Pale Lights

Chapter 153 26

The ground whispered against Tristan's boots as ahead of him the light dragged into existence a stretch of underground. It wasn't the first time he returned to the forge, but it was the first at night and somehow that made a difference. Even knowing that the briarid had long left the grounds he could not help but tense up as they approached the basement, fingers tightening around the grip of his pistol.

He knew, in principle, that the lemure would not be there.

That briarids kept several lairs, that it would not keep dwelling on grounds where its blood had been spilled – thus attracting predators and scavengers - and even that over several days multiple students, including himself, had gone to the forge without encountering it. Yet, reaching that ragged edge of bitten-off earth beyond which the basement of the forge waited, his steps stuttered. His thumb ran across the hammer of the pistol as if itching to cock it back.

Like shooting it would make much of a difference, anyway. It had been so fucking quick, for a beast its size. If not for Angharad landing that absurd shot on the grenade and Shalini constantly peppering it with salt munitions – to a lemure, the equivalent of getting hot coals shoved under their skin – Tristan would have had the life snatched out of him within moments of the fight starting. There was no sneaking around a creature that saw not through eyes but the Gloam itself, not even for a rat.

"Tristan?"

He shook his head, glancing back at Angharad. His companion had two kegs strapped to her back, not that you'd notice from the way she carried them effortlessly. When she'd picked those up at the docks it had made the garrison officer eye him witheringly, to his surprise, until he understood why. Gallantry could hang, she had twice the muscles he did.

"It's nothing," he said. "Let's keep moving – the sooner we finish, the sooner we can get to bed."

His bedroll in Lamb Hill might be less than comfortable, but it was still a bed.

"Oh, I don't know," Tredegar mused. "It is almost nostalgic, being up at this hour. Just a bit earlier than I used to wake up for my sword lessons out by Gwyddau Cliffs."

He paused, blinked at her.

"Four past midnight?" he skeptically said.

There was no natural night in Malan, which was under a Glare pit, but surely even for them that was a preposterous hour.

"Just past five is the best time to catch blue geese," she told him, as if this were a reasonable thing to know or have done.

By the telling, Angharad's childhood had been a parade of strange tutors in the art of fighting, the strangest of which had all been brought in by her wildly suspicious father. That the Watch had several times found Gwydion Tredegar innocent of 'deliberately malicious bargaining', also known as getting a god to kill off your enemies for you, only made him more suspicious as far as Tristan was concerned. If you got cleared of murder charges twice, it didn't mean you were innocent: it meant you were very good at cleaning up behind yourself. Also, what in the Manes were blue geese?

"We'll be looping back to that later," he informed her, stepping into the basement.

It was much different from their first visit. The grounds had been cleared, the lumber either thrown out or put to use, while the ingots and iron rods were methodically cleaned out. Straw baskets full of loose stone, called gaviones, had been stacked by the entrance of the tunnel to serve as a barricade and the stairs had been abandoned in favor of two ladders and a makeshift pulley. Tristan wasted no time getting to the least creaky of the ladders – which was Rong Ma's, though out of a sense of loyalty he and Angharad used Izel's instead whenever he was present.

"Tie them in place," he said. "I'll pull them up."

"I could climb with these," Angharad said. "They are not so heavy."

"Heavy enough I give it even odds the ladder breaks," he shot back, and she conceded.

She secured the kegs to the rope and after climbing the ladder he brought them up one after another. Angharad was soon with him, casting a look at the fortified forge with a muted pride he would admit to sharing. The briarid had torn the doors off the hinges, but between crates and planks they'd been able to bar them again – at least well enough most lemures could no longer enter. There'd been few takers, anyway. The forge had ichorspill on the floor, but it also smelled like briarid and that made most creatures think twice. Only a few bold shades had tried to set up in here, and they were easily driven off.

Most of the work had been done on the worktables. Further gaviones had been stacked between them to make cheap walls, reinforced with the anvils that'd not been set in the floor and whatever machinery was solid enough to be worth it. Two falconet cannons rented from the garrison – falconets were the lightest fields cannons owned by the Watch, but had still proved near-impossible to bring up from the basement – were aimed squarely at the gates.

The tinkers had turned the ground floor of the forge into a makeshift bastion curving inwards facing the gates, with an eye to drawing in lemures into overlapping lanes of fire. Rong Ma, given the means to ply their trade, had then made the grounds left open into a vicious landscape of traps. In the back of the forge the hole in the wall had been plugged loose masonry, while the anvils past the coal burners still stood slightly dusty from the work they'd all been doing in shifts, hammering away and filling the barrels.

"I may well have nightmares about that anvil, over the coming months," Angharad muttered from his left.

"You and me both," he said.

Still, it had been amusing to see her lose out in a physical contest for once. Izel was not all that much stronger than her, as far as Tristan could tell, but he was trained to swing a forge hammer in ways she simply was not – the muscles were different, as was the effort. She'd still seemed somewhat insulted when the Izcalli lasted an hour longer than her at the anvil, her pride ending up even more bruised than her arms.

Tristan traced the surface of one of the kegs with his fingers, running them across the seared brand of SORIADA ALQUITRAN followed by a rough leaping dolphin for the seller's mark. They switched roles this time, Angharad climbing up onto the remaining balcony to pull the rope while he tied up the kegs. He drifted away as the second keg began to rise, the mirror-dancer's lack of so much as a groan of effort only justifying anew his earlier decision, and drifted towards the door through Rong's yellow-painted safe path.

Six sideways planks nailed in place held up to about half the height of the open gate, so he climbed onto the row of crates behind them to get a look over them. Past the ridge of the escarpment lay the OId Canals, looking so tantalizingly close in the dull light of earliest morn. Hidden somewhere in there, near the water, was the Lord of Teeth. Barely a half hour walking briskly, even with the broken terrain after the streets ended, but it might as well be a thousand miles away: there were so many lurking beasts between he and the dantesvara he wouldn't even make it halfway there before something ate him.

Even now, Tristan could make out faint movement in the underbrush. Lycosi come to tear up the rotten remains, probably. Tossing out the carcasses of the shades that'd tried to settle in the forge had drawn a pack. So close to home, and yet there lay a wall of death between he and it. No matter how long the journey, it meant nothing without that final step. A rueful smile touched his lips. How did the tune go again? Lightly he hummed the first few notes of Anochecer de Leones, then hummed again adjusting the pitch. Only when he had it right did he softly sing.

"And they roared, the victors of Isobal,

Peony-pluckers, the iron that broke steel

Who broke proud Saraya by the river

Made sixfold bastards, lions by lion led!"

Movement behind had him drawing his pistol, but he almost cursed himself when he realized it would be Angharad before even finishing the turn. She did not visibly react at the movement, or at his holstering the gun, only coming to stand by him on the crates. She rested her elbows on the top of the planks, leaning out. Just enough to catch a little wind, he thought.

"That one sounds like a song, not a verse of Ilaria's," Angharad said.

"The Dusk of Lions," Tristan told her. "It is an old ballad from the Century of Dominion."

"A war song for tomorrow?" she teased.

"I hope not," he said. "It is about the Battle of Castanar."

"I am not familiar," she admitted.

Hardly surprising. Few outside Sacromonte cared for that little piece of history.

"Sacromonte thought herself the queen of Liergan's by-blows, once," Tristan said. "And, dues as owed, during the Century of Dominion the city came close to earning the title. Artecale was annexed, the Riven Coast became a tributary and the Peones were vassals in all but name. It even broke Saraya, and after that began to campaign north into the Chelae to unite the last remaining Lierganen states."

Well, there'd been sitiadas further south as well but the Six had expected those would read the writing on the wall once the remains of the Second Empire were united. For once Tristan agreed with their assessment.

"It failed," Angharad guessed.

"Like Old Saraya failed before that, like Merion and the Duquesas and the Azure Kings of Tamaria," he snorted. "Dreams of empire go a hundred a copper, among my people."

Cheaper than sweetbread, and even easier to swallow. He cleared his throat.

"Anyhow, it all went to shit as it almost immediately. I'll spare you the long way around-"

"You are not boring me," Angharad assured him. "You could tell the whole tale if you'd like."

Gods, and he could tell she wasn't even being polite. He was never going to get used to that... aggressively keen intensity she got when being told a story. Tristan cleared his throat again, hiding how unsettling he yet found her.

"There was a stretch of almost a decade just before the final collapse where hope rose that Sacromonte would recover," he told her. "Abelar Ostafe, one of those rare scions of the Six living up to all the praise, rose to command and he promptly cowed the Peones, then took back most of Artecale before crushing a Sarayan incursion on his way out. He won an astounding streak of victories marching north, all the way up to Concordia, until the Six cut him loose."

She blinked at him, seeming confused.

"Why would they do this?"

"Because they were bankrupt and the streets were rioting from the bread shortages," Tristan shrugged. "There were politics, too, but gold is ever king. Yet the Lion of Ostafe was not easily daunted – he took his army and marched right back south, through the same lands it had taken him years to pacify."

"They revolted again," Angharad predicted.

An apt a summary of all Lierganen attempts at empire since the Second, it must be said.

"Every conquest gone up in smoke in a matter of months," Tristan agreed. "Still, the man was one of the finest generals Sacromonte ever fielded. It took him two years but he made it all the way back to Artecale with his ragged, desperate army."

"To the Battle of Castanar," she said.

He nodded.

"The Sarayans struck an alliance with the Duke of Aco, bought up a dozen mercenary companies and all waited for him at Castanar: on the road back to Sacromonte, dug in behind a river."

He paused.

"He was as fine a general as can be, Abelar Ortafe," Tristan said. "But it was not a close-run thing. They repulsed his attempt to cross the river south of their position, then crossed to encircle him and slaughtered the army to the last. They fought bravely, but they all died with home just past the horizon."

"It sounds like your countrymen sold their lives dearly," Angharad noted. "Wiser men would have let them pass."

"Ah, but then he would have returned home at the head of a loyal army, to find a Sacromonte in grave unrest," Tristan smiled. "None of the lords he had beaten wanted to find out how much more trouble King Abelar would be."

There was a long pause, which did not feel uncomfortable. They stared out into the night, at the coming field of carnage. The first obstacle he must break to get where he needed to be. Angharad stirred at his side, earning a raised eyebrow.

"I suspect," she quietly said, "that your own home past the horizon is not called Sacromonte."

His jaw clenched. He did not answer. It was easy to forget, sometimes, that Tredegar was one of the keenest eyes in their brigade.

"We will get her back, Tristan," Angharad said. "I swear it."

Anyone else, even Maryam, he would have cut for that – by word, if not steel. But Angharad had seen him weep like a lost child already, when Fortuna was first taken. There was no wretched weakness he could reveal now that would be worse than that.

"I keep forgetting she isn't there," he tiredly admitted. "Looking for her and finding nothing."

I am even more afraid that one day I will stop expecting her to be there when I look, he did not quite dare to say.

"I have envied your relationship to your patron, on occasion," Angharad said. "It seems very fond."

"I can hardly remember what my life was like before she was in it," Tristan said. "She is... large. It makes her absence echo."

His silences felt deeper, these days. His plunges into his own mind found darker places for it.

"You contracted to her young, I take it," she said.

"I was eleven," he said. "A few months after my mother died."

Dark eyes laid on him, openly curious.

"It would be indiscreet to ask," Angharad acknowledged.

He snorted. Indiscreet was one word for it.

"And how did you come to contract with the Fisher, Angharad?" he shot back.

No answer, as expected, the two of them still looking out into the night. She breathed out.

"The night they came for my family," Angharad said, and he hid his bafflement, "my father sent me to the water. He told me to take a boat hidden by the shore, to go upriver to House Madoc for aid."

"You don't need to-" he began, but she sharply gestured to cut him off.

"But on the way there," she said, "I came across a lake that exists on no map I ever saw. Its waters were ink black and indifferent to the wind, as if made of oil. And in the depths of it, past the reflections of stars in the sky, was a shrine like jagged teeth – old, worn rocks riven by green moss, spearing out of the black. And looking through those, I could hear whispers."

He swallowed.

"And you sailed into that?" Tristan asked.

That sounded like a bad death served on a plate.

"The whispers knew my name," Angharad told him. "They promised me revenge. And what I found beyond the rocks, the voice in that dark place, it granted me power – for an oath."

She chuckled softly.

"Both were ruinous, though I did not know it yet," she said. "I woke up laying down at the bottom of the boat, in sight of the Madoc manor. An entire day and night had passed."

Tristan let out a low whistle. That meant her meeting had not been a dislocation, her soul drawn into the god then sent back. She had been physically in the Fisher's presence, drawn to it. It also, implicitly, meant that her god was a manifested one. At least third order.

Angharad spoke not another word, not even a reminder. She did not need to.

"It was bad luck all around," Tristan finally said, looking into the distance.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

His fingers tightened against the plank, digging into the old wood until he remembered to fear splinters.

"I'd not been on my own for long," he said. "And I was a vagrant, Angharad, but I was doing better than most, better than I had any right to hope. It'd been months so the coterie had stopped looking for me, as the landlord hadn't paid them enough to keep caring."

He breathed out.

"The workhouse lines were too long, I never got a job, but they handed food to kids and since I could read one of their messengers paid me the odd copper to carry letters for her."

Tristan almost smiled.

"I could read the street signs, you see," he said. "Most boys my age could not, in the Murk."

His tone darkened.

"I should have stopped and thought twice about why a messenger would be willing to pay another to carry letters for them," he said. "She sent me only into places where the worst coteries ran the streets, though I did not know how to notice such things back then. And after weeks of nothing but small scares, my number came up."

He snorted.

"Bad luck, like I said," Tristan told her. "I ran into three toughs dragging a corpse through an alley, a corpse with a red cloak."

"One of the Guardia," Angharad said. "Your city guard."

"And the Guardia don't take kindly to their people getting knifed," Tristan said. "They'd have retaliated if they knew who to aim at. So the men ran after me, to cut my throat and ensure I couldn't tell the redcloaks. I ran, of course. But they were grown men and I was a boy. I got desperate, so I went into Toppletown."

He paused there, hesitated.

"Toppletown's not Murk, exactly, though it's sometimes counted as part," he said. "It's where the city walls collapsed during the big quake of 13 Sails, and down in the crevasse that opened there's pack of old ruins that the city was built over. Hollows live there, mostly, so there's hardly any light. I thought they wouldn't follow me in."

His smile turned dim.

"But the more I ran, the more they grew convinced I was out to destroy them," Tristan said. "One of them clipped me with a knife so I was bleeding from the shoulder when I found this half-buried arch. I crawled into the opening, hoping they'd be too big to follow, and found myself in some stripped-out shrine."

He could still remember how it had felt, how it had looked. The dust and smell of cold stone, the absolute darkness cut into only by a small clump of luminous mushrooms.

"Not a spot of color in that room, except for one tile on the ground," he softly said. "Blood-red. I touched it, and blood was trickling down my arm so I smeared it with my finger by accident."

He smiled.

"And suddenly there she was."

"Fortuna," Angharad said.

"She thought I'd come there to worship her, wouldn't hear otherwise," he fondly said. "So I told her there was no point, I was going to die anyway, and she put on this smile."

He closed his eyes. He still remembered her grin like it'd happened yesterday: the pearly white teeth, the golden hair framing it.

"Would you like to bet on that?" he echoed from the past.

And Tristan, who had sworn to himself he would never take a contract no matter who offered, had made one with her then. He shook his head.

"She's saved my life more times than I can count, Angharad," he said. "And I don't mean my contract. Just by being there, by looking out for me. And now it's her who needs me. I can't..."

"I know," Angharad quietly said. "We won't let the dantesvara devour her, Tristan."

No, Tristan Abrascal thought. I won't. No matter what he had to do to ensure it.

--

That day, after coming back from their bloody run-in with the briarid, Tristan had considered the way forward and come to a conclusion: it was a dosage problem.

The balancing act of his plan was rather like dealing with a poison whose antidote was potentially just as lethal. For the whole enterprise to be worth the time and funds it would represent, they had to draw a large number of lemures. Which had the downside of, well, having drawn a large number of lemures. Traps and fortifications would only get them so far, what they needed was more men. More guns, more blades, to push up the threshold before the holding force was overwhelmed.

"First we get secure our alliance," he had told the other two.

"Ferranda might balk at the risks," Izel said.

"Ferranda's not a complicated creature," Tristan said. "She wants the most for her brigade, at the least cost. I just need to raise the reward enough the risks are worth it."

And, thankfully, their very adventure had left him with the means for that. The following morning they'd returned to the forge, finding it abandoned, and grabbed the leverage: the silver ingots. Once those were brought back to camp, Tristan made the Thirty-First his offer. Should their brigade agree to support his plan there would be equal split of the silver even with those who'd not gone into the tunnel, after half the sum won from selling them was plowed back into supplies to make the venture feasible.

Ferranda had hemmed and hawed a bit, but she wanted the coin and if this enterprise was to be a victory then she wanted her name on it. She talked it out with her brigade, carved out an exit clause to her support and took the bribe they all politely pretended wasn't a bribe. Tristan had then promptly thrown in his share of the silver back into the supply pot – what could he possibly buy worth more than a path to the Lord of Teeth? – and half-hoped the surprise would make the others spit back out a bit of their own funds.

It'd, uh, worked too well. Angharad, inexplicably, immediately did the same with her whole share. Izel followed suit after a heartbeat, looking angry with himself for having hesitated. That had Shalini and Zenzele doing the same in solidarity, which left Ferranda and Rong as both the only ones to profit and the only ones not to have gone in the tunnel.

That understandably stuck in the craw of the half of the Thirty-First that'd actually fought the briarid sleeping atop the silver, and some... spirited discussion ensued.

Rong, in particular, was adamant in keeping their silver. They did not give a shit about any of this, which Tristan had to concede was fair. He wouldn't either in their shoes. Anyhow, Ferranda threaded the needle by tossing back into the pot half her cut and making the other half into brigade funds, Rong doing the latter with half their own cut then promising that the remaining silver would be used on traps meant for the forge, which had been compromise enough the arguing stopped.

There'd been tension between the cabalmates since, though, a sense of lines drawn and tests failed. Ferranda had burned a glare into Tristan's skull for several days after, as if he had sown the resentment on purpose. Mind you, he had to admit that if he had been trying to do that he could hardly have pulled it off any better. Still, with Ferranda accidentally bullied onboard the doors to getting the work started had finally opened. Her empire-building fantasies meant she had some pull with the independents and Tristan had a need of their hands.

"Few will be willing to dig without pay," Angharad predicted.

"Then it's a good thing we have the means to pay them, don't we?"

"You do not mean the silver coin," she slowly said. "That would run out too quickly."

No, he did not. Because while they may not be traditionally precious metals, the remaining piles of copper and steel ingots in the forge were still very much precious in practice. Two days' work for a copper ingot, that was the deal on the table, and the students flocked to it. Once they'd brought in the tools and the lumber, turning the boar mole burrow into a proper mine shaft down into the tunnel only took the two days paid for.

The nature of Scholomance's student body also meant that a man could always find a pack of engineers and carpenters with a need for coin, which saw a wooden gangway made and installed to connect the tunnel and the shaft. Some argued for stairs instead, but Tristan insisted – field pieces were on wheels, which did not play well with stairs.

That left the steel ingots as a war chest, which were fewer than the copper ones but worth significantly more. In practice, with the total number, those were actually worth more than the silver had been. The Garrison was eager to buy them when informed, as the Watch was ever hungry for steel, and they got their money's worth out of the deal in ways that selling the ingots for a higher price to Allazei smiths simply would not have allowed for.

With Commander Salimata herself signing onto it meant their crew was able to buy restricted military supplies straight from the warehouse, get an exemption that allowed them to keep buying up powder, rent two falconets from the Garrison, obtain an hour's service from a senior Akelarre and, by a stroke of good luck, even obtain a whole barrel of pariah blood.

There was a difference, of course, between students being willing to use a spade and hammer and the same students volunteering for a hard fight against unknown number of lemures. Of the many who had worked, only six were willing to lend their blade to a fight. That addition made thirteen guns on the line, and that was nowhere near enough. Tristan had a notion as to how he might get a few more, but that wouldn't get him to twenty – and twenty, as far as he was concerned, was the cutoff for the plan being viable.

Thankfully, over the week the problem solved itself when Captain Guadalupe the Tovar decided to rather blatantly try to take over their plan.

He wasn't surprised Angharad hadn't caught it when one of her Skiritai friends tried to sell her on it, because she only paid attention to Stripe games in passing. Chunhua Cao only cared so much who actually made and executed plans, despite the pretense otherwise, and usually awarded her 'points' to the closest Stripe in good standing who could take credit. The captain of the Second Brigade had, accurately in his eyes, made the bet that this could be her.

The Thirteenth didn't have their own Academian along, so they were poor lost lambs in need of leadership, and de Tovar was much higher up the pecking order of the Stripes than Ferranda. Their friend Guadalupe had thus decided that after hitching her boat to the plan, whatever it was, she could claim the lion's share of honor for it. It must have been a delicious little thought for her, not only getting repaid for the 'loss' of the hippogriff but using Song Ren's own cabalists to pull ahead of Song in cabal rankings.

"So we decline," Angharad had slowly said.

"Gods no," Tristan replied. "Cut them in. Just let them know that for fear of sabotage we can't tell them the whole plan yet, just where we will be fighting."

Removing the ladders and trapping the remains of the old stairs had ensured that even if some curious soul went to visit the forge they wouldn't be able to easily get out of the basement. It was still accessible through the surface route, but that was quite a risk to take just for a spot of curiosity. And even if de Tovar made the effort, brought ladders of her own or sent a sneak, it wouldn't amount to much: the most important supplies were only getting moved in at the last moment.

So why would Tristan refuse expendable guns for the gun line? He was going to shop for yet more, but if the Second Brigade wanted to leap right into his cauldron he'd even give them a nice pat on the back before he started stirring.

With that there was one last real hurdle left, and that one would need some fancy footwork to get around.

Tristan had the skirmish largely mapped out in his head. Reeling in the first fish, fighting from the heights then a retreat towards the fortified lines. That was where it got tricky, because once the pressure grew too strong the next step would be an orderly retreat down into the tunnel but that was predicated on the lines not breaking. Which he wouldn't worry about even if they were going to fight a hundred lycosi, but they'd be drawing bigger monsters once ichor soaked the ground.

One of those would, at some point, barrel thought the gates and make a mess. He needed a crew capable of putting that monster down whose lives he was also willing to risk on bad odds, and there weren't many crews fitting that definition around. Only one, in fact, so he was going to do a few maneuvers to secure it. Angharad, as she so often did these days, came along.

"This is reckless," she said. "I cannot promise you a cordial reception."

"It always feels worse when it's you saying that," Tristan noted. "If Lady Leap-on-the-Dantesvara is critiquing my ploy then it feels like I should reconsider."

"Will you?" she hopefully asked.

He paused in his steps, made a thoughtful noise and resumed walking.

"I have," Tristan said. "The plan stays."

Angharad frowned at him.

"I will stay with you, then," she said.

Of course she should, he thought. He wouldn't even have been allowed into the man's presence if she wasn't the one asking, he suspected, and having her along meant steel probably wouldn't be drawn. Still, he made a show of consideration.

"How good would you say you are looming menacingly?" he asked.

She turned a flat stare on him and he made a noise of appreciation.

"Yes, exactly like that," he beamed. "You're hired."

Neither of them commented on the rolled eyes, for they were nearly there. The soldiers flanking the entrance of the increasingly fortified promontory at the top of Lamb Hill eyed them lazily, waving them through when Angharad mentioned having arranged a meeting with the Marshal. They found the man seated at the edge of the cliff, sitting by the edge and getting his cup of wine topped off from a crystal carafe held by one of his pages. He did not turn before addressing them, only dismissed his page.

"You asked to see me," Marshal de la Tavarin said. "Well, here we are. Do try to entertain."

"I asked on behalf of my companion," Angharad said, "who would make you a proposal."

"Abrascal," the old man mused. "One of the Name-Eater's pupils, I hear?"

"I am," Tristan said. "Are you acquainted, sir?"

"By reputation," the Marshal said after taking a sip of his wine. "Of course, it could be said you are becoming someone of note yourself – shooting Skiritai in the back, are we?"

Tristan put on a false smile.

"Apologies," he said. "I-"

"Don't apologize, boy," he snorted. "It was a valuable lesson. I've asked that old skinflint Hage about sending some of his students down into the Acallar to take potshots at mine while they fight lemures, but the miser refused."

"A loss for us all, I'm sure," Tristan lied.

The old man chuckled.

"Well, you've buttered me up enough," he said. "Ask what you want."

"Though it is presumptuous of me," Tristan said, "I came to ask you to adjudicate a killing contest."

"Men or creatures?" Marshal de la Tavarin casually asked.

Tristan almost shivered at the nonchalance of it, the casual disregard it implied. How many lives did you have to take, to begin finding the line between the lives of men and beasts so thin?

"Creatures."

"Eh," the Marshal said. "You are losing me."

"There would be a life in the balance," Tristan hastened to assure him. "If you'll allow me to elaborate?"

"Do," the old man allowed.

Tristan laid out the nature of the contest, the terms and prize, and who it would be had with. There, finally, the Marshal laughed.

"That could be amusing," he conceded. "I'll preside, Abrascal, if it is done no later than tomorrow."

"The tomorrow it shall be," Tristan said, hoping he was not lying. "Manifold thanks, sir."

"Oh, don't thank me," the old man grinned. "I'm rooting against you and hoping for at least three."

His eyes were rheumy but no less sharp for it.

"She had potential, that girl Ahuic," the Marshal said. "Nerei's get or not, I've yet to see anything from you that was worth her loss."

His smile was cold.

"I suggest you work to prove me wrong, Abrascal," Marshal the la Tavarin said. "For I will be remembering your name otherwise."

And to think, Tristan thought, that this was going to be the most pleasant of the conversations he'd lined up this morning.

--

It was not difficult to arrange a sitdown with the Nineteenth Brigade, even when it was still so early some in camp were still asleep. He only had to send Izel to do the asking, which left a bad taste in the mouth but was to be borne.

Yaotl Acatl came stomping over with her last three minions in tow. Valantin Mercator, a tall Lierganen with fair hair and dead eyes. Anayeli of Teskatlan, who looked like the princess with a quarter of the height taken off and made into muscle. Then the one Tristan had never heard speak before, Ozoma Chamolin: a grim, scarred visage on a man barely taller than Shalini and unusually hairy for Izcalli. He was highborn, supposedly.

Tristan had his own crew along as he sat on a log. Angharad stood at his right, eyes cold, while Izel crossed arms to his left. Shalini stood besides the tinker, toying with the tassels on her belt. A show of support from the Thirty-First, but a deniable one. Until stated otherwise, Shalini could be here for the personal reason standing at Tristan's right.

"Izel has pleaded for my presence," Yaotl Acatl said, sitting on the wooden log across the empty fire pit. "Make it worth the words, Abrascal."

Honestly, that was more cordial than he had expected. Best to fix that.

"Well, I thought I'd give you an opportunity to get what you want," he easily said. "You seem to be having a hard time without help."

She scoffed, spitting into the pit of cold ash.

"Shall you bare your neck, then?" Yaotl said.

"You've certainly been trying to get your hands on it lately," Tristan mused. "But as your trackers are learning, I'm not the easiest of fellows to catch."

He felt Angharad stiffen at his side, fingers going for her blade in at a reminder of the little he'd told her of the night he had come across Ishanvi Kapadia.

"Might be you'll get me eventually, might be not," he continued, meeting the dark eyes set in the painted face. "Either way, it'll take time."

"I have much of it to spare," Yaotl said.

"Do you?" he said, drumming his fingers against his leg. "Because the way I see it, every week since the Old Playhouse where you don't string me up bleeds your reputation a little drier. You slapped the gauntlet down and I ran one of yours out of town in the same breath."

He leaned in.

"It makes you look weak, letting that stand," Tristan said. "Makes you look incapable."

The princess clenched like a forming fist, eyes burning.

"I know what a man offering a deal sounds like, Abrascal," she said. "Lay it out, that I might laugh in your face and be done with it."

He smiled, all charm and pleasantness, and her hand twitched towards her sawsword.

"Our crew has a plan going," Tristan said, "and we need swordhands to get it done. You have more than a few, so I'd like you to join in."

As promised, she laughed in his face.

"And why would I ever do that?" she smiled. "I will enjoy watching you fail, Abrascal."

"Oh, all sorts of reasons," Tristan said. "First, because a win there will help mend your reputation."

"Better to watch yours burn to the ground," she said.

"Because if our plan goes badly enough, Izel could die."

That gave her pause. The way her gaze jerked away from the tinker's direction was telling, but she played it off with a too-loud laugh.

"Then it is his corpse I will send back to Teskatlan," Yaotl said.

I don't buy that, he thought. You don't want revenge, you want everything you lost back and a few adventures to boast about. Izel's corpse won her none of it.

"But, most of all, because I'm going to give you what you're after," Tristan said.

"Is your neck back on the table?" she smirked.

"Bit definitive, that," he said. "I was thinking more along the lines of fingers."

She paused, a flicker of uncertainty flashing through her face before she slammed on a mask of general disdain.

"We'll be fighting lemures tomorrow," he said. "So here's my offer: for every one lemure your crew kills more than mine, you get to cut off one of my fingers."

Her eyes narrowed.

"And how could I trust your count, Mask?"

"Don't," he said. "I'd lie. But you won't have to, because I asked the Marshal to come along and keep count. What reason has he to lie?"

She cocked her head to the side.

"Your crew is seven," she said. "Mine four."

"Only two Skiritai," he said. "Then myself, three scholars and a Stripe. Do you think yourself unable to beat such a motley crew with your band of warriors?"

Yaotl Acatl studied him, and Tristan saw the wariness in her eyes thaw. And why wouldn't it? She had just found what his angle was – numbers, putting a gun in every hand and betting on that triumphing over the skill of the four Skiritai making up the Nineteenth. That's right, princess, he smiled. You found my trick, no need to look for another.

"Membership in the Skiritai Guild," she said, "does not make muskets reload any faster. You seek to stack the desk, Mask."

Tristan cocked his head to the side. She was going to take the deal, he thought. She wanted to, now that it gave her a legitimate avenue for harming him while also helping keep Izel alive. But for all that she had failed to dig deep enough, the princess had been raised in Calendar Court and she had the instincts. She knew she had the bigger end of the stick here. That she could string this out, wait for him to get more desperate and offer a better price. He needed to cut that off at the root, now, and there was only one way for that.

Putting up blood.

"I see you're not convinced," he said, putting his hands up. "I'll sweeten the pot for you."

He raised a finger.

"One."

"One?"

"Right here, right now," Tristan said, "you get to strike me once, barehanded, with everyone looking. I'll stand there and take it."

The smile she gave him was positively wicked.

"Agreed," she immediately said, offering her hand.

He winced but took it. As much because he did not want to give her time to reconsider as because none of her brigade looked all that impressed by their captain agreeing to throw them into the belly of the beast without so much as asking for their opinion first. The princess rose to her feet and immediately began making a ruckus, calling for the whole camp's attention.

Shalini whistled and Angharad's face was grim.

"How bad is one blow going to be?" he asked them without turning.

"Bad," Angharad evenly said. "Try to turn with it."

"Always good advice," he said, hiding his nerves.

Demonstrating the true skillset of royalty, Yaotl had whipped up a crowd of faces all too eager to see the commons put back in their place through physical violence before ten minutes were out. She swaggered back and forth, proclaiming her supremacy, and Tristan let her. He was not so proud as not to happily pay a price of pain and humiliation to get her killed soaking up violence for people he actually liked.

He shrugged off his cloak and coat, loosened his muscles and offered himself up.

"All right, Acatl," he called out. "I'm ready for my medicine."

She still made him wait a little more before swaggering back his way. She stood close, smiling, and smiled even wider when she noticed the way he forced himself not to go tense. It was hard to miss how tall she was, this close, or how she was built almost as strongly as Angharad.

"Don't worry, Sacromontan," she said. "It'll barely-"

He caught that flicker in her eye just a moment too late. By the time he tried to turn the cheek with the blow he was already halfway to the floor and his face was a bloom of pain. He hit the ground with a groan, dazed, and fuck but the pain only got worse. Something had come loose, he felt with his tongue, and he was bleeding. Shit, had she... He rolled to the side and spat out a bloody tooth. Fuck, she had knocked out a tooth.

He opened his mouth to talk but instead turned aside to vomit.

Gods, that was so much worse. It mixed with the blood to... think of something else. A shadow was cast over him, Yaotl Acatl looming tall.

"Consider it a taste of what's to come," she said. "Until then, you have our blades."

She walked away, all smiles, and Tristan wiped bile and blood off his lips.

"Someone pick up that tooth for me, would you?" he groaned. "I'm going to want that back."

Hopefully, he thought, Song and Maryam were having a better time of it.