Chapter 27 (Patreon)

As far as plans went, it had the virtue of simplicity.

“So we’re going to rob the man,” Tristan amusedly said.

“Politely,” Cressida insisted. “He knows how to open one of the gates, you saw it just as I did. In the morning he always goes without that Someshwari girl he’s made a deal with, so we can grab him and get him to talk.”

“By robbing him,” Tristan reminded her, lips twitching. “Are you sure I’m the rat here?”

“The smell does not lie,” Cressida Barboza replied without batting an eye.

Damn. She just kept nailing those, but he wasn’t going to stop. One of these days she’d miss a step and it would make finally getting one over her all the sweeter. Though both of them agreed that their target was unlikely to return to the tower today, they agreed to meet up at Scraptown by six of the evening.

“I couldn’t find out anything about the Someshwari, but Silumko belongs to the Twenty-Ninth Brigade,” Cressida said. “I’ve never seen one of the other cabalists follow him to Scraptown but best to keep an eye out for them anyway.”

“You followed him around as well, I take it,” Tristan mused.

“We all have things we’re good at,” the noblewoman replied, then looked him up and down. “Presumably.”

“Like pickpocketing,” the thief smiled. “Not a skill I expected from you, Lady Cressida.”

“Met a lot of noble girls, have you?” Cressida smiled back, just as falsely.

More than most rats, he figured, at least since the Dominion. Not that he intended to tell her as much.

“Did House Barboza have a rough few years, perhaps?” Tristan ‘sympathetically’ asked.

She cupped her hand around her ear.

“Do you hear that?” Cressida replied. “The sound of how close I’m getting to pulling a knife, I mean.”

“Just making conversation,” Tristan lied.

If he recalled correctly, Professor Iyengar had marked her as being ‘Lusitanian’ during the first Mandate class. He’d never heard of such a people before, but the word sounded vaguely Lierganen. Something to look into if he could find a source of information. Like, say, an ancient devil from a conspiracy obsessed with secrets he was headed to do underpaid labor for. As if sensing something Lady Cressida Barboza narrowed her dark eyes at him.

“The trouble with digging too deep, Abrascal, is that it makes a grave for people to push you into,” she warned.

Ah, Tristan thought with a pleasant smile, but that was only a problem if you’d never learned how to dig your way out.

--

“So where are Lusitanians from?”

Hage’s brows rose. It was the devil’s favorite facial expression, which he used often and to great effect – they were mighty impressive eyebrows, Tristan had to concede, and well taken care of. He was coming to suspect the devil brushed and waxed them regularly.

“Do I look like an atlas to you, boy?” Hage asked.

“You’re not anywhere that useful,” the thief agreed.

“If you want more than insults, make it worth my while,” the devil said.

Tristan did not even hesitate, knowing exactly the sort of coin his teacher was after.

“I’ve struck a pact with Lady Cressida Barboza to work together to get into the hidden tower,” he said. “Robbery might be involved, in a polite sort of way.”

Satisfied with the information offered, Hage nodded.

“Lusitania,” he said, “was one of the southernmost Sitiadas.”

Tristan let out a whistle. When the Second Empire fell, entire swaths of its heartlands had been swallowed by the Gloam in a matter of days when the Thirteenth Betrayal swept through the cradle of the empire. Yet if only those lands were lost Liergan might have recovered – not as an empire ruling the world, perhaps, but some kingdom match for the great powers of the modern nights.

Only the catastrophe had not stopped, invasions and civil wars ravaging the lands now called Old Liergan until only remnants were left. As the Succession Wars stretched on, the entire southern half of the continent was lost to the dark save for a few fortified holdouts: the Sitiadas. Small pockets of Glare surrounded by hollow kingdoms and mad gods, ever teetering on the edge of annihilation.

“Was. What happened to it?”

“It fell in 71 Sails,” Hage said. “You did not buy much with imprecise gossip, but I will add this: that entire affair was tied to the first muster of the Watch in over a century.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Tristan admitted.

“A call,” Hage said, “for every garrison, free company and Watch ally within a year’s travel of the source to mobilize their full strength and march there as fast as they can.”

So the sort of calamity causing nightmares for the rest of one’s life. Only Cressida Barboza could not have been born in Lusitania before it fell, unless she wore her twenty-nine years of age very discreetly. Most likely she’d been born in exile, her family fallen on hard times after becoming refugees. That was an angle that could be worth-

“Mephistopheline got into the cream again,” Hage idly said. “Best get out the bucket and soap, he threw up particularly sticky.”

Later, sadly. Tristan shot a betrayed look at the guilty party, who flopped belly up in formal denial of having slapped a cream bottle off the shelf so he could lap up too much of it and spew it into a corner. For the third time in two weeks.

“Mrow,” Mephistopheline tried, advancing a case of pure happenstance.

“I don’t even know how you keep getting up there,” Tristan muttered, pulling back his sleeves. “You’re like a fat anvil, there’s no way you can make that jump.”

And to mop up vomit he went. A Mask’s work was never done.

--

Meeting at Scraptown, they prepared thoroughly for tomorrow.

Secondday would be Saga class, which Tristan was sad to miss, but needs must. In truth neither expected subduing the Malani to be all that difficult, it was not missing him before he disappeared into the shrine that was the real obstacle. Silumko, Cressida told him, had arrived at Scraptown around seven for the past two days. He always came from the south, going around the forest by a wide margin. He then bought breakfast at one of the shops in the fortified town, washed his hands in the well and headed out to the tower.

She had written all this down in a small booklet in neat handwriting, which Tristan struggled not to find endearing.

“He has some sort of silver gyroscope he uses to navigate the scrapyard,” Cressida added. “I’m not sure what it does, but I’ve never seen him get anywhere near a lemure.”

“So we follow after him,” Tristan said.

He’d not mind riding the man’s coattails twice in a day, if they had room to fit him.

“It’d be best to only grab him while he’s at the foot tower,” she agreed. “Otherwise we’ll have to carry him. I have restraints to put him in – do you have a weapon that shouldn’t kill him by accident?”

Implying she did not. Something to remember.

“A blackjack,” the thief replied. “He didn’t look like much of a fighter, if we take him by surprise I like our odds.”

“He carries at least two grenades on him,” Cressida warned. “We get only one chance at doing this clean.”

They agreed on three hand signals – attack, wait and retreat – and to set up a watch for the night, one of them always staying awake to keep an eye on the front gate. They simply could not afford to miss Silumko, as if he reached the inside of the shrine he would be beyond their reach until he deigned to leave. Assuming he did not simply find the way into the tower and leave them behind. Having only taken a quick look at the shrine gates, the thief made inquiries.

“They are kept closed by some kind of aether lock,” the noblewoman said. “He’s got some silvery tools that let him work it, but lockpicks don’t do anything.”

“Ever go inside the shrine?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Tried through the pipes, but there’s grids,” Cressida said.

“On pop seals,” he said. “It’s possible to get through – and our potential teacher certainly did, because the inside of the one I visited had a trap laid.”

She eyed him, reluctantly impressed and entirely unwilling to acknowledge it.

“You couldn’t get further in?”

“I think it’s an aether machine that controls the doors,” Tristan said, “and if the pipes are broken it no longer works. Any shrine I could get into that way would be a dead end from the start.”

“The shrine Silumko’s working has unbroken pipes,” Cressida noted. “That lends some credence to your theory. How sure are you the teacher’s the one who laid the trap?”

“Unless our Malani friend hangs up taunting notes with his traps, it’s not his work,” Tristan said.

Cressida seemed pensive.

“Between that and the flower rods, it seems almost too harsh a test,” she said. “I cannot help but feel we are missing something.”

“I don’t know about that,” Tristan said, “but here’s the thing about those flower rods: the salts in them fade. Which means someone has to be placing them out there regularly. And if neither of us saw anything during day hours…”

“Then odds are it was done during the night,” Cressida finished. “That’s… Doing it once might be possible, with some luck, but regularly? Even a veteran would balk at trying.”

The lemures out there were no joke, as he had personally found out.

“Either our teacher’s not afraid of lemures, or they have a way to avoid them,” Tristan agreed.

Considering they were Krypteia and not Skiritai, the latter seemed far more likely. By the hour’s turn they had the outline of a plan ready and some contingencies for the most likely disasters, but there was one area that Tristan thought unfortunately vague.

“You really don’t know anything about the Someshwari?” he pressed.

“She only came once, last sixthday, but she spent an hour around the tower and ran into Silumko while he was on his way there. They spoke and looked like they came to terms. As far as I know she has not come to Scraptown since.”

“He has a lot of toys, the way you tell it,” Tristan noted. “Could be she’s providing tools or funds in exchange for a seat in the class when he has a way in.”

“That is my guess as well,” Cressida said, “but it is only a guess.”

He let the subject go at that, instead letting the conversation change to the watch shifts for keeping an eye on the front gate. Yet in the back of his mind, wheels were spinning. One meeting, the appearance of alliance and some guesswork. It was a thin foundation to the belief the other Masks were in accord. Besides, Silumko was usually alone by the tower and did not seem like a trained warrior, which Cressida definitely was: she had a sword and the right calluses for someone knowing how to use it.

She could do this alone. It would be riskier, certainly, and that was reason enough to bring Tristan in. But that was a safety, a surplus. Not a necessity, and so not a match for the eagerness to make common cause with him she had displayed back in that paella shop.

So what was she not telling him?

--

Silumko of the Twenty-Ninth Brigade strolled through the front gates of Scraptown at precisely seven hours and four minutes, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and that sown-up fighting coat.

They went ahead while the Malani bought his usual apple bread at the street stand, leaving through the back gate and hiding out in the scrapyard where they had a good line of sight on the exit. Moments later he was heading out, a large bag hoisted on his back and a musket as well. He’d not had that yesterday. The Malani moved surefooted, but not quite as warily as he should have: following him was child’s play.

Every minute or so he pulled out that silvery gyroscope Cressida had mentioned, staring at it for a few seconds and sometimes sharply changing direction. Then, about halfway to the tower, he headed straight left without even eyeing his device first.

The pair were puzzled but knew better than to speak out here, instead following as closely as they could. Tristan had not been sure what to expect, but it was not what they found: a trapped shade. A beartrap buried under the rusty sand had caught it by the leg, and though it did not seem in a great deal of pain neither had it been able to flee.

The tall lemure looked thin in the morning’s silver light, like a rattling scarecrow, and lashed out angrily when Silumko approached it. The Malani put down his pack and went rifling through it. He took out a ball of rags, removing from them three glass vials. Two were full of translucent liquids, the third empty and larger. With deft fingers the man mixed some of the liquid from the two vials in the third, corking them all afterwards and putting them all away save for the mix – which he shook, then uncorked before throwing at the shade vial and all.

What a waste of good glass.

“Poison?” Cressida murmured.

It was more silent than the musket, the thief thought, if Silumko wanted a quiet kill. But Tristan was unconvinced and turned out correct in his suspicions. It seemed as if Cressida might have been right when the shade, at first shrieking in displeasure, settled down and after five minutes ceased moving entirely. Only Silumko undid the bear trap and took shackles and a muzzle out of his bag. He fitted them on the shade and tied a makeshift harness of rope before putting it on.

The Malani let out a loud sigh, then set out with the lemure dragged behind him.

“Well,” Tristan drily said when he was out of sight, “that’ll certainly make him easier to follow.”

Not only had Silumko slowed down significantly he was leaving a literal trail behind.

“What does he need the shade for?” Cressida wondered/

Tristan did not know, but if he had to guess? It must be related to why the Malani could get into the shrine but evidently not yet the tower. The flower rods, are they there as more than a way to make the journey dangerous? If a lemure was necessary to beat some sort of puzzle, it only made sense to make trapping them easier. Too early to tell if it was a coincidence.

Following the Malani the rest of the way proved almost triflingly easy. And it had other benefits besides: Silumko now consulted his gyroscope so often he did not even bother to put the silvery tool back into the back afterwards, and though the path was winding they did not so much as glimpse another lemure. Once they’d reached the stone grounds around the shrine they had to let the man pull ahead a bit, given the sparser options to hide.

Thankfully, he had to drag a shade up a set of stairs so he was a tad distracted.

The pair circled to the left, moving from pillar to pillar in the shade of the pipes. It took longer than Tristan would have liked and was unfortunately tricky besides: the caltrops the Malani had laid yesterday kept forcing them to make detours. Tristan was starting to wonder if the point of them might have been to flush out anyone creeping up rather than catching the unaware.

Either way, within a few minutes they were in position. There was a collapsed section of pipe on the ground angled so that you could not see the inside entirely from near the shrine gate, he and Cressida stood in wait inside. About a dozen seconds later Silumko dropped the harness and leaned forward, hands on his knees. Panting and red-faced. The Malani was not as tall as Tristan had first thought – not even a full foot taller, the thief assessed now that he was closer.

The gray-eyed man cocked an eyebrow at Cressida, reaching for his blackjack, and she nodded. Bet get it over with now. A load moan stopped them cold.

Silumko started cursing, hastily fleeing from the awoken shade struggling to get out of its bindings. It was flailing ineffectively but the Mask still panicked, tripping on his own bag and groaning as his musket dug into his side. The two of them waited for a full minute while the Malani struggled to open his pack and mix his brew again before tossing the vial at the wriggling lemure. Tristan would admit, in the privacy if his mind, that he was starting to feel better about their odds rolling the man without trouble.

“Now,” Cressida murmured.

Only yet again they stopped, as Silumko – back on his feet, managing to look disheveled even with that haircut – had turned towards the stairs and was peering at something attentively. The pair shared a frustrated look and settled to wait. The Malani waved whoever he was looking at closer, and there the complications began. A tall middle-aged blackcloak in regular’s uniform, a Lierganen man with sword and musket, stepped into view. He bore a heavy pack and lieutenant’s stripes on his shoulders.

“Regulars aren’t to intervene in student scuffles,” Cressida murmured.

Tristan scoffed.

“If you believe that, I have a nice manse in Pandemonium to sell you.”

The officer stood there talking with Silumko for a few moments, their voices pitched too quiet to carry, then a decision was reached. The Malani pulled the unconscious lemure closer to the shrine gates even as the watchman put down his own pack and took out a large tin receptacle. He unscrewed it, then produced a broad paintbrush.

With further ado he dipped the paintbrush inside and began tracing a red line of paint. After three strokes, it became clear it was to circle the entirety of the shrines. As if to mark it off limits, one of the few rules enforced on the island. Tristan squinted.

“You ever seen that lieutenant back at Scraptown?” he whispered.

“No,” Cressida whispered back. “But I’m not familiar with all the officers there. That is a real uniform, though.”

“There’s no way the tower’s really off limits,” the thief said. “So I guess the question is…”

“Bribe or fake?” she finished, tone pensive. “While I’m uncertain whether there would be consequences to tracing a false red line for a student, there likely would be for a watchman.”

Tristan hummed.

“If our friend down there had the coin for a bribe large enough to make a lieutenant gamble his rank, I expect he would have no need of making common cause with the Someshwari girl,” he said. “My bet is on fake.”

The cosmetics must be very skillfully applied to fool him even at a distance, but Tristan was not so arrogant as to thinking his eyes were above being tricked.

“Sound about right,” Cressida muttered, then risked a peek. “I should be able to shoot him from here.”

Tristan blinked.

“Pardon?”

“It’s not that hard a shot and he’s moving predictably,” Cressida said.

She sounded like she was wondering whether or not to be insulted.

“That is not the nature of my surprise,” the thief flatly replied. “Even if it’s not a watchman, they are still a student.”

“It’s not like I’ll aim for the head,” she peevishly said. “A leg shot would-”

“Be a death sentence, out here,” Tristan said. “We both know that. Blood and the inability to run? They would never make it back to Scraptown.”

“I thought Sacromontan street rats were cold-blooded killers with butcher’s knives,” Cressida frowned.

He rolled his eyes. Provincials.

“That’s the confederales,” he replied. “Though I understand the butcher knives are mostly symbolic.”

“Your lot chop people’s hands off and hang them upside down to bleed out,” Cressida flatly said. “And now you’re balking at a leg shot?”

“That’s the coteries,” Tristan said. “You’re aiming Murk-wise, at least, but do I look like a legbreaker to you?”

“More like a legbroken,” she sneered. “What even are you, if not those?”

“Unwilling to use murder as a conversation opener,” he replied. “It’s one thing to rough up the Malani for information, another to drop a student without warning. We should try to bargain first.”

“We’d lose the advantage of surprise,” Cressida said.

“The false watchman’s irrelevant, it’s Silumko we need,” he replied. “We can still grab him and take him hostage. I’m guessing whoever that is in lieutenant’s stripes can no more enter the shrine without our Malani friend than we can.”

The noblewoman scoffed.

“I wouldn’t have put out a hand if I’d known you were going to be such a flower about it,” Cressida said.

That had the ring of truth to it, which stung a little but that was a passing thing. He’d come out here for results, not more false comforts. The thief said nothing, simply raising an eyebrow. They both knew she was in too deep to turn back. Even if she fired that shot anyway, nothing forced him to help. He might even prefer to help Silumko subdue her in exchange for the way in.

“Fine,” she groused. “I’ll grab him. Can you run me a distraction, at least?”

“Done,” Tristan replied. “I’ll wait thirty seconds before going in.”

“Make it a full minute,” Cressida grunted.

Tristan crouched down, glancing back long enough to see her disappear into a pillar’s shadow without a sound. His gaze swept the ground as he counted the sixty seconds, finding what he needed and closing his fingers around it. Silumko was unwrapping a leather roll holding silvery tools, eyes on it, while the watchman energetically went about painting red. Fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty. Tristan slowly rose, eyed the distance and snapped his wrist.

The loose stone he’d picked up hit the officer right in the back of the head, a real beauty of a peg.

The watchman shouted in pain even as Silumko turned towards him in alarm, but Tristan ended up the most surprised of them all – even as the officer clasped the back of his head, his skin rippled and then burst into smoke. It wafted off in streams, revealing a furious Someshwari girl of the same height and in the same clothes. Contract.

“What the-”

Tristan stepped out of the pipe, drawing their eyes.

“Sorry,” he smiled, making his tone obnoxiously false. “I was cleaning my rock and my hand just sli-”

The Someshwari lowered her musket at him. She was just a few inches shorter than him, he noted, but broader at the shoulders and more muscled. Hair pulled back by beads to bare her forehead and going down the back of her head in curls, gray eyes – darker than his – and thick lips pulled back into an angry snarl.

“Who in the Wheels are you?” she demanded.

“My name,” he gravely said, “is Lord Ferrando Villazar, of House Villazar. You stand in the presence of-”

“Fuck.”

Both their eyes went to the speaker, Silumko, who raised his hands as Cressida stood behind him with a pistol pressed against his throat.

“-a distraction,” Tristan smoothly finished. “And how might I refer to you, my fair lady?”

“Ira,” the Someshwari replied, batting her eyelashes at him. “You’ve fine courtesies, Lord Ferrando, but this seems to me a most unprovoked assault.”

“Nice red paint you brought,” Cressida drily replied. “Musket on the ground, now, or I pop your friend.”

“Please don’t,” Silumko croaked.

That accent was thick as board but mostly intelligible. Definitely from Uthukile, though, good to confirm the beads were no mere pretension.

“You will not shoot him, Barboza,” Ira snorted. “If you could get into the shrine you already would have. He is your way in as well.”

“I brought a lockpicker and the tools are out,” Cressida said. “Try me.”

The Someshwari glanced his way.

“You are a lockpicker?”

“My talents are myriad,” Tristan solemnly replied.

She tittered but those eyes were cold as ice. She flicked a considering glance between them.

“Then if you switch sides, I will pay you double,” Ira said. “It does not matter who gets me in.”

“Ira, you bitch,” Silumko choked out.

He tried to struggle, but Cressida pressed the gun into his neck and that settled him down. Tristan raised an eyebrow.

“You have ten ramas on you?” he asked.

“There is no way she paid you five gold,” Ira haggled.

“Three,” Tristan ‘admitted’. “But I’ll do it for eight.”

“I can do eight,” the Someshwari smiled.

Tristan shrugged at Cressida, as if to say sorry, and turned to face her while sidling closer to Ira. Always keeping an eye on that musket, which had moved a little closer to his accomplice but could still be turned on him in a heartbeat.

“Villazar, you treacherous whore,” Cressida bit out ‘angrily’. “I should have known you’d turn.”

“None of you can get into the tower without me,” Silumko called out, openly panicking. “The aether device inside the shrine is broken and I’m the only one who knows how to jury-rig it.”

“I’m going to take a guess and say it involves strapping that shade into some sinister-looking machine,” Tristan said.

The other man cleared his throat.

“That’s not all it takes,” the Malani defensively replied.

“Go on then, Barboza,” Ira challenged. “Kill him. I imagine breaking one of the few enforced rules on Tolomontera will see you hanged and I can take my time getting that seat afterwards.”

Tristan sought Cressida’s eyes to get an idea of their move here. He was not sure if he could handle Ira in a fight, though odds were he could divest her of her musket at least. He was already clasping his blackjack inside his sleeve, but the thief was not sure the Someshwari would let him get close enough to use it. If he could get a pistol pointed at her back that would make a difference, let them dictate terms to the other two, but it would take- Cressida’s eyes widened, which was the only warning he got.

Ira brandished the musket at him, taking aim, and with a curse Tristan dropped. Only she didn’t pull the trigger, instead swiveling back the way of the other two and then shooting – both Silumko and Cressida ducked low, neither able to see Ira had shot above the standing heights of their head. A fakeout, he realized even as Silumko wriggled out of Cressida’s and broke into a run. Shit, he thought, even as he rose back to his feet and Cressida took a potshot that had Ira ducking behind a pillar.

“I’ll take her,” Cressida shouted, “take the-”

He didn’t listen to the end of the sentence, instead moving to intercept the Malani before he could make it into the scrapyard. The tall man snarled when he realized there was no way out, then reached for his belt as the thief closed the distance. Silumko was quick on the draw, but Tristan was just a second quicker: his blackjack hit the man’s elbow just as he drew his pistol, sending the ornate pearl-incrusted piece clattering to the floor.

The Malani yelped in pain and the thief drew back, angling a blow to the side of the head, but then Ira was on him.

She had turned into an ox of a man, at least seven feet tall and so muscled the sleeve of her uniform burst. Tristan half-ducked out of the blow but her fist still caught the side of his chin and it was like he’d gotten kicked by a horse: his head snapped back and when he next blinked he was on the floor, on his back. Ira, back into her true shape and wafting smoke, was struggling to fend off Cressida’s sword with a dagger and shouting all the while.

Vision swimming, Tristan pushed himself up onto his knees – dimply realizing his hair was free, his cap gone - and saw Silumko was facing him the same way. By the looks of that nasty bruise on his cheek Cressida had sucker punched the Malani with the shell of her guard. Silumko was reaching forward, towards the pistol he had dropped. Which now lay halfway between them.

“Truce,” Tristan offered, discreetly reaching inside his other sleeve. “We can let them fight it out.”

“Indeed,” Silumko said. “Let us not be uncivilized.”

A heartbeat later he tossed his knife as the other Mask threw himself at the pistol, the blade losing itself in the cloth of the coat. Silumko triumphantly raised the pistol but Tristan kicked it out of his hand, the other man shouting angrily before charging him bare-handed. The thief reached for his blackjack, but the Malani punched him before he could aim a blow and the two of them ended up rolling on the floor. Back hitting a pillar, Tristan choked out a curse and elbowed the man in the nose.

“Not the face,” Silumko complained, kneeing him the belly.

“Not the belly then, you prick,” the thief gasped.

He caught the Malani’s wrist as the man tried to punch him in the face again, gouging at the man’s eyes only to miss and claw at his cheek instead. Panicking, Silumko smashed their foreheads – and the angle was horrid. They both rolled away, groaning in pain, and Tristan wrinkled his nose. Was he bleeding? No, the blood on his fingers wasn’t his. The Malani had a nosebleed from that elbow earlier. They both got onto their knees again, legs wobbly, only for Silumko’s eyes to widen as they stared behind him.

“Stop,” the Malani shouted. “STOP. There’s-”

Tristan started running without bothering to look back. Something brushed against the back of his heels, reinforcing the wisdom of that decision, and he almost tripped into Silumko as the man stumbled trying to wheel around.

“BLEMS,” Silumko shouted. “WE DREW BLEMS!”

Tristan risked a glance back and saw a thing of horror. They moved on two feet and they had a man’s shape, roughly, but that too-broad torso bore no neck or head. The headless men had small beady eyes scattered all over their abdomen and a mouth like a crevasse – going down into a jagged stripe, full of sharp teeth and tendrils that looked like stretched-out black tongues.

Gods, Tristan thought as he saw the taller of the blems – almost eight feet tall – suck back in a tendril that’d extended at least a dozen feet out. Gods, that thing was what’d almost grabbed his foot. Silumko had slipped when he stumbled, dropping his hat, and from the whine of pain he’d hurt his leg. Tristan gritted his teeth, dragging him upright and snatching the fallen wide-brimmed hat without thinking about it.

“Move you fool,” he snarled.

“It’s sprained,” Silumko moaned, but move he did.

Tristan hurried, half at a run, but the headless men were so tall and he could feel the ground shake behind them as they caught up, a wet slurp as a tendril extended and, and shrieks as the blems drew back. They’d run into the caltrops, the thief realized with dumb relief.

“How long to open the shrine?” Tristan asked, lengthening his stride. “We can’t lose them by running.”

“Seconds,” Silumko breathed. “I rigged the aether lock, I just need to pop it open.”

Seconds was what they’d earned from the caltrops, as the sting did not distract their pursuers for long. Headless men did not seem like much, compared to some of the lemures out there, but there was a reason they were so feared: the things were basically unkillable. Unless you cut them in half or fired a cannon into them there wasn’t much of anything that would keep them down for long.

“Get him to the door,” Ira shouted, and there was a burst of thunder.

The Someshwari had fired her musket at the lemures, though it would be but a fly’s bite to them. Cressida, the thief saw, was aiming her pistol and gauging the shot. Once they were mere feet away from the tools, Silumko pushed off and pressed something into the thief’s hand.

“Slow them down,” the Malani gasped, reaching for the tools.

Tristan’s fingers closed against a ball of cast iron with a fuse. A grenade. Well, better odds than him landing a shot. He absent-mindedly put on the hat to free his hands and went fumbling for a match, finding and cracking one even as two more shots sounded. Not that the bullets did much more than anger the blems, one haring off after Cressida while the other tried to snatch Ira before she ducked behind a pillar.

That one was closest to the gates, so it was the one Tristan tossed the grenade at.

“GRENADE,” he shouted.

Not quite loudly enough he did not hear a click behind him, Silumko sobbing with relief as the gates began to jerk open. A heartbeat later there was a burst of powder and pale light, both lemures shrieking in pain – when Tristan opened his eyes, colors swimming across his vision, he saw the skin of the monsters looked burned in patches. On the bright side, it made the blems draw back for a moment.

On the less bright side, it woke up the shade and the thing was very angry.

Ira was running to the gate, he saw, and so was Cressida. So it fell to him, damn it, if they wanted to get anywhere inside. Tristan grabbed the rope harness and grunted with effort as he began to drag the furiously struggling shade into the shrine, the other Masks hurrying past him as the blems screeched in fury and one’s mouth opened – only for the gates to jerk closed past the shade’s foot, a dull thump hitting the metal form the other side.

Furious hammering against the door ensued, but the sound was muted and the metal did not even tremble.

The four Masks stood there in the dark for a heartbeat, alone with a terribly angry monster, until Ira lit a lantern and their faces were cast into light. They traded looks, a little at a loss, until the thief cleared his throat.

“I’m not giving back the hat,” Tristan firmly stated.

--

With two headless men pounding at the gate and a barely contained shade in there with them, none of them thought resuming the fight to be a sound notion.

After they dragged the shade in a corner away from them, the four spread out and saw to their own health. He’d not come with a physician’s kit, but he had cloth and sweat enough wiping himself clean of Silumko’s blood was easily done. He offered to check on the man’s leg, suspecting it sprained, but got only a frosty look.

“Fair,” Tristan admitted.

It was Cressida that put it forward they should formally make a truce until they left the shrine, which the continued pounding at the gate made a sound argument for. The motion passed unanimously and the tension thawed a bit, if only a bit. Silumko had been coming here for days and he had water stashed as well as six cheap wicker lanterns, both of which were shared.

Tristan had wondered what the inside of the shrine would look like – the proper rooms, not the glorified closet he’d made it into – and he was duly impressed once enough lamps were lit they were able to see around.

The heart of the room was a massive bronze altar sculpted like a procession of foxes chasing after falling stars, never quite sinking their fangs into them. Pale marble benches faced the center of the room, radiating out in circles, and the ceiling was covered with twisting rivers of bronze. There were two doors out, save for the front gates, in the corners of the room near the back.

Both were closed, and according to Silumko likely to remain so unless he was allowed to ‘proceed with the work’.

“This doesn’t look like Antediluvian work, aside from the choice of metal,” Cressida noted.

“It is not,” Ira replied. “The kings of ancient Sologuer built these shrines over the works of the Ancients. They believed themselves capable of drawing power from such places.”

“They mutilated the aether machinery is what they did,” Silumko grumbled. “There are channels all over these walls that got redirected, it’s no wonder this entire setup is good as scrapped.”

The man had been quiet and almost harried, but now that they’d been in here for fifteen minutes and no one bared a knife he was getting rather chattier.

“Redirected towards where?” Tristan asked.

“That gaudy altar,” the Malani said. “It is hollow. Meant for some sort of ritual, I think.”

The thief sighed.

“The shade goes inside, doesn’t it?”

He did not deny it.

“My theory,” Silumko said, “is that they used to put people in there, but anything with a connection to aether should do. I know how to work the controls, but the power always diffuses. I believe it needs to pass through the altar successfully for the doors to open, connecting both sides.”

“And a lemure would work?” Cressida asked.

“I expect it will blow up after a few seconds so the window will be short, but yes,” Silumko replied.

Ira looked fascinated.

“And if someone was put inside the altar instead?” she asked.

“No idea,” the Malani said. “I’m not a Savant. Aetheric mechanics are my area of expertise, not the fleshy bits.”

“Are you quite sure you’re a Mask?” Tristan teased. “You sound more the Tinker.”

And if a bit of teasing to him to keep talking, all the better.

“I was recruited because poisoned an entire branch of House Gumede with their own poison-testing artifact,” Silumko bluntly replied. “There’s a price on my head and the Krypteia both has a use for saboteurs and the ability to hide me.”

An awkward heartbeat passed.

“I did not truly expect you to answer that,” the Sacromontan admitted.

Silumko shrugged.

“It is not so well-kept a secret it cannot be found out,” he said, then cleared his throat. “Personal matters aside, we all have an interest in reaching the tower. Will you not let me open the way?”

There was some hesitation, but in truth all of them were curious and there was little else to do considering they were going to have to wait out the blems. Agreement was had and they went about the preparations together. The shade was beaten into compliance with the butt of muskets before Ira and Cressida tossed it into the altar, which would have felt in poor taste were the creature not a clawed monster wanting to eat them all.

Silumko, hobbling about, asked the two to close the altar above the shade and set about waking the aether machinery. Mostly that involved prying open hidden compartments under bronze wall decorations to fiddle with the devices inside, then kneeling at the low platform by the altar and pointing out a lever worked to look like simple gilding.

“Pull that on my word,” he instructed Tristan.

The thief nodded. Silumko picked up a silvery tool that looked like a dull hook at the end of a rod, then hobbled to the door to the left of the backwall. Frowning, he worked it into a small keyhole to the side and only then exhaled.

“Now,” Silumko said.

Tristan pulled the lever, which was surprisingly well-oiled even after all these years. After a heartbeat there was a click and the air thrummed. Light coursed along the ceiling like veins of bronze as the shade screamed inside the altar, but the thief barely paid it attention: his eyes were on Silumko. The Malani twisted his wrist delicately, then let out a noise of triumph as there resounded a quiet hiss and the stone door slid open. Ira, who had been told to stand ready with the largest stone they could find, put it in the way of the door in case it tried to close again when-

There was sound like wet splatter and the bronze lights winked out.

“Best take some lanterns in, it seems,” Cressida drily said.

To their common pleasure, the door did not try to close so there was no need to wriggle through and hope the stone did not shatter under unknown pressure. They moved into the back of the shrine gingerly, wary of traps, but that proved unnecessary: the last people to come here had been much more interested in trashing the place than trapping it. Lantern light lapped at the walls of the broad half-circle of a chamber, revealing scars and cracks while near everything else in the room was either rubble or scraps. There were twisted bits of bronze and a surprising amount of black marble, but the only thing in there still whole was a square steel contraption.

It was at the apex of the half-circle, about half the height of a man and just as broad, and small beads of light almost like droplets were travelling along its surface.

“Another machine?” Tristan asked.

“Not like any I know,” Silumko admitted.

“Here,” Ira called out.

Tristan had missed a detail, it seemed: to the contraption’s left there were words written in chalk on the wall. His stomach tightened the moment he realized that, like that taunting note he’d found in the other shrine, it was written in the four most common languages of Vesper. Cressida raised her lantern, leaning in, and read the words out loud as the thief worried the inside of his cheek.

“If the lights were lit, passage from eight to nine the following day. Through the red door.”

Tristan was no signifier, but this reeked of one thing in particular to him.

“That thing lets you into a layer,” he said.

It was the only thing that made sense. The tower only seemed partly present at the best of times, so unpleasant as the thought there was logic to a layer being path inside. Eight to nine, was it? The thief eyed the others, finding their faces blank. At least until one of them broke the silence.

“You can all consider me withdrawn from the race, then,” Silumko sighed.

Tristan blinked at him.

“Why?”

“I would like to live to thirty, Lord Ferrando,” the Malani said. “That tends to be less achievable when one blindly enters layers whose foundation were laid in the shadow of Scholomance.”

He shrugged.

“There are other classes, and still time enough to find them,” Silumko said. “Good luck to you all in this suicidally foolish endeavor. If you survive and ever want to trade information, I run with the Twenty-Ninth.”

Tristan eyed him cautiously, looking for the lie but finding nothing.

“Fair enough,” the thief acknowledged, and offered his hand. “It’s been an interesting acquaintance.”

“It has,” Silumko said, shaking it.

The Malani nodded to the other, who after some hesitation returned it.

“Now if you’ll excuse me,” Silumko said, “I am going to take a nap until the blems are gone and hope they did not savage my pack so much I am out of the truly odious mixture that will obscure the smell of my wounds.”

They all watched him limp away, slightly bemused. Ira was the one to break the silence.

“I, too, have decided to withdraw,” she tittered. “The dangers are too great.”

Tristan snorted.

“See you tomorrow, Ira,” he replied.

He followed after Silumko, stretching out his arms. Cressida simply flipped off the other Mask before heading back to the shrine room.

--

It took two hours for the blems to leave and they agreed to wait one more just to be sure.

Tristan cheated and had Fortuna step out to see if they were still around before volunteering to be the one to look out and see if there was still danger. His bravery was much praised, Ira even complimenting the honor of House Villazar. Ferranda was going to kill him, but it was simply too funny to stop now. Though the four of them had come with intentions to bludgeon one another, truce was extended to the way back to Scraptown and they banded together for safety on the path.

It was there they parted ways, and not on the terms he would have liked.

“We’ve opened the path to the tower,” Cressida bluntly told him. “Our alliance is finished.”

He narrowed his eyes at her.

“You think I’ll be easier to roll than Ira,” he said.

The Lusitanian shrugged, not denying it.

“You should have let me shoot her leg,” she said, and walked away.

“Cold,” Fortuna mused from his side. “You have to respect that.”

Did he? He would not cast blame for it, blame had no place in such things, bit neither would he admire it. Perhaps he should. It felt like his edge had dulled since he left Sacromonte, clutching at this and that like he was a man instead of a rat. He’d run all the way across Port Allazei to leave the cottage behind and now part of him felt like he should be running from this place as well. Only he was trapped on this fucking island, unable to leave and disappear into the crowd.

Infuriating.

He left Scraptown behind, first swinging by the cottage to notify the Thirteenth he still lived. Song had left out the latter, as if to chide him for not having bothered to write a second. He left the cottage after grabbing fresh food and blackpowder to head back dockside. There he stashed his affairs in the attic after looping around for half an hour to make sure Cressida wasn’t following him. She’d proved skilled enough at the art. Only perched up there did he let himself relax, napping for a few hours and having a meal.

Fortuna sat with him as he finished the last of the bread and chicken, eyeing an ant across the ground. No doubt if she had a physical form she would be tormenting the poor thing.

“It’s not looking good,” he admitted. “The hour’s known, so the others will head there as early as they can and wait.”

And he did not believe he could win in a fight against either woman. Ira looked the softer target of the two, but she had still been able to fend off a trained swordswoman with a knife long enough to pull out her own sword. Tristan doubted he would have been able to do the same.

“You could lay traps,” Fortuna suggested.

“We’re all going to get there as early as we can,” Tristan grunted. “I wouldn’t have time.”

If they’d checked the board, which they would have, they would know the lemures thinned on the ground around six in the morning. Six fifteen was probably the best time to get going, which was why Tristan had been using it.

“I also don’t have the materials for traps,” he admitted. “The few drugs in my physician’s kit wouldn’t do the trick.”

“Then bring thugs,” Fortuna drily said. “Ask the Thirteenth to come.”

“No point,” he said, shaking his head. “Tomorrow’s thirdday. You think Song will miss Teratology for this, give Professor Kang fuel for the fire? No, there no other options.”

The goddess turned a golden stare on him.

“There are quite literally two more people in your cabal,” Fortuna said.

His fingers clenched.

“No.”

“No,” she repeated, unimpressed.

“No,” he snarled. “Do you not get it, Fortuna? If I go to them, they own me. I admit I cannot cut it on my own, that I need them to stay here. Song thought she could push me, and she got away with it. If I come crawling back, she has me by the throat.”

“Maryam-”

“Is my friend,” he said. “Not my keeper, and I didn’t see her stepping in that night once the swinging started. Did you?”

Not even the Lady of Long Odds had quite enough wherewithal to suggest involving Angharad Tredegar in the affairs of Masks alone.

“Wen,” she finally said. “Is his office on Tolomontera not to aid you? He might have advice.”

Tristan hesitated.

“He already gave me the Chimerical, or good as,” he said. “Besides I don’t need advice, I need an angle.”

She looked like she wanted to argue, and did. He half-ignored her on his way out of the house, taking to the port. It was dangerous to wander around too much with a price still on his head so he kept to side streets, but the air helped him think and for all its foibles Port Allazei was still less dangerous than the Murk in many ways. Only neither the sea breeze nor the streets yielded answers.

“Wen,” Fortuna insisted, smelling an opening.

At this point it was no longer about helping him for her, it was about winning. In a twisted way, that had him considering taking the advice. Captain Wen did have a way of knowing things he-

“Huh,” Tristan muttered.

“You have come over to the wisdom of my words,” his goddess guessed. “As it should be.”

“Wen once told me,” the thief said, “that Alvareno’s Dosages is required reading for all Krypteia.”

“And?”

“I know who the poisoning teacher is,” Tristan said, “which means I know who will be selling poison cabinets.”

“You still need to lay those traps in advance,” Fortuna pointed out. “You tried the night before, it will only get you killed.”

Which was a problem, yes, but only if he let this turn into a footrace. It didn’t have to be.

“Crossing during the night will,” he agreed.

“You can’t be serious,” the goddess said. “You want to sleep out there?”

“They can’t beat me to it if I’m already there,” Tristan replied, and abruptly turned around.

He knew the way to the Chimerical from here, more or less. Time to see if Hage was willing to part with his stock.

--

Devils were a particular sort of evil. Tristan walked out with a worse box than the one he’d had on the Dominion, and with only two silvers left to his funds.

Half of what remained went to finding the Twenty-Ninth Brigade and arranging to rent a tool for a day.

--

The guards of Scraptown were beginning to know him by sight, a recognition that had him greasing palms with coppers to learn that neither Ira nor Cressida had returned to the tower.

Double the sum ensured they would keep quiet about his having passed through.

--

By the time Vanesa’s watch marked five in the morning, Tristan had not slept more than fifteen minutes in a row even thought Fortuna kept watch the whole night. Every sound, ever whisper of the wind had wrenched him awake. His hiding place, up on a length of piping both sides of which had fallen off and so stood as an raised isle of bronze, was not the kind most lemures could have reached.

But some could have, and that knowledge had been enough to have him sleeping in fear sweats.

Now, though, he had the last laugh. He lowered the rope and made his way back to the ground, finding the shrines were back even if much of the tower was still missing. The gates they had left open yesterday yawned open, beckoning him in, and he breathed in deeply.

Time to see if ruining his finances had been worth it.

--

Ira arrived at precisely seven, armed to the teeth: musket, pistols, sword and two knives. Not someone he remotely wanted to get into a scrap with.

Cautiously she approached the open gates of the shrine, only to stop cold. As well she should, since Tristan had earlier picked up Silumko’s caltrops and spread them in front of the door like a moat. The Someshwari peered into the shrine and found no one, but there were plenty hiding places in there. She had to know that it would be child’s play to hole up in there with a musket and shoot at whoever tried to clear the caltrops until the passage opened.

“There’s no need for this,” Ira called out. “There are still two places left, we can work together.”

If Cressida had not reached out to make a deal, Tristan would eat his own newly acquired hat.

Ira unbelted her sheathed sword and cautiously began pushing aside caltrops, constantly eyeing inside the shrine to look for a pointed muzzle. It was busy with the work that Cressida found her. The two women eyed each other warily, but relieved the Sacromontan from the obligation of eating his hat by sharing curt nods.

“We can clear them out properly, he’s not going to shoot,” Cressida said. “He doesn’t have it in him.”

There was a faint note of contempt to the words that had Tristan’s belly clenching.

“You first,” Ira drily replied.

After a minute of Cressida brushing aside caltrops, the Someshwari was convinced and joined in. By seven thirteen they’d cleared a path, which was quite unfair since it had taken him easily thrice that to place the caltrops. They entered with guns out, Ira calling out a warning they would shoot on sight, only for silence to answer them.

That was when the both of them to noticed the door, commanding their full attention.

Tristan put out the rope and slid down from the same perch where he’d spent the night, landing softly on the ground as he heard bits of conversation inside. He readied the rags and the matches. By now they would be close to the bronze door with the double pop seals he’d gone to steal in the other shrine up earlier and which was now wedged squarely across the only open door to the passage. Blocking it entirely, save for an open stripe above and below.

“-if he wedged it in, we can rip it out,” Cressida was saying.

“He’ll be waiting with a pistol on the other side,” Ira said. “I don’t know how he got here so early but-”

Tristan crept up to the gates, pressed against the wall after toeing aside the caltrops in the way. The two argued for a bit, until agreeing at least that they grid should be taken out. They paused after that, as if expecting him to reveal himself, but they were misunderstanding the nature of his plan here. The grid wasn’t meant to stop them at all.

“Fine, give me room and cover the angle,” Ira grunted. “I’ll change shape and rip it out.”

If something requiring strength had to be done quickly, Tristan had known from the start who would do it and how. He’d known he would be able to use it the moment he recalled Ira’s clothes sleeves bursting when she had turned into a large man.

Because it meant that when she ripped out the wedged door, she would not be wearing gloves.

The sound of metal being scraped sounded, then a surprised sound.

“It’s wet,” Ira said. “Why would there still be-”

“Shit, wipe your hands,” Cressida said, sounding like she was backing a way. “That’s not water.”

No, water wasn’t anywhere that expensive. That was a full silver’s worth of Spinster’s Milk, the version of the venom treated so it could serve as a coating without drying. Tristan checked his watch. Seven fifteen. Assuming both palms had made contact, she should be down in a matter of minutes.

“He’ll have an antidote,” Ira breathed out. “He must. Villazar, you fuck, you-”

Ah, and the sound of the pair rushing into the back room. That was the signal. Tristan reached into hiso pocket for the matches, scratching them and lighting the three packs of rags he’d prepared before pulling up a cloth over his face. He stepped into the shrine, throwing two in the main shrine room and one close to the back door.

Smoke immediately began to waft up, thick and odorous.

“Did you hear that?” Cressida asked.

Hurry now. Left of the gates, the stonework that looked like a square with a bronze triangle inside. Tristan pulled out the silver aether tool he’d rented from Silumko, a X at the end of a rod that he pressed once against the surface of the square then pivoted twice to the side.

“Villawar,” Ira snarled, already slurring. “What is shis?”

He turned and found her pointing a pistol at him. Tristan raised his hands, stepped back towards the door. Cressida took one glance at the lit rags, the fumes, and covered her mouth with her sleeve and stepped back. The movement distracted Ira, and in that heartbeat Tristan ran for the gates.

He pulled at the luck even before the shot sounded, feeling the ticking rise sharply – and releasing it in the same breath as he threw himself forward.

The shot streaked just above his head, somehow missing flesh but tearing a stripe through the top of his new hat and of his hair. The heat burned, but he got recompense in the way the two inside shouted in anger as the gates to the shrine closed behind him. The thief got up, passing a hand through his slightly shorn hair and wincing. Twice over when he looked down, as there was a caltrop spiked into the coat that’d come a hair’s breadth away from drawing blood.

“What is in those things anyway?” Fortuna asked, leaning against the door. “I saw you gather up that ichor from the burst lemure, but I did not recognize that vial from the cabinet.”

“Sweetsleep,” he said, taking out his watch. “The full stock.”

Seven seventeen.

“You dosed them with poppy?” Fortuna laughed.

“The derivative that puts people to sleep, yes,” he replied. “Thickened with the blood it should make enough smoke to fill both rooms and some.”

The real issue was going to be not killing them by robbing them of air entirely. Ten minutes was the most he was willing to risk, so at seven twenty-seven he went to pop open the gates the way Silumko had told him to. For a price. Smoke came pouring out and Tristan waited with his blackjack in hand. No movement inside. He put out the rag fires then found Ira by the door in the back, making sure she was still breathing before risking a look inside the back room.

There lay Lady Cressida Barboza, that hat with the golden rope over her face, seemingly sleeping like a baby. He nudged the hat off her face, blackjack at the ready, but she did not react. He divested her of her weapons, then went back to the other room and did the same with the Someshwari. All the weapons he dumped outside, before forcing open the shrine and putting them both inside it. Facing each other like they were sitting in a bathtub.

That ought to make for an interesting wakeup, he figured. His gaze lingered on the girl he’d worked with, if only for a day.

“It’s harder, not to use the tile,” Tristan quietly said. “But if all I wanted to learn was easy, why come to Scholomance?”

He waited alone in the backroom for twenty-nine minutes, until the beads of light on the steel frame formed into a curtain. He went through the passage alone.

-

Tristan crawled through the curtain of light and emerged into Hell.

He was on the streets of Tolomontera, but he could hardly tell: it was as if the entire world were aflame, curtains of smoke obscuring even the Grand Orrery’s lights as the dull roar of fire swept through the city. The world ending did not seem to hinder the battle taking place from rolling on, unsurprisingly, as men in coats of mail wielding spears fought against armed riders with face-covering helms and – shit, were those devils?

Best find that red door fast.

The north side of the street was a burning ruin, the part leading where he thought might be the port was being enthusiastically occupied by a devil and its significantly less enthusiastic victims while the other side was – huh, that had to be the largest brother Tristan had ever seen. And it still had lights on? While the gray-eyed man was no great fancier of sex, admittedly – if he wanted strangers to press against him uncomfortably, he’d elbow his way into the crowd at charity bread distribution - but he figured not even the most ardent partisans of the hobby would not indulge while the city was being sacked around them. Shots sounded in the distance, startling him, and the thief headed up the street towards the brothel.

It was a three-story edifice with two side wings and sundry balconies, occupying moist of a city block, and glass windows had been barred with furniture. The front door, painted green, had knockers shaped like… well, something Tristan struggled with believing anyone would enjoy getting knocked.

“Halt,” someone shouted, and the thief looked up.

A bulky musket was being pointed at him from a balcony above, a middle-aged woman with a heavily powdered face glaring. No, not a musket. What must have come before them: barely more than a tube of metal on a length of wood, a small rope with a knot tied under where the trigger would be. It was heavy enough she had to prop it up against the balcony railing to keep it pointed.

“No closer,” she called out in accented Antigua. “Go back, we are closed.”

Tristan raised his hands.

“I am looking for a red door,” he called out.

“Did you not hear me, boy?” the woman bit out. “We are closed.”

He frowned.

“The brothel’s called the Red Door?” he asked.

“Last warning,” she said. “Leave.”

Good as confirmation. He’d thought that note out in the shrine was too straightforward. He’d just best there was a painted red door somewhere around here that led to a pit full of scorpions or something of the sort. Now he just needed her to move first.

“Your door’s painted green,” Tristan complained. “It is a very misleading-”

He saw it in the way her body tensed a second before she pulled at the rope. That gun was bulky, almost more like small handheld cannon than true firearms, and the powdered woman was not large: she prepared for the kickback before pulling the rope.

Good.

He broke into a run, straight for the door as two heartbeats passed and she tried to follow his movement with the gun – but it was heavy and he was quick. Even as the woman shouted above, he reached the doors and wrenched them open. To his dim surprised the actually opened, revealing on the other side two large men pointing crossbows at him while a crew stacked furniture across a gaudily decorated entrance hall.

Through the red door, the note had said. That teacher was a bloody sadist.

“Fuck,” Tristan said, and threw himself through the threshold as the bolts went flying.

He flopped belly down on the floor, the breath smacked out of him as a steel tip sliced off a lock of his hair, and as he gasped he-

Looked down not at overly colored tiles but dull grey stone.

“When prostrating your belly should not touch the ground, only your knees and forehead.”

Panting, sweat running down his back, the thief allowed himself a moment to close his eyes and rest his face against the cool stone. Only after a solid ten seconds did he push himself up with a groan, getting onto his knees and matching the gaze of middle-aged Malani woman with round cheeks and bright eyes. She was beaming at him.

“This is inside the tower?” he asked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “Who are you?”

He frowned. Could she not even give him a straight answer now that he had made it here? He pushed himself up, taking in the room – barely more than a closet, with a small desk and candle where this Malani had been reading a book while sitting on a rickety chair. There was a door by her, wooden and closed.

“Tristan Abrascal,” he said. “Are you a Mask teacher?”

If Hage had spoken truly, they were bound to answer that question properly.

“I am your mother,” the Malani informed him. “You have not been eating your vegetables.”

His lips thinned. What was this – the woman shivered, and that was when he noticed it. She didn’t shiver like a person, not properly. It came from under the skin, like she was just wearing it.

“You’re a devil,” he blurted. “Again?”

How many devil teachers did the Krypteia have? The thing wearing a Malani suit grinned, but before she could answer the door was wrenched open. An angry ten-year-old Malani girl glared at them both, decked in too-large black robes and wearing pretty red ribbons in her braids.

“Cozen, if you ever put the key on a high shelf again I will feed you to crabs,” the child snarled. “And you, stop giving her what she wants. A cryptic should know better.”

Tristan cleared his throat awkwardly.

“Pardon?”

“She feeds on casual dislike, you idiot,” the girl said. “That shot you just gave her will have her insufferable for the entire afternoon.”

“So offhandedly contemptuous,” Cozen dreamily sighed. “It tastes like pepper.”

Tristan cleared his throat again, increasingly bewildered.

“I am-”

“Nerei’s latest, yes, we’re all gossiping about it,” the girl said. “I am Professor Sizakele, teacher for Aetheric Warfare. Also known as ‘Deicide’.”

“I would like to attend your class,” Tristan tried.

“You can,” Professor Sizakele began, then shuddered.

Under the Sacromontan’s horrified stare she began trembling and shaking, falling to the ground. He glanced at the devil, Cozen, but she seemed unmoved. Mere seconds later the fit ceased, and Tristan was no longer looking at a young girl but a woman in her twenties. Those robes were no longer loose.

“Ugh,” Professor Sizakele said. “As I was saying, you can begin attending on firstday afternoons from one to six. Cozen will give you a keystone and show you the shortcut.”

Tristan cleared his throat a third time.

“Not to be impolite,” he said, “but if I may ask…”

“Some gods are sore losers,” Professor Sizakele replied. “I age a decade every hour, which means I die thrice a day. It leaves me requiring some help, for which I was cursed with Cozen’s assistance.”

The devil happily waved.

“This is a contract price?” he asked.

“No. I beat a Someshwari god of death at riddles but the bastard tried to stiff me on the immortality,” the professor idly replied. “Turns out the words for ‘undying’ and ‘continuing’ are the same in Ghantalasa, which he thought was very funny.”

She smiled.

“Note the past tense,” Professor Sizakele said, adjusting her robes around her newly grown frame. “That’s enough chatter, however. I have another student coming and I’ll not brook doubling up so you have to go. Cozen will see you out.”

He was left standing there, feeling a bit like it was the aftermath of a storm, until the devil made eye contact with him and slowly tore a page off her book.

“That’s not going to work,” he warned her.

“I just like breaking things,” she smiled.

It worked, damnit.

--

Getting Cozen to do what she was supposed to was much like pulling teeth, but eventually Tristan was given a ‘keystone’ – a small latch key quite literally made of stone – and ushered through a tower room so quickly he barely glimpsed the inside before being guided through a door that would serve as a gate back into the layer the devil referred to as ‘the Landing’.

On the other side was not a room but a pit, which Cozen pushed him into.

He landed back into Port Allazei as it was being sacked, so that part was true, and on the outskirts of the fighting besides. Frowning as he followed the devil’s directions to the way out of the layer, Tristan kept an eye out for movement. The fire had yet to spread this far out so he navigated mostly by Orrery lights as he turned where told to turn and came in sight of the stone bridge that was his way out.

Only there was someone standing on it.

The thief stilled. Cozen had been painfully clear that the path was supposed to be deserted that early into the layer’s span. This must be a visitor, then. The student that had beat all of them to the tower? He would admit to some curiosity about that identity, enough to risk his own face being seen. Carefully, he approached the silhouette. A woman, he saw from behind. Dark hair, about his height. She was looking out into the distance, almost pensive.

Once at the foot of the bridge there was no more cover to hide behind – and staringly another Mask might be dangerous - so he coughed to announce himself.

“Good morning,” Tristan called out. “I did not expect to-”

Then she turned and the thief froze.

“Maryam?”