Navigator seemed unusually friendly, which by the way her eyes kept straying to the muscled arms Izel's rolled-up sleeves had bared had a somewhat amusing explanation. Not that he'd noticed, significantly more interested in Nenetl's now-intricate steel prosthetic. Nenetl was in turn visibly struggling to decide whether she was flattered or unnerved by the attention.

Song would be headed for the drain-digging crews when her rotation as a guard ended. Tedious work, but it was sixthday and they needed to finish the second batch of drains before the rain tomorrow. Tristan had offered to take her shift – let's be honest with ourselves, Song, I won't be hitting any lemure with even an elementary grasp over the concept of cover - but despite the temptation she had declined. If she opened that door, Camaron would promptly throw a parade right through it. Better to just dig, it would save on complications.

The wind picked up for a breath, winding through the leaves of the many thorny bushes making up the brushland, and Song's eyes narrowed as she shouldered her rifle again. Such a thing could serve to hide the approach of a creature, and yesterday afternoon had. Had Shalini not been at hand, the mentiroso might well have taken a bite out of Rong Ma. It'd been a young specimen, which had not yet built a 'lie' of a body to wear as a way to approach its prey, but in a way that was worse.

It had meant to drain the tinker's blood, then chew up their flesh to turn it into something like paper pulp in order to make a false body out of it.

The attacks were getting more frequent, the reprieve bought by the Battle of the Barrels beginning to wane. It felt absurd that after over a hundred slain lemures their kind would resume prowling the grounds less than a month afterwards, but few of these were freshly born beasts – they came from other parts of Allazei, drawn by the empty hunting grounds. Only lesser lemures so far, though.

There were only so many great beasts in Port Allazei, and few of them were inclined to move their lairs when they were already comfortably settled. So while it was only a matter of time until full packs of shades and lycosi were found here again, it might be months or even years before the likes of a briarid or a patarico returned. They were, thankfully, rare creatures that did not breed often.

Song's concern about the bushes being a risk was shared by another of the guards, she saw, as Ritwick Banerjee wandered among them with a pistol in hand. The sullen Someshwari kept his other hand tucked under his cloak, ready to trace, but after a few moments he ended up withdrawing.

On their other flank that pompous windbag Ruo Xian was doing the same, no doubt using the same antiquated formal language with the rhododendrons he did with everyone else – who did he think he was, the King of Cathay? - while behind her... Ferranda, Song found, had just finished a sweep of the dip behind the hill. What had the Tianxi raising an eyebrow was that instead of returning to her high ground the other captain was walking towards her.

Silver eyes flicked up down, looking for a wound and finding none. Not in the conventional sense, anyway. Ferranda Villazur made a point of looking put-together, like most Stripes – presentation was a crucial part of the illusion of control, Colonel Cao had once told them - but as she watched her colleague approach Song could make out the marks of wear and tear. The rings around her eyes from poor sleep, the listlessness in her limbs from eating poorly and even the seemingly permanent crease on her brow from the headaches that never entirely went away.

Ferranda was not taking the effective collapse of her captaincy well.

Musket in hand, the infanzona slowed her steps as she approached the bottom of Song's perch and waited a beat before clearing her throat.

"Song," she said. "A word?"

Song was tempted, for a heartbeat, to stay up here as she replied. The way Ferranda had treated her cabalists in her absence had earned precious little courtesy from her, despite their shared history on the Dominion. But it would have been petty of her, and pointless, so Song instead crouched and slid down the raised stone.

"Ferranda," she replied. "Do you need something?"

That last part, she'd admit, was something of a dropped glove.

For all that the infanzona had been openly angry and resentful about Song coming into the hunt and effectively taking command of the operation, she had not dared to say much about it besides a few bitter comments. Song had not judged it worth a confrontation, not when most of the Thirty-First were currently willing to take her orders as if she were their captain. If anything, such a confrontation might look like she was cornering Ferranda and drive them back her way.

Ferranda stared at her for a moment, a flicker of something unreadable passing through those brown eyes, then the tanned woman bit the inside of her cheek.

"Advice," she finally said. "I need advice, Song."

That, she would admit, was not where she had expected that conversation to head.

"I'm listening," Song replied after a beat.

Given the current state of their relations, it would not be prudent to venture advice before being told about what. What she thought Ferranda could use an opinion on and what the other captain thought the same about were not necessarily the same matters.

"Do I really need to spell it out?" Ferranda asked her through gritted teeth. "My brigade is good as disbanded, in case you hadn't noticed. I'd be surprised if Shalini hasn't asked about transferring to the Thirteenth yet."

"She hasn't," Song evenly said.

Nor would Song be inclined to agree if she did. A second Skiritai would be a boon to the Unluckies and Shalini Goel got along well with the brigade, but if she ended up knocking at the Thirteenth's door it would be in part because that was the roof under which Angharad's bed lay. Song was wary of recruiting off the back of tryst that might not last, especially when recruitment meant letting in someone on their secrets – the cottage being among the least of them.

"Well, early days yet," Ferranda bitterly said.

She would be more worried about Rong Ma, if she were Ferranda. Zenzele and Shalini were angry because their shared ties meant something to the pair. The shared grief on the Dominion had forged a genuine comradery. Ma, on the other hand, treated the brigade largely like a professional association and Song doubted they'd think twice about transferring out if made a good offer.

"I am unsure," Song said, "what exactly it is you want my advice on."

This time, there was nothing unreadable about the look in those eyes. Song knew anger well, and wounded pride too.

"You're doing it wrong," Ferranda hissed.

Fair hair slightly askew from the wind, a touch of red to her cheeks, the infanzona looked like a tower of cards about to tumble.

"Your brigade constantly picks fights with teachers and brigades, bites off more than you can chew," Ferranda Villazur spat out. "You act unpredictably when it's not outright unhinged, you pass on near every alliance offer come your way and it's as if you cannot turn a stone without finding a disaster you immediately get dragged into."

Ferranda's fists clenched around her musket until the knuckles turned white, like she was trying to rip apart the wood and steel.

"Just this year Song, in less than two months, how much did you do? The Unluckies butchered the sailors of one of the richest houses in Malan and extorted its scion in public. Then you became the only brigade to take on both the delve and the hunt, you publicly shot a first-year in the back and poisoned her, you made and then immediately spent a fortune funding the Battle of the Barrels, your island trade venture turned into a major diplomatic incident, you were publicly beaten within an inch of your life in the Scholomance entrance hall and then barely off that stick bed promptly started a damn blood feud with the single most influential Stripe on the island, who also happens to be your covenant instructor."

She was panting at the end of it, panting and looking exhausted.

"All in two months, Song," Ferranda said almost plaintively. "And still the Thirteenth is thriving, you are thriving. How can that be? You've broken every rule there is to break."

Song let silence reign for a while, long enough that Ferranda's face hardened into something refusing to be embarrassment.

"Were you looking to empty your stomach," Song mildly asked, "or are you truly interested in an assessment of your performance as captain?"

"I cannot call it luck that you stand where you do," Ferranda curtly said. "So I would hear what you have to say."

After that outburst she was in no mood for gentleness, so she delivered her opinion bluntly.

"You fundamentally failed at the only thing a brigade cannot do without," Song said without missing a beat, "which is trust."

Ferranda's jaw clenched.

"I don't recall you hurrying to tell your brigade about that night either," she said.

Song acknowledged that with a nod. They'd never really talked about that evening, the two of them. Neither had missed the fact that the other also fired at Isabel Ruesta, and back on the Dominion there'd been a sense of safety in that – there were, in a way, accomplices. None could easily turn on the other, which going into the Trial of Weeds had even felt like an advantage. It was only after Song's foolhardy insistence on doing the Lugar Vacio that the last of that complicity vanished. Once they'd realized that they both wanted Angharad for their brigade and both held the match to a grenade that could blow in both their faces.

"I did not," Song agreed. "And I can trace back many of the mistakes I made those first few weeks to overcompensating from my guilt over it."

Ferranda's brow rose.

"Guilt?" she said. "This is new."

"Over the deception, not the killing," Song clarified.

She was yet unable to muster much regret over the death of Isabel Ruesta and doubted she ever would.

"I have come to admit to myself I did not pull that trigger for the right reason," Song continued, "but it remains that there were right reasons."

Ferranda grimaced.

"It made sense to me at the time," she said. "I thought she was glutting on her contract after years of needing to watch herself in the City - treating us like some sort of sordid dollhouse playing out her tale, toying and culling at her whim. And so long as she had her claws in Tredegar, she couldn't be touched without blowing up everything."

It had been the final line for Song as well, the way Ruesta had seduced Angharad into some sort of idiot tryst while they were in the middle of cult and lemure infested woods. That she had done it while convincing Angharad to twist her given word into knots had seemed like an ominous sign, a herald of worst things to come.

And Song had wanted to save Angharad from peril, from herself, so that she wouldn't be allowed to leave Song when they reached Scholomance. That ugly truth she still struggled to look in the eye, sometimes, but she must not let herself forget it.

"My mishandling of the situation nearly cost me the Thirteenth," Song said. "Yet in the end I made apologies to Angharad and offered what reparations I could. Your situation is different."

"It should be better for me," Ferranda said. "None of them were... involved with Ruesta."

"You are missing the point," Song replied. "Pulling that trigger was one thing, every lie since another. And the lies are where the real damage lies."

"I've hardly-"

"There is no point to this conversation," Song cut through, "if you choose to willfully blind, Ferranda."

The blonde looked like she'd just made to suck on a lemon, but she kept silent.

"When the Thirteenth came apart you good as recruited Angharad, only to then realize you had in your hands a powder charge: it could come out at any time that you'd shot at Isabel, and when it did the longer she'd had time to grow closer to your cabalists the worst the fallout would be. So you had to cut her off before it could blow up in your face, and you were handed a golden opportunity to do so when the incident with the mara happened."

"And?" Ferranda impatiently said.

"There is a word for someone who seizes on every opportunity," Song said. "It is opportunist."

And it was not, generally speaking, considered a compliment.

"I couldn't keep her on," Ferranda quietly said. "And it was a major mistake, for her to do as she did."

Maybe, Song thought. But you also threw out a woman who'd mere months ago fought side by side with half your cabal when she looked like a ruin and could barely walk without a cane. Her brigade had remembered that sight with their guts long after they forgot the reasons their minds had understood. And that'd sent them the wrong message.

"They're not hirelings, Ferranda," Song just quietly replied. "Or estate guards. If I learned anything it is that our cabalists are going to make major mistakes. There is no getting around that. So will you, so will I. And you showed them that when it happens, they will be sent out the door."

The infanzona's face twisted in anger.

"That's it?" Ferranda disbelievingly asked. "One misstep and-"

"One misstep and every time you doubled down on it since," Song harshly corrected. "When Angharad returned and the two of you became openly at odds, you said nothing even when one of your own brigade is part of her Acallar crew."

But then how could she, when it would expose the hypocrisy of that night where they'd parted ways?

"Then every month you kept that distance, kept the feud going even though Angharad was facing monsters with Shalini and feeding ducks with Zenzele, you burned a little more trust in your judgement."

Ferranda's jaw clenched.

"The turning point came when you tried to have it both ways after the incident at the Old Playhouse," Song continued, relentless. "To keep my cabalists as assets while avoiding the blowback of standing by our brigade. It was so nakedly opportunistic that even your own brigade protested."

Song could almost hear the teeth grinding.

"The last nail in the coffin was your trying to cut them loose when the hired Navigator hounded the crew," Song said, frowning. "You have made decisions I disagreed with before, Ferranda, but that I could see the sense in. This was not one, and in all frankness felt unusually shortsighted of you."

Diego Calante was never going to be more than a temporary setback for the crew, given that come seventhday evening he would have to return to town to prepare for classes and so the Thirteenth would be able to do the same – and thus be able to secure means to chase him off. It reeked of Ferranda trying to part ways with the Unluckies to then parlay the discovered canalside route into joining with one of the leading crews without the heavy luggage that were her troublesome allies.

Song drummed her fingers against her arm.

"Even so, you might have pulled through and kept your brigade's trust had you told them why you did any of it, at any time," Song assessed. "You did not. Instead you told them to trust in your judgement, which they did – until they no longer could."

"Is that all?" Ferranda asked, forcefully calm.

Song cocked her head to the side.

"As for criticisms?" she said. "Yes. I admit I have long been confused about your overall approach to Scholomance, but that is not something deserving criticism."

Song knew what it looked like when someone was fighting for calm, so she stayed silent as Ferranda Villazur waged that war against her temper. She said not a thing until it was won, or at least the enemy temporarily put to flight.

"You hold me in contempt," Ferranda finally bit out.

Song blinked. While Ferranda was yiwu by birth, Song had for some time compared her favorably in her mind to the likes of Watch princelings – who arrogated the same airs, and unlike Ferranda had renounced no tyrannical privileges by joining the black.

"I don't believe so," she slowly said.

Brown eyes studied her.

"Perhaps you don't think of it that way," Ferranda finally conceded. "But you do. Because I buckle, because I cut my losses, and you do not. And you are the measuring stick you weigh everyone by."

Song frowned at her. And this was meant to be unusual? Everyone did this. When one spoke of a handspan, you did not imagine a stranger's hand but your own.

"I don't follow."

"You want to know what my approach to Scholomance is, Song?" Ferranda asked. "I want my entire brigade to live to graduate."

She waited for a moment, until it became clear nothing else would follow.

"Implying that I do not," Song challenged.

"No you don't," Ferranda grimly replied. "Not more than you want to win Scholomance anyway, to graduate in glory, and you got all your lunatics to buy into the notion. And that's poison, Song. Your entire brigade is poison."

The infanzona breathed out.

"You think I don't know my friends hated it every time I tried to distance us?" Ferranda said. "I'm not an idiot. Your Unluckies, they're charming and they're skilled and they're loyal. They're the kind of people you want on your side, so it feels like foolishness to step away from them."

She exhaled.

"But then death follows you like a shadow, doesn't it?"

Ferranda stared her down.

"Song, last year your brigade killed enough students to make it onto the list of causes of death," she said. "You got into conflict with multiple brigades within a week of arriving, stumbled into an abduction ring then topped that off by turning a milkrun test into a death match with a rampant god the size of the school while intervening in the middle of a civil war."

"We did not choose to be there for the Newborn's rise, Ferranda," Song curtly said.

"No, but you chose to fight it," she replied. "To charge into the breach. You could have run, Song, you should have run. You didn't, and it made you famous – legends in the making – but all I could think of when I heard was how lucky you got. How many close shaves there must have been. Even the Fourth, lost a man in that fight, they got so very lucky."

Ferranda breathed out, tugged at her collar.

"I admire you for that choice," she frankly said. "But I'm not sure anyone in your cabal will live to see twenty-five, and that's all I want for mine."

She laughed.

"And still I let myself be talked into reaching out by Zenzele, at the start of the year, because surely after last year you would have calmed down," she said. "Learned to curb your temper."

"And then the Old Playhouse happened," Song neutrally said.

"You'd already shot up a ship crew by then, so I knew better," Ferranda half-laughed, sounding almost crazed. "But Zenzele was so sure. They know they're running out of rope, he said. They will try to fade out of rumor. Then Abrascal started a fucking fight to the death with an Izcalli warrior-princess by gunning down a student from behind in broad glarelight before tapdancing across the fine print of Scholomance rules."

Ferranda Villazur rubbed her temples, as if fighting a headache.

"I don't want your enemies, Song," she honestly said. "I expect it makes you think less of me, but I won't apologize because you make so many of them and they are all so fucking dangerous. And even though your brigade keeps surviving, you also keep drawing your allies into your messes."

The hands came down.

"And I'm not Tupoc Xical, I won't shrug it off if my cabalists die."

Ferranda hesitated, licked her lips.

"I've had enough of running the wrong way," she said. "Of having it cost me people I care about. Sometimes you need to take the loss you'll survive even if it will be ugly, because there's nothing uglier than death."

"And have you told your brigade any of this?" Song asked her.

She looked away.

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"I shouldn't have to," Ferranda bit out. "We came in twelfth last year, Song. Twelfth. Maybe that's not impressive to you, having come in third place, but we beat the better part of sixty brigades. And we did it without taking foolish risks, without waging war on anyone. Steady work, competence – they paid off. It worked. That should have been enough."

Her jaw clenched.

"Instead when you talk to Camaron and Chapul they treat you like an equal, while I am not even an afterthought," she said.

And there was a soft poison in how she'd spoken that sentence, Song thought. The sort you might drink a little sip of every day, telling yourself it would make you immune, only to find instead it'd been filling your bones the whole time. Ferranda Villazur had done it all right, the way that an infanzona and Stripe were taught to, but despite her results she'd found herself playing second fiddle to the Thirteenth.

Watching Song decline the alliance offers she'd courted, turn the worst of reputations into an asset where her carefully cultivated appeal floundered, take every fool risk and come out of it in laurels instead of coffins. She could not entirely cut ties without burning herself, and could not embrace them without the same. Fear of getting her friends killed threaded with jealousy and resentment, all coming together into a series of bad decisions Song finally began to understand.

Because Ferranda wasn't wrong, really. She had done it the way she was supposed to, Song had not, and yet Song was rewarded while she fell behind. It would have driven Song half mad, in her shoes.

It would have driven her to do more foolish things than Ferranda's attempts to use the Unluckies just long enough to have notches on her belt she could parlay into an alliance she actually wanted, every time failing to finish the split and wounding her brigade's trust in her.

"Sebastian Camaron thinking well of you would not have held your brigade together," Song finally said, for how could she voice any of the rest?

"No, but it would have meant that when reaching for allies at the start of the hunt we would have had better options than you," Ferranda tiredly said. "It started so well last year, when I got the captain's meetings started. Then the brigades started competing in earnest and no one wanted to share information anymore. I couldn't even tell you when they stopped taking us seriously."

I can, Song thought. It was when you decided not to make enemies. Reputation is the real currency on this island, and you have the reputation of someone who wants to keep her head down. The kind of brigade you might work on a shared task with, but not develop close ties. Fundamentally, she thought, Ferranda thought of alliances with other brigades the way an infanzona did. A sort of dynastic arrangement where both sides kept to their own manor, managing their own affairs and calling on each other only for business or war.

That could not work, in Scholomance. Every student had half a dozen different ties – loyalties to their sponsor, to their covenant, to mentors and causes and ambitions. The Thirty-First Brigade was not House Thirty-First, and while not every cabal was run like a family they were all run like at least a warband. Every relationship here was personal, every alliance, because that was the currency. No one would look at the rankings on Cao's list and pick their allies off the numbers alone. And at the end of the day Ferranda wanted alliance because she thought they meant safety, while everyone else struck alliances for reasons. For causes.

She provided neither.

And that was good enough if you wanted to make pacts with the leftover brigades and the bottom-rankers, but that wasn't what Ferranda wanted. She wanted to be one of the hallowed few, even as her approach made the likes of Sebastian Camaron and Nenetl Chapul treat her like an afterthought.

"Your meetings filled a need, at the start," Song told her. "They died when they no longer did. It is the same with how you run your brigade."

She met brown eyes with her own.

"You claim to put their lives above all else," she said. "But do they? You are not their mother, Ferranda, or their lady. It is not for you to decide what they might lay their lives on the line for."

"Your brigade isn't a cause," Ferranda retorted. "It is a pit."

"Maybe," Song said. "But it is a pit we all dug together. I give us better odds of digging our way out and surviving than I would what you've made of your brigade by confusing rule and command. One is a crown, the other is a trust. And for all that you whine of them lacking trust in you, it seems you trust them even less than that."

The last of her patience and sympathy long run out, Song set down her rifle atop the raised stone and climbed back onto her perch. She did not bother with a goodbye, and after fuming at her feet for a few moments neither did Ferranda.

Song did not look back when she left.

--

In different circumstances Angharad would not have hesitated before reaching out to the Emain twins, but it could not be: given that the Twentieth Brigade was part of the hunt, it was likely the twins would require concessions related to it in exchange for their help.

Especially now that the grand alliance arranged by Song had spent afternoons clearing a way through the bushlands even on days not dedicated to the hunt. Such visible and visibly progressing labor had the rest of the hunting crews keeping a close eye on them, though none had yet dared to act against such a potent roster.

That left only a few possibilities. Awonke Bokang, though a well-inclined acquaintance from the Third, simply did not have the influence to organize a gathering of Malani nobleborn. Neither did Kasigo Njezi, who she barely knew besides. Emeni Maziya had the pull, and the captain of the Twenty-Ninth was a former of ally of Song's, but her public break with Nkonisathi Morcant made her unsuited for the task.

Musa could have done it easily, of course, but Angharad already owed him a favor from earlier in the year and she could not risk unbalancing the alliance Song had assembled.

Of the three remaining, one must immediately be discarded: Fanyana Khosa was part of the Second Brigade, which while yet friendly to her was no friend to Song, and the man was simply too highborn for her to be able to request a favor of him on such thin grounds of acquaintance.

Thus only two were truly on the table: Zama Luvuno and Thando Fenya.

Angharad had some history with Lord Luvuno, who had once aided her in a time of need, but the man was in the grips of enmity with Maryam. That had Angharad settling on Thando Fenya, who was traditionally one of the organizers for such events besides.

She thus found herself having a private drink with Thando in one of the hole-in-the-wall shops off Regnant Street, drinking decent Lierganen red. The second-in-command of the Eleventh Brigade had little changed over the last year – he had hardly grown any taller, still short and skinny with too many golden rings on his ears and that unfortunate wart stuck by his left eyebrow.

He was dressed down, today, but wore a high collar that hid the intricate green tattoo she knew lay on the side of his neck – a great house's acknowledgement of the great favor he had done them, as much a promissory note as a mark of friendship.

"It had been some time, Lady Tredegar," Thando smiled, toasting her.

Angharad put on a matching face as she met the toast. While she had kept an icy distance from the accursed captain of the Eleventh ever since Imani Langa outed herself as a Mask scheming against her kin last year, Salvador's presence on her Acallar crew meant she had never entirely severed ties with the brigade at large. She had not, however, ever sought Thando's company outside the common bounds of their fellowship of Malani highborn. She'd long thought he must suspect something of what his captain was up to, for he had never acted as if he were being slighted by this.

More importantly, these lukewarm ties were enough to approach Thando for a favor while within the bounds of propriety, though the other side of the coin would be that she'd have little prior relationship to draw on when haggling. She would not be owed the courtesies that would be offered to a friend and ally.

"The weeks have gone by quickly," Angharad ruefully said.

It was only the twenty-second of second and already it felt like a year's worth of misadventures had dogged the steps of the Thirteenth.

"More so, I imagine, now that your captain has gathered sworn rivals to her great enterprise," Thando idly said. "A coup that is yet the talk of the town. Many believed the pact would not survive the first hunting days."

By which he meant the span of fifthday to seventhday that students signed onto the hunt usually spent based on Lamb Hill, scrabbling to secure a route to the dantesvara. Angharad could understand there might be skepticism over the Third and the Ninth being able to spend three days together in proximity without an incident happening, but that was underestimating Song. She would not have brokered the deal between the rivals if she did not have good reason to believe it would hold.

"Whatever their differences, they have a common cause," Angharad said. "It would be doing a disservice to their character to believe them incapable of setting aside their enmity."

For a time, anyway. Eventually the knives would come back out, which was why Song aimed to have the assault on the dantesvara happening on the twenty-ninth – next secondday. Any longer than that and the alleged disservice might be shedding the prefix of the word. That was not giving Thando much, however, and she was still paying up for his having accepted this meeting so she was not surprised when her tightlipped answer had him going fishing in other waters.

"It was good timing, anyhow," Thando mused. "The achievement prevented tarring of Captain Ren's reputation when the... allegations surfaced."

Angharad's lips tightened. While the Unluckies were out in Lamb Hill a first-year had 'coincidentally' gotten their hands on correspondence speaking of the last trials on the Dominion of Lost Things. As save for one thoroughly disappointing occasion Song's record on the isle had been laudable this should not have been an issue, but the correspondence in question related a very unflattering version of the events.

The nameless officer who'd written the letter blamed Song for the collapse of the mountain and the death of blackcloak officers, then linking the matter to the rising of the Newborn on Asphodel and intimating that both matters were due to Song Ren being cursed by the collective hatred of Tianxia for her line. A suggestion was made that she was a living calamity, that she would bring disaster to all she touched and should be drummed out of the black.

That alone would have been rumor fodder among the student body for months, but the letter also speculated on Song having a sniffer contract being able to identify the god to which one was contracted. That had alarmed a great many people, given the secrecy around contracts. It also came close enough to leaking the contents of student records to the public that the Thirteenth had consulted Captain Wen over what recourse they might have.

"We can lodge a complaint with the Obscure Committee," he'd told them. "But she covered her ass in what she leaked and how she got it out. If she ever gets the hammer brought down on her, that complaint will make it worse. But if she doesn't get bled? It won't be going anywhere."

They had lodged the complaint anyway. As far as Angharad was concerned, they were past the point of reconciliation with Chunhua Cao. Still, such a bureaucratic measure did little to stem the rumors and wariness of which Song was now the focus.

"Chunhua Cao is a noted blackmailer," Angharad said. "That the one who left this 'letter' to be found had to resort to speculation, rumor and stitching together events in which Song had only marginal involvement proves they had nothing truly actionable at hand. That should speak volumes."

Thando hummed, for she had not quite given him what he was after.

"The dredging up of her past record is something of a dull blow," he acknowledged. "I've wondered if the purpose was not simply to spruce up the allegation about her contract – which are, I'm sure you'll agree, rather worrisome."

So that was the coin he wanted. Her word on the matter of Song's contract. Not details about what it could do, one did not ask such things, but assurances about what it could not do. Fine, she could offer up meat for the plate.

"Song Ren," Angharad said, "did not know the name of the spirit Tristan Abrascal is contracted to until he told her."

Denying the capacity outright would not work, even if Angharad couched the words very carefully. No, better to imply that under certain circumstances Song could learn the name of a contractor's spirits but that there were limits. Tristan's contract, what little was known of it, was believed to be minor telekinesis while Fortuna herself was not a famous spirit. That should lead Thando to speculate that perhaps Song could read only into powerful aether taint, or specific kinds.

The absurdity of Song Ren's contract served them well here: few would be inclined to believe it could do more than the seeded rumor.

Now that he'd been duly remunerated, the Laurel let the conversation move on to small talk until Angharad brought forward her own request: that he arrange another meeting of their peers, and ensure Nkonisathi Morcant was invited. He proved amenable, to an extent.

"To arrange the evening itself is no great chore," Thando said. "I already took care of such busywork most of the time."

Which Angharad had known. It'd been one of the reasons that put his name at the top of the list – as a source of invitation, he would not be suspicious.

"To invite Nkosinathi Morcant for the primary purpose of seeing him humiliated before our peers, however, would be taking a side in your quarrel," he said.

Angharad cocked her head to the side. How real was the reluctance, she wondered? Thando was of the Eleventh, who by virtue of being dragged in the delve dispute on the side of their allies the Fourth were broadly opposed to Morcant's brigade and his 'student association'. That was a brigade decision, however, while Thando would be putting his personal reputation on the line by involving himself in this matter. He might genuinely be reluctant.

Some probing was in order.

("You could be said to have already taken a side in that quarrel," Angharad said, "by virtue of your brigade."

"It is not the Eleventh's means you would call on for this, it is mine," Thando flatly replied.)

Angharad sipped at her wine. Means, she noted, and not honor or even reputation. A mercantile concern, then.

("I open these talks on the behalf of my brigade," Angharad said. "Any favor asked in return would be carried by our whole number, not merely my shoulders."

"Some would call being owed a favor by the Unluckies closer to a curse," Thando drily replied. "But in this case curses are what I need."

"How so?"

"Shumise, our Navigator, is struggling with logos fencing," he said. "Given Maryam Khaimov's fearsome reputation in this regard, I would trade for her tutelage. Five hours weekly, for four weeks.")

Angharad set down her cup. He was willing to deal and she knew what he wanted. She must now barter the best possible price on Maryam's behalf, lest she let down her friend.

"An interesting interpretation," Angharad said. "Is Morcant the only nobleborn of the isles in his year?"

Thando frowned at her.

"That is not so," he said. "There are more than a dozen, though not all fit for invitation."

"Yet some are," she pressed.

Laurel that he was, he caught the trap then. Unfortunately for him, she had narrowed it down to a simple question with little room to maneuver.

"Some are," Thando conceded.

"Then by refraining from inviting him when his peers will be, one might say you would also be taking a side in our quarrel," Angharad noted.

And there he was cornered again, with both doors out to his disadvantage. Either he agreed with her, and thus conceded that the only real favor being done here was arranging the meeting – thus lowering what was owed for it. Or he disagreed with her and he implied he considered Morcant less worthy than his peers for his own reasons, in which case Angharad would be aiming to strike as someone he held in no regard. Such a favor was also worth less than if he had been asked to facilitate an attack on one with which he had neutral relations with, as he'd intimidated earlier.

Thando eyed her sharply over the rim of his glass as he drank. At this point, Angharad would usually have worried that he would simply decline getting involved at all. But she knew there was something he wanted from the Unluckies, so as long as she did not go overboard that was not a heavy concern. The Laurel set down his cup.

"I had not heard Sizani Maraire was a skilled negotiator," he finally said.

"Mother was not," Angharad acknowledged. "My father, on the other hand, might have sold eggs to a chicken."

Thando looked surprised, then a little approving.

"I have known few heiresses to praise a father's wisdom," he said. "It is broad-minded of you."

He slid a finger along the rim of his cup.

"My brigade's newest recruit, our Navigator, has some difficulties with logos fencing," he said. "I would trade you this favor for ten hours of tutelage by Maryam Khaimov on the subject, arranged as their schedules allow."

A cutoff of half, Angharad noted. Tempted as she was to bargain for even better terms, it was better not to overstep. Father had often cautioned her that one must know restraint when holding the advantage in a negotiation – else one was simply making enemies out of greed, and enmity was the death of commerce. Better not to singe this bridge for the measly prize of an hour or two shaved off.

"That is agreeable," Angharad said. "Have you a particular date in mind for the banquet?"

His lips quirked.

"I imagine you have a suggestion," Thando said.

"The first half of the third month seems suitable," she mildly said.

His brow rose, which drew the eye to the mole until she made herself not notice it.

"The seventh of the third month is as far as I am willing to go," he told her.

Anghard kept her face bland as she sipped at her cup. Well, it might have been too much to hope for longer than that. As Thando well knew, for all that the evening would be an occasion to take aim at Nathi Morcant until it took place that party served as a shield for the Thirteenth. One which they needed, since once the hunt was brought to a conclusion their current shield – a working alliance with two prominent brigades – would also end.

In that limited span of time that was close to the banquet but not yet it, Morcant could not easily make a move against the Thirteenth: it would mean attacking a known guest to a party he would soon attend, risking his invitation being pulled and thus public humiliation. His reputation might have been able to weather such a blow before Song's public accusation, but now?

If he was openly snubbed by his peers while saddled with accusation of cooperating with slavers against the Watch, he would begin looking like a pariah. And for a man that preferred to act through intermediaries, that would not be an acceptable outcome.

"Then the seventh of third it will be," Angharad agreed with a smile.

They toasted on it, and it was done.

--

Song, along with the other Stripe students, had been taught by Colonel Cao that the Akelarre Guild's independence within the Watch was one of the two bastions that centuries of Academy moves had failed to entirely reduce. The main reason for that was that there was simply much less leverage over them than the other covenants.

The three societies of the College were the most vulnerable, as they were dependent on Conclave funding, Garrison facilities and the ability to either train up scholars in their internal schools or recruit them abroad. They could never be squeezed too hard, else the talent that had fled the petty tyrannies of the rest of Vesper would leave, but ultimately what the College wanted was stability and the Conclave was the organ of the Watch best placed to provide it.

The Skiritai Guild was widely considered in the upper ranks of the Academy to be politically illiterate, though in some regards its heavy ties to the free companies made it difficult to rein in – no captain-general on the Conclave would vote for a motion that angered the elite troops at the core of their own company. But unlike the warrior societies of Izcalli or the Tamgaji of the Raj of Dragada, the Skiritai had never made the transition into a soldier caste that would begin gathering political power and property.

They were owed favors but had never made a functioning system out of it. They were, in practice, kept afloat in Watch politics by their ties to the Akelarre Guild. Without that coin and support, they would flounder.

And that left the two old thorns in the thumb: the Krypteia and the Akelarre. The former could not easily touched, as not only were they a necessary grease to keep the gears of the Watch turning but they also happened to aim a great deal of their mandate at keeping the Academy in check. Picking that fight had never ended well, and while their very existence was in some ways an overreach the leading lights of the Academy tended to think of the assimilation of the Krypteia as the penultimate step to the unification of the Watch. Something best left for when there was no one else left standing.

The Navigators, though? The Navigators had been on the plate for centuries, but the Academy was still chewing and the meat wasn't getting any closer to swallowable.

As far as the Stripes were concerned the problem was not that they were wealthy, though they were. The Guild made a fortune every month by providing merchant shipping the only reliable means of surviving a Gloam storm, which was not a great concern in the Trebian Sea but was worth its weight in gold in the Straying Sea and the Relic Sea – and even out east, in the Sorrows trade. The cut of these contracts that the Akelarre offered up every six months was nearly always the largest single income source for that budget, and the Garrison would have to draw down about a third without it.

Neither was the problem that they were influential, though they were that also. The Guild's sheer usefulness – lifting curses, clearing out aether parasites, closing or opening sea lanes - meant that it was owed favors not only within the Watch but also by foreign nobles, who then in turn had a stake in the Akelarre remaining somewhat independent so they could continue offering sweetheart deals on the side. More than that most Watch fleets, either Garrison or free company, required Navigators to function.

In practice that meant the Akelarre always had a strong bloc of votes supporting them in the Conclave, and one spread across multiple factions.

The problem wasn't even that they were a functional cult, though they absolutely were. The initiations and mysteries and isolation, combined with the shared slow death of Gloam use, resulted in a fierce sort of tribalism that often put loyalty to the Guild above loyalty to the rest of the Watch. Navigators always closed ranks when threatened and their informal blacklisting of individuals or organizations were usually heeded by the entire guild.

No, the way the Academy saw it the problem was that the Akelarre Guild was capable of functioning outside the Watch, and if pressed too hard by the Conclave would threaten to do so. They had the coin, the influence and the culture to pull it off. There'd certainly been offers by powers great and small for chapterhouses to split off under their aegis, most egregiously from the High Queen of Malan.

Navigator leadership had resisted that call on the basis that the Watch provided the best home for them, since the guild separating into national chapters would be very lucrative in the short term but risked being assimilated by the great powers in the longer view, but that only held so long as the Conclave did not step too much on their toes. The unlikely but not impossible prospect that the Skiritai might follow them out of the order was enough to keep Stripe elders up at night.

Song had some sympathies for the classic Academy view of things, if only so many, but she tended to think that what her covenant could least forgive the Akelarre for was that the guild could and frequently did ignore the Academy to do whatever it wanted.

And today she was counting on that very source of anger to work in her favor.

"You know, when I told you girls to leave your elders to their squabbling that was not an invitation to start squabbles of your own with your elders," Captain Yue noted.

"The instructions were unclear," Maryam cheerfully replied, "so we erred on the side of violence."

While Captain Yue put on a good show of displeasure, Song's eyes caught the twitch of muscle. She'd suppressed a smile at that. The silver-eyed Tianxi cleared her throat.

"There is no undoing that enmity," Song said. "Our best path forward is through that meeting."

"More like your only path forward," Captain Yue said, rolling her eyes. "I hear you've been thrown out of the delve."

Song's lips thinned. She'd known from the start it was only a matter of time until Colonel Cao struck a deal with the delving crews. She'd asked Tupoc to make as much of a mess of those talks as he could, which he'd gleefully accepted, but in the end those students were there because they wanted to find the Glass Repository. Once sufficiently good terms had been offered, they'd ended their strike.

Cao's heavy-handed captaincy system had been replaced into something more to the liking of the leading crews. Only 'official' delving crews could continue plumbing the depths of Scholomance, but any crew could be made official if ten participants elected a captain. Those captains had then signed onto a much-reduced truce, one only banning physical and metaphysical violence between official crews while within the bounds of Scholomance.

In exchange for that, they'd received the concessions that Vivek Lahiri had been pushing hard for. First, a known threshold of points at which students were considered to have passed their yearly test, which had been set at two hundred points, and then the right to appeal any granting or docking of more than ten points by Colonel Cao to a council made up over every official captain.

And just like that, Song had thought when Tupoc told her, Vivek had made himself the darling of every other captain of the delve while politely defanging Cao. The colonel had then immediately taken a bite at her most visible enemy to prove she still had some teeth: she'd ruled that students could not be part of both the delve and the hunt, giving students a week to desist from one of them.

The Unluckies had not left the hunt, and so were no longer part of the delve. Cao clearly had no intention of letting Song back in, so she had decided to... take measures.

"More like we sauntered out, ma'am," Maryam objected. "And we're trying to squeak back in!"

"Some would say it's foolhardiness to insist on being part of both," Captain Yue said.

"Only if we lose," Song said.

The older woman snorted.

"On your heads, then," Yue said. "You offered a good enough bribe he accepted to show up and I agreed to host, but know that I wash my hands of the rest. I've no intention to plot against Cao in dark corners like some sort of second-rate conspirator."

"To have arranged the talks and to host us here is already a significant favor," Song acknowledged, dipping down her head thanks.

"Stripes are always so polite, when you're doing them a good turn," Captain Yue drawled, then she sighed. "But I'll have tea sent, at least."

As she'd said, she then left them to their own devices. The tea was only passable but it was quite sweet and Maryam guzzled it down like it was the waters of life. An acquired taste, Song assumed. It was only a half-hour more before their interlocutor arrived, wrenching open the door with a complete lack of ceremony before strolling in.

Colonel Fermin Azocar, supreme commander of all Garrison troops on Tolomontera, was old.

He had two tufts of sparse white hair on the sides of his head but nothing else, his laugh lines were deep as trenches, his nose was a gourd and his jowls were hanging so low they were almost a beard made of flesh. He had rheumy brown eyes and a stooped back, leaning on a blackthorn cane that the heavy head made look like it would serve as a decent cudgel – yet the most eye-catching part of him was by far the tattoos.

One across his wrinkled forehead, an inked ZANJA, marked him as having once been condemned to a life sentence mining in Sacromonte's infamous Trench. The knuckles of his right hand were inked with the characters for thief, pirate and escapee – the first two in classic Cathayan, the last in Machin – while going up his left wrist and disappearing under the sleeve was a full-arm tattoo of Redeemer hymns and symbols in Umoya. Song glimpsed long reeds and lizards embracing oval shields covered with diamond patterns.

"Did I make you wait?" Colonel Azocar asked, voice reedy.

Song opened her mouth to answer, but he cut her off before she could.

"Good," he said. "Because my morning has been spent addressing the concerns of the patron of the Three Hundredth Brigade about how her brigade's house burned down, though somehow only the inside and at a time none of them were inside it."

Song offered a strained smile.

"I'm sorry to hear that," she said.

"Are you?" Azocar grunted, hobbling towards a seat. "Because when a captain has their Mask leave a half-burnt shoddy wooden carving of a bridge in the middle of the ashes it doesn't sound like sorry to me."

Song had not, in fact, asked Tristan to do that. Or even to retaliate against the Three-Hundredth after their captain 'found' and spread the false correspondence that had tarred her reputation. He'd done it on his own, which meant she was allowed to find him funny. Besides, he was getting impatient with the lack of progress in the other matters he was pursuing so it had let him vent some of the frustration.

"He's very good at arson," Maryam proudly said, which was no help, but then at least she pivoted. "But he's even better at breaking into places, which is how he found the gift we have for you."

Song took the cue, offering Colonel Azocar the transcription of his own stolen letters that Tristan had done largely off memory. The old man took them, unfolding the papers and scanning through one before tossing it on the table before doing the same to the second.

"Your Mask left the original copies in her office?" he asked.

"He did," Song said. "We don't believe that Colonel Cao knows he broke into her office."

Colonel Azocar spat to the side, to both their surprises. As much about the poor manners as the fact that he'd dare to do it inside an Akelarre chapterhouse.

"You know, last week I had a talk with my valet," Colonel Azocar mused, "about which of us has the worst job on Tolomontera."

The old man scoffed.

"He pointed out that he has to clean out my chamber pot, but then I told him – maybe, but at least you're allowed to clean up the shit. They don't even let me do that, then the Conclave complains about the smell."

Ah. Song was beginning to develop some suspicions about why Fermin Azocar, while a colonel, had been a colonel in command of an island that had been until rather recently one of the most infamous career boneyards of the Watch. Maryam, predictably, looked like she was taking to the vulgar old man.

"Fine, consider me convinced," Colonel Azocar told them. "I have a spy in my secretariat. Not that I can do much with that since I can't prove whose spy it is."

"The accusation alone would be highly damaging," Song noted.

"Sure," the old man said. "Until it gets kicked up to the Obscure Committee. Then they untangle the knot, and if you girls aren't idiots you'll have realized that Cao would never make these kinds of moves without a backer in there."

He tapped his cane against the ground.

"Until I know who that backer is, or even if there's more than one, I won't be putting myself at their mercy," Colonel Azocar said. "Was that all, children?"

Song's eyes narrowed at him. He was dismissing them as being of any use all too quickly, she thought. There had been no debate, no uncertainty. Why? Wait, no. He'd been telling her exactly what he was willing to slide their way. He'd done it in two parts, and deniably enough that if this exploded in their faces and they were interrogated by truthtellers there would be nothing incriminating to say. She cleared her throat.

"I understand your concerns regarding that unfortunate fire," she said, Maryam turning a startled look on her. "As reparations for your lost time, I would offer the same of his. I'm sure some fitting drudgery could be found for him."

All right, you want Tristan and you want to know who Cao's backer is, she thought. Now tell me where it is you suspect that letter is and why you need a Mask to get there.

"You're more reasonable than your reputation, girl," Colonel Azocar 'praised'. "We've got some ships getting long in the tooth, swabbing their decks should teach him a little restraint."

Song's fingers clenched under the table. A ship. All this time she and Tristan had been convinced that whatever correspondence Chunhua Cao kept as insurance on her backer would be somewhere in town. Neither had considered it might be out on the water, safely out of reach of Mask hands.

Until now, anyway.

"I'm sure he will do a fine job," Song said, inclining her head.

"See that he does," Colonel Azocar replied, then spat again to the side. "All right, you're not completely hopeless even though you're a legacy from the smugness and nepotism foundry. What's the game you want to sell me on?"

Song straightened in her seat.

"I have been given to understand," she said, "that the order to provide soldiers to patrol and maintain the gains of the Repository expedition came down from the Obscure Committee."

"It has," he impatiently said. "And?"

"How precise were the definitions of 'patrol and maintain'?" she asked.

The old man looked at her for a long time, then let out a wheezing laugh.

"Well, look at you," he said. "You remind me of an old friend of mine, Song Ren. Brilliant and inspiring girl, she figured out this foolproof plan to get us all out of Trenches."

Song cocked her head to the side.

"Did she?"

"No," Colonel Azocar said in that reedy voice. "They caught her in five minutes, whipped her to death and hung the corpse above the door to our quarters so we'd have to look up at her every time we went to sleep."

He paused.

"It was a good plan, though," he mused. "We used parts of it when we broke out three years later."

Colonel Azocar smiled at her for the first time, revealing that most of his teeth were gone and those that remained were twisted nubs.

"Draft the papers and I'll sign them," he said. "But try to last longer than five minutes, would you?"

He wrinkled his nose.

"My friend, she was a lot less inspiring when she began to rot," he said.

Song made herself smile, bowing her head. Five minutes?

She would make it to the very end, no matter what Chunhua Cao put in her way.