Chapter 7 (Patreon)

Adarsh Hebbar was quick on his feet and not half so careless as he looked.

He also was not heading back to Hostel Street, if the way he headed straight for the broken shrines behind the Old Playhouse was to be believed. Tristan had to wait and let him get ahead, as the stairs back down to the street were open ground with little room to hide, but he hurried after the Varavedan the moment line of sight was broken.

The shrines were more rubble than ruin, but there were enough spans of columns and roofs left he could move from cover to cover. Adarsh, constantly looking back to see if he was being followed – but never in the right places, always in the open instead of the corners – entered a row of collapsed houses in all haste. A blunder. Buildings were only good at shaking off pursuers when you knew all the ways in and out, a row of ruins with more wind than walls would not help him in the slightest.

Tristan cut in through a collapsed wall to catch up, then kept close as they ghosted through the ruin together. Close enough that when silver Orrery lights swept ahead he could see the nerves on the bespectacled man’s face, those thick brows knotted into a constant half-flinch. Did he know he was being followed? Tristan did not think he had been seen but a contract might not care for that.

This island was not going to be kind to him, he could already tell. Anyone here could have a contract, it made situations difficult to gauge properly.

Adarsh seemed to have some notion of where he was heading, leaving the ruined houses for a narrow alley leading up to a town square. A better choice than the houses, as the alley was so narrow it’d be near impossible to hide in. Which the Varavedan must have been counting on, as he stopped after reaching halfway in to wait and see if anyone followed.

Tristan immediately gave up that game as lost, instead circling around through a larger street to the left that was full of broken statues and quickening his step on the way to the town square. The place was not so large as it had seemed, for at its heart what must have once been a few trees around a large pillar was now a thick copse touched by rubble.

The trees were a decent place to place his ambush, Tristan decided, and he found a tall root overlooking the easiest path west. Hiding there, he waited and was eventually confronted with the sight of absolutely nothing. Adarsh was not coming. Had the man played him, baited him into circling around before running back towards the Old Playhouse? If so, the thief was reluctantly impressed.

He moved towards the head of that narrow alley, risking a glance in, and found a silhouette in there – thankfully looking the other way. Ah, Adarsh wasn’t gone; he was still trying to catch out his pursuer. If there was a contract at work here, it must not be a precise one. Taking this for the opportunity it was, Tristan moved the site of his ambush to a once-shop at the left side of the alley head.

There was a large window there, and by the looks of the marks in the stone beneath it there must have been a wooden counter wedged in. Long gone, that, but the window would serve to keep an eye on Adarsh’s movement and the shop door should lead Tristan straight behind him. The thief settled in to wait, but did not need to: mere heartbeats later he heard hurried steps in the alley.

The Varavedan did not come out, though. Instead he stopped on the left edge of the shop window, less than two feet from where Tristan was waiting. The thief had an almost direct look at Adarsh and went still as stone so movement would not draw his eye. The tanned man sagged against the wall, relief plain on his face. He took off his spectacles and pulled up the hem of his cloak, cleaning them with the cloth.

Which was when Tristan reached through the window, snatching his collar and dragging him in through up to the shoulders. Before Adarsh could so much as scream he had a knife against his throat.

“This doesn’t have to get ugly,” Tristan said, tightening his grip. “You just need to answer my questions.”

He forced the Varavedan to bend at a bad angle the way Abuela had taught him – Adarsh had less than an inch on him, it was easy - not so much of a bend it would hurt but enough it’d be hard for the other man to get enough of a footing to fight him off. The Varavedan swallowed loudly.

“Bhosdike,” the man cursed. “I don’t know who you are, but this is a mis-”

“Your name is Adarsh Hebbar,” Tristan cut in. “You have been taking notes about who speaks with Ferranda Villazur and Angharad Tredegar. Why?”

The man slumped, as if the fight had just gotten beaten out of him.

“Bait,” he said, and for a moment the thief tensed before relaxing at what followed. “Just call me Bait, that’s my name now.”

The bitterness in his voice was the detail that let Tristan put it all together at last. The man being a terrible spy, the individuals he had been writing about and now the mocking name forced on him?

“You’re with Tupoc Xical,” the thief accused. “Fourth Brigade.”

“With is a strong word,” Bait replied. “Can I put my glasses on? I don’t want to drop them, they’re very expensive.”

“No,” Tristan refused. “It would make it harder to blind you.”

The man shivered.

“I told him no, you know,” the Someshwari whined. “I’m a Savant, we don’t reconnoiter. That’s for Masks and Militants.”

“And then he punched you,” Tristan said, trying hard not to be amused.

A valiant effort, but the cause was doomed.

“He doesn’t do it himself anymore,” Bait mournfully said. “It’s Expendable now, she’s next in the ladder.”

“Ask about the names,” Fortuna demanded, suddenly wedged against him and leaning past the windowsill to peer at their prisoner. “Tristan, don’t you dare not ask about the names.”

There were more important questions, the thief knew. Truly. Still.

“Explain the names,” he ordered.

“Xical says it’s to keep us motivated,” Bait sighed. “We fight every month and the one who does best gets to use their real name while the rest of us get one of the placeholders.”

Bait, Trista learned when prodding further, had placed second behind a Navigator called Alejandra. He stood above the inauspiciously named ‘Expendable’, who herself ranked above the even more unfortunate ‘Acceptable Losses’. Apparently Tupoc had struck some kind of bargain with Lady Cressida from the Nineteenth to get Bait into the Old Playhouse, under instruction to pretend he was part of no brigade.

Entertaining as Xical’s general inability to refrain from being terrible was when turned on others, there was something off here. This wasn’t the Dominion, there should not be souls so desperate that Tupocfelt like a good idea.

“Why do you stick with him?” Tristan asked. “You cannot be forced to be part of a cabal.”

“You think I’d stick around if I had a choice?” Bait said. “It’s either him or sticking with the spares.”

“And your lack of alternatives springs from...”

Bait grimaced.

“My father was a colonel in the Twelve Hundred Sleepless Slayers,” he said. “Only he was, uh, caught embezzling from company funds and selling information on the side.”

A free company of the Watch, Tristan deduced, likely somewhere out in the Imperial Someshwar.

“And that makes you pariah how?” the thief asked.

“He was selling it to the Rana of Kuril so she could underbid on contracts,” Bait said. “The company didn’t look kindly on that – they hung and quartered him, then tossed my family out. I was already on my way to Scholomance when it happened so I thought they’d decided to spare me, but no. They sent word ahead to Tolomontera: there’s not a student here with family in the black that doesn’t know what my father did.”

Tristan almost winced. The Watch was as a tribe, tolerating quarrels within itself but fiercely punishing any conspiracy with outsiders. This had the sound of a thoroughly poisoned well.

“And a man who calls you Bait is better than trying a spare cabal?”

“Well,” Bait slowly said, “he is a Stripe.”

“I am aware of that particular miscarriage of a decision,” Tristan said, “but why would it matter to you?”

“Academians can get perks for their cabal as part of their covenant class,” the bespectacled man said. “Enough to get a real edge. I was warned that by the time the yearly test comes either you’re under a Stripe or you’re fodder.”

Perks for the cabal, was it? That sounded like someone running a game to Tristan. No doubt there’d be prices for the boons, drawbacks. It felt like a way for those officer candidates to tame their cabal, get the wild beasts used to looking up to the hand feeding them. Why the Stripes would want this was easy enough to figure out, but why had the other cabals agreed?

“Useful information,” Tristan noted. “My thanks.”

“And what do those help me? You took my notes, so I’m about to be the new Expendable,” Bait sighed. “Captain Tupoc is not forgiving of failure.”

The thief smiled, not that the other man could see it.

“Why, Bait, there is no need for such glumness,” Tristan said. “I can tell we are kindred souls, you and I.”

A pause.

“Yes,” Bait tried, though it sounded like a question.

“Naturally I will return your notes to you,” the thief said. “We are friends, aren’t we? I like to help my friends.”

Bait twisted around to glance at him as much as he could, which was not very much.

“Could you,” he hopefully said, “take your knife off my throat then, friend?”

“No,” Tristan said.

He paused.

“Bait, in the spirit of our long and sincere friendship I would ask of you the tiniest of favors.”

“Oh no,” the man groaned.

“That page where you noted who Angharad Tredegar was speaking with,” Tristan said. “You will carefully remove it and replace it with a list that makes no mention of Captain Imani Langa.”

The Varavedan frowned.

“Why?”

Because she was the most dangerous of them by far and he wanted Tupoc Xical nowhere near someone who was a genuine threat to the Thirteenth.

“We’re really not that sort of friends, Bait,” the thief chided, tapping the flat of his knife against the hollow of the man’s throat. “Try again.”

“Good as done,” Bait croaked out.

“That’s lovely to hear,” Tristan beamed. “I don’t think there’s any need for either of us to mention this conversation to Tupoc, is there?”

“Never,” the Varavedan fervently said.

“Your friendship is a great comfort in these trying times, Bait,” the thief said. “So much that I think in the coming days I might seek you out again so we can have comforting conversations.”

“Please do not make me a spy,” Bait desperately asked. “I am very bad at it.”

Tristan sighed, as if that had actually been his intention. Like Tupoc would not sniff out the man before the hour was done – by the nervous sweat alone, if nothing else. Bait almost looked like he’d been in the rain.

“All right,” he said. “But I might have some academic questions to ask a Savant, on occasion. I trust you can help me with that, at least?”

“It’d be my pleasure,” Bait hastened to reply.

Tristan strongly suspected that assertion would not survive being asked what a heresiarch was. Still, now that he had liberally used the stick he should offer up some honey.

“When we have these little talks,” Tristan said, “it would naturally be my role as your friend to share things with you. Rumors, secrets – perhaps I might even get information for you, if you are tasked with obtaining it by Tupoc.”

“That could be helpful,” Bait admitted, sounding pleased.

“It will be,” the thief replied.

That was how you kept people on the hook, by giving them things they wanted. It was even odds whether Tupoc would sniff out this arrangement or not, but even if he did there could be a use for that.

“I am about to let you go, Bait,” Tristan announced. “But before I do, I’m afraid there is one last spot of bad news: I’m going to need your cloak.”

The man blinked in confusion.

“Why?”

“It has a hood,” the thief informed him, “and you’re about the right height.”

--

With Bait cut loose and a new cloak stashed away, Tristan decided to call it a night. It would not do to linger too much out here. He had yet to see lemures or even lares, but it was only a matter of time.

It was simple to cut straight south in the direction of Hostel Street than double back to the Old Playhouse, so Tristan took to the streets under the Grand Orrery’s strange lights. The earlier silver had turned pale, almost like a lantern’s glow, but from the way the shadows were moving between walls the false star above must be heading east. No other slice of light seemed close, so the thief expected a span of dark sometime on the way back. That prospect kept him on his toes, enough that he noticed it.

The first time he saw movement on the rooftops could have been happenstance, but not the second.

Tristan was all for exploring this mazelike ruin of a city and would hardly begrudge a soul standing atop a collapsed dome for better view of the surroundings, but when someone flicked a glance down into an alley to see if you were there and then precipitously hid when you noticed things got a mite suspicious.

“Someone’s in trouuuuuuble,” Fortuna sing-sang.

“Check the roof,” he murmured, pressing himself against the wall.

The thief had taken the most direct path back to Hostel Street, past a long-dry canal and now through a knot of narrow alleys reminding him of the Murk, but it seemed that’d been a mistake. It’d been predictable, and predictable was always the worst pick when there were people out to grab you. He should have remembered that. Fortuna’s head popped out through the wall an inch away from his face, grinning.

Ugh. He would never get used to that.

“They jumped down, but I heard people talking in the street on the other side,” she told him. “At least three.”

Best to assume the worst and assume an entire cabal of seven were after him, then. It could be more than one brigade out there, admittedly, but Tristan was inclined to believe that given their advantage in odds they’d not be inclined to split the bounty on his head with another cabal. The gray-eyed man breathed out, brushed away the early stirrings of fear. If he was to be hunted, best it be among alleys. He knew his way around that kind of battlefield.

“Oh, I just realized,” Fortuna chortled. “Maze of streets. Rat. You’re like a-”

“Don’t you dare,” Tristan hissed.

“- rat in a maze!” she proudly finished.

He would have to ask Bait about the feasibility of trading in your god for another. Freshly irate, the thief got to work. First he best get off the street, lest he be herded into dead ends by superior numbers. He would have risked that against coterie thugs, but would not against Scholomance students. A glance to the side revealed there was a round window in the wall he’d been pressing against – which Fortuna had pointedly not used – and he climbed onto it.

A half-collapsed arch curved over the alley, just out of his reach, but he got around that by anchoring his foot on a slightly jutting jamb stone and throwing himself at the arch. His fingers scrabbled against the rough, worn bricks but with a grunt he dragged himself atop the arch. From there it was only a small climb to the flat roof from which he had just been spied on, now deserted save for the weeds growing on it. Thank the gods he’d not worn the formal uniform with those shiny, slippery boots. He'd be on the ground groaning right now if he had.

Tristan crept towards the opposite end of the roof, where Fortuna had said she heard voices, but when he risked a glance over the edge the alley was empty – not so the street just past the corner, where he caught sight of someone moving. Eyeing the roof on the other side of the alley, another of those flat brick surfaces cracked open by weeds, the thief decided to risk a leap. Given how cramped the alley was the risk came not from the leap itself but the landing: stone or not, there was no telling how solid that roof was.

Cloak trailing behind him, he landed atop the brick with a merciful lack of immediate collapse beneath his weight. Wasting no time he crept for the edge, now at a better angle to look at the people past the corner. There were three of them, he counted. One was the tall Tianxi from earlier, Captain Tengfei of the Forty-Ninth Brigade. So that was where he’d gone to after stalking off.

With Tengfei were two more: another Tianxi with a chubby face, shuffling nervously on his feet, and blonde Lierganen girl with a scar across the nose and a hard look about her. They were whispering, but loudly enough Tristan could mostly make out the words.

“-don’t see him,” the woman was saying. “Too many alleys to hide around here, we should have waited in the Mangles.”

“He would have fled right back to here,” Captain Tengfei grunted back. “We have him surrounded, Ramona. Muchen will sweep from behind and-”

Four, Tristan counted. Four of them confirmed. Tempted as he was to simply keep fleeing by rooftop, he first wanted to know if they had a way to track him. These Mangles – the name for the large field of broken, overgrown shrines between here and the Old Playhouse, he figured – sounded like a bad place for them to catch him. The captain and the Lierganen girl both had muskets and blades, the nervous one a pistol.

Any of those could end him in an instant if they found him out in the open.

A flicker of movement stirred him out of his study. Not down there but closer to home. Another rooftop, flanking the one he had first climbed from the other side – some was climbing over the edge, black-cloaked. Keeping calm, Tristan looked for cover. The edge of the roof was too low to hide him fully, but to his right a pack of weeds had grown tall enough he was able to flatten himself behind them. Unless the Orrery lights swept straight across him, he should be hard to make out.

He could not see much himself, in that position, but there was a way around that.

“That’s the same one that jumped down earlier,” Fortuna said. “She’s looking down into the same alley but from the other side.”

Tristan subtly nodded. A curse in Umoya sounded in the distance.

“He’s gone,” a woman called out.

“He can’t be, we fenced him in,” Captain Tengfei called back. “He’s just holed up in a house. Huang, confirm it.”

By the provenance of the voice, it ought to be the nervous Tianxi boy who answered.

“I don’t have much left for the night,” Huang said. “Are you sure you-”

“Do it,” Tengfei snarled.

A sigh, then a moment of silence.

“Not north,” Huang said, then waited another heartbeat. “Not west. Only four uses now.”

A contract that confirmed whether someone – something? – was in a direction or not, Tristan guessed. Or something along those lines. If he could get them to spend these last ‘uses’, waiting them out became an entirely viable way to get rid of them. They could no more afford to spend the night out here than he could.

“I’ll sweep the houses with Muchen,” Ramona said. “You two take the sides to prevent him slipping away.”

“I give the orders here, Ramona,” Captain Tengfei flatly replied. “We might both be Stripes, but only one commands.”

“Careful, Teng,” she warned. “You got us the bounty and that got you the seat. It doesn’t mean you have to stay in it.”

If this was what the competition was like Tristan was beginning to feel rather more confident in the Thirteenth Brigade, horrible number aside. He waited until he heard movement, the Forty-Ninth beginning the search, and then turned a questioning look on Fortuna.

“She’s still on the roof,” the Lady of Long Odds confirmed. “Back to you, though, she’s looking at the other alleys.”

No time to waste, then. Tristan rose smoothly from the cover of the weeds, one step to the side and then two step backs. The woman who’d cursed – Malani, he could see from the dark skin even in this gloom – had her back turned to him. She was studying the street he’d used to get to the alley she first found him in, looking intently at a collapsed house full of bushes. Tristan leaped across the alley to the next roof, muffling his steps the way Abuela had taught him, and as he advanced to the next slowly took out his blackjack.

Eight long, quiet strides as he angled himself right and then the thief leaped again, onto the roof where his enemy was. A heartbeat after making it across he waited, looking for a reaction, but she had not heard a thing. Instead the woman crouched down at the edge of the roof, squinting at a bush being made to move by the faint breeze. Tristan took his time approaching, careful not to make a sound, and then he struck.

The blackjack took her in the right temple, knocking her unconscious with a faint thump, and Tristan slid an arm around her waist to prevent her toppling over the edge. It was harder than he had thought – her cloak hid that she was plump of body – but he laid her down on the roof, smoothing his breath as he waited for a shout from the streets below. None came. He had not been noticed. Good, he could afford to search her then.

Rifling through her affairs got him seven silver arboles, a good knife, a loaded pistol of Watch make with ammunition for five shots and a set of matches whose use he only understood after discovering that there was something in the inner pocket of her cloak. A round, cast iron grenade. Could be useful, he decided, pocketing it along the rest save for the knife. That one he put to work, putting his blackjack away and turning the stranger on her back – carefully ensuring she could still breathe - and pulling back the cloak to expose her legs.

He took off her right boot, revealing a worn yellow stocking he took off as well. Tristan leaned in, taking her knife and sharply slicing across the back of her heel. Quick and deep, so he would fully cut through the tendon. She stirred, feeling the pain even when unconscious, but it was not enough to wake her. It was enough to ensure she would never walk with that leg again, however, it the tendon was not healed.

It was tempting to simply kill her so she would not trouble him again, but the risks were too high for the gain. Dropping her knife on her back, Tristan palmed her pistol and crept away. Putting a bullet in the back of the man with the contract should be enough to ensure he was able to flee, he thought, though he’d have to wait for an opening. Best to leave this particular rooftop first, he had already lingered here too long.

A stripe of golden Orrery light swept across the nest of alleys, cast by some distant star, and Tristan ducked down as he swallowed a curse. He’d be a lot easier to see so long as the light stayed, he might even already have – half a man’s body was already over the edge of the rooftop, and the thief would never have known if he’d not looked because not a sound had been made. He met dark eyes, the lithe Tianxi – not one of the earlier two, this one must be ‘Muchen’ – holding a naked straight blade between his teeth to keep his hands free.

Tristan, naturally, shot him.

He’d aimed for the right shoulder, barrel snapping back as the powder caught, but the shot dragged to the left. Center of mass, right in the chest, and the thief was already hoping it wouldn’t be outright lethal when there was a blur. A milk-white hand with a lotus on the palm formed in front of the Tianxi, turning into a shower of tinkling porcelain shards but catching the bullet. A heartbeat later the man was on the roof, sword in hand, and Tristan grimaced.

If that wasn’t a Skiritai student he’d eat his hat. Time to run, tracking contract or not. The likely-Muchen flicked a glance down at his unconscious comrade and frowned.

“I will have to cripple you for that,” he calmly said.

Tristan took a step back, narrowing his shoulders and putting fear on his face.

“Please don’t,” he pleaded, throwing the pistol at the man’s feet. “I surrender.”

Shouts below, the others of the cabal catching up, and Tristan took another step back as the Tianxi swordsman thinly smiled. He angled his torso so his cloak would pull in front of him, hiding his hands.

“A foot for a foot,” Muchen said. “It need not be painful.”

Fuck, this was hard to do blind and he wasn’t sure about the length.

“Would you take a bribe?” Tristan baldly asked, playing for time.

The Tianxi laughed.

“You’re worth enough we won’t have to dip into brigade funds at all this year,” Muchen replied. “You think coppers will stay my hand?”

A burn on his fingers told the thief it was now or never, face twisting in pain the Tianxi mistook for fear.

“Maybe not,” Tristan admitted.

But the stolen grenade he’d lit under his cloak might, so he threw it at the other man’s feet. Only the utterly ridiculous prick was already moving, the flat of his sword about to lob the grenade back his way, so Tristan borrowed luck.

The ticking began in the back of his mind.

It all happened so fast he could barely make it out. A spark flew off the end of the wick and caught the bottom, spreading the fire there, and even as Muchen began to lob the grenade it exploded. Not with powder but with noise and blinding light, like fireworks, and the Tianxi screamed in pain. Tristan released the luck, opening the eyes he’d closed and finding it was all dark. Had he been blinded? No, the pale light from above had simply stopped. Too strange a turn of luck, he thought, for that to be the whole. He’d used the draw to hurt someone, more or less and-

From beneath his boots the stone began to crack.

“Fuck,” Tristan feelingly said, and fell.

--

Falling through the roof was hard enough on his legs, but then the floor gave as well and it all went to shit.

Tristan rolled around with a groan, feeling out his limbs. He was glad to see nothing was broken, though his left leg hurt like Hell and his chest was going to be a mass of bruises – a couple of loose stones had fallen with him, thankfully none so large that his sternum broke. Pushing through the pain the thief forced himself to move, unsure whether or not the Skiritai had fallen down here with him.

It was dark in this presumed basement, and he could not see the firmament above. He felt a sliver of fear at the thought that the collapse might have sealed the house over his head, but it was too early to give in to panic. Reluctant as he was to burn air, he needed to see so he reached inside his pockets and produced the matches. Striking one, he took in as much of his surroundings as he could before it guttered out.

Loose stones and rubble everywhere around him, in a room no larger than a carriage, and no sign of Muchen. The good news, that. The bad ones were that above his head seemed to be a ceiling of solid stone. Which meant he’d not only fallen down but to the side as well – he’d not felt that, but directions were hard to make out when falling in the dark. Four matches left. He struck another to try and examine what direction he might have come from, finding only that to his left was thickly packed rubble and to the right solid stone.

Three matches left.

Cursing, Tristan began crawling around the two directions he had not yet explored. Ignoring the throbbing of his fresh collection of bruises the thief tried the wall behind and found it to be solid stone, though there was metal bolted in. Torch holders by the shape, gone rusty by the feel of the metal. A dead end. With only the front left he tried that wall and found more masonry. His stomach clenched.

Was he buried alive? No, he could still try to dig his way out through the rubble. It was risking a landslide in a room so small it would be impossible for him to move out of the way. But was there even another choice? He couldn’t just wait here, running out of – air? Against his knees, he’d not felt it because the coat and cloak were so thick. Fingers trembling, he felt his way down the masonry until he found a metal grid. Not hesitating, Tristan cracked a match.

Two left.

A rusty grate, barely in its hinges, blocked access to what looked like some kind of dry sewer tunnel, covering the entrance to a low and narrow tunnel. Large enough for him to squeeze through, if barely. When the match went out the thief evened out his breath, settled his mind. He did not have his tools on him, but that grate looked on its last legs. He wrapped his cloak around his fingers and pulled at it, grunting with effort until one of the hinges gave. He broke all those he could, and though one resisted his best efforts he was still able to pry open the grate.

Into the tunnel he went, crawling on his belly as he felt out in front of him with his fingers. There was dried filth at the bottom, so long there it felt more like dirt than anything else, and when Tristan found the first clump of weeds his excitement rose. Weeds didn’t come from nowhere, the wind carried seeds. He must be close to an exit. A few seconds later he came at a crossroads: left, right, front or back the way he’d come. Reluctantly, the thief cracked another match.

One left.

Only he saw near nothing for a faint gust of wind from ahead put out the flame before he could take in much. Tristan paused, awaiting Fortuna’s laughter even as relief poured in from having gotten the answer he needed anyway, but nothing came.

“Are you here?” he whispered.

A long silence.

“Red is the least fashionable color,” he tried.

Silence continued, the thickness of it clogging his throat, and Tristan force himself to swallow. Fortuna was not here, but why? He’d not pulled on the luck anywhere as strongly as he had on the Dominion. Was it something about Tolomontera, an old Antediluvian device that prevented her from coming to him? She will be back, he told himself. I just need to get on the streets again. Ignoring the cold sweat on his back, the thief began crawling forward again.

The dark ahead was so deep it was his only hand that told him of the drop.

Carefully he felt out in greater detail, finding more and more emptiness, then risked peeking out his head and looking around. Above was another grate, thick squares large enough to put a hand through, and though those he made out the faintest hints of light. A way back up, he thought with relief. Now the trouble was finding out how to get there. Further feeling out let him figure that he was at the edge of a tall drop, facing an identical tunnel across that gap.

The drop and the shaft going up to the grate both seemed wider than the tunnel he was in, but not so wide he would not be somewhat squeezed. He could leverage his way up there, then, if he was careful. Only if he slipped he had no real notion of how long the drop would be. It might well kill him. The rat reached for his knife.

“Rat King,” he murmured, praying up at the street. “Prince of scraps and scrabbling, gutters and grimed, smile on me this once. They are big and I am small, so help me scurry off.”

Tristan pulled down his sleeve and cut at his forearm, wiping the wet blade against the edge of the drop. He felt not warmth or weight, but then he never had: that was not how the Rat King did business. Besides, he was far from Sacromonte, much too far for the god to lend a hand. It had been as much to harden himself to the risk as to seek aid he’d done it, Tristan would admit as much to himself. Sheathing the knife, the rat got to work.

He wriggled out, wedging a foot on the edge of both tunnels, and from there began the climb. His body ached, bruises throbbing, but he bit his tongue and pushed on: feet on one wall, back on the other, pushing himself up slowly but surely. Sweating and aching, he made it inch by inch until he was in arm’s reach of the grate above. He reached out for it, cursing when he saw the iron grid could be pushed off but there was a large padlock preventing it.

The muscles of his back trembling, Tristan slipped a hand through the grate. The lights above were strangely dim so he could barely make out what he was doing, but he felt out the padlock carefully. A simple key lock, roughly made. Shoddy workmanship and the metal was something softer than iron. Copper, maybe? The opening for the key was wide and from what little his fingers could tell the inside of the lock was the same metal as the outside.

The pressure on his knees was mounting, the trembling of his getting worse as he got tired, but Tristan forced his breath to stay even. His palms were dry, his eyes open, and he reached for his knife. Slipping his armed hand through, he angled it as best he could and slid the tip knife into the padlock’s keyhole. It was large enough the blade went right in, but he couldn’t just shove it in and turn – it’d snap his knife, steel or not.

He felt out the insides with the blade, looking for the right angle, and gently began to wiggle it. Shoddy padlocks used simple teeth, rarely more than two plugs, so if he got the angle just right... One click, Tristan heard. Now he must find another, but the trembling of his legs shivered up and made his hand unsteady. Holding his breath not to miss the noise he began wiggling the blade again and – one, two. Tristan turned the blade.

Only for his boot to slip some, turning a gentle turn into a snapping sound. He almost screamed in frustration as he felt his knife’s blade break, biting his lip until it bled not to make a sound as he got his foot back in place. Putting away the remains of his blade, he reached for the padlock with his hand and – loose? Breathing in, the thief pulled at the shackle and it gave. Manes, he’d gotten it done just before the snap.

Off went the padlock, then he pushed the grid aside as quietly as he could and dragged himself up onto the street. Resting on his belly, every limb aching and drenched in sweat, Tristan pressed his face against cool stone and did not even care he was smudging his cheek with dirt.

He stayed there breathing in the dark for a long moment, eyes closed but ears pricked. He did not know what had happened to the Forty-Ninth, but he doubted the collapse of the house had been enough to kill all of them. If Muchen had died, would he be responsible by Scholomance’s rules? He was uncertain, but surely that they had been the ones to come after him would count for something. Breathing out, the thief, forced himself onto his knees as his cloak fell around him in curtains.

He glanced up at the lights, and that was when he realized he was in trouble: that wasn’t the Grand Orrery.

Or rather it was, but the false stars were nothing like the way he knew. They were without color, pale and veiled and casting only the faintest of glows onto Tolomontera. Like a lantern with a cloth atop it. Fingers clenching, Tristan looked around what he had thought to be a street but was nothing of the sort: he was on a flat roof, surrounded by what must be a hundred of the same, and from the angle of the horizon on the distance must be at least three stories high.

The city around him was Port Allazei, but it did not look the same. There were no Glare lanterns, only torches, and the buildings did not look as worn – or abandoned. People still lived here, and he thought he could hear the noises of a city asleep on the wind. Panic welled up, but Tristan mastered it. It could be he had gone through some kind of Gloam storm after falling into the house’s basement, but this might also be some sort of dream. Something not real.

The rough stone of the roof felt real under his hand, but it would if this were a dream. He had to believe that.

“First the edge of this... whatever this is,” Tristan muttered to himself. “Then we decide if it’s all worth screaming about.”

Fortuna’s silence only deepened the shadows of the night.

Moving across the rooftops was not difficult. The heights of the roofs were uneven, but they were also all roughly rectangles so there was always a path to climb if he went around. Like giants’ stairs, they were. The Orrery lights above were so dim he found it difficult to orient himself, but the lights down in the city served as the north to his compass. He must have begun near the middle, and but a few minutes into the straightforward but laborious process of moving across he was given pause.

There was a cottage.

Tristan had grasped the shape of what he was on, more or less. The overall layout must be that of a cube made up of stacked rectangles, small houses piled atop one another over several stories like some childish god had been at play. The fit was not perfect, with roofs of different heights and some space between the ‘houses’ forming pits, but he’d thought he had this figured out. Only now, in the middle of this landscape of roofs, there was a bowl with a cottage in it.

Not a small one, either – neither the cottage nor the bowl. The latter was maybe one story deep and large as a town square, only over the roofs a garden had been made: green grass swallowed by fields of flowers in purple and blue and red, their colors weaving in and out so skillfully he could hardly tell where one ceased and one began. A small stony garden path led to a neat cobblestone cottage, at least two stories high though one side went even higher with a little turret atop.

That turret bore a weathervane that Tristan was almost entirely sure was not moving according to the wind.

That smacked of danger to him, but also of answers. And whether this was a dream or his being cast out of his life, answers were what he needed most. The thief lowered himself down into the garden, landing softly on the grass, and crept closer to the cottage. There were great curved windows overlooking the garden – of glass, and the transparent kind! – so he went around, past the door, and eyed the cobblestone walls. The stones were smooth, but he might be able to climb up and enter through the turret.

Then the door opened.

Tristan ducked into a bush, but there was no one at the door and it stayed open. The faint lights from inside painted the doorstep. Fuck. All right, so this was a Gloam-witch’s house and he’d been caught creeping around. Swallowing, Tristan straightened his back and got out of the bushes. Best to pretend he’d always been going to come in through the front. He got back on the stone path, reached the threshold – there was a straw mat he dutifully wiped his boots on – and entered the devil’s den.

The first thing he noticed was how richly filled the cottage was. Fine furniture in polished wood, but also cushioned chairs of filigreed copper, silver mirrors and even a bookshelf casually bearing a fortune’s worth of colored leatherbound books. Everywhere seemed laden with trinkets, some precious like a music box in ivory but others as common as dried flowers and a shoddy mounted owl.

The lights inside were soft and warm, coming from candles set in cups, and the moment Tristan stepped inside the door closed behind him.

He did not need to ask where he was supposed to go, as past the entrance was a drawing room by those tall windows he had earlier seen and at the table there a man sat with a pot of tea. And two cups. The stranger was not yet looking his way, so Tristan took his time to study him – average height, dark hair and an air of softness about him. So pale he must be either a hollow or kin to Maryam’s people.

“Do come and sit, young man,” the stranger said. “It has been too long since I had a guest.”

The man’s voice was smooth and deep, almost musical, and Tristan’s shoulders loosened the slightest bit. Not because of the voice, but because even hollows did not usually lay hands on a guest without good reason. It was an assurance of safety to be named a guest, however slight one.

Silent, the Sacromontan padded over on the thick carpet until he sat on the thick padded armchair facing the other man. Finally facing him, Tristan’s eyes skimmed over a long face and straight nose touched by a bump. Classic Trebian islander looks. And he must be a hollow, else why live in a house without any Glare lights?

The armchair, to his discomfort, was almost sinfully comfortable. He didn’t know what was inside those cushions but it certainly wasn’t straw.

“You seem shy, for one of such bold wanderings,” the man said. “Might I have your name?”

“Tristan,” the thief replied, unwilling to give more. “And I must confess I did not come here on purpose.”

The other man hummed.

“Not your purpose, perhaps,” he said. “But a purpose, most certainly.”

Tristan squinted at him.

“Would you happen to be a priest, by any chance?”

A soft, almost pleased laugh.

“Once upon a time,” the man agreed. “I have withdrawn from the life, though not so thoroughly as I had thought if you can find me out so easily.”

He paused, smiling in a flash of pearly perfect teeth.

“Call me Sakkas, Tristan,” he said. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

The thief considered the phrasing, then leaned in.

“Is the tea poisoned, Sakkas?” Tristan politely asked.

The dark-haired hollow laughed, not offended in the slightest.

“My dear boy,” he said, “you are a lucent standing but an hour’s walk away from the Lightbringer’s own summer palace. In what world would I need poison to dispose of you?”

Tristan made himself smile, as if he had been aware he was apparently in viewing distance of the fucking King of Hell. Sakkas didn’t sound like someone selling a line, either, but instead as if he were stating a simple and well-known truth. Most distressingly, the thief found he believed the priest. So he swallowed, nodded, and let the hollow pour dark fragrant tea into a cracked ceramic cup. Sakkas encouraged him to try it and Tristan did.

He'd been prepared to fake a smile, but to his surprise it was genuinely delicious. Nothing at all like the Tianxi and Someshwari leaves he knew – tasted fruity, and sweet without being sugary.

“It’s very good,” he admitted.

Sakkas beamed.

“Strawberries, young man, the secret is strawberries,” he said. “I make my own jam from those that grow in the garden.”

Tristan took another sip, mirrored by the hollow across the table, then set down his cup on a saucer.

“Thank you for the tea,” he said.

“You are most welcome,” Sakkas easily replied. “Though as you earlier mentioned a purpose yet unknown, I expect you have some questions for me.”

“I do, if you would allow it,” Tristan slowly said.

He had not given his entire name on purpose, and though the man did not seem like a god in man’s guise he would not ask questions if they need be traded for boons.

“I do enjoy a mystery,” the priest affably said. “Ask away.”

The thief hesitated, then bit the bullet.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“This is the city of Allazei,” Sakkas said. “Once capital to a kingdom of some import, now the seat of infernal enterprise.”

The Prince of Lies again. Perhaps that was the thread he must pull at to unravel the truth of where he was.

“And what,” Tristan asked, “would that enterprise be?”

“That depends, I suppose, on whom you ask,” the priest mused. “The princelings out there will tell you that the isle of Solomontera is where a great empire is to be founded – it is, after all, where we raised the monstrous palace that is to be its seat of power.”

Solomontera, the thief noted, and not Tolomontera. Sakkas did not seem the kind of man who misspoke, so it must be another name for the island. An older one?

“You don’t believe that, though,” Tristan said.

He was sure of it. It had been a kind manner of condescension the man spoke with but condescension nonetheless.

“That the forges of Hell will spew out an endless tide of devils, sweeping over the world as the vanguard to our kind?” Sakkas snorted. “Hardly. It is not in the nature of the Morningstar to raise thrones, only to topple them.”

“Then what is he after?” he asked, gesturing around.

“As an archbishop of the Sunless House, I suppose I should be telling you that the Lightbringer’s plans matter little for no matter in whose service ours is a holy work,” the dark-haired hollow said. “In putting out the lights we will end the Tyranny of Bounds and release all souls from imprisonment, as is our sacred duty.”

Tristan went very, very still. He had heard of the Sunless House before, like all Lierganen. The Thirteenth Betrayal, the cult that had gnawed at the insides of the Second Empire for decades – maybe even centuries - before bringing it down on the head of the last emperor. No hollow cult was as feared or despised on the Trebian Sea, not even centuries after the Watch had put down the last of them. And now he was sitting across an archbishop of their kind, one of their great warlord priests.

He forced himself not to swallow, but the other man’s brown eyes had a knowing glint.

“You don’t sound like you believe that either,” Tristan said, pressing on.

“I am an old man, Tristan,” Sakkas replied.

“You don’t look it.”

It was hard to put a number, given the smoothness of his appearance, but the thief would have guessed no more than in his thirties.

“I look however I care to,” the archbishop dismissed. “Mastery of one’s flesh is one of the lesser mysteries. Suffice it to say that I was young when this city was young, and it is no longer that.”

“And what does that mean?” Tristan asked.

“That I know what it looks like,” Sakkas said, “when someone sits by a window waiting to die. And that is what the Lightbringer does, watching as we all squabble at his feet – princes drawing kingdoms on maps of places they have never been, Origen’s pupils hollering for holy war and the devils trying to make themselves into a court like a jigsaw puzzle where every piece bites.”

The dark-haired man shook his head.

“I know not what he intends, but the Morningstar lost all interest in Solomontera once the last stone of his palace was set down,” the priest said. “He knows the Watch has called on the great powers and they muster a host to kill us all, yet he only waits.”

Sakkas might well be right, Tristan thought. He did not yet know whether this was a dream or not, but if this was a glimpse of a time past then the island really had come into the possession of the Watch. A change the thief doubted would have come by peacefully.

“So why stay here?” Tristan asked. “Take a ship, leave.”

“It is a lucent disease, the fear of impermanence,” Sakkas amicably said. “You draw bounds between ‘before’ and ‘after’ that do not exist, find loss in the indivisible. Does water fear to become snow?”

It might, Tristan mused, if it could think it all. Souls were forever bound to the Circle Perpetual, spinning and spinning until they had become unto gods, but a death was still a loss. You kept nothing of what you had been, once you returned to the Circle. Stripped clean of anything that might ever have mattered to you. No, death was something to fear. But that wasn’t the way hollows thought.

They didn’t really see death as being death, it was why they seemed so unpredictably violent: the stakes they played with just weren’t the same as other people’s.

“So you’re sitting here by your window,” the thief said. “Sipping at tea and waiting for the tide to catch up.”

“So I am,” Sakkas easily agreed. “Yet we have spoken of me quite enough, I think. What is it that brings you to these shores, Tristan?”

“I am lost,” he admitted. “And very far from home.”

“No one is ever lost,” the priest laughed. “There are no right or wrong paths. You are ever where you should be.”

“I’m not even sure I am when I should be,” Tristan drily replied. “Much of this seems strange to me.”

He had spoken the words casually but kept a careful eye on the other man’s face. What would he think, how would he react? With benign amusement, was the answer, unless the priest was better at feigning emotion than Tristan was at ferreting out.

“Time is largely a lie,” Sakkas assured him. “Do not worry too much of it.”

This was not unlike, the Sacromontan mused, being comforted by a shark. The intention was there but the teeth were no less bloody for it.

“Yours is a very soothing kind of nihilism,” the thief decided.

“And your skepticism is very amiable,” Sakkas complimented. “It is important, the understanding that knowledge is not iron but a reed: it breathes, changes, bends. A mind of iron is ever fated to break.”

Tristan finished the last of his cup just as the first roll of thunder struck. Sakkas unhurriedly rose to his feet, pulling open a window, and in the distant sky they saw flickering lights. Not that of the Orrery but of Glare lanterns against clouds. Ships, Tristan thought, come to the port. And they had announced themselves with cannons so they came not in peace. Time to go, the thief decided.

“It has been interesting,” Tristan honestly said, setting down his cup. “But I must leave. I fear the consequences of lingering here.”

The priest smiled, leaning on his elbows to watch the signs of his approaching doom as if he were enjoying the view.

“The tide has finally caught up, I think,” Sakkas said, then shook his head as if slinking out of reverie.

He glanced back at Tristan.

“I should give you a gift to commemorate our meeting. I expect there will not be another.”

Tristan stilled.

“That’s not necessary,” he said.

“It was done long before you came here,” the archbishop easily said. “I lay here a mystery, you see, a line in the sand: none may find this house who have not tread its ground before.”

Sakkas shrugged languidly.

“You are not lost, Tristan,” he said. “Home is where you make it.”

The thief hesitated. It was a fool’s thing to ask, but the curiosity burned.

“What will you do?” he asked, licking his lips.

Sakkas smiled, grandfatherly for all his apparent youth.

“I am the last archbishop of the Sunless House, my boy,” he said. “I have partaken of the eldest law and made it into my bones, sung the words that eat themselves.”

The air shivered, as if the world itself were flinching what had been spoken, and Tristan found he could not look away from Sakkas’ dark eyes. They were pits of darkness, endless and cold and unhurried the way only something beyond time could be.

“If the Watch comes to my doorstep, I will help them remember why they should be afraid of the dark.”

Tristan forced himself not to run to the door, but it was a narrow thing.

--

The garden felt sinister now, the reds deeper and the purples poisonous as he hurried down the path.

There ought to be a way down from this place, Tristan thought as he found a lower edge to the hollow the cottage was tucked away in. In his haste he misjudged a stone, and when he put his weight on it to push himself up it gave in a spray of powdery mortar. With a grunt the thief fell back down into the grass, shielding his face with his hands so the stone would not smack into it. When he sat up with a groan after, though, the grass under him felt coarser.

As it should be, since he was no longer in that hidden garden.

Around him were ruins, gutted houses and streets akin to the Port Allazei he knew. Excitement rising, Tristan looked up and finally let out a relieved breath: the Orrery above was the one knew, the colorful false stars. Gods, but he’d never thought he would have been pleased by that eerie sight. So what had happened? Had any of it been real, or was it all some sort of Gloam delusion? Tristan rose and went patting around for his knife, finding it missing.

Yet he could have lost that when he fell through the roof, strange as it was he was now nowhere near that place. It was only when he dug up the matches that he got a definite answer: there was only one left, like in the dream that had not been a dream at all.

The thief swallowed nervously, for this sort of thing was well past his understanding. He needed to find Maryam as quickly as possible and find out how long had pas– remembering Vanesa’s watch, Tristan fished it out. An hour and change past his leaving the Old Playhouse. More or less equivalent to the time that would have passed if he’d never been... elsewhere.

How did it work? Had it- no, he thought, shaking his head. To guess without a grounding in the matter was just stirring air. Maryam first, then he could panic. The thief found a collapsed house that made for an easy climb and got onto the tiled roof, finding the direction the lights of Port Allazei were in – straight ahead, and from where he stood he could even see that a new ship appeared to have docked. Tall and slender, its sails lowered as dockworkers unloaded its contents by lantern light.

Tristan headed straight that way, putting a spring to his step as he entered a stretch of pale light.

He kept a wary eye for lemures, for he was tired enough to get sloppy, and was rather relieved when at the end of the street he found a patrol of blackcloaks. Eight of them, led by a tall Someshwari woman with lieutenant stripes on her collar. Tristan hurried their way, but about halfway through the street his steps slowed. They had seen him, but instead of a wave or a jest what he got was the watchmen spreading out in a line with their muskets raised. A second later he saw why.

Between them, in the middle of the street and going across houses, was a painted red line. Something told him he wasn’t the one on the right side of it.

“Manes,” he cursed under his breath, then cleared his throat and called out. “Apologies, lieutenant, I did not cross the line on purpose. I was caught in-”

“Hands where we can see them,” the Someshwari lieutenant harshly ordered. “Now.”

Grimacing, Tristan did as bid. How could he talk his way out of this? They did not seem overly inclined to shoot him, but neither did they seem overly disinclined.

“Don’t make sudden movements,” one of the men barked.

“They are the very last thing on my mind,” Tristan assured him.

Not so much as a flicker of amusement on anyone’s face, all of them keeping the muskets pointed and unwavering.

“Do you have a plaque?” the lieutenant asked.

“I do,” the thief said, hoping he had found an end to the canal. “Thirteenth Brigade. My name is-”

“Take it out,” the lieutenant interrupted. “Slowly, with your bare hands.”

Bare hands. Was there something unusual about the plaque’s making, then? Tristan carefully reached inside his cloak, producing the round silver seal and holding it up to their lantern light.

“And now?” he asked.

“Now we wait,” the lieutenant said. “Soggy?”

“Started the count, lieutenant.”

The one to speak had been a tall Malani in the back, who was now looking at an open brass pocket watch. A long moment of silence passed, muskets pointed at him and unwavering, and Tristan bit the inside of his cheek when he realized he should have been keeping count from the moment he saw ‘Soggy’ looking at his watch. He began late and made it to thirty-four seconds before the Malani closed his watch.

“Your hands, boy,” the lieutenant said. “Show them to us.”

Tristan did, not yet putting away the seal, and finally the tension lessened. Guns went down, several breathing out in relief.

“Congratulations,” the watchwoman said. “You are not being ridden by a mara.”

“Ridden,” Tristan said. “As in being possessed?”

“If you’re lucky,” the one called Soggy grimly replied. “But you didn’t burn under the Judas test, so your soul is clean. On which layer did you end up?”

Tristan choked. He could guess what the ‘layer’ was, but the implication here surprised him.

“There’s more than one?”

“Soggy,” the lieutenant sharply said. “Shut your mouth. You, boy-”

“Tristan Abrascal, tia,” the thief provided.

This time she let him finish, nodding.

“Tristan,” she said. “What did your surroundings look like?”

“The Orrery was dimmed,” he said. “And there were torches in the city.”

“Second layer,” she immediately said. “Yours was just a shallow dive, you should be fine. Have yourself checked by a Navigator anyway if you can, it pays to be prudent.”

“A dive into what, lieutenant?” he pressed.

She frowned, as if irked he would ask, but did not deny he had a right to.

“Tolomontera sits atop one of the largest aether wells in Vesper,” she finally said. “All that loose aether, it means that if enough taint is put out in a short amount of time it’ll make an impression into the local fabric, a layer. You wandered into the one we call the Witching Hour.”

Tristan remembered what Tredegar had told him of Brun’s confession, of how his little god had loved nothing more than the burst of flavor in the aether when men died. And so he knew where the taint for this Witching Hour had come from.

“It’s from the night the Watch took this island,” he said.

He got a sharp look for that.

“Clever kid,” the lieutenant said, though it did not sound like a compliment. “You avoided a bad end this time, Tristan Abrascal, but I wouldn’t count on a repeat if you wander back in.”

She leaned closer.

“If the mara in there don’t take you, a stray bullet will.”

He stilled at that revelation and she smiled nastily.

“Did you think you couldn’t die in there? Aether’s just as real as you are, boy, a shot of it in the head will kill you proper dead.”

She gestured for ‘Soggy’ to come, ordering him to check the plaque and mark the number so his patron could be informed he had been out of bounds – though she seemed to believe him when he told her it was entirely unwilling.

“Welcome to Scholomance, Tristan Abrascal,” the watchwoman said afterwards, patting his shoulder. “Best be more careful about where you step, if you want to last through the year.”