Pale Lights

Chapter 163 36

The houses claimed by the Orels were packed tight from the addition of another seven souls, but the sounds coming from their yard were happy.

Young Koval was shrieking with laughter, a black-haired man only a few years his elder wrestling with him in the grass. Blankets had been laid over the steps and grass, the newcomers sitting on them with hollow cheeks but gleaming eyes. Old Horvat ducked and weaved among them, filling cups and patting shoulders and wheezing. Bolic was standing tall with a flask in hand, telling a story, but Maryam had not come for him. She kept to the shadows as she moved, never coming into their sight.

There was a shed, not far off, where Orel Poltava had put together the barest bones of smithy. Its windows were lit with lamplight and Maryam found the blacksmith inside. She was kneeling on the floor, sifting through a pile of chains and manacles. Some were set aside, the parts in good iron, while the rest were dumped in a bucket that would likely be sold to the Workshop for spare coppers. The tinkers always had use for scrap iron, though they were rarely willing to pay much for it.

Maryam did not try to keep her steps quiet, so by the time she came to lean against the doorsill Poltava had turned her way – hand on the knife belted at her hip, just in case. The other woman's broad face lightened at the sight of her.

"Princess," Poltava nodded. "A pleasant surprise. Do you have need of me?"

"You might say that," Maryam said. "Are you in a hurry?"

She snorted.

"The bad ale Horvat is passing around will keep," she replied. "I am at your disposal."

That, Maryam had come to realize, was rather the issue. The Orels were bound to follow her arrangements but sitting with Izel she had realized that she had no real idea what they wanted. Oh, she knew what Bolic wanted. Her ship, her name, perhaps even her body. But Orel Bolic was only one of five.

An hour ago, before being forced to look her choices in the eye, Maryam would have dithered. Tried some small talk, maybe let the opportunity pass outright. But she was done with that, she had to be. Too much time had been wasted already.

"Your journey to Kofoni turned into a shitshow," she frankly said. "You were shot at, nearly broke a leg and raided a slaver's ship. Are you all right?"

"The physician said the leg is only sprained," Poltava told her. "I have coin saved, enough to buy herbs for the swelling."

"That's not what I meant," she said. "As I think you well know. You are not a soldier, nor were you contracted to serve as one. I would not blame you for having doubts."

"You think this will happen again?" Poltava quietly asked.

"It could," Maryam said. "Neither me nor the Thirteenth would seek to put you in the way of blades, but to ferry the brigade around the Trebian Sea for contracts may well see it happen again."

The older woman nodded, staying silent, and looked at her for a long time.

"Is this about Bolic?" Poltava finally asked.

Maryam's brow rose.

"It's not not about Bolic," she acknowledged. "What has he said?"

"Fool things," Poltava said. "The kind that tell the whole tale of how he lived it large for a time but ended up in slave hulk young. Some of those young men we picked up might like the sound of them, but I know better. The blackclad captain was happy enough to hang those slavers, but if they'd not attacked us first he would have walked us to the gallows instead."

Not with any great pleasure, Maryam thought, but she agreed he would have done it anyway. Captain Tianming had not struck her as the kind of man who looked away when the Watch was in the wrong – at no point of the talk in the warehouse had he ever hinted that the matter with the merchantmen could go unreported to authority. Only which authority had been worth discussing.

"And that doesn't bother you?" Maryam asked.

Poltava licked her lips.

"I'm not good with words, princess," the blacksmith said, bringing up her hands. "My grip is the gift the gods saw fit to give me. I think you should talk to Koval, he'll say it better."

Koval the Elder, presumably.

"You would have him speak for you?" Maryam asked, honestly surprised.

She had known that Bolic 'led' the rest of them by virtue of highest birth and being the most experienced seafarer more than any deep love, but she would not have thought the elder Koval to be anyone's choice. Maryam found him rather mousy and focused on his son at the exclusion of almost all else. It did not make him a bad man and it did make him a good father, but were she one of the Orels she would have not picked him.

"More than Bolic," Poltava bluntly said. "I know he's your man, princess, and trying to be in the other way too. But he's a vitez to the bone, and I'm not interested in coming to the same end as his last crew did."

It occurred to Maryam, not for the first time, that these were strangers. That she'd not known what they thought of her ties with Bolic, thought of each other. She didn't even know what had happened to the man's old crew, though guesses came easy – and grim.

"And what's that?" she asked.

"Those that didn't run away in time were seized and sold to the ironmen," Poltava said. "Fodder for the mines. He's a vitez, though, and they were just sailors. He got sold as a curiosity to some Malani official instead."

Maryam's eyes narrowed.

"You make it sound," she said, "like it was not the Malani who had him seized."

"Malani ruled the city, sure," Poltava said. "But they didn't run it. The harbormen are the ones who had him taken in. Didn't bribe the right men, or maybe they were tired of the running the risk."

"And the harbormen were Izvoric," Maryam slowly said.

The older woman nodded and Maryam's throat tightened. They would be, wouldn't they? There were only so many Malani in Juska, even if you counted all the colony towns. They'd have a stranglehold on the key posts of the major cities and ports, maybe even fill the ranks with their own men, but for smaller cities? No, the Malani would just put one of theirs in charge of the old harbormen and let it all go on as before. Too much trouble to do otherwise, for too little gain. Gods.

"Koval should be taking his evening poppy about now, so he'll be inside the house," Poltava said, sounding hesitant.

She had been silent for too long, Maryam realized, and she cleared her throat.

"Why?" she asked, mostly to say something at all.

"He doesn't like to be feeling it around his son," the blacksmith said.

She thought of Tristan, for half a moment, but the similarity was only slight. The thief wouldn't have taken a drop of it unless he were forced.

"I'll pay him a visit, then," Maryam said, inclining her head.

She pushed off the door, cloak catching slightly on the wood, and had taken only one step away when Poltava spoke up.

"Thank you."

Maryam turned to find the blacksmith on her feet, leaning against the wall.

"For getting us out," Poltava softly said. "But for this too."

"I should have done it earlier," Maryam said, voice tight. "I never asked what the five of you want. And I didn't tell you enough of what I can really offer."

"But you asked," Poltava said. "It's already more than any princess I've ever heard of."

I'm not sure I should be called that anymore, Maryam thought. It had been one thing, to put on that half-formed notion and wear it like a garland when there was no one around it meant anything for. She could ruefully call herself princess of Volcesta when no one there had ever seen the valley, or understood that the word in Recnigvor she was translating didn't really mean the same thing in Antigua. But now that there were Izvoric around it wasn't just noise, a crude word shouted into a cave to echo.

Calling herself a princess, it would mean taking on a responsibility. Taking up oaths, some of which ran against oaths she had already taken.

"I'm not so sure a princess is what I need to be," Maryam finally said, then shook her head. "Thanks for the talk."

--

It was as Poltava had said – the man was inside the house, tucked away in a side room mending clothes clumsily. He was surprised when she asked for a word but promptly invited her to sit. It took but a few moments for Maryam to realize the strangest thing: Orel Koval reminded her of home more than any of the others.

Bolic, with the swagger and the sword and the mustache, he fit everywhere men sailed. He carried that with him, in him. Koval, on the other hand, stuck out like a sore thumb in Allazei. He'd bought local clothes but there'd been no eye to flair: he'd gotten whatever was warmest, sturdiest and cheapest for himself and his son, as much of it as he could. Most of the shirts had been too large before he tightened them up with needlework.

Orel Koval walking around slightly bent in his mismatched clothes, hair black and eyes blue, looked like he'd been stolen right out of some coastland town and dropped on the streets of Allazei. He looked like half the Izvoric she'd ever seen and spoke like them too.

Only there was something slightly off about him, which Maryam picked up on only when she looked closer: the colors of his clothes were slightly off. The blues were not quite vivid enough to be from copper soup, the reds were Tianxi vermillion instead of madder red. The man had not changed, but the dyes had. A girl more inclined to verse might have found something in there, but Maryam had not been blessed with the gift of the turn of phrase.

She had eyes, when she cared to see, and ears when she cared to listen. But that was not the same thing and her tongue often felt clumsy when used for anything but sarcasm. Still, she had graces enough to ask about this wounded shoulder.

"The Dove's physician assured me that enough rest will see it heal well," Koval told her, fiddling with the bandage. "I will not be as nimble as it was before, but I was lucky and the bullet did not strike bone."

He shifted in his seat, uncomfortable – though whether it was from her presence or talk of the wound she was not sure.

"The liquor the blackclads use to clean wounds works better than honey," Koval said. "They gave me a bottle and bandages with instructions on how to change them, so I need not fear infection."

His hand reached for one of the scars beneath his eyes, thin lines that almost looked more like a mark than an old wound.

"If you head to the hospital, they will change it for you," Maryam said.

The man gave her a forced smile.

"I appreciate it, princess, but unless the wound sours I would rather take care of it myself."

It wasn't pride talking, she thought. Koval had that father's virtue of being able to swallow his pride when it came to anything that might reach his son, and dying of a bad wound would qualify.

"Are they giving you trouble there?" she asked, nails digging into her knee even through the tunic.

Maryam – well, Song – had checked and as auxiliaries the Orels were allowed the use of the hospital on the same terms as the locals. Koval the Elder shook his head, almost smiling in a way that had little joy to it.

"All the world gives us trouble," he said. "It would be grasping of me to complain when you have us living in such luxury."

Maryam would have laughed, if not for the utter seriousness of his tone. Awkwardly she cleared her throat, not quite sure what to say. Koval let out a small noise of understanding.

"Apologies, princess," he said. "I forget how young you are."

Her brow rose. She might have been inclined to find insult there, if not for his tone being so matter-of-fact.

"Meaning?"

"That I live in a stone house without paying rent," Koval said. "That I do not owe a quarter of my catches to a lord and must not offer ten days of labor to the priests of Ribacki every spring to get my family's boat blessed."

He snorted.

"Food is freely sold, the blackclads serve as thief-takers without asking for the barter price and by the laws of their order I cannot be called as levy to wage war."

Koval picked at his bandages absent-mindedly.

"A lord offering such fine living on the coastlands would have been called a tall tale," he frankly said. "Gaining these circumstances for my son would have been well worth dangerous work, but you do not even ask it – only sailing for trade and travel, at pay more than generous."

"It's lesser pay than what most sailors would get," Maryam said, throat tight.

The Thirteenth simply hadn't been able to afford more without it eating into their means – even with Young Koval getting half-pay on account of his youth.

"We are lesser sailors than most," Koval said. "And your ship, we love it not. Even Bolic makes signs to ward off evil whenever he passes by the engine room should you not be there to impress."

Maryam hid her amusement at that, though it passed quickly enough anyway. The older man ran a hand through the thinning black strands of his hair.

"It is understandable," Koval said, "that you do not see the worth of the gift you gave us. You were born a princess and became a craftwoman, so most of these things you must take granted. But even the others, who were all moneyed back home, have easier lives here than they did in the lowlands."

"A blacksmith like Poltava makes a good living everywhere," Maryam stiffly said. "Better than the pay I offered."

"Poltava shoed horses and spent most of her time on nails and arrowheads," Koval replied. "The finer work she did, mail coats and city-coinage, she did on behalf of the king of Prarije for a pittance."

The older man shrugged.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

"Old Horvat owned his inn, it is true," he said. "He was propertied man until he went out of business. But he paid dues to the Staresine and was subject to the war tax."

"Bolic was a free knight," Maryam tried, feeling like she was grasping at straws.

"What is calling yourself a vitez really worth, princess?" Koval mused. "He was a pirate with no rights under any law, even his ship only his own so long as he had the swords to keep it. He docked where harbormasters could be bought, and only as long as they found his gold worth braving Malan's anger. I would wager your service is the first time he's had such a long string of warm meals since he was a boy."

She swallowed. It had not occurred to her until then that the truth buried beneath the tale of her mother's war might also lie beneath the tale of what it was to be a free knight. She had patted herself on the back for knowing that vitez were pirates and smugglers, not legendary loyal partisans sworn to war on Malan, but never given thought to what that life would really mean.

"And it doesn't bother you, the way they look at you?" Maryam asked, throat tight. "The stares, the whispers. That half the people out there will take you a servant or a slave just from the color of your skin?"

"I have been both of those things, princess," Koval gently said. "It does not offend me to be thought either. It is not a source of pride, but shame? No, not that. The work was work."

He looked out the door, through the common room in which echoed the laughter of his son still playing in the yard.

"If there was any shame to be found, my lady, it was in the cruelty offered my family and that will not be my burden to bring into the Nav. I am no more ashamed of having been a slave than I am of having been shot."

"Are you chiding me for my pride, Koval?" she quietly asked.

Blue eyes shied away.

"I think pride is a concern for free knights and princesses," Koval said. "I was a fisherman, and I am now a sailor. My concern is winter blankets for my son, teaching him enough written Antigua I can petition for him attend the school near the barracks."

He touched his bandaged arm.

"This is, I think, will be a rarity," Koval said. "The Watch will not suffer anything else of either you or the zeljezari."

"The Morcant won't stop," Maryam told him.

She did not specify Nathi or the house, for there was not much difference.

"The Morcant will fight as lords fight everywhere when offended," he shrugged. "But their family has sent a child to the Watch as hostage, so they will have to follow its laws or pay for it. My son is safer here than anywhere else in the world, I think."

And Maryam had not asked the question, not come anywhere near it, but Koval was not a fool and sometimes neither was she. Let this be one of those times.

"You don't want to leave," she said.

He watched her for a long time, silent.

"You don't know us," Koval said.

Her lips thinned. She would have liked for that to be a lie, but it was not. The rest of her evening made the truth of that all too plain.

"This is not a reproach," he hastened to assure her. "It is... proper. You are a king's daughter and our patron. Already you offered great kindness in personally showing us around the port, teaching us where to go and who to buy from."

But, she thought.

"But you do not eat with us, princess. You do not drink in our garden, trade junak tales or toss axes with Horvat and Poltava," Koval said. "I will be grateful for what you did even after I die, carry it unto the Nav for the gods to weigh, but you have no idea what any of us want. Not even Bolic."

"And what is that?" she asked.

"I want my son to grow to manhood on this island, for him to put on a black cloak when he grows of age," Koval told her. "I want to set enough coin aside that when our contract ends I can buy a home, to take up fishing for the Watch in the shadow of one of their fortresses. I want to marry, to have children and never raise my hand in violence again until I die."

Maryam blew out a breath.

"I thought you'd want..."

"To sail around the sea hunted like dogs, looking for slaves to free?" Koval asked. "No, princess. It is selfish of me, having been freed by your kindness, but I cannot. I am no vitez, to glory in the knife's edge until it inevitably slips and cuts my throat."

"You would leave our people in bondage," Maryam said, and it was not quite a reproach but it was not far off.

A reproach as much for herself as him, she thought. The man's lips thinned.

"My wife is still alive, as far as I know," he told her.

Maryam stilled.

"I had no idea," she said.

"I do not speak of it," Koval said. "We were taken at the same time, but on Arpadi a Malani magistrate took a shine to her. He bought her from the ironmen, made her his cook and his bedwarmer."

Bile rose in her throat.

"I'm sorry," she hoarsely said.

"So am I," Koval softly said. "The ironmen shipped us on to Peredur, and now she is across the dark sea. I do not expect to see her again, princess, but even if I knew her to be in Concordia I would still oppose a raid to free her."

"You can't be serious," Maryam replied, openly appalled.

"Call me craven, if you would like," Koval said. "It is true enough. But I will not risk the life I have found here, the future I have found for my son, on a doomed adventure."

"You fought to free our people from the merchantman," Maryam said.

"Aye," Koval said. "And so I've passed on the freedom you gave me. This much even a coward owes, but I it does not make me a warrior and I'll not pretend otherwise."

"And that's it?" she demanded. "You lent a hand once, now you're done forever?"

"Once is the number of times I was helped," Koval softly said.

"We can do better than what life hands us," Maryam told him.

His lips quirked, but it was a melancholy thing.

"It must be disappointing," he said, almost sympathetically, "to find that we are petty things."

"Pardon?" she said, honestly taken aback.

"That evil was done to us but it doesn't make us kind or selfless. That it didn't make us virtuous any more than getting bit by a dog would," Koval said.

"That's a choice, Koval," Maryam flatly told him.

"It is," the black-haired man agreed. "And I choose to be small. To be selfish and fearful. And we all owe you a great debt, Maryam Khaimov, none will claim otherwise. But I must ask you this – when you broke our chains, was it to make us free or to make us your subjects?"

To make them free, of course, but that was his very point. That if they were free, they had a right to their choices - even those that disappointed her.

Orel Koval, she slowly realized, did not feel responsible. That was the difference between them. When he saw Izvoric in chains he saw evil, but it did not follow that it was his charge to end it. And much as Maryam would like to castigate him for that, could she really? How many millions of men from the Last Light to the Broken Gates saw the same evil and did the same nothing, even when they had so much less to lose than Orel Koval? It was a hypocrisy, to demand better of him just because he had been a slave. To demand virtue should follow from getting bit by a dog.

And there was something else too, the unspoken thread binding all he had said tonight together. It was humbling, to now realize that in Koval's eyes he had never truly been under her protection. That she was his benefactor but the Watch that was his protector. It was even more humbling to realize that he was right, because what in the Threefold Crown could she do if House Morcant decided to show up tomorrow with a pair of warships and put all the Orels to the sword before clapping her in irons?

Maryam Khaimov could not do a damn thing about that.

The Watch had begun to feel like a string around her throat, but it had also been her shield for years. And that shield, for all its flaws and limitations, could do a lot more for her people than even a hundred skimmers filled to the brim with raiders.

"You're right," Maryam breathed out.

"I am?" he asked, sounding surprised.

"Not about being done," Maryam replied. "Because that's a choice, Koval, and as long as most of the world keeps making it nothing will ever change. But about the rest – that I do not know you, and that inside my mind I turned wounds into virtues. You're not my subject, Koval."

She scoffed.

"I have none," Maryam said. "I don't expect I ever will. But I don't have to be a princess to wield power -and you've reminded me that I don't need to own it to use it."

Because Orel Koval didn't give a shit about the war of the Watch, but he still wanted to fish in the shadow of one of their fortresses. To use them as a shield, a way to ensure his son would thrive. And if a fisherman become auxiliary by the grace of the Thirteenth could lever the Watch this way, how much more could an Akelarre schooled in Scholomance – with those meant to become the new rising stars of the Watch – would be able to accomplish?

She'd become drunk on her own power, she realized. Not even an entire year of being able to trace Signs properly, to draw from the Cauldron, and Maryam had deluded herself into thinking the power came from her. It didn't. Even Signs were just means to borrow the power of the Gloam, like all this time she had been borrowing from others – from Captain Totec, from her friends, from the Watch at large. And if you took without giving back, as she had begun to, then that did not make you some worthy crusader.

It made you a parasite. She closed her eyes, the sharp bite of shame gnawing at her.

"I have been," Maryam murmured, "selfish."

Koval choked, hastily rose to his feet.

"Princess, please, do not say such things," he hurried to say. "I did not mean to imply-"

She cut him off sharply.

"I would speak to them, the new men," Maryam said. "I would have you with me when I do."

The new men. She must call them that, Maryam thought, because she did not know a single one of her names. And still part of her had thought going to Marshal Camaron the only moral decision that could be made because what was being under the thumb of an ambitious man compared to being a slave? And that was true, if you compared only those two things. But Maryam had thought to bargain with lives not her own, as she had sought to make arrangements for men she did not know or understand.

But I have no subjects, she mused, trying out the thought. Moving it about, weighing it.

For a beginning, it would do.

--

Maryam sat in the courtyard with the most Izvoric she had seen in many years, stomach clenching at the hushed silence brought by her approach, and sat on the blankets.

Poltava had returned from the smithy and Old Horvat immediately pressed a drink into her hand, which she politely took. Bolic had a smile on his face, though it turned into a frown when she did not mirror it and instead gestured for Koval the Elder to sit at her side. Gods, but they were young. Bolic had called them young men and not lied, but the eldest could not be older than nineteenth and the rest closer to sixteen than that. The Malani had wanted workers they could work for decades, not months.

"I am," she told them, "Maryam Khaimov. I was kin to great names, once, but they are long dead. I am now an officer of the Watch, the men we call the blackclads."

"Princess," a dark-haired boy reverently said.

Kneginja, he'd used. The word for a princess meant to rule.

"Kraljevska," she corrected. "But it means nothing. To take refuge in the Watch, I had to set aside all titles."

"But the rules of the blackclads only matter to them," Bolic told the men.

"They matter to everyone here," Maryam curtly said, "so long as we rely on the protection of the Watch to keep you safe."

There was a ripple of unease among the young men, and Bolic looked startled. Several of the freedmen eyed the vitez dubiously. Not the kind of talk they had been promised, she thought.

"In this land, my rank is that of warrant officer," she said, speaking those words in Antigua. "It is low, and I am counted a student still. I have limited means, and what influence I do have comes from the deeds of my brigade and belonging to a guild of those practice Craft, the Akelarre."

"Princess," another of the men called out, fair haired and rosy-cheeked. "Are you not the commander of the ship that freed us?"

The right word, this time.

"Your name?" she asked.

"Rados, princess," he said.

She nodded.

"I own the ship, Rados," Maryam said. "But the Orels serve as subordinate to the Thirteenth Brigade, the warband of which I am part, and on all our behalf. I am not the captain of that warband, as is customary with craftwomen even across the dark sea."

She took pains to remain patient and clear without over-explaining. There must have been some success, for they were not shy in asking questions after that. How she had come to cross the sea, what the Watch was and if she was not head of her warband who was.

"So is it this Song Ren we must petition, princess?" a pale, slender man by the name of Kresimir asked.

"It would make no difference," Maryam frankly said. "We had to beg favors to enroll the Orels as subordinates, and that was after they were brought onto an island belonging to the blackclads by the slavers – which meant falling under the laws of the Watch, which do not allow for slaves."

Dismay on the faces of several newcomers, but also surprise on Poltava and Bolic's face. They had not realized, she thought, and she'd been too proud to say. No more of that.

"I have no favors left to ask," she continued "and would not have the means to support you even if by some miracle the colonel ruling this isle allowed it."

"Then what are we to do?" Rados plaintively asked.

"I will not go back," the boy called Emerik bit out. "Better death than that, princess."

Maryam raised a warding hand.

"What is it you want to do?" she asked them.

Several of them snuck looks at Bolic, as if expecting him to speak up, but Maryam met his dark eyes without blinking and he kept silent. There was chatter, which was best summed up by 'not being slaves' and then much incertitude. Most of them, she was told, had been taken young or were born in bondage. They knew no trade but obedience and no law but the whip.

"What can we do?" Kresimir eventually asked her.

"If you want to flee, I will find you a ship," she swore. "And there is a land in Aurager where slavery is against the law, the Heavenly Republics. You could try and make a living there, and I would make you a gift of what means I can."

Her own skimmer, if it came to that.

"Can the Watch truly not take us in?" the boy called Vjeko hesitantly asked.

He was the most soft-spoken of them, and the youngest. He'd been the one playing with Young Koval earlier, barely past boyhood himself.

"I cannot find you a place under my brigade, or on this island," Maryam frankly replied. "But I could try to bargain for you to take service elsewhere."

Not everyone seemed sanguine at the idea. Unlike the Orels, they still thought of her surname as the thing it had been back home. Not what it was on this side of the sea. For several among them, the Watch was just men in black cloaks and a Khaimov looking over them was the real guarantee of safety.

"What kind of service?" Emerik asked, frowning in suspicion.

"The Watch takes three sorts," she said. "Soldiers, sailors and servants. Servants would not wear the black, and their rights would be lesser, but soldiers and sailors must take oaths of at least seven years."

They asked her what it was like being under the Watch, after, and while she answered she also invited the Orels to speak. Koval the Elder was brutally honest about how their pale skin would be looked down upon and mocked, but added that blackcloaks and those in their service could not be cheated or robbed with impunity. Poltava shared what she knew of those taking up trades under Watch rule, which turned out to be significantly more than Maryam knew – she must have been talking with traders in town. Old Horvat spoke instead on the rations offered to garrison men and sailors, which again Maryam knew little about. Even the Dubrik staples he compared those meals to were mostly unknown to her.

Bolic, to her surprise, kept almost entirely silent. He spent the whole time studying her instead, face unreadable.

The young men argued among themselves, split between taking the offer of a ship or asking her to bargain on their behalf, but the knowledge that to get anywhere in Tianxia they would have to learn Cathayan when most of them weren't even fluent in Antigua – Recnigvor and Umoya were the twin tongues – tipped the balance the way of the Watch.

Maryam had expected a split, but even when their arguments grew heated none put stock in that notion. They had been each other's sole comfort for months as the merchantman travelled, not even those who disliked each other wanted to part ways. It took them hours, enough that their party broke to eat and that Bolic whispered into her ear that several of her brigade had come to look in on her from a distance, but before midnight they'd reached a decision.

"I will make arrangements," Maryam promised them when told. "I'll return tomorrow."

Though she was offered a bed under the roof of either house, she declined. They would be cramped enough already, given the new additions, and her work for the night was not yet done.

There was still one Izvoric on the island she had not spoken to.

--

The eternal gate duty pair of Sergeant Alia and Lieutenant Rishabh tried to heckle her on the way in, but then they took a second look at her face and did not try again.

Maryam did not waste time, heading straight for the Meadow, and was soon padding across the grounds. She headed away from the handful of Navigators bedding down near the river, sleeping deep, and into a thicket of plum trees. The first flowers had yet to bloom, leaving only the skeletal arms of the trees curving over the grass, but she could count on some semblance of privacy here.

Hooks agreed, her sister walking out of the tallest tree's shadow as if it were a doorway.

The other Khaimov was clad splendidly tonight, and not in Watch black. Whites and blues and reds embroidered with curling silver zmeys, the elaborate skirts and scarves of a king's daughter adorning her frame. She wore thick silver bracelets over billowing sleeves and a necklace of black pearls around her neck, her hair kept in place by a delicate ribbon of white lace. Even her slippers were embroidered, displaying small wisplike curls.

As so often, Maryam in her blacks was as a rook to a songbird.

"You flinched," Hooks said.

For the throat. Always for the throat, with her sister.

"I listened," Maryam replied. "I can be a decent hand at that, when I try."

"Just because Song-"

"It wasn't Song," Maryam said, a trace a finger on the veil to let her feel the truth of that. "Though we owe her an apology, I think, for the way we lashed out at her."

Thinking back, now, she wondered how much of the anger in her belly by the sea had to do with anything Song actually said. Precious little, she thought. Hooks scoffed.

"Gods, let it not be Koval," she said. "I only heard crumbs of that through our nav, but I know mewling when I hear it."

"Izel," she said. "To my own surprise, it was Izel."

"Coyac," Hooks skeptically said. "I'll admit I read him wrong – he's sweet, and not as spineless as I thought. But what exactly was his stirring argument?"

"It's what he didn't say, because he thought it was so terribly obvious," Maryam said. "He ran from Izcalli to the Watch, and why?"

"It beat marrying the Acatl girl," Hooks shrugged.

"Because he saw in the Watch the power to change things in Izcalli," she sharply corrected.

"We're not tinkers, sister," Hooks just as sharply replied. "We won't be making a miracle in a box like he's betting on. All they have to teach us here is Gloam, and Mother showed us the limits of how far that'll get you against Malan."

"Mother showed us the limits of how far war can get us against Malan," Maryam said. "We waged one and we lost. The High Queen has spent the years since grinding out every inch of that strength in the lowlands. We don't win by taking up a sword."

"Cowardice," Hooks snarled. "The moment we fail to take it up, we have lost. It will be the moment they have beaten defeat into our bones, Maryam. That's the one loss we don't recover from."

"We lose when we fight them the way they want to be fought," Maryam bit back. "Do you think the Malani are afraid of a few hundred slaves going missing, of a few docks burned? They own ports halfway down to the Last Light, Hooks, they lose that every month and barely bat an eye."

"It makes a difference to those we'll free, I wager," Hooks coldly said.

"I don't want to fight," Maryam said. "I want to beat them. And I can't do that as a deserter with a price on my head. We're not abolitionists, then, we're pirates. They get to call us that and most of the world will agree."

"And why should we care? The world doesn't, Maryam," her sister said. "It never does until you have steel in hand and you make it."

"A sword is just power," she replied. "And there's more than one kind."

"What I hear," Hooks said, "is that you got comfortable. That the Watch is just warm enough a hearth that braving the night lost its appeal."

"Tomorrow," Maryam quietly said, "I am going to keep them all free, and I am going to do it without turning on my friends or on my people."

She let her palm against the veil when she spoke the words.

"You really believe that," Hooks said.

"I do," Maryam said.

"And if you're wrong," Hook asked, "if the Watch is a dead end and there is no doing good through it?"

"Then we pick up a sword," Maryam said, offering her hand.

Blue eyes met hers, and after a moment Hooks took it.