Pale Lights

Chapter 166 39

It was a little nostalgic, eating chicken-and-onion skewers with a keg of cheap beer.

It reminded Angharad of the evenings out after fencing tournaments, when she would sneak out with the other competitors to buy too much street food and get drunk in public gardens until someone's minder found them and they were all forced to trundle back to their lodgings feigning feeling chastised. Angharad's first kiss had happened while she smelled of roasted beef and maize beer, Arianwen laughing at her for it even as she pressed her against a tree.

It was still a fond memory despite their bitter parting, the wounded accusations that Angharad was throwing away her talent by returning to some wet, moldy manor instead continuing the dueling circuit year round. Arianwen was a third daughter, not the heiress. She'd never had to contend with the responsibilities that such a position entailed, the choice between legacy and personal glory. Besides, it had been a smaller world they both contended with in those days.

Malan had once seemed so large, so far. Now it was but a corner of a world that seemed to grow larger by the year.

There was no such bitterness tonight, though, and instead nestled under Angharad's arm was a treasure rather sweet. Shalini's head lay against her shoulder, her brown hair smelling of hibiscus and sandalwood, and she had refused to move since Angharad made room under the cloak for her. The swordswoman was disinclined to complain, especially with Shalini's fingers resting ever so gently on her upper leg. It was enough to give a woman ideas.

"All right," Tristan announced, clapping his hands. "Everyone is fed, several of you insist on imbibing expensive rotten water that makes you feel sick and stupid-"

Most of the assembled hunting crew booed him, Angharad included. She drained the last of her earthenware cup just to show him, handing it to a laughing Rong Ma afterwards for filling. They sat with the keg between their legs, like it was a beloved child, and had been generously pouring all evening.

"-but I never held high hopes about any of you anyway," the Mask sadly said. "I thus declare the Fourthday Council in session, and anyone may claim the floor."

Fourthday Council. Angharad snorted. Well, she supposed it sounded more respectable than the tomorrow-we-set-out-so-decisions-must-be-made council, thought it might be a more accurate description. Zenzele cleared his throat.

"Has Song considered recruiting a diplomat for your brigade, or at least having you gagged?" he politely inquired.

"The Laurel thinks more Laurels should be recruited," Tristan replied, rolling his eyes. "There's a surprise."

"A candidature is being considered for an Arthashastra cabalist," Angharad provided before the conversation further descended into petty bickering. "I could not speak on the matter of gagging."

"Let us all be honest with ourselves here," Ferranda mused, "who hasn't fantasized about gagging Abrascal?"

Angharad pressed a kiss against Shalini's head, getting a pleased noise for it, and if the timing allowed for her amusement at Ferranda's sally not to show it could have been a coincidence. Sometimes it was easy to remember why she had once liked the infanzona.

"I'm flattered, Ferranda, but you are simply too much woman for me," Tristan 'regretfully' said.

"It's true," Shalini murmured loud enough only she could hear. "At least one Khaimov and a half, by weight."

Angharad politely kept her chortle behind her hand. Rong Ma, cheeks flushed from the drink and a genuinely impressive number of skewers for someone of such slight frame, cleared their throat.

"I was approached again this morning about joining our hunting crew for whatever expedition we've planned," Rong said. "If we wait any longer, the Ninth and Seventeenth will have recruited all the standouts."

"I was ambushed after class, myself," Izel told them. "Awonke Bokang from the Third extended an invitation for us to join his brigade in their own push."

"People are getting curious about our intentions," Ferranda said. "I warned you keeping quiet would only make them more eager, Tristan."

And how eager they were. Victory drew men like honey drew flies, Mother had once told her. Rhiannon Tredegar had greatly struggled to find funds and sailors for her first expedition across the Aeolian Sea, but after she discovered the isle of Lunkulu suddenly every noble from Carchar to Port Cadwyn had a caravel to offer her. As was so often the case, her mother's teachings proved true. Their hunting crew had needed to make dubious bargains to fill the ranks before the Battle of the Barrels, but now there were volunteers all but throwing themselves at their doorstep.

Most of these eager souls were independents, of course. Now that the path to the Old Canals had been cracked open, the hunters were mounting expeditions to find the dantesvara's lair but to track down the great monster's hiding place would be no small affair. For one, entering its hunting grounds risked provoking it to stamp you out and few of the independents cared to take that risk on their own. So why not hitch their horse to an already-proven cart instead?

The alliance of the Thirteenth and Thirty-First had a recent and eye-catching notch on their belts, so for many they had been the first port of call.

"Waiting didn't hurt us, we'll have to refuse most of them anyway," Tristan opined. "Larger numbers will be useful until the moment we find the Lord of Teeth, at which point they'll become a noose like as not to get us killed."

Predictably, Ferranda was displeased at the notion of turning away manpower and influence. It was a relief, in some ways, that the infanzona also made it easy to remember why Angharad had come to dislike her.

"We don't need to march with them personally," Ferranda insisted. "We can form them into hunting crews loosely under us and send them out on their own. We would cover significantly more ground that way."

"If we take them under our banner, we owe them aid and protection," Angharad icily replied. "I shall generously assume that you did not mean to imply these undercrews were to be used as disposable outriders."

Shalini tensed under her arm, but after a beat said nothing and did not pull away. The mirror-dancer hid her surprise, as that was a fresh development. Usually Shalini made sure to maintain a distance when Angharad and Ferranda clashed, no matter who it was she agreed with.

"We would not countenance such a thing," Zenzele said, the words straightforward enough Angharad let the matter go with a curt nod.

Anything less would be questioning the truth of his word, and he had not given her reason for such a slight to his honor. Still, the look he shot at Ferranda was less than pleased. It was becoming increasingly clear that the victory on the heights had done nothing to mend fences between them. Angharad's deliberate restraint in asking Shalini about the going-ons of her brigade had made that a surprise to realize.

"It's not like we'll be turning away everyone, Ferranda," Tristan slid in, peacemaking. "The hunters from the gunline on the heights proved steady in a fight, there's no reason not to keep those we can. And I've been speaking with a first year called Luyanda who has a contract that lets them augment their senses, we should take them in as well."

It sounded like a powerful contract, making it strange that Angharad had hardly ever heard of this Luyanda before, but after she asked she easily grasped why. Luyanda could only increase a sense by drawing on the others, meaning that though they could have a cat's ears it came at the price of having a mole's eyes and a fish's nose. Without someone guarding them, their contract was more liability than help.

Shalini wiggled out from under Angahrad's arm, clearing her throat after she tugged her tunic back into place.

"We'll need those swords if you're intent on the western route," the Ramayan said. "And for the record, I still think we should take an eastward swing instead."

There, Angharad did not agree.

"The east is safest but also the path most the other brigades will be taking," she reminded her lover.

"I'd rather be crowded than dead," Shalini shrugged.

So far, the planned hunting expeditions were headed one of two ways. A trio of hardened fighting crews, Sebastian Camaron's Ninth foremost among them, would be pushing straight north into the greenery-and-detritus filled trenches of the ancient canals. It was the most straightforward path to the dantesvara's territory, but one passing through thick herbage certain to have dangerous lemures lying in wait.

The remaining crews were instead swinging eastward through the ruins to the right side of the canals, intending to stick to that safer path until they'd reached the section of the canals where water still flowed. As dantesvara usually dwelled close to water, it was considered most likely that its lair would be around the part of the canals where the piles of mud and detritus tumbled into the waters of Rhodon Bay.

The cost of this approach was that, while safer, the ruins lacked anything like a working path. Theirs would be as much a climbing expedition as a hunting one. The Third had been the first to commit to the path, buying up climbing equipment while their tinker built a sort of foldable bridge out of wood and iron, but a flood had followed behind them.

Tristan and Angharad had chosen to follow neither tendency when planning out their advance. The scouting they'd been able to get in before matters with Song and Maryam came to a head had shown there might be a different opportunity: they could strike out where no one else dared, westwards.

"There are risks to swinging west," Tristan acknowledged. "We'll be close to the Nests, so if we stumble into lemures it will be tricky to fend them off without drawing more. But there's also benefits."

"The eastern edge of the Nests is a functional paved street," Angharad said, still remembering the sight of that narrow canal-side strip in the distance. "By using it we could reach the detritus beach at the end of the Old Canals in hours instead of days. And it lets us narrow the search down."

"Because if there's an area entirely free of lemures that close to the Nests, it's almost certainly because the Lord of Teeth is lairing there," Izel completed, having been brought into the planning early. "It's a gambit, to be sure, but the chances of striking gold are too good to pass up."

"Yes, I'm well aware of the selling points," Shalini sighed. "But also of the risks of drawing half the Nests down on our head should we get into a shooting match. We killed a lot of lemures that day, but we sure as Fetters didn't empty the breeding grounds."

"That's the selling point of bringing Luyanda," Tristan pointed out. "We put them on a stretcher and have them warn us of anything coming close."

A tactic that was not feasible for either the crews headed into the canals or eastward, given the broken terrain they would be moving through. A paved street, though, would make two students carrying a third in a stretcher something other than an elaborate death pact.

"To be frank, I am not sure the benefits outweigh the risks of coming so close to the Nests," Zenzele said. "Could we not simply take in every independent and force march north down a canal bed to make similar time? There is one still left unclaimed."

Several winces from the more tactically inclined, including herself. Angharad cleared her throat.

"Taking a large band into the canal negates the advantage of numbers," she said, "while leaving us to bear all the costs of them: slowness, noise, disarray."

Especially since a mob could not be counted on to hold steady in the face of danger. It was a recipe for a rout, not a triumph.

"We could take up the Third's offer, then," Shalini pressed. "Things have been quiet with the princess, but she's still around and the Second's still seething from Alizia Salas' death. There's safety in numbers."

The Nineteenth Brigade, that nest of spies still stubbornly resisting disbandment, had been keeping out of sight. In a rare display of good sense, Yaotl Acatl had avoided the Lamb Hill camp and spent her time out scouting for paths forward. As for Guadalupe, Angharad suspected that the enmity there was not so great as some thought but she could not find it in her to argue against caution given the Thirteenth's record with enemies.

"Accepting Nenetl's offer would mean taking sides between the Third and the Ninth, regardless of the practical considerations," Ferranda pointed out.

Half of her cabal looked less than convinced, and Angharad hid her surprise at the fact that they were so openly displaying it. This was an informal parliament of ideas, certainly, but the sheer lack of deference to their captain was troublingly open. She was not the only one to notice, either.

"Opinions are getting entrenched," Tristan said. "Let's put it to a vote and move from there, yes?"

They went by raised hand. Those against the plan to swing by the west voted first, earning two raised hands: Shalini and Zenzele. All five others voted in favor, a decisive enough majority in that direction it would be difficult to argue with it. Her friend was not the kind of man to call a vote without knowing the outcome in advance.

"Then we head west," Tristan said. "I'm not blind to the risks, mind you. We should proceed with care and prepare for another avenue to take should it prove too dangerous. I expect we've got two volunteers to consider that."

It was a sop thrown to the two against the plan, Angharad judged, but a well-placed one. Zenzele looked pleased, at least, and Shalini was not one to argue when a plan was agreed on even if she disliked it. Angharad had found the gunslinger was perfectly capable of thinking on her feet, down in the Acallar, but she preferred to leave the planning to others. Angharad suspected it was an old habit from the years Shalini had spent as a bodyguard.

"And, on this note, the beer has run out," Rong Ma drily said. "I believe this heralds the ends the first session of the Fourthday Council."

There were general noises of agreement. It was not late but tomorrow would be a long day. An early start was the best way to make use of their plan, and that meant rising with the earliest lights. They'd have to be careful not wake the others when leaving. Song and Maryam still had Warfare class tomorrow but they were still sleeping in town, largely because they were rushing through Maryam's arrangement with the ship captain before Colonel Cao's peace dinner tomorrow.

That meant their room would be quite crowded and Angharad would have to seek other arrangements for her evening. But before their assembly could disperse Shalini leaned up close to her ear to whisper.

"Rainsparrow, room seventeen," she breathed, hand coming to rest high on Angharad's leg as she did. "Twenty minutes."

What a farsighted woman she was, Shalini. Full of great ideas. The curvy gunslinger drew away with a catlike smile, leaving the mirror-dancer to adjust her cloak and try not to think too much about those nimble fingers put to improper work. She abruptly rose to her feet, hastily bid Tristan and Izel goodbye – the latter poorly hid a knowing smile behind his hand when wishing her a 'pleasant evening' – and strode away.

It turned out to be a premature notion, as they'd all settled on seaside benches maybe ten minutes of walk away from the Rainsparrow and Angharad found she had time to waste with frustrated energy in her limbs. There were much more pleasant ways for her to spend it, but instead she found herself wandering by the empty courtyard houses north of Fort Seneca to waste time.

The informal trainings grounds were where her Skiritai lessons took place, these days, though in truth they reminded her more of her mirror-dancer training. Nandi Khota was not interested in drills or in pushing on her a particular fencing school, instead pitting her against a wide variety of weapons and opponents – on occasion, several at a time.

The courtyards were deserted at this time of night, though, and rarely saw use past noon. Which made it all the more unusual when Angharad caught a flicker a movement inside one. Angharad raised her voice, hailing a stranger, but the lack of answer told her this was no couple looking for an unusual tryst location. Lemure, lares? Either way, it would be dishonorable to pass on a nasty surprise to whoever came here to train in the morning when Angharad stood present and armed.

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She unsheathed her saber, slow and careful so the sound would not carry, and stepped past the threshold into the dark courtyard. Silver Orrery light swept above, casting shadows across the sand, but there was no mistaking who stood in the middle of it. A ghost in black, wearing a sneer like it was armor.

"Cai Wei," Angharad evenly greeted. "You return to haunt me."

"Tredegar," she replied. "How could I not, when you've set out to kill me?"

Her brow rose.

"A bold claim," Angharad said. "One might argue you are already dead – and that I owe you not a thing besides, parasite."

The ghost's teeth clenched.

"You know what will happen to me when I am embodied again in the Acallar," she said. "The Marshal already pointed a gun at me once with intent to pull the trigger – he'll push for me to be executed."

"You took from me willingly, Cai," Angharad flatly said, "where the others latched on dreaming. You even tried to hide your presence."

"And for that I deserve to die?"

"I did not ask for you to be killed, and the Marshal cannot decide it on his own," she impatiently replied. "Once you are embodied again you will have the same protections as any other student."

Until she was tossed out of Scholomance, anyway. Angharad did not know whether she would be held to account before or after she washed out, nor did she particularly care.

"They'll put me on trial," Cai Wei snarled.

Her anger stoked the same in Angharad's belly.

"To hold you to account for things you have done," Angharad snarled back. "Where was this concern when you slunk under my skin like a sickness, feeding on my soul?"

"So I should sit on my hands like a good little fool, watching you bring us back one after another until I can be dragged in front of a tribunal to, what – hope I don't die patrolling the Desolation or doing seven years of hard labor in the Kalkhea mines?" Cai said. "I won't just wait in silence as my life is ripped away from me."

And Angharad could sympathize – at the torment of watching powerless, if not the refusal to own her deeds – but she struggled to see what Cai Wei thought could be done. Little of this was in her hands.

"What do you want from me, Cai?" she asked.

"Testify for me," the ghost demanded. "Bring me into your brigade. I've heard the talk, you did it with the tinker that tried to off the rat, didn't you? I'll be much more useful than a cogboy when I have my body back, you could use another fighter."

A better woman might have considered it, at least a moment. Angharad did not: the utter, instinctive revulsion at the notion of bringing the likes of Cai Wei into the Unluckies, into that rarefied circle of trust, was strong enough it blotted out the very thought.

"I owe you no such thing," she coldly replied. "And will make no such offer. Bear the consequences of your actions, Wei. I will add nothing to your burdens, but neither will I excuse your crimes."

"Then you are killing me," the ghost bit out, striding across the sand. "Just slow and cowardly instead of a blade in hand like someone with true nerve would."

To Angharad's genuine surprise, Cai Wen struck out at her. She raised her sword, instinctively, but the ghost flowed through it and reached for her throat. The fingers closed around the flesh and there was utter startlement on both their faces when Angharad actually felt pressure, like she was being squeezed.

She struck at the ghost, dispersing her into mist, and Cai Wei did not reappear.

Angharad was left alone in the courtyard, breathing heavy and touching her throat. She could feel marks on her skin, proof she had not imagined it.

This, she darkly thought, was going to be a problem.

--

All that Tolomontera soft living was making Tristan soft in turn: this morning his eyelids felt heavy and his limbs ached. There'd been a time where he would have hardly batted an eye at operating on dregs of a night's sleep, but he'd grown unused to a dozen small daily aches that in Sacromonte he'd just thought of as being part of life.

Still, there'd been no getting around it: there were simply too many things that'd needed to be done last night. After the town went to sleep was the best time to break into the private storage, and he wasn't going to risk casing the house he was after in the day hours either. It wasn't in a part of town where even a student could walk around without notice: a pack of blackcloaks had settled in the same few streets, turning the slice of the Triangle into a small fortress where idlers stuck out as sore thumbs. No, to have a close look the dead hours of night were the only real option that wouldn't land him a mention in someone's report.

As for his early rise, well, his hunting crew had arranged to set out at six which meant he needed to have his little meet-up with the informant even earlier. The tiredness had been worth what he learned, though he'd admit he had not enjoyed scaling Lamb Hill when they arrived and would not enjoy making his way through the brushlands after the expedition set out towards the Old Canals. For now, though, he could stand on the heights and rest while letting his eyes wander.

The Lamb Hill camp was bustling, half a dozen expeditions preparing to set out within the same hour. Some might have preferred waited longer, continued scouting paths, but once even one brigade tried for the prize everyone else had to or risk losing the advantage. Even this morning there was an informal competition about who would set out first.

Captain Nenetl of the Third was giving a hard stare to the Twentieth as it gathered around its twin Pereduri signifiers, standing on her fine new prosthetic. Nenetl had picked the safe path, but she would have to race down it against everyone of the same mind. Most of the crews were headed her way and one had even already set out, explaining the naked impatience on her face, but Tristan suspected she was already staring at her main challengers.

Most of the eastern-bound crews were small, single brigades as the relative safety of the area was not pressuring students to gather in numbers, and none were half as well prepared as the Third or the Twentieth. If that portable bridge Nenetl had prevailed on her tinker to make ended up even half as useful as Tristan suspected it would, the Workshop was going to get flooded in orders for imitations tonight.

The Ninth under Sebastian Camaron was less worried about competition and taking its time to depart, though they would not be setting out alone. They'd picked up five independents, including one Tristan had hoped to keep from the Battle of the Barrels – Jiang Chen, a steady gunhand with a boon that let him resist exhaustion – to bulk up their numbers. They were not the only ones. The nature of the terrain the Ninth's crew was headed into meant that there were few viable routes: only the canal beds and the high grounds between them.

In practice that mean no more than four, five crews could head north and their paths would be running straight lines through whatever opposition or broken grounds were in their way, so the three crews that'd actually chosen to push north had all gone shopping for additional guns beforehand. Camaron had even acted to cut off posturing over who got which route early by publicly staking his claim on one of the canal beds and making it known he'd kneecap anyone ahead of him.

It was a hard stance to start on, but instead of brawls it'd resulted in a gentlemanly agreement between the three crews about who would be taking which route so Tristan had to concede that Camaron had read the room right.

"Looking for someone?"

Having heard the footsteps Tristan did not startle, though he was surprised about who it'd turned out to be. He had been expecting Angharad, but instead he turned to find Zenzele Duma.

"Trying to figure out if the Second will bring whoever they recruited to replace Alizia Salas along," Tristan said. "De Tovar's been quiet enough about who it is I haven't been able to get a name."

And Guadalupe de Tovar would need a fourth member for the Second Brigade, else by Scholomance rules it would disband at the end of the month. She did not strike Tristan as the kind of woman who would tolerate such a disgrace, so the only question remaining was whether they'd bring in some temporary seat-filler that was part of the brigade in name only or if she'd already had her eye on someone.

"It's a rare treat to be ahead of you on gossip," Zenzele smiled. "Look at the bottom left of the hill, near the latrines. The new man's an old acquaintance of yours."

Tristan's gaze followed along the instructed path and he almost cursed at who it was he found. A Tianxi with dark hair, dark eyes and a steady composure. Muchen He, the Skiritai that'd been part of the first Forty-Ninth before it was forcefully disbanded. Muchen's tainted reputation had seen him bounce between assigned brigades last year, but he fit Guadalupe de Tovar's needs well: a skilled Skiritai with a contract that would allow the Second some unusual angles of approach.

And he was currently talking with Valantin Mercador, the Monkey Society spy from the princess' brigade. Tristan's eyes narrowed. De Tovar had been very open in expressing distaste for Yaotl Acatl no lesser than the one she felt for him, so that was a surprise. Skiritai chatter, happenstance? Hard to tell, they were far and neither was an easy man to read.

Valantin was the toughest nut to crack in the Second, the one Tristan was wariest of. The others were an opportunist and a Krypteia plant, leverage worked. Valantin, though, had likely been assigned to stick close to Yaotl at the Grasshopper King's order. It would take more than just leverage to move him.

"I don't suppose you'd tell me if my good friend Muchen happens to hold a grudge against me?" Tristan idly asked.

Zenzele snorted.

"None that I can see," he replied while Tristan hid his surprise at getting an answer. "It seems you're not the center of the world after all."

Meaning that if Muchen He hated him, it was not a strong enough emotion to show as a visible thread to Zenzele's contract. That was reassuring. Muchen had seemed the most even keeled of the old Forty-Ninth, so tentatively Tristan would mark their old matter as water under the bridge. Mostly. He cleared his throat.

"I never asked," he said. "But can you..."

"No," Zenzele cut off. "It shows as a golden chord, but it wraps around you. I am unsure what that means, exactly, but we will not be able to use your love for your patron as a compass."

Tristan grimaced, almost wishing he hadn't asked. He tried not to consider the implications of what he'd just been told too much, that it might mean the boon Fortuna had left him was all that was left. He still had time, if ever less of it. According to Andreu Claver's work Fortuna should not have lost anything yet. Let it be that the dantesvara's oddities were impairing Zenzele's contract instead, it was a safer thought to embrace.

They headed to their crew's slice of the camp together, joining the throng as they prepared to set out. Theirs was not the largest hunting crew out there, but they weren't far off either: between the Thirteenth and Thirty-First they numbered seven, while another four independents bumped them up to eleven. Luyanda, to his pleasure, was among that number. He'd not even had to offer the bribe he had been saving up for them. The Battle of the Barrels had been a terribly effective remedy for the damage he'd done to the Thirteenth's reputation.

Their company set out mere minutes after the initial wave departed, long enough that Tristan was able to find out both the Second and the Nineteenth were headed eastwards. Something of a relief, since that was the opposite direction they were.

Like much everyone else, their crew first went down the wormway and kept going on the surface until they'd reached the wreck of the forge, a scorched hole with one last standing wall. It would have been a virtual certainty they'd have to fight something getting here, before the Battle of the Barrels, but that morning's work still held even though the plumes of smoke had long dispersed.

From there they headed west through ruins so thoroughly collapsed they might as well be wilderness, the few remaining bits of stone now covered in bushes and tall weeds. Tristan stuck with Izel in the middle of the pack, leaving vanguard work to the Skiritai.

Not a single lares or lemure leapt out at them from cover, despite the many hiding places. His own earlier sallies with Angharad had yielded the same result, and the information he'd traded with other crews pointed at the same conclusion: from the border of the Nests out west to the edge of the Ashgarden out east, there was hardly a lemure left. The lingering fire and heavy smoke had scared off scavengers and it would be a while still before monsters reclaimed the grounds.

About thirty minutes in they found a mound made of a collapsed temple and climbed it to orient themselves, finding they were facing the high grounds between the leftmost and central canal.

"Another half hour and we'll be at the edge of the Old Canals" Tristan quietly said.

"And of the Nests," Izel grimly replied.

The tinker kept reaching for the contraption on his bandoleer as they moved, checking it for something. Izel had claimed it'd tell them when they were close to the dantesvara, though only once, and after that would become part of an aether spike. Forty minutes in they were attacked for the first time, better than Tristan had dared to hope for. A lycosi tried to nip at their heels only to get put down by Ferranda, who was careful to use a blade and not a pistol: they'd all agreed not to use guns unless lives were on the line.

"It's ragged, look at the ribs," Ferranda opined afterwards. "Some survivor from the packs we killed at the Battle of the Bells that's failed at hunting on its own."

The next attack wasn't even from a lemure – Shalini disturbed a snake, which bit at her boot but failed to punch through. It was dead a moment later, Angharad's blade flashing, but it served as a reminder to all of them that there were dangers to this expedition beyond beasts touched by the Gloam. Their company was large enough that no other remnant dared approach, and by the hour's turn they reached the bottom Old Canals while facing as only opponent a swarm of large, black flies that tore chunks out of exposed skin.

Horrid fuckers, and since their plan was to skirt the edge of lemure warrens none of them could put on lemon or other smells to drive them off.

Tristan had never come so close to the Nests before, but their silhouette had been on the horizon so long it almost felt familiar. Once upon a time, this part of Allazei had been a bustling port. It had been important enough to their treasury that the kings of Sologuer built the Old Canals, three parallel canals joined together at their southern end so that a complex system of water locks could be used to turn any of the three waterways into an entrance or an exit.

To service that constant freight, warehouses had popped up like mushrooms after rain and a large stretch of city to the left of the Old Canals had come to be filled with them. Then Allazei had died, and those warehouses slowly turned into the Nests.

Little of the fighting from either conquest of Allazei had reached this part of the city, so it was time and the elements that had made the Nests. Tall warehouses fell apart in pieces, became overgrown with greenery and dirt, until an entire district became a pile of mounds made around the shape of the old warehouses. They were never filled in entirely, so the Nests were essentially a neighborhood's worth of warrens and caverns that no Orrery light ever touched the inside of: the finest lemure breeding grounds one could ask for.

And from those breeding grounds monsters had spilled into what had become of the Old Canals. Time had not spared the waterways either – the locks of which had been closed during the Watch's taking of Allazei to prevent an easy landing of the fleet. The intricate machinery fell part as mud, detritus and plants filled the dry canal beds. Over the years trash and dead greenery had turned the old waterways into marshy canyons of trash and reeds, the ground between them becoming thick forested groves whose roots dipped into the marsh below.

But the side of the Nests that touched the canals was a still-flat paved street running north along the leftmost canal's edge all the way to Rhodon Bay, time having largely spared the road. In a few places collapsed stones and earth from the Nests covered the street, but even with those obstacles there was simply no comparison to the difficulty of wading through the canals or the eastern ruins. The risk, of course, were also significantly higher – but they'd prepared for that.

"All right, Luyanda," Tristan said, clapping his hands. "Let's get you on that stretcher."

The skinny, almost waifish Malani grimaced but they'd signed up for it.

"All in the ears," they promised. "Do not fire a pistol within five feet of me, else it will burst my eardrum. And I would appreciate no whistling, but that's rather more of a personal preference."

"I'll see what can be done," Tristan amusedly replied.

They tightened their formation into a ring of steel around the stretcher-carried contractor and despite the strength brought to bear here Tristan could not help but feel naked. His eyes kept straying to the dark silhouettes of the Nests. Carefully, they began marching north.

It would have felt almost like a strange promenade, if not for Luyanda stopping them a mere minute in to warn there was something large approaching. They all hid under the awning of long-buried shop, clutching their weapons, and only resumed advancing when the contractor told them whatever lemure it'd been had wandered off. They advanced in fits and starts afterwards, a walk that would have taken barely thirty minutes by the Allazei docks instead taking them almost an hour and a half.

Of that a chunk had been pauses to allow Luyanda not to draw too much on their contract at once, but it was still a staggeringly slow pace. The only comfort was that the other crews would have it even worse.

Once they'd reached the 'beach' of the leftmost canal, where dirt and detritus sloped down into murky water, they took a break to quickly eat and decide on their next step. Izel's device had not found the dantesvara nearby and neither had their eyes, which left them with a decision. First was to keep going north, following the edge of the Nests with water to their left in the hopes that the Lord of Teeth was dwelling there.

"Dantesvara like mud piles," Izel reminded them. "Even if some part of the canal wall has collapsed enough to serve as water access, it'll not be the sort of lair their kind prefers. Besides, if a beast that large had made its home that close to the Nests..."

"There would have been waves of lesser lemures fleeing it, not the trickle we encountered before the battle," Ferranda said. "Agreed. We need to cut east."

Which meant using ropes to get down into the canal bed, then again to climb onto the raised grounds to its right. No one was all that sanguine at the thought, since it would mean the only ways to retreat if the beast chased them would back up the ropes to the Nests or south into the canal bed with no idea what lay in wait. Still, it was that or retreat so reluctantly their crew agreed on pushing eastward.

The 'beach' was a horrid swamp of mud, debris and detritus with enough mosquitoes one could hardly suck in a breath without swallowing one, but Tristan did not mind the smell as much as some of the others did. It wasn't even as bad as the Sacromonte canals during the summer dredging; the dry heaves from some of the crew were a little dramatic. Their company was well-equipped enough in ropes to leave them hanging and still have enough for the climb up the opposite wall, so they did.

Tristan had no intention of being the first up that rope, so he hung back with Izel while the students afflicted with bravery threw hooks and secured the lines on some of the roots that grew in thick knots.

"We could probably find a shorter climb if we march south for a bit," Tristan mused. "There's parts where the canal is filled in almost two thirds of the way up."

After a third heartbeat passed without Izel answering he turned with his hand already palming a knife to find his wide-eyed comrade staring down at his contraption. Izel loudly swallowed.

"It's here," the tinker croaked. "Within at least two hundred feet. We must have been just out of the radius when I last tried."

Shit.

"You're sure?" he asked.

"It's either that or a manifested god," Izel said, voice strangled.

Tristan considered which manner of god might make a home in the ruined, stinking remains of a once-prosperous waterway and decided that outcome was unlikely to be an improvement. He immediately went to Angharad, taking her aside, and she was soon glancing around.

"Where?" she whispered.

"I don't know," he whispered back, "but the last thing we need right now is anybody making noise. Get them to stop climbing."

"Oh, shit," Luyanda squawked.

They all looked where the contractor was pointing. Maybe a hundred and change feet further up the canal, on the right wall, there was a gaping hole none of them had noticed because it was dark on grey. It looked like the opening of some cavern that'd been dug into solid ground, a good spot for the dantesvara's lair.

The Lord of Teeth must agree, since its fucking head was poking out of the opening.

"Down," Tristan croaked. "Everyone down."

Eleven blackcloaks lay down in the stinking earth, pressing themselves into the wet garbage, and Tristan had never before been so glad of a reek. It might just save their lives. The Lord of Teeth sniffed at the air, almost in irritation, and none of them dared to even breathe.

After the longest two minutes of Tristan's life, the beast slunk into the water with hardly a ripple. Gods, but it was so quiet for how large it was.

They waited another five minutes in silence, terrified one and all that it would emerge on the beach, and didn't even dare to take back the second set of ropes before fleeing back up the first. The moment they were back on the paved street they booked it south, running as far as their legs were allowed, and did not stop even when shrieks erupted inside the Nests.

They made it back to the greenery and then the wormway, soaked in sweat and panting and stinking like carrion, but every one of them still alive.

And, best of all, they'd found where the monster dwelled.