Pale Lights

Chapter 157 30

Izel Coyac rubbed the bridge of his nose, vainly trying to slow down the incoming headache.

He'd been at this for two hours now, moving down from his desk to the cottage's drawing room in the hope that the view out the window might inspire him, but he could not seem to find where the mistake was. And there must be a mistake, because the last two tests of the lenslight had resulted in the same anomaly he had first found with Helena.

He did not dare approach Professor Achari without first having ensured his calculations were impeccable, lest he be made to wear the pair hat next class for having approached an instructor without having his works checked by other tinkers first. There was something peculiarly embarrassing about wearing the blue foot-shaped hat. Anyhow, he'd asked Jingyi to take a look and his friend had agreed that theoretically the mathematics involved were sound.

Of course, pure mathematics only got you so far when the likes of Glare and Gloam were involved.

He was startled out of his thoughts by a cup of tea being set down well to the left of his papers – Kuril greenleaf, by the smell, and he perked up. Song Ren, who even at her least formal buttoned up her nightgown up to her neck and wore another layer over it, went around the table and slid into the seat across from him.

"You look frustrated," Song said.

"I cannot seem to fit the underlying theory of my work with its actual results," Izel admitted. "It does not fit with my understanding of Glare."

She eyed his cup of tea meaningfully and duly took a sip, then another for it was even more refreshing than he remembered. Hard to believe something tasting so delicate came from the Raj of Kuril, that rugged land of valleys and mountain passes.

"I am told it can help to explain one's work to someone less schooled in such matters," Song offered.

He snorted. Relatively less schooled, anyway. His captain regularly had higher marks than him in Theology, which was somewhat absurd given that his Deuteronomicon classes were essentially applied theology. Still, it was this or smashing his forehead into the table until enlightenment ensued so an explanation seemed the wiser course. He sipped at his tea, then leaned back into his chair. How best to get her to understand? He'd have to start with the basics.

"Not to crib from Professor Artigas' speech too much," Izel said, "but what is the Glare?"

"It is a physical and metaphysical force that imposes order on everything it comes in contact with, taking the form of light," Song replied without batting an eye.

A perfect textbook answer, straight from Gatsheni's Philosophy of Essences.

"Metaphysically speaking, that's accurate," Izel said. "It's an Akelarre's answer, which Artigas is. But for a tinker the answer is not enough, because 'takes the form of light' is something of an approximation. Glare looks a lot like light and acts in some of the same ways, but it isn't."

Song's brow rose ferociously, as if rebelling at the thought of a class reading being less than entirely correct.

"How is it wrong?" she asked, leaning in.

"There are forms of light that our eyes can't see," Izel told her. "It's how lemures and hollows can see in the dark when we can't, for example. But Glare is not a purely physical force and because of that it is not constrained by the rules of the Material the way light is. The most important property is that Glare is a self-contained force and cannot be dimmed, only amplified."

"Yet Glare lights are famously softer than direct pits of Glare," Song pointed out.

"Sure," Izel said. "Because these do not project Glare but light infused with Glare. Think of it as pouring from an endless pot of ink into a river so its current grows colored. Palestone pillars like what the Second Empire used are essentially the brute force version of this, their glow fading not because the Glare itself has weakened but because the amount of Glare the palestone was capable of holding ran out."

Even if you used infinity to fill a waterskin, it could still only hold a waterskin's worth of water. That limitation was why the upper ceiling on the 'power' of Deuteronomicon works involving Glare was determined by the available materials – you worked with what you were able to trap, and what you were able to trap depended on the material means at your disposal.

"A consequence of that property is that Glare, when amplified, loses nothing of the power spent to amplify it. This is a breach of the observed rules of the material world, which are that something is always lost in transactions of power because the transaction itself has a cost."

Song's brow rose and he could tell he was losing her. He bit at the inside of his cheek.

"When you and I burn a piece of wood," Izel said, "the flame eats the wood to sustain flame. But this is not a perfect process, there are losses."

"Embers, ash," Song cautiously agreed.

"When dealing with Glare, the entire piece of wood becomes flame," he said. "Perfectly."

"That sounds as if it might have heavy implications," Song admitted, "but I struggle to parse them."

"In practice, it means that flames equal to more fuel than the piece of wood will have burned," Izel said.

He picked up one of his draft sheets and a charcoal pen, quickly sketching out a basic machine: a chamber with the piece of Glare, connected to a second chamber with several later of aether-forged lenses.

"This is a basic Glare emitter," he said. "The Glare in the first chamber, which we say has a power of 'two', goes through the lenses. Each one of them is a 'transaction', in this case one that focuses the Glare into a smaller beam, and the result..."

"The Glare emitted by the machine at the other end has a power of more than two," Song finished.

Normally the gains of that transaction would be minimal, but aether-forged lenses significantly improved the margin.

"Exactly," he smiled. "Now, my lenslight is hardly any more complicated."

He picked up the charcoal pen again, sketching a second machine. The first chamber was the same, but the second chamber bore a gas burner as well as the aether-forged lenses. He tapped the burner with the pen.

"Heat amplifies Glare, so the second chamber burns gas to raise the temperature," he said. "After which the amplified Glare goes through the same series of transactions."

"Why burn gas at all?" Song asked. "What does it achieve?"

He hummed, choosing his words.

"My machine is a proof of concept, not something meant for use," he said. "Its point is to prove a theory: that amplifying Glare with heat and lenses can result in quadratic yield of what was invested into it by burning gas."

And Song might not be a tinker, but she was far from slow on the uptake.

"Because if that is true, a gas burner ten times the size would result in a massive gain," she said.

He beamed, nodding.

"Now, there are only so many ways to measure those theoretical returns," Izel said. "I am using plates inlaid with different concentrations of lunar salt, which would burn under specific strength of Glare emission."

"And something isn't lining up," she said.

He nodded.

"There are six plates," Izel said. "Going from most sensitive to least. That the first three burned means that the amplification added by burning the gas made it to the end of the machine. Yet the fourth and fifth plates did not burn at all."

Helena had insisted twice that creating a set-up where an amplification was not dispersed by leaks in a machine made of largely mundane materials was already a significant achievement, that while the lenslight itself was not all that useful a device it could become an extremely useful component in other machines, but Izel was not moved. He had set out to achieve something specific with the lenslight and had not. That could only be called a failure, despite having stumbled over ancillary benefits.

"So the returns did not multiply despite the lenses," she said.

"That was my assumption," Izel said, "before the sixth plate burned."

She blinked.

"It was not a false result," Izel told her. "I tested it twice more with different sets of plates."

Song cleared her throat.

"Is that not mathematically impossible?" she asked. "Either the power increased or it did not."

"You see my issue," he tiredly said. "I cannot find a flaw in my calculations, which means it must be in my premise. It must be a property of Glare I am unaware of. I will have to consult a teacher."

"You sound defeated," Song noted. "Are they not there to help?"

"Oh, I expect Professor Achari will either help me through or show me how it is a dead end," Izel said. "My fear is that the heat is the part that makes it all go awry, that I need another amplification method."

Song leaned back into her seat.

"And why is that something to fear?"

Because the vast majority of Candles run on heat, he thought.

"Heat amplification is easiest to adopt," Izel said, which was as much of the truth as he was willing to speak.

It had to be easy. It had to be so easy that it was a choice not to use it, an act of deliberate cruelty, because anything less would not be enough. His fists clenched. Gods, let it be that the heat was not the issue. If it was that would mean going back to the drawing board and starting from scratch. Izel finished his tea, letting the conversation lapse, and found the knots in his shoulders loosening ever so slightly.

Talking about it had changed nothing, save perhaps making him see that he was forcing himself to go over the same numbers out of fear that Professor Achari's solution would not be what he needed it to be. The outcome had been decided hours ago, now he was just flailing in the hope of undoing the inevitable.

"Thank you," he finally said, after emptying the last of his tea. "I was getting obstinate to no end."

"Do not thank me yet," Song said. "There is need for us to have another talk."

He grimaced. There were only so many subjects that could be about.

"Yaotl," he said.

Song inclined her head.

"She has been banned from the Workshop and the Ossuary, as have been the rest of the Nineteenth," she said. "Your work, I take it?"

"I lodged my complaint," Izel warily said. "As is my right."

"I do not disagree, or disapprove," Song replied. "But this ceased being a personal affair of yours some time ago, Izel. When you take measures like this, I would appreciate being told instead of learning through Gallery gossip."

He passed a hand through his stubble, finding it was growing too thick. He would need to shave again soon.

"That is fair to ask," Izel admitted. "I should warn you, then, that I have put up a going rate for my tutoring."

Tutoring the years below you was not mandatory, but it was encouraged by the teachers and a board had been placed that allowed second years to offer tutoring over specific subjects at a price of their choice. Izel had offered his time for Teratology and for general mechanics, the latter being first-year classes common to both tinker tracks.

"You're not asking for coin," Song stated, eyes narrowing.

"I ask for them to vandalize the houses of the Nineteenth," he plainly said. "Break windows and doors, spoil food, toss trash and offal inside. Destroying class assignments warrants extra time, if proof is brought."

Song swallowed.

"This week," Izel continued, "I will be paying children to throw shit and mud at them in the streets."

"You're serious," Song said.

"I am."

Izel still remembered what it was like, being on the wrong side of stares at the Calendar Court. Being pointed at, snickered, taken from. He did not expect the Nineteenth Brigade to suffer such treatment for long without either breaking up or lashing out stupidly.

"She will retaliate in kind," Song warned, "and she has deeper pockets than we do."

"She will try," Izel said. "And find, I expect, that this is a small island and sinking one's reputation into the gutter has consequences. And even should she find willing hands?"

He shrugged.

"I wish them good luck finding the cottage," he said. "The streets around here are not kind to lingerers. The only other place to ambush is Scholomance, a fool's game."

Song studied him.

"If you are sure," she said. "Then we may discuss strategy."

He blinked.

"You want to do more?"

"The Nineteenth is a brigade not run by a Stripe and fielding four Skiritai," Song thinly smiled. "You would be surprised at the number of brigades in her year that want it snapped like a twig."

And no one, Izel soon found out, did reprisal quite like the Stripes.

--

It'd been two days since the 'Battle of the Barrels' and as far as Maryam could tell the only way anyone would ever shut up about it was if they got gagged.

She did not begrudge the other part of the Thirteenth their acclaim, truly. And it was a lot more exciting to talk about the battle-trap that had killed more lemures in a day than the entire Allazei garrison had in all of last year than of the slow, methodical grinding of the delvers through the Trench. No, the part that got stuck in her throat was that the Thirteenth's name was at the heart of the talk – along with the Second and Thirty-First – so every single time another Navigator asked her about it she had to swallow the reminder that she had not been there.

She had not helped, advised, been involved in any way. Captain Yue had been there, and she'd not even learned until afterwards!

The few whose take on the battle she would have welcomed were instead infuriatingly tight-lipped. Angharad had been all too grim since she attended the funeral of her dead Skiritai friend – which neither Tristan nor Izel had been invited to – while Izel could only be moved to speak of the fight in between moaning about how one of the cannons had been wrecked and it'd emptied the last of their funds to repay the Garrison for it. She hadn't even known about the funds, and part of her wondered if it was because they'd feared she would ask for a loan.

And Tristan, Tristan only smiled and nudged the praise the way of others before changing the subject. That'd stung the most of all, the realization that she was being managed. Held at arm's length, treated as a potential problem.

Meanwhile apparently all was forgiven between Tristan and Izel, which still wasn't half as much of a splinter under her nail as the way she kept running into the thief talking quietly with Angharad in the drawing room, poring over maps and supply lists. She could not recall the last time she had felt as much as an intruder as when she'd passed by them on the way to the kitchen and the conversations had stalled out when she was near, only resuming when she was going up the stairs.

"You should say something," Hooks told her, running a comb down her hair.

The bone comb, not the nice nacre one that someone had stolen for her. Maryam grimaced.

"What, exactly?" she replied. "That I find their treatment since I abandoned them to fend for their lives in order to go treasure-hunting for a library has been distant? I wonder why."

Song's speech at their last dinner before the split had helped, but only so much. In the end a line had been drawn and choices made. Now they lived with the consequences.

"Maybe that's true," her sister replied. "But neither of us are good at guilt, Maryam. It'll turn to spite soon enough."

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She moved to trade places, if only so she wouldn't have to answer. That the Orels were a day late on their planned return from Kofoni did nothing to improve her mood, but the last straw came on secondday when Maryam nearly blew her hand off. She managed to contain it at the last moment with her sister's help: they yanked the Gloam down, and it streaked the side of her thumb red instead of swallowing all five fingers in a conflagration.

The broken Sign sizzled and sputtered on the stone before dying, the two of them staring down in horror.

Hooks stepped out of her shadow, face drawn tight, and Maryam eyed the dark red mark on her thumb with something like disbelief. It wasn't a bad burn, in an hour washing it with water would get rid of the crusted blackened edged and then the skin would heal as if it had been but a scrape, but she'd not made such a blunder out of a Sign in a long time.

"It's not getting worse," Hooks quietly said. "But neither is it improving."

"It'd been two weeks since we had a slip-up," Maryam said. "What changed?"

"It doesn't matter," her sister said. "We lost control of a Sign in the Abbey cell, Maryam. Can you imagine if we'd been practicing upstairs?"

She grimaced. Down here, the Gloam was as placid as the Gloam ever got. If she'd been in one of the ranging rooms upstairs, though, that slip up might well have cost her half her hand.

"Our Command is fine," she said. "This is entirely the Grasp."

It was as if they became temporarily blind to how much Gloam they were actually drawing. It'd been the same when she blew up Yaotl Acatl's bag by accident at the beginning of the year, and again when she overdrew facing Bingwen.

"We need to talk to Yue," Hooks said.

"You know what she'll say," Maryam replied. "She's been saying for months we need to undergo obscuration."

"Then we undergo obscuration," Hooks flatly replied.

She glared at her sister.

"Doing it when our Grasp is unstable would be wildly dangerous," Maryam bit out. "It told you we should have done it before reaching into the Cauld-"

"You weren't complaining when the stringwork saved us at Misery Square," Hooks sharply cut her off.

"We can't even use that now, because-" Maryam began, but she forced herself to breathe in.

It wasn't her sister she was truly angry at. She was just angry, because she'd made the choices that were supposed to be the right ones all this time and now if felt like the house was collapsing on itself. It felt like punishment, and there was no one to blame so it felt like everyone was to blame.

"We go see Captain Yue," she made herself say. "There is no point in bickering down here."

"On that," Hooks muttered, "we agree."

Maryam spared one last glance for the void facing the edge of the cell, the empty dark, and tore her gaze away. It was never wise to stay down in the Abbey when your thoughts took a dark turn. She picked up her bag, allowed herself a drink of water and made for the stairs – only to find that, slightly higher up, someone else was standing and looking straight down at her.

"Maryam?" Amaru Wayar called out. "Are you quite all right? I felt that Sign collapse."

The Izvorica hid her dismay. She couldn't think of anyone she would have wanted to catch her failing at elementary signifying, but also of few she would have wanted to catch her less than Amaru.

"I got distracted," she lied. "Sleepless nights are catching up."

Amaru studied her for a moment, too polite to be openly skeptical.

"If you say so."

They didn't talk on the way up, and Maryam hurried to Yue's private study before Amaru could try to trap her in conversation. The captain was usually doing paperwork at this hour, so it was no surprise that after a sharp knock Maryam was told to enter. Yue always welcomed a distraction from the stacks, and tilted back her chair as the pale girl entered.

"That's a Gloam burn on your thumb," Yue noted. "What happened?"

Maryam laid out the mistake in stark terms, then the last few instances, and Yue hummed.

"Obscuration is in order," the captain agreed. "But it sounds as if you and your sister would rush it, and that is unwise."

"I'm not sure we have a better alternative," Maryam said.

"You do," Captain Yue said. "It's called getting your shit together."

She swallowed.

"Pardon?" Maryam forced out.

"You're all over the place," Yue said, not unkindly. "You've got so many messes about you it's like you're halfway made up of knots. If you attempt to obscure while in that state of mind you're like as not to botch it."

"Besides my Grasp troubles, I have-"

"You haven't mentioned your little Mask in weeks," Yue said, raising a finger. "And you didn't warn me about his scheme, because he didn't trust you to know about it."

A second finger went up.

"It's still stuck in your throat that Ren doesn't want you in the room when I study her."

It was Song's right, Maryam forcefully thought. She had thought her presence might be a reassurance, but her captain's great concern seemed to be privacy. Like Maryam would gossip about it. A third finger went up.

"And whatever it is you're doing with your countrymen and the ship, it has you on pins and needles," Captain Yue finished.

"These are all personal matters," Maryam told her. "I'm not a child, I can focus."

"We're not Stripes, Maryam," Yue said. "Everything an Akelarre does is personal, we use our own soul as brushes."

She drummed her fingers against the tabletop.

"I'll have the supplies prepared, it should take about six days," Captain Yue said. "If you want me to allow you to use them, however, give me a reason to believe you won't die doing so. Dismissed."

Maryam's only comfort, as she walked out, was that she could tell through the veil Hooks felt every bit as humiliated as she did. It was a cold comfort, but then it seemed those were turning into her specialty.

--

Enemies were most dangerous when about to lose, and Yaotl Acatl was teetering on the brink of ruin. That bore watching, Tristan had decided, and acted accordingly.

He'd chronicled the state of the Nineteenth Brigade through a dozen cutouts, digging into the coin he'd set aside, and found out at once much and little. By terceday and the eleventh time their homes were vandalized, the Nineteenth had moved into the Emerald Vaults were staff overhead several loud arguments taking place behind closed doors.

While moving into the hostel spared them further attacks, it did not prevent urchins throwing mud and shit at them in a surprisingly effective tactic. The first time it happened they went back and changed, the second they were made sport of in Scholomance for coming in muddy and stinking and on the third one of them laid hand on of the children – a slap, nothing all that harmful but enough for Izel to end the tactic after – and that sunk their reputation even further.

It was when six first-year brigades rose from their tables and left the Crocodilian rather than eat in the same room as the Nineteenth that Tristan knew for sure that Song was involved and it was only going to get worse. Snubbing by other brigades, as ensued, would have been a small thing in another school but in Scholomance it was another story. Now most of their year did not want to share a hallway with them when walking to class, or go together when walking up Arsay Avenue, or accompany them to the Acallar.

It was a slowly closing fist of exhaustion and humiliation.

And yet, by the time the return to Lamb Hill began to loom over their heads, the brigade showed no sign of collapsing. Considering Yaotl Acatl's reputation had nosedived from 'fool' to 'actual plague rat', that was a choice more than bold.

It was suspicious.

Students, particularly Skiritai – who were the ultimate commodity, as far as captains were concerned – would usually be given a pass for having served in an inglorious brigade after leaving it. Yet that only applied if you left the sinking ship at the first opportunity. Choosing to stay on as water filled the hold, again and again, meant questions would be raised about your judgment. That the stain would take much time and scrubbing to get off your name.

And while the princess no doubt had the gold in pocket to satisfy even the greediest of souls, anyone intending on a career in the Watch had to know that sticking with her now was a black mark – and not the sort of black that the rooks liked.

So Tristan had himself a little investigation. Izel seemed to know an impossible amount of College students and Angharad's name was a skeleton key in most conversations with Skiritai, so most of the time all he had to ask for was an introduction. While his... loss of temper was still remembered, what students had taken to vaingloriously calling the Battle of the Barrels was fresher ink on his record. That made it easier to collect information without bringing out coin.

He started with Valantin Mercador, who from what Tristan had seen tended to serve as the princess' second on the field.

"Mercador? Fine swordsman, but he likes a stiff drink if you catch my drift."

So a drunk, if one who functioned well enough it did not show. In Tristan's experience that tended to be a temporary state of affairs – once you were on the hook, it was just a matter of time until it ate you. Still, a love of the bottle made for a semi-plausible reason Mercador would stick by Yaotl: gold for his craving and the tolerance of someone with no better options should he slip up.

Anayeli of Teskatlan next. The one who had once hunted serfs.

"Eagle Society washout," Yaq from the Twenty-Ninth told him.

Oh? An avenue worth looking deeper into. From what Tristan recalled, the Eagle Society was one of the most prestigious warrior societies in Izcalli.

"Rumor has it her training cadre was part of some debacle near the Tianxi border and it was either the Watch or being made tlanixucatl," Andreu Claver happily shared over drinks. "Scandalous!"

Tristan had to consult Izel to learn what that meant exactly. The tinker had mentioned the word before as a sort of auxiliary to the Izcalli army his father had once served as, but not elaborated.

"It means 'front tooth'," Izel explained. "Aztlan can serve in the army as fighters instead of servants by enrolling as one, they need only bring their own arms and armor to qualify. Their name comes from the way they are the first sent into every danger, soaking up the casualties for 'proper' warriors."

He paused.

"Serving four years as one is one of the few ways an Aztlan can become Izcalli, though it is a personal honor and not transmissible by descent," he said. "For someone who was an Eagle Society trainee, though? It would be taken as a particularly scornful method of execution."

That, Tristan thought, might be the angle here. A princess of the blood could make such a scandal disappear from Anayeli's record with a single conversation, if she cared to. Which assumes that Anayeli intends to head back to Izcalli with her. If so, that made Anayeli the most dangerous to handle of the Nineteenth – if she intended to leave the Watch, she would not care as much about burning bridges within its ranks. That left the fourth of the lot, Ozoma Chamolin.

"Chattiest Izcalli I ever met," Silumko shared.

Nothing more, though, not without paying. So Tristan kept fishing.

"The man should be a Laurel," a tinker by the name of Helena Vargas told him, all too eager to chat while Izel was there. "He pays to borrow songbooks from the Ossuary through an intermediary and he's constantly penning little tunes."

"I often run into him at the bookshop on Templeward," Kasigo Njezi, an acquaintance of Angharad's, provided. "I do not mean to gossip, but it is my understanding he's run up something of a debt there."

So, money problems. The weakest angle of the three by far, which made him the natural target should Tristan need to move on the Nineteenth. He even had a known haunt in that bookshop. Something about that, though, had the thief's hackles raised. It was almost too neat, and hadn't Izel told him that the princess was convinced her uncle had assigned some Monkey Society plant to keep an eye on her? That might be the one. The Krypteia might know, of course.

But the Battle of the Barrels had not gotten his ban on accessing the index or the menu lifted, so if he wanted that information he was going to have to... take a different route.

Tristan had cased the place anew, but given all he'd heard about Commander Quenmach Pale the defenses around his home were underwhelming. Overly so. Which left the kind of measures that were not so easily picked up on – aether machines, Signs. Tristan boasted precious little experience with those so he had, naturally, acquired the services of a veteran specialist in defeating such measures.

"Are you sure we should not be wearing hooded cloaks?" Angharad Tredegar asked. "I thought them the traditional accoutrement for skullduggery and the like."

"While I'll grant that Port Allazei is one of the cities in Vesper where it least suspicious to go around wearing a hooded black cloak," Tristan sighed, "I am grieved to inform you that this relative least is still pretty fucking suspicious."

"Maryam goes around wearing a hooded cloak all the time," Angharad pointed out.

"She's a witch, it doesn't count," he dismissed.

There was supposedly a first year Akelarre with a skull belt buckle and it'd hardly even merited a second glance. Angharad hummed.

"It seems a mite unfair," she mused, "that having spent a decade of my life learning the rules of dressing correctly I am now to learn there are several other such rulesets."

That's because the rules you learned weren't about dressing right, he thought. They're about keeping out the people who dress wrong, which is everybody not taught to do it your way from the cradle. Much of what appeared as noble foolishness began to make a sick sort of sense, when one realized the labyrinthine customs and conventions were mostly about keeping out those not born to the station.

"Broadly speaking, skullduggery is not keen on rules," Tristan told her instead, not even feigning his amusement. "We shall muddle on without."

They turned the corner, finding squeezed between two lesser structures the finely rebuilt home that Commander Quenmach Pale had arranged for himself. At this time of the day there were few students about, most still attending covenant classes, and even fewer watchmen. They walked down the street, settling into a slice of shadow, and he cleared his throat.

"If I were to pass through the windows?" he casually asked.

Angharad stilled, eyes fluttering ever so slightly. Less noticeably than they might have a year ago, before she began practicing with Maryam.

"Some manner of curse would make you fall asleep," she said after a moment.

"Front door it is, then," Tristan muttered.

The old diplomat had sprung for a good lock but Tristan had seen better. And he was not afraid of there being a Sign on the front door, as casing the place had shown him the commander and some of his guests touching it without any trouble. Seeing the fine make of the lock he did not even bother trying the skeleton key and moved directly to pick it. He had it popping open after two minutes, while Angharad grew increasingly restless.

"What if someone saw us?" she loudly whispered.

"We are not breaking the rules of Scholomance," he shrugged.

"I doubt that will be enough to appease the man, Tristan," she chided.

"I expect not," he agreed, rising to his feet as he put away the lockpicks. "But that scene by the tunnel will have blown back on him as well. I expect he'll find few sympathetic ears, should he go complaining."

Which still made a very influential man a potential enemy, but if he insisted on wiping Yaotl Acatl's ass then the commander should cease expecting clean hands out of the business. They slipped in, Angharad seemingly unable to decide whether this was thrilling or something to be mildly ashamed about. It had taken his assurances that he'd broken into houses with the endorsement of his Mask instructor before to get her onboard, although she'd been strangely enthusiastic about it after.

He cast a careful look around. The house, though not particularly large, had been thoroughly rebuilt. The bottom floor was all open space, a luxurious kitchen paired with a parlor room and a small bar with three stools. In the corner of the kitchen was a trap door, while on the opposite side were stairs heading up. Those kitchen tiles, he noted, were not local stone.

It was typically a poor notion to leave anything involving Gloam in a place where one intended to either spend much time or eat, so most of this floor should be fine. That did not mean there would be no trap, however.

"Parlor room?" he asked.

A beat.

"Crossing the floor triggers a loud horn sound," Angharad frowned. "I do not know what causes it, or where it comes from."

"Aether machine," he predicted. "Won't matter if we stay out. Let's head up."

There were three rooms upstairs instead of the expected four, two on one side of the hall and the other alone. All doors were closed, and Angharad glimpsing ahead revealed that only the one on the right side had a Sign on the handle.

"I can understand the window," Angharad said, "but a door handle? It seems impractical and an absurd expense to pay an Akelarre to set the Sign anew after every time the door is opened."

"You described the Sign as a contact curse," Tristan said. "I expect he just uses gloves made of the right material to use the handle anyway, leaving it in place."

Still, that one could go last. The locks inside the house were of lesser make, the skeleton key popped them open with hardly any effort on his part. The first room was Commander Quenmach's own bedroom, richly decorated, while the second was a more modest guest room.

"It will be his study on the other side," Angharad predicted. "Captain Wen mentioned him as a man of heavy correspondence, no?"

"He did," Tristan agreed. "What I'm after will be in there."

Angharad cocked her head to the side curiously.

"So what thief's tool did you bring to get around the cursed door handle?" she asked.

"The standard issue," Tristan said, withdrawing three steps before hammering the door with his boot.

The lock popped and it stuttered open, Angharad sending him an almost plaintive look.

"Now he will know we were here," she said.

"He was going to anyway," Tristan shrugged. "His most private papers are sure to be behind a trap of some sort."

The study was perhaps the most richly decorated room in this richly decorated house, a testament to how much time the diplomat must be spending in there. There was a small, cozy salon to the side where the man might receive a small group for tea but most of it was swallowed by a massive desk whose skeleton gave out faint light. Azirvada wood, Tristan thought, and cut recently enough it had not stopped emitting Glare. The rest was old, heavy oak carved with scenes from Izcalli myth. Around it were heavy stacks filled with books and papers, as well as a bare bones shrine with an obsidian knife atop it.

"The desk," Angharad said.

"The desk," he agreed.

Its surface was not bare, instead a half-finished missive and a few other papers scattered atop it. Tristan skimmed the letter but it was only private correspondence. Commander Quenmach was telling a Garrison colonel in Fuxing that he had not minded being pulled out the talks in Huac because the Izcalli side seemed to have 'no real interest in renewing the treaty'. He was predicting a formal flower war by the fifth year of Smoke. Tristan filed that away as of being potentially tradeable information but he had come for records, not correspondence.

There were four drawers and one small cabinet between the two the sides of the desk, which Tristan would normally have taken his time to carefully probe. Thankfully, there was an alternative.

"The cabinet is trapped," Angharad eventually said. "The rest only locked, if even that."

He had her describe the trap several times before digging into it. The trick, he found, was that there was a second lock. It was on the bottom of the drawer above it, and if both locks were not turned before the cabinet was opened a small contraption would blow out paralytic powder. It took him about ten minutes to be confident it'd be safe, at which point he carefully popped the cabinet open with his cloak up and in the way.

Nothing happened.

"This is less exciting than I expected," Angharad admitted.

"That means things are going well," he told her.

The cabinet had two shelves: the top one had a neat but thick pile of dossiers besides which a half-empty bottle of pulque rested. The bottom one had a series of papers split in five piles by ornate metal plaques. Tristan was spared testing for further traps by Angharad's contract, picking up the dossiers on the top shelf and after a heartbeat resisting the urge to do the same with the papers of the bottom shelf.

There was a difference between an opponent and an enemy.

To his amusement, the first dossiers were not the Nineteenth's but those of the 'Thirteenth Brigade, sobriquet Unluckies'. Song would weep, if she knew that'd been made official. Instead of giving those a gander, Tristan put them back. The other half of the pile, though, was what he'd come for: the records of the Nineteenth Brigade. And by the thickness of every file, their friend Commander Quenmach had more than the official reports in there. Tristan smiled. Exactly as hoped.

"You have them?" Angharad quietly asked.

"I do," he said, then knelt back down.

The urge was there to take that bottle as well, and perhaps even help himself to a few of those lovely salon cushions for the cottage drawing room. And, Manes, odds were that in the cupboards downstairs the commander would have expensive fare that might make an agreeable change from the limited recipe rotation of the Thirteenth. But, instead, he closed the cabinet door.

Taking the Nineteenth's files was a professional offense, a blow within the invisible lines drawn by the Watch. If he went further than that, though, the conflict became more than professional. And he had enemies enough already.

"Let's go," he said. "I don't trust that there wasn't another tripwire somewhere that was quiet instead of loud."

If there was, though, they moved faster than the measures it tied into. Angharad's contract really did make an absurd difference when it came to this sort of thing. They rushed straight back to the cottage, where Tristan barely took the time to tear off his boots and cloak before settling in the drawing room with the spread of dossiers. Angharad, though openly curious, drew water from the well and went to wash off before padding down to join him.

Moments before she slid into the seat opposite him he finished the last page of Ozoma Chamolin's expanded dossier and he closed his eyes.

"Tristan?" she said, worried. "Whatever it is, I am sure we can-"

Convulsively, he began laughing. It was only after a solid two minutes he finally stopped, and his friend looked a little miffed at the end.

"What, exactly, amuses so?" Angharad asked.

"Well, I know why none of them are leaving her now," Tristan said.

Her brow rose, and she gestured for him to elaborate. He went for Valantin Mercador's dossier first, straight at the last page.

"The princess called it right, her uncle put a Monkey Society spy by her side," he said. "He's one of the Izcalli spies in our year the Masks know about."

Commander Quenmach's own files theorized he might be a 'Coyote' instead of a Monkey, but as far as Tristan knew there was no such society. Angharad's lips thinned.

"I am not sure whether such an act by the Grasshopper King is caring or controlling," she said. "Either way, it was not worth such laughter."

"That's not the funny part," he said.

He flipped open Anayeli's file to the middle page, pointing out the right line.

"The Kautilyaka," Angharad read out loud. "Who are these, and why would they buy information?"

"Think of them as mercenary clans of spies scattered across the Someshwar," he said. "She's not an agent they trained, just an informant, but they offered her a great deal of money to stick by the Izcalli princess that joined the Watch. Someone in the Someshwar must be very interested in that turn of events."

He cleared his throat.

"Which is still not what had me laughing," he said.

Ozoma's file was still on its last page.

"His file is perfectly normal," he said. "A Skiritai, as we know. Except for this."

At the bottom left corner of the last page was a splotch of ink that, if gazed at carefully, could pass for something like an angled pair of scrolls.

"It's a Krypteia mark," he said, "indicating that the file I just read is a fake and he's Mask asset on assignment. Only his Krypteia handler on the island would have his actual dossier."

"They are all spies," Angharad slowly said.

"All of them," Tristan agreed with a shit-eating grin. "Just from different stables."

And as Angharad joined him in incredulous laughter, his mind was spinning.

Because he now had a great deal of leverage, and all the reasons in the world to use it.