Chapter 29 (Patreon)

Maryam stayed, as she would wish for others to stay with her in such circumstances, but it was clear Song was in no chatting mood. She seemed lost in thought, though her face was not as grim as Maryam might have expected.

Either way it was somewhat tedious to simply sit in silence, so eventually Maryam stirred herself to ask if there was anything she could for Song. Somewhat predictably, her studious captain asked for her writing kit to be fetched along with Theology books for tomorrow and what passed as light reading in the eyes of Song Ren: a fist-thick volume titled ‘Jewel of the Crown, A Comprehensive History of the Asphodel Rectorate’.

“That seems like a worse experience than the beating,” Maryam told her.

Song snorted.

“It is a bit… florid, I’ll admit, but it is the only history I could find that follows Asphodel from Morn’s Arrival to the Century of Sails.”

Maryam doubted even Asphodelans – Asphodelites? - wanted to know so much about the island they lived on, but if the Tianxi wanted to practice the scholarly equivalent of self-flagellation that was on her own head. If nothing else, the volume should help her fall asleep. The signifier headed back to the cottage and packed everything before glancing at the Orrery lights through the window. She grimaced at the sight, only now realizing how late the day was running.

She’d have time to return to the hospital then head back here in time for supper with Tristan, but not much wiggle room. The cottage was safe and close to Scholomance, but it came at the price of being far from most everything else.

Her second unpleasant surprise of the day came when she was heading down Templeward Street and ran into someone she would rather have avoided.

“Maryam,” Angharad Tredegar called out, lengthening her stride to catch up. “Please wait a moment.”

Despite the urge to ignore her, Maryam did.

“Tredegar,” she nodded with cool politeness.

“Is it true that Song was attacked?” Tredegar asked.

To her honor, the dark-skinned woman did not seem to be leaning into the quadruple murder end of the rumors. However low Tredegar’s opinion of their captain at the moment, it was evidently not that low.

“It is,” Maryam said. “She is bedridden, so I am bringing some of her belongings to the hospital.”

“I must accompany you, then,” Tredegar said.

Joy. It would please Song, though, so she’d live with it. And use the free labor that had just presented itself.

“I could use help carrying the writing kit,” Maryam subtly hinted.

Tredegar promptly volunteered to lug around the wooden box, which had been digging in the Izvorica’s back like a bony elbow for the last quarter hour. She put a spring to her step to see if she could force the Pereduri to rush, but sadly Tredegar’s longer legs and inconvenient physical fitness forced Maryam to slow down a few minutes in so she would not start panting noticeably.

It was like Captain Totec said – if you’re going to smash a skull, be careful not to drop the stone on your own foot.  A lot of the old man’s advice involved cracking skulls, now that Maryam thought of it. Either it was a staple of Izcalli sayings or Totec had gone out of his way to learn all those that mentioned it. Her musings were disrupted by a throat being cleared.

“Have you had a pleasant week?” Angharad Tredegar tried.

Maryam eyed her skeptically. The dark-skinned woman seemed uncomfortable, almost squirming.

“We don’t need to talk,” Maryam finally said.

By the look on her face, Tredegar was uncertain whether she should be feeling relieved or insulted. Maryam’s skillful deflection of small talk delivered blessed silence for the rest of the way to the hospital, only for her jaw to tighten once they reached it. That Izcalli watchman from earlier was still at the door and he once more stared at her before frowning down at her plaque for a full ten seconds. He only gestured for her to pass after the other guard got curious.

Naturally, the man barely even glanced at Tredegar’s plaque before waving her in.

That little interlude put Maryam in a foul enough mood she did not slow when the Pereduri let out a noise of surprise at the sight of the hospital hall. She kept moving, forcing Tredegar to catch up with the writing kit rattling on her back. At least the second set of guards offered equal indifference while writing their names down, so there was that. The Izvorica had learned the virtues of apathy since crossing the sea: sometimes it was the best you could hope for.

Maryam had long been disabused of the notion that the Malani were the only ones to look down on pale skin. It took different shapes, different names, claimed different reasons, but she figured the source was all the same. The lands here, Aurager – the First Empire name for the two continents it had ruled, Issa to the south and Serica to the north – knew only darklings to have pale coloring and anything else went against centuries of how they thought the world to be.

It was simpler to think of the Triglau as less than men, more comfortable, and despite their insistence they were all different mornaric all liked to stare down at the same navel. You could tell, if you listened carefully, just from the way they used the word ‘Vesper’ when really meaning ‘Aurager’. Deep down they thought of their corner of the world as the whole of it, and everything that did not neatly fit into that corner was to be despised.

The sound of the guards closing the door behind them jolted Maryam out of her morosity, back to silver eyes going wide at the sight of them. Song had been awake when they entered, busy staring at the ceiling, and now straightened against the cushions like she had been caught with a hand in the honey jar instead of simply being bored.

“Ah,” Song coughed. “Angharad, I was not expecting you.”

“Sergeant Mandisa told me of the assault,” the noblewoman solemnly replied. “I am glad to see your wounds appear minor.”

Tredegar’s eyes lingered on the bruised cheeks, her jaw clenching at the sight. There, at least, Maryam shared an opinion with her.

“Please, take a seat,” Song invited her. “You too Maryam.”

The writing kit was set aside, the books piled up on the bedside table and Maryam paid middling attention to the prompted second recounting of the ambush and how Song had survived it. Again the Tianxi remained vague on the nature of the creature Scholomance had guided into the fight, though it did not sound a devil so it must be some sort of lemure.

“They were from different cabals, I am almost certain of that,” Song was saying, answering Tredegar’s question. “The sole common thread was roots in Jigong.”

“Empty seats tomorrow should make it plain which brigade they belonged to,” the Pereduri said. “That will make obtaining reparations straightforward.”

Naïve, that.

“It won’t work like that,” Maryam said.

Eyes went to her. She cleared her throat, not having expected the attention.

“This isn’t a student squabble,” she said. “The garrison got involved, there is an official investigation and Captain Wen even mentioned a tribunal. It’s Watch business now, not some Scholomance scuffle – the hammer’s going to come down hard on everyone even slightly involved.”

“The Watch has been offhanded in such matters so far,” Tredegar pointed out.

“They gave us only three rules when we came off that boat,” Maryam replied. “If they do not strictly enforce those few lines in the sand, it will be chaos.”

Tredegar hesitated, then nodded in acknowledgement of the point. Song was Song, and therefore worried mostly of how fighting off an ambush would mar her record, but their captain wasn’t going to be the one the mud was splashed on here. Every captain who’d had a cabalist plot the murder of another student under their nose without noticing a thing was going to lose some feathers for it, as were their brigade patrons.

Normally that would have prompted fears of retaliation, but this once Maryam was inclined to believe the lot of them would be avoiding the Thirteenth like the plague for the foreseeable future. Being caught doing anything akin to doubling down on attacking Song might very well see repeat offenders killed. While the Watch tended to look the other way for small or first offences, its take on third chances was being lined up against the wall and shot.

“Maryam is correct that this cannot be considered a personal matter any longer,” Song said. “Not with the garrison involved. I expect the Watch will see justice done on my behalf.”

Ah, clever girl. Now continuing on the warpath would mean Tredegar was questioning the honor of the Watch itself, which she would be very careful about doing. She’d keep her saber sheathed until the investigation was finished, which no doubt was Song had been after by phrasing it that way. It was the right choice: much as Maryam would enjoy watching Angharad Tredegar cut down everyone involved, it would make them the aggressors instead of the aggressed. If you wanted the king to chasten your enemies for raiding your cattle, you couldn’t raid their cattle right back.

Alas, now that Song and Tredegar were seated in the same room there was no more avoiding idle conversation. They tore into pleasantries with ferocious appetite, moving on from the weather to class readings and what this week’s Warfare class might be like. Though Maryam considered this social equivalent of having your fingernails slowly pulled out by a disinterested torturer, she took some comfort in how Tredegar was growing more and more uncomfortable as time went on.

Was the noblewoman failing to find a polite way to excuse herself? No, Maryam eventually decided. She was not glancing at the door or trying to end the talk. What she was doing was shuffle like someone whose seat was aflame. Hesitating. And while Maryam took perverse pleasure into feeding the conversation to stretch this out – have you done the Saga readings yet, very interesting stuff, did you know the Kingdom of Tariac existed before Izcalli? – Song had also noticed and the Tianxi was soft.

“You have something you want to say, Angharad,” Song said. “It seems to be weighing on you.”

Tredegar hesitated.

“The discussion need not happen today,” she said.

Ah, so it was bad and she did not want to add misery to Song’s already miserable day. For once this was eminently sensible and Maryam sympathized, but Tredegar had pulled on the wrong lever. She had just implicitly pitied Song Ren, the equivalent of tossing a torch inside a blackpowder depot.

“That is not necessary,” Song said, a tad coldly. “Speak your mind, Angharad.”

It would have been eminently petty to use such a charged moment to pick on Tredegar.

“Yes, Angharad, do speak your mind,” Maryam pleasantly smiled.

She was only human, it wasn’t her fault. Finding no ally in her quest not to further ruin everyone’s day, Tredegar sighed and took a moment to firm her resolve, squaring her shoulders.

“I have come across information about the death of Isabel Ruesta,” she said.

That infanzona girl from the Dominion? Tristan had called her poison, though one that the Cerdan brothers had swallowed so the pair had been quite cordial. There had been no deep relation there, though. She’d heard much more of the girl from Song, who had used a solid half of their secret meetings to rant on the subject.

“Have you?” Song mildly replied.

The Izvorica studied her, brow creasing. It was Song’s fighting face she was looking at, which boded ill for the rest of this conversation.

“Isabel was shot from behind,” the noblewoman flatly said. “And from the stairs. Only two stood there: Lady Ferranda Villazur and yourself.”

Maryam bit the inside of her cheek. Well now, that sounded rather close to an accusation. She eyed Song again, genuinely curious. Had she really shot the Ruesta girl? Certainly she had fumed about the infanzona when it was just the two of them, how dear Isabel had sunk her hooks in Tredegar and now kept complicating everything, but Song was not one to kill unless she felt she had good reason.

“You are leading to a question,” Song said. “Ask it.”

“Did you kill Isabel Ruesta?” Tredegar bluntly asked.

The silver-eyed Tianxi watched the other woman for a long moment, then sighed.

“Let us say that I did,” Song said. “I would have broken no oath by pulling that trigger.”

Maryam almost whistled, but she was wary of dipping even so light a toe into this conversation – they were a hair’s breadth away from each other’s throat, it would not take much to turn that tension on her instead. A full three beats of silence passed, the two matching stares.

“That is not untrue,” Tredegar finally replied, tone clipped. “After the Trial of Ruins, the truce was not explicitly established again. And your reasons for such an act?”

Song cocked her head to the side.

“Would they matter?”

Angharad Tredegar breathed in deeply.

“No,” she admitted. “They would not.”

She stiffly rose from her seat.

“I cannot be under the command of someone who slew an ally,” Tredegar said. “I will remain part of the Thirteenth in name until the month has ended, but transfer to another brigade after that.”

Maryam stilled. She had not truly expected Tredegar had it in her to walk out. To complain and bargain and settle, yes, but leave? Not after the Dominion. But then they were not the only brigade to come out of the Dominion of Lost Things were they? She had forgot that, having rubbed elbows with them so little.

“An appreciated courtesy,” Song evenly replied.

It took a second for Maryam to catch up there, to find said courtesy. Leaving at the beginning of next month gave the Thirteenth a full four weeks to find Tredegar’s replacement. If Tristan returns, Maryam suddenly thought. She was not as sure of that as she would have been minutes ago. She’d not believed Tredegar would leave either, but now that the door was open… Her stomach clenched. Just as she began to find her footing on Tolomontera, the ground turned to sand again.

“I would not consider you an enemy,” Tredegar said, “but neither will I call you friend. May you fare well, Song Ren.”

The Tianxi’s face was a blank mask. Tredegar turned towards Maryam, hesitating over what to say, so the Izvorica spared her the trouble.

“Door’s behind you,” she said with a light wave. “Don’t let it hit you on the way out.”

Maryam had been most amused the first time she heard the sentence ‘taking the high road’. In her experience, the high road was the one you took to shoot at Malani patrols from behind before disappearing into the crags.

Tredegar’s face tightened.

“Goodbye, Maryam Khaimov,” she forced out.

Maryam only cocked an eyebrow. The noblewoman spared them a stilted nod, then marched out of the room like it was a parade floor. Song stayed still as a statue, so the Izvorica gave her the courtesy she knew the other woman wanted instead of the one that was her instinct to give.

She stared at the door in silence, pretending she could not hear Song putting her composure back together one piece at a time.

"An eventful day,” Song finally said.

The signal that she had glued enough of a mask together that Maryam was allowed to look again.

“A real Dominion classic,” she replied, then paused.

Song cocked an eyebrow. It should have been cooly inquisitive, but the Izvorica could see the cracks. The only word for it was fragile.

“Did you pull the trigger?” Maryam asked.

They both knew she would not particularly care if the Tianxi had, beyond some curiosity as to what Ruesta had done to warrant it.

“It doesn’t matter,” Song said, looking away.

“Given how much Malani care about oaths, I would argue otherwise,” she said. “I won’t say Tredegar would have stayed on if you swore otherwise, but it would have muddled the waters.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Song repeated. “She hesitated to ask, Maryam.”

Her brow rose.

“And?”

“Pity stayed her hand, the desire not to darken a dark day,” Song said. “The bedrock of that is the belief that the result would be dark, that I pulled that trigger. Angharad already believed me guilty, so all protestations otherwise would have achieved was mark me a liar in her eyes.”

Maryam frowned.

“Maybe,” she said. “But you good as confessed.”

“Had I not, she would have been honor-bound to consider both possibilities,” Song tiredly replied. “And to treat them equally, regardless of her beliefs. That would mean…”

“No joining the Thirty-First,” Maryam muttered. “Because Ferranda’s the other possibility.”

She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

“Still taking care of her even as she leaves,” the Izvorica complained.

But there was no heat in it. It was, in truth, somewhat pleasing to see that Song would continue to extend a warding hand even to those no longer under her. Regardless of whether that help was deserved or not.

“Better she come under Ferranda than be snatched up by someone less scrupulous,” Song said.

Maryam cocked her head to side.

“That and Ferranda will feel like she owes you, so you might still be able to rely on that swordarm in a pinch,” she said.

The lack of denial was telling.

“Charity need not mean naivety,” Song simply replied.

She leaned back into the pillows, bruised and exhausted.

“You will be late for supper with Tristan if you do not leave soon,” Song said. “Please convey to him I request a meeting at his earliest convenience.”

The bit about being late was true, though that was now why she said it. Maryam did not fight the dismissal. She left, and let Song lick her wounds with no one looking.

--

There were lights inside the cottage when she arrived, and the scent of something being cooked wafted out when she opened the door.

“In the kitchen,” Tristan called out.

The smell was almost enough to make her drool: rice, fried vegetables and was that garlic? She found Tristan in the kitchen, as advertised, sleeves pulled up and wearing a leather apron as he stirred the insides of a large pan. He glanced back as she slumped into a seat, humming as he set down his long wooden spoon to grab a jug and a cup from the counter. He set both down on the kitchen table before her.

“I expect that’s not wine,” Maryam said.

She had never seen him touch a drink unless it would make him stand out to refuse, and even then he only sipped.

“Pear juice,” he said. “Fresh from the harbor.”

“Sounds expensive,” she mused.

“I expect it would have been,” he said.

She squinted at him, then down at his chest, then back up to his face.

“I don’t recall us having that apron either,” Maryam noted.

“The key to getting a good price was the just stealing it,” he solemnly revealed.

She snorted and helped herself to the jug of pear juice, pulling out the cork and taking a sniff. Like it was fresh out of the orchard. A lovely treat, she thought as she poured herself a cup. Tristan returned to his pan, but by the time she was halfway through her cup he’d taken it off the fire and was pushing two generous portions off onto plates. It looked delicious, Maryam thought – rice, peas and carrots made into an almost golden bowl seasoned with onions and garlic.

“It’s better with salt,” Tristan told her as he set down the plates, “but season as you will.”

He returned with their salt pot and a set of utensils, sliding into the seat across from hers. Maryam shoveled a mouthful in and let out a noise that might have made a man less utterly disinterested in sex blush.

“Itsh goodsh,” she complimented.

He rolled his eyes.

“You know, when you told me to return for supper I did not expect to be the one doing the cooking.”

Maryam swallowed.

“I would never deprive you from the familiar comfort of being wrong,” she said.

“You’re all heart, Khaimov,” he drily replied.

“Thathsh mee,” she happily said.

After so much walking around and a dip in a layer, she was ravenously hungry. She’d polished off most of her plate by the time he was only halfway done with his, and Tristan usually tended to eat the fastest of the Thirteenth. By unspoken accord they put off the talk until their bellies were full, and as the Sacromontan finished the last of his rice Maryam put on a pot of tea. With how full she was, if she didn’t get some in her she might fall asleep at the table.

She poured them both cups of Someshwari leaf, though she knew he was unlikely to finish his so she left it half empty.

“Has the leviathan been sated?” Tristan teased.

“The leviathan would have liked dessert,” Maryam said, raising her chin, “but she will pardon the lack.”

“If the leviathan really wants those candied pistachios, she can shell out the coin for them herself,” he drawled.

“Solid pun,” she praised.

“I’ve been sitting on it for days,” he confessed.

Which was, she supposed, one approach to the matter.

“You might have been able to use it earlier,” Maryam casually said, “had we seen more of each other.”

His face tightened the slightest bit, then she watched as he forced himself to breathe out. He also killed an irritated glance to his left, meaning his goddess was likely making fun of him. She did that sometimes, when it was just the two of them. Maryam had been itching to hear it for weeks, but Tristan refused to convey messages either way. He claimed he’d be stuck playing interpreter forever if he started, which honesty compelled Maryam to admit was probably true.

“The teacher I sought was tucked away in a location that can only be accessed during hours overlapping with morning class,” Tristan said. “And it was nowhere near here to boot, so I slept out in Scraptown.”

The name begged a question, which was absolutely he’d dangled it, but she bit at the bait and asked anyway. Though he stayed somewhat vague on details, Tristan laid out his adventures of the last few days and the general area they’d taken place in. Those other Masks, she thought, sounded like a bunch of little assholes. Except that Silumko fellow, who unlike her own friend had displayed the rare good sense not to go crawling through strange layers.

Did the others also follow nice men down dark alleys when written signs told them to?

Tristan was usually wiser than that, which tugged at her unpleasantly. The thief only grew reckless when he believed himself cornered, and no matter how airily he talked of crossing the layer he had to know there had been risks. It was unlike him to take them, as was spending the amount of coin he must have to obtain the equipment he used in his story.

Poison boxes were not exactly common market fare, for one.

“So the only way in and out of the tower is through the Landing?” she asked.

Lucifer’s Landing was the thinnest of the layers around the island, according to Captain Yue, but that hardly meant it was without dangers.

“I think there might have been a physical entrance once, but it seems gone,” Tristan said. “Either way, the shortcut will rid me of much the travel time. I only need to pass through an underground shrine south of the Nettlewood.”

“Congratulations,” Maryam said. “You have both your Mask teachers for the year, sounds like.”

“Barring abduction, my stay at Scholomance is secure,” he agreed.

He’d said that casually, Maryam thought, and not in a ‘too casual’ sort of way. Unthinking, and so in a way as honest as Tristan got. And in that small sentence was, she thought, the thread to pull at. The reason he’d taken so many risks, and why she would wager he had no intention of sleeping at the cottage tonight. My stay at Scholomance is secure. Maryam sipped at her tea and marshalled her thoughts.

“Did I ever tell you how I became a signifier?” she asked.

He cocked his head to the side.

“I’d assumed your mother chose you as her apprentice,” Tristan said.

“That’s not wrong,” she said, “but it’s not right either.”

Mother had certainly never believed there was a choice to make, but Maryam had known even as a girl that the Craft was not something you could be forced into. An unwilling or halfhearted practitioner was a disaster in the making.

“I was born with the talent, but I didn’t have to become someone who practiced the Craft,” she said. “I could have been taught just enough to not hurt myself and left to walk a different path.”

Practitioners had a term for those who made that choice, tup, which meant ‘dull’ and not in a complimentary way. It would have been a blow to her mother’s reputation for Maryam to refuse the Craft, enough that she would likely have tried for a second child with Father.

“So it was your choice,” Tristan said, sounding almost surprised.

She could understand why. There was power in wielding the Gloam, but also peril. And in these lands across the sea, the Navigators had gathered all the esteem of such a profession onto themselves – those who wielded Gloam without being guildsmen were seen as halfway charlatans.

“My childhood was… complicated,” Maryam admitted. “My mother was my father’s tenth wife.”

He choked.

“That seems perhaps overly ambitious,” Tristan tried. “How would a single man even have hours enough for ten wives?”

“It wasn’t a love match, it’s not like they were joined at the hip,” she said, rolling her eyes. “After Mother became pregnant they only met a few times a year.”

“An alliance match, then?” he asked.

“Something like that,” Maryam said. “Mother was the youngest member of the Ninefold Nine in a century, but she came from nothing. She needed backing. Father, well, he wanted the prestige of so famous a wife and a scary stick to shake at his trade rivals. It was a pleasing arrangement for both.”

She had heard marriage was used to make alliances in Sacromonte as well, though strangely only one spouse at a time. That seemed odd to her. If marrying for advantage, why stop at one? It was rare for a ruler to need to tie only a single ally by blood.

“And the Ninefold Nine were…”

“The society that rules over those who practice the Craft among the Izvorica,” Maryam said, then grimaced. “Ruled, anyway. Anyone who wants to learn the Craft has to be initiated, and from that number eighty-one souls are elected to decide which practices are outlawed and serve as a tribunal over practitioners who commit crimes. It is a great honor.”

Tristan’s eyes narrowed as he parsed through that.

“So within your father’s house, your mother would have been too strong to ignore but too weak to ward off the other wives,” he resumed.

That was… distressingly close to the reality of it, Maryam thought. Ever sharp, Tristan. Some of the other mothers had been born to landowners or the wealthy traders, and while they had feared Mother’s strength in the Craft they’d had weapons of their own to wield. That and Mother’s power had not always been an advantage – sicknesses and accidents had been blamed on her ‘curses’ quite often, when Maryam was young. She nodded.

“It was not clear where I stood when compared to the other children,” she said. “And several were close to me in age.”

She did not need to tell Tristan what kind of nastiness that would bring about.

“They were not kind in our childish arguments, and neither was I,” Maryam said. “Someone almost lost an eye. In the end, Mother and I were made to live away from the others.”

“I cannot tell if that is the mark of a victory or defeat,” Tristan noted.

Maryam shrugged. Looking back, she thought it might be a little of both.

“As a girl, it felt like the latter,” she said. “Like my own father had cast me out.”

“So you turned to your mother instead, and with her the Craft,” Tristan said.

She nodded.

“Years later, I learned the separation had been meant to stand for a few seasons only,” Maryam told him. “Until tempers had cooled. Come the following spring I was to have lessons along with my siblings closest in age, to foster ties.”

She sighed.

“Only I had chosen the Craft by then,” Maryam said. “My lessons were my mother alone, and it would have been unsafe for a young practitioner to sleep under the same roof as others. We stayed away.”

She shrugged.

“As for my siblings, from then on I spoke to them only a few times a year at feasts and never knew any of them beyond courtesies,” she said. “They were strangers.”

Maryam sipped at her tea, gone from nearly scalding to barely warm. Her lips were dry, it was pleasing to wet them.

“It was not something I grieved,” she admitted. “But now that they are dead, I look back on those children’s arguments and they feel… petty. A small thing, compared to the possibilities they cost us.”

Gray eyes studied her.

“Ah,” he said.

“Ah?”

“Ah,” he repeated.

She waited, but he said nothing else.

“I expected more,” Maryam admitted.

He sighed.

“I like learning about you,” Tristan said. “It – we know each other, I think, or at least understand each other. But stories like this fill the painting, and I enjoy that as well.”

“But?” Maryam said.

“When is a gift not a gift?” he asked. “When it is a tool.”

The blue-eyed woman winced.

“That was not a recounting of your childhood, that was you asking me to let the matters with Song go.”

Ever sharp, Tristan. Even when it was inconvenient.

“Not let go,” Maryam laid out. “Only to hear her out. She asks for a meeting. And there is a situation that-”

“The quadruple murder, yes,” Tristan mildly interrupted. “Jigong students that saw an opening, I imagine?”

Maryam hesitated a moment, then nodded. There was no point in denying it.

“I must be a potent curse indeed, to continue endangering her even when on the other side of the city,” the thief scathingly said.

The Izvorica’s jaw clenched.

“She almost died, Tristan.”

“So did I, after we followed her into the fucking terror pit,” he sharply replied. “That did not stop her from coming after me with everything short of a knife.”

“Which she regrets,” Maryam stressed. “And wants to apologize for.”

“Oh, come off it,” the thief scorned. “The brigade fell apart and now she had a close call so suddenly regrets grow in the garden of Song? That’s convenient.”

“She genuinely regrets how she acted that night, Tristan,” Maryam said. “I do not say this to play peacemaker – I truly believe it.”

Maybe not entirely for the right reasons, but Song did regret it.

“She regrets slipping up,” Tristan corrected. “Because it was beneath her, because it cost her. But we all had a look at what lies under the politeness, that night, and I am not going to pretend otherwise because she makes a few stilted apologies.”

That was… not untrue, but incomplete. And somewhat unkind.

“I don’t think you understand what her situation is,” Maryam said. “She-”

“I don’t care,” Tristan honestly replied. “About her reasons or why she’s the way she is. She is not my friend, Maryam. I spoke in anger that night, but I don’t think I was wrong.”

He leaned in.

“I am tired of her walking around peering at everyone’s secrets, reading our contracts and spying on our gods, while even acknowledging that she’s fucking doing it is somehow a line too far,” Tristan bit out. “She commands and demands with eye to her personal advance and nothing else. I might be able to forgive that, if at least we were going from victory to victory, but our record is a pit.”

“We are two weeks into the year,” Maryam said. “And I do not blame you for it, but you have to know some of those troubles followed you to the Thirteenth.”

This was slipping through her fingers, damn it. She had not wanted to have to accuse him, anything that would have her ‘choosing’ Song, but she was being forced to turn after turn.

“Just as troubles followed her,” Tristan countered. “That was the nature of the arrangement, mutual protection. For that purpose she tolerated me and I tolerated her. There is no deeper kinship there, Maryam. I owe her nothing.”

Her fingers clenched.

“I’m not asking you to forgive her,” Maryam said. “I’m asking you to hear her out.”

“Why?” Tristan bluntly asked.

She blinked.

“Why?”

“Why are you always cleaning up behind her?” he challenged.

“She would do this in person if she was not bedridden,” Maryam said. “I only-”

“You’re being obtuse,” he said. “Why are you going out on a limb on her behalf, when you were angry with her that night as well? Not like I was, perhaps, but you were. I could tell.”

She had been angry, he wasn’t wrong about that. That Song had not said a word when Tredegar called her useless, that she’d not said a word when the Pereduri phrased their older and deeper ties involving knowledge of a curse she helped manage as somehow an insult. Mostly she had been angry that Song kept bending over backwards to the other woman while the rest of them had to work for what they got. Yet these had not been deep cuts, not like Song and Tristan dealt each other.

And knowing that Song was trying, to mend things and to understand, had restored some of her faith in what the Thirteenth could still be.

“She’s my friend and she’s in pain,” Maryam quietly said.

His face closed.

“Pity is not a plan,” Tristan said, and his words had someone else’s cadence to them.

“You are angry, and have reason to be,” Maryam said. “Can you not also concede that she had reason to be angry with you?”

A moment passed.

“I could,” he admitted. “But I look into myself, Maryam, and all I find is a question: why should I bother?”

“Because it’s the only way the Thirteenth will keep,” she hissed out angrily. “And you just…”

Her fists clenched. Silence stretched out between them.

“Tredegar left, didn’t she?” Tristan finally said. “You sound too raw.”

“Just before I came here,” Maryam confessed.

“Unexpected,” he admitted, “but I can’t say it moves the needle for me. You know how it goes with rats and sinking ships.”

“So that’s what it comes down to?” she bitterly asked. “I must choose one of you and leave the other one behind.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Will I somehow become a stranger if we are not in the same brigade?” Tristan challenged. “Stick with Song, if you want to stake your chances at Scholomance on pity instead of sense - I’ll not be pleased at the choice, but neither will I disappear.”

“You sound like your decision is already made,” Maryam said.

“I do not think it impossible to join another brigade,” Tristan honestly replied. “I come with some trouble, but I am also a Mask positioned to graduate with useful skills. I do not need the Thirteenth.”

My stay at Scholomance is secure, he’d said. It sunk in, slowly but surely, that Tristan had not hurled himself into a layer and spent most of his coin simply because he felt like he needed a victory. He’d done it, Maryam realized, for courage.

He’d done it so he would be able to have this conversation with her and not flinch.

I’m too late, she realized. She was not weighing on the scales of a choice, she was trying to turn back the clock on a decision he had already made. Tristan had felt himself trapped, shoved into the grave, and he’d clawed his way out. Now he could not care less what happened to the coffin he’d been buried in. You decided Song is an enemy, Maryam thought. Not the knives out kind, but someone to work around instead of with.

From the beginning she had been going about this wrong. There was no point in trying to make him sympathize with Song, because for all that he called himself a thief he saw things much like the warriors Maryam had once ridden with. Those that put on the armor for life, not for seasons or reasons. Those who learned to look into the eyes of the warriors on the shield wall on the other side and not see men, because you couldn’t see men and cut them down without losing sleep.

Once Tristan Abrascal decided you were an enemy, sympathy no longer weighed on the scales. Pity was not a plan, as he’d put it.

Maryam breathed in. It was not all lost. Much like with those warriors, he did not see enmity as… personal, in a way? It was just the way of the world, and did not mean hate. You could trade with opponents, even work with them. Maryam just had to make this all transactional.

“Do you have another brigade lined up?” she bluntly asked.

That gave him pause.

“No,” he said. “I have only begun to consider possibilities.”

“Then stay with us until the end of the month,” Maryam said. “Tredegar’s doing the same.”

His eyes narrowed at the ‘us’, but she would not pretend. She was not abandoning Song. Tristan would be fine without her in the same brigade, but Song might well crumble.

“I can agree to that,” Tristan said.

“And I want you to hear her out anyway,” Maryam said.

He did not answer, only watching her with calm gray eyes.

“You both know some of the other’s secrets,” she reminded him. “If you are to part ways, formalize an arrangement first. And while you do, what does it cost you to listen to what she has to say?”

Maryam saw him weigh costs and advantages, how he lost time in exchange for departing the Thirteenth on better terms and throwing her a sop besides. For the first time Tristan sipped at his tea, though it had to be cold by now.

“All right,” he said. “Tomorrow, then.”

It was the best Maryam would get, so she took it.

--

Things still felt unfinished with Tristan.

They’d gnawed at the bone of Song for long Maryam felt there was an entire conversation they’d missed. It was why she insisted he sleep at the cottage this time, and said she would be doing the same. She only needed to swing by the hospital to check on Song one last time and mention to her that Tristan was still alive. It took some coaxing, but her honest admission that she might head to the Meadow to sleep if the cottage was empty clinched the matter.

It also left her to feel like she was pulling at an increasingly tattered rope, a sensation she did not enjoy in the least. No, there was still a talk remaining between them.

Song had the Asphodel history in her lap but she wasn’t snoring when Maryam arrived, which she had to concede was impressive. Part of her felt like she should tease the Tianxi about the reading, but when she dropped into the chair by the bed she found herself too tired. Wan, like there was no banter left in her.

“I take it,” Song said, “that the conversation did not go well.”

“He’s at the cottage, alive and will attend class tomorrow,” Maryam said. “That is the sum whole of the goods new I have to bring you.”

“He refused a meeting?” Song asked, seeming genuinely surprised.

“No,” she admitted. “It’s not that. It’s…”

Maryam licked her lips.

“Then he wants to leave the Thirteenth as well,” the Tianxi quietly said.

“That’s a symptom of the sickness more than anything,” Maryam replied. “I didn’t understand how he took the argument that night. I expect my leaving didn’t help, looking back.”

He would have been alone in a house with a woman he considered an enemy. No wonder he had fallen back on his habits from the slums of Sacromonte – if there was no one to watch his back, he could only press it to the wall.

“Yet he agreed to hear me out,” Song slowly said.

“You are being managed,” Maryam bluntly said. “Or the situation, rather. The way he sees it, he’s just agreed to go through the motions.”

“As long as he sits across from me, I can attempt to convince him,” Song said. “If I cannot, that is my failure.”

“You can’t think of it like that,” she said. “That’s a dead end, Song. He’ll trade, because he’d trade with Lucifer himself if the bargain was solid. But that’s transactional. It’s not trust, and trust is what you need if you want him to stay.”

At which point her gaze turned on the Tianxi. She had been fighting one front of this war all this time, but hardly given a thought to the other. Assumptions had already bitten her once tonight, so she silently asked Song the only question that mattered.

“I do,” she said. “It is… I made mistakes. Sought to put him to my purposes while balking at granting him the same. But surely time and bargains would win trust?”

It won’t, Maryam thought. What Song described was not unlike how she had befriended Tristan on the Dominion, but part of her knew that was no fair measure. Friendship with him had been like turning the key in a lock. There had been the satisfying heft of something happening, snapping into place, but the pieces had fit from the start. Besides Maryam had never been an enemy, even when she wore a mask and called herself Sarai. She’d not been trying to claw her way out of the pit.

“It won’t move the needle,” Maryam quietly said, echoing his words. “You need…”

She frowned.

“You need to bleed,” she finally admitted. “To pay a price upfront and for his sake, something he can’t just rationalize as an exchange of favors. You have to smash expectations or you’re staying in that pit forever.”

“That seems excessive,” Song carefully said.

And she couldn’t help it, she laughed.

“It’s just,” Maryam snorted. “You, of all people, saying that.”

“I don’t follow,” the Tianxi said.

“You did the exact same thing to him,” she pointed out. “It’s part of how this got so bad, I think. At some point you decided you’d figured him out and you haven’t had a good look at him since.”

Song’s lips thinned.

“I did him wrong, I will not argue that,” she said. “But while I have been painting him in darker colors than warranted, you are no more without blinders than I.”

“He’s my friend and I trust him,” Maryam acknowledged. “But I trust him because I know him.”

“You met him mere months ago,” Song gently said.

“The same is true for you,” she replied, “but unlike you, during that time I saw him at both his best and his ragged edge. There’s a lot about him I don’t know, and it may be I never will, but I know him.”

She leaned back into her seat.

“And you’re going to hate hearing this, but he’s a lot like you.”

Which said some particular things about her taste in friends but was no less true for it. Song stayed silent for a long moment.

“I will require an explanation for that,” she finally said.

“You sort people the moment you see them,” Maryam said. “Not the way Tredegar does, looking at their birth and putting them in the matching box, but you still sort them. People who can help you and people who can’t.”

“So does everyone,” Song quietly replied.

“I’m not throwing stones, Song,” she said. “The trouble is that once you put someone in the bad box, you never let them leave it. You don’t give second chances.”

The Tianxi did not answer. Which was, in a way, the only answer needed.

“For him, there’s those who are a threat and those who aren’t,” Maryam said. “Only on his bad side, you don’t get dismissed – you get measured for a knife in the throat or poison in your tea, because the moment someone can kill him he thinks he has to treat them like they will.”

“And our… altercation made me a threat,” Song slowly said.

“You’re an enemy now,” Maryam said. “That’s what I saw when I spoke with him tonight. And I can ask him to act like you’re not, but that’s not truly going to change his mind. Just make him pretend.”

She sighed, passing a hand through her hair.

“If I could fix it, I would,” she said. “But I can’t, Song. It’s you who must dig your way out, and I love him but he’s going to be a right shit about it. He wants to be right about you, so you have to prove him so wrong he can only swallow it.”

The Tianxi looked down at her hands, hesitating.

“I have not been wary of him without cause,” Song said. “I can see his goddess and she-”

“Don’t,” Maryam curtly said. “It’s not about reasons, one of you being right and the other wrong. I wouldn’t care even if it was Lucifer himself whispering advice into his ear. Relations aren’t an argument they’re…”

She struggled for the word.

“Trade,” she said. “Good coin and bad, what you want and give. And even if you owed a debt to the Black Goat herself it would still be debt. It has to be paid back.”

Song laughed.

“Zunyan,” she ruefully said.

Maryam frowned.

“Dignity,” she translated. “In Cathayan.”

“It is not a simple word, for my people,” Song said. “When Master Shijiang wrote the Fangzi Yontu – the Purpose of the House - he wrote as a mason trying to understand why the house known as Cathay had collapsed upon our heads. His answer was the imbalance of zunyan.”

“An imbalance of dignity?” Maryam frowned. “He thought the world needed more politeness?”

“Why is the face of a prince worth more than that of a beggar?” Song asked, voice cadenced. “The wheel turns without end; across eternity all souls will be high and low. To honor a single life is as building a wall with a single stone. The only universal truth is the equal dignity of souls, and to refuse this is to deny the Circle Perpetual itself.”

The Izvorica sucked in a breath.

“Noble can’t have liked that,” she said.

“He spent most of his life in exile,” Song quietly said. “But if the words of the Feichu Tian are the mind of what it means Tianxi, then those of the Fangzi Yontu are the heart.”

She grimaced.

“I have not given Tristan Abrascal the zunyan that is his due.”

“He hasn’t been a darling to you either,” Maryam gently said.

“That cannot, should not weigh on the scales,” Song replied. “A universal principle does not bend to circumstance."

The Tianxi swallowed.

“And in that spirit, I something to tell you.”

Maryam’s brow rose.

“I’m listening.”

“You saved me,” Song said.

“A lovely thought,” Maryam began, “but-”

“I do not mean it figuratively,” the Tianxi said. “The entity I told Captain Wen intervened when I was about to be tortured to death? It resembled you like a sister and claimed to be there on your behalf. It tore through the three of them like paper.”

Maryam swallowed.

“It,” she slowly said, licking her lips, “it killedpeople?”

“First it made them turn on each other,” Song said. “Then it popped one’s head like a grape and fed the last to a ‘smok’ made of Gloam.”

That… those weren’t Signs, at least not the latter two. They sounded like Craft.

“It shouldn’t be capable of using Gloam,” Maryam whispered. “Not if it’s some sort of parasite.”

Which meant Captain Yue was wrong.

“I have no idea what it was,” she admitted. “I need to talk to my mentor.”

The Tianxi nodded.

“The creature, she said things,” Song quietly said. “Revealed secrets you have not chosen to share.”

Maryam licked her lips nervously.

“Tell me.”

A moment’s hesitation.

“She called herself the last princess of Volcesta.”

The pale-skinned girl let out a startled laugh.

“That’s,” she began, then shook her head. “True, narrowly enough? My father was the king of Volcesta, but that title doesn’t mean the same thing it does on this side of the sea – and my mother was not his first wife, besides. I had almost twenty half-siblings who lived to adulthood.”

Maryam passed a hand though her hair, only she found her fingers curling like claws.

“I am the last of them, as far as I know, so that part stands,” she quietly admitted. “Not that Volcesta exists anymore. The Malani renamed it Ifanje and the High Queen appointed a lord to rule the city.”

“But you were a princess,” Song insisted.

Frustration rose sharply. Mornaric just couldn’t seem to understand that their tyrant-kings weren’t what everyone else meant by the word – none of the sailing peoples save the Izcalli ever seemed to grasp a king might not be some all-powerful autocrat. Father had been checked by the Staresine, whose consent he would need to wage war or raise new taxes, and had no right to pass judgement over landholders and practitioners of the Craft. He could not even choose his own successor, only pick candidates for the Staresine to elect from!

“The word doesn’t translate,” Maryam said. “In Antigua, it implies status. A title. In Recnigvor it just means…”

She struggled to find the meaning.

“Ruler’s blood,” she settled on. “It is a qualification, not a position. And being my mother’s child disqualified me from inheritance anyhow, so it is debatable whether I even warranted it.”

Like most of the Triglau, the Izvorica had once been ruled by lines of Craft-Queens who plied their powers over Gloam and spirits to rule with an iron fist. The bloody, endless feuds of that era had led to the forbidding of Crafters ruling over others and the founding of the Ninefold Nine as a union and tribunal. Being the daughter of a mistress of the Craft as infamous as Izolda Cernik would likely have seen Maryam refused the right to inherit even if she had not proved capable of the Craft as well.

Certainly, if her name had been put forward to rule of Volcesta the Staresine would have accused Father of committing davanje zaba– putting forward an obviously bad pick so they were left with only one real choice to elect. Song studied her for a long moment, then slowly nodded.

“Wintersworn?”

Maryam grimaced.

“The name of my mother’s host, taking the war to the Malani,” she said. “It is… a complicated matter.”

And she had no taste for getting into a talk about what swearing yourself to Winter meant, or the price it exacted.

“Keeper of Hooks,” Song continued. “First and last of the Ninefold Nine.”

Maryam rolled her eyes.

“Did she call herself Queen of the Third too, while at it?” she said. “It’s nonsense. The Ninefold Nine were, well, my people’s Akelarre Guild.”

Her teeth clenched.

“I was inducted into the society as a girl and might well be the last such to draw breath, but the Ninefold Nine are long buried,” Maryam said. “Most were butchered by the Malani and the rest took their own lives.”

She looked away, after that, and got what she hoped for: Song did not dare ask about the title of Keeper of Hooks. Maryam would rather not speak of her first and deepest failure, how utterly she had miscarried the hopes of her mother. That title was hers, by dint of the lack of contender for it, but even hearing the words burned like acid.

Centuries of knowledge, of wisdom, all turned to smoke because she was not good enough.

“She claimed your mother could weave a leshy out of Gloam that was large as a ship,” Song tried, a tad more lightly.

“By the end of the war, she could,” Maryam acknowledged. “Her might in the Craft was a match for the old legends.”

The blue-eyed girl hesitated.

“But by then she had grown… volatile,” she said. “The ritual that empowered her had cruel costs.”

The twenty-nine souls had begun blending into hers and each other, leaving her half mad and talking to herselves. The elects that had survived the Malani raid on the sacred grove had taken their lives willingly, giving their power and wisdom, but no mortal was meant to bear the weight of so many lives. The only pure thing left in her had been the rage, so it was rage that ruled the roost.

Silence stretched out between them, Song having finally run out of uncomfortably intimate knowledge about her past. Or at least of willingness to keep discussing it.

“It is a strange thing,” Song quietly said, “to know so little about you and still feel I know you.”

“The past is past,” Maryam replied.

Silence.

“No,” Song said. “It’s not that. I think I know the shape of your wounds, Maryam, and you mine. It is a little like being in someone’s confidence, to see the scars the world left on them.”

She swallowed, uncomfortable as the soft words. Unsure she could deny them.

“What are you going to do?” Maryam asked.

Song closed her eyes.

“I am going to burn a bridge with the Forty-Ninth still on it,” she said. “I am going to rob their corpse of everything of worth, and then I will buy trust with blood – theirs, mine, everyone else’s.”

She breathed out.

“And when you tell Captain Yue of the apparition that saved me,” Song whispered, “tell her one more thing. The boon of my contract is to ‘see the truth of things’, and at the heart of that entity I saw a soul.”