Chapter 32 (Patreon)

Tonight was the night.

Song rose early and made breakfast: eggs, bread, bacon rashers. Not at all a meal she enjoyed, but it was hearty fare and the others seemed inordinately fond of it. Tristan stumbled in a few minutes later, his hair in no way distinguishable from usual even though he had clearly just got out of bed.

“Fancy,” he said after a peek at the pan, sliding into a seat at the kitchen table.

“The eggs only had a day left,” she replied.

He took his eggs scrambled, mixed with onions and tomatoes if there were any to spare. There were just enough of the latter left from the potage that sprucing up his eggs did not feel like a waste, so into the pan they went. He waited until the bacon was added to his plate before thanking her, cutting his own slice from the loaf. Just a little diagonally, to the left of straight. Ugh.

She tried not to visibly react, but he was suddenly all smiles. The little bastard had definitely noticed.

Maryam only emerged when they were both done with their plates, dressed for the day and freshly washed. Song heated her rashers again and made her eggs cooked on both sides, which went to show that bad taste could cross the ocean. It was one of these historical tragedies that outside Tianxia only the Someshwari seemed to understand eggs were best eaten as omelets.

“Ooh, you even put in the herbs,” Maryam enthused.

With her mouth full, which rather evened out the expression of appreciation in Song’s book.

“I’ll leave the dishes to you two,” she said, getting up. “I need to get ready for the day.”

She paused and carefully did not look at the man in question.

“Will you be needing the washbasin, Tristan?”

A pause, long and thoughtful.

“Did you cook the breakfast we like just to be sure I’d feel guilty enough to agree?” the thief asked.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Song Ren lied. “I’ll leave a clean cloth for you. And a comb.”

“The things a man does for bacon,” Tristan gravely said.

“You can’t cross her, she’s the only one who can make it crunchy but still bendy,” Maryam whispered.

Confident in her victory, Song retreated upstairs as they began bickering over how Tristan overcooked his and she ‘slurped up raw pig entrails’. Uncle Zhuge had never mentioned the importance of maintaining cooking superiority when preparing her for captaincy, which was sane and reasonable but still somehow felt like an oversight on his part.

The Tianxi fetched the clothes she had laid out, closed the door to the washing room and shed her night clothes before scrubbing herself thoroughly with cloth and soap. She rinsed and wiped before checking on her braid in the copper mirror, finding it a little loose. She pulled it up and combed her hair freshly before braiding it anew, in that easy pattern Mother had taught her as a girl.

When she was finished she put on layer after layer, checking on the buttons and adjusting the collar. The combat fit for today, though her belt was downstairs with her guns and sword. Song gave herself one last once over in the looking glass, facing a neat profile with a severe edge to its cast. The impression she wanted to give, now most of all.

Her interlocutor would only see any hint of weakness as an invitation to take liberties.

Giving a satisfied nod, she changed the water of the washbasin and put away her nightclothes after folding them. She dipped back into the room to place a clean cloth folded where it could not be missed, along with a small comb and even the soap.

The latter was a long shot, but a girl could dream.

--

Tonight was the night.

Angharad had been looking forward to it ever since Lord Musa handed her the formal invitations, so she rose already in a good mood. The house was small enough the smell of breakfast spread through every nook and cranny, Angharad padding into the kitchen in her nightdress to find Rong’s usual: warm rice porridge, a traditional Tianxi meal. They made the same thing every morning, which she would have come to find tedious if not for the many plates of toppings spread around the porridge bowls on their cramped kitchen table.

Eggs, chopped turnips and carrots, some sort of ruddy bean paste, stripes of cooked chicken and fish, sundry spices: the porridge stayed largely the same, but could be made to taste rather differently according to what one sprinkled in.

Rong Ma was setting down the last plate when she arrived, and they nodded a greeting before sliding onto a stool. The room that was both their kitchen and their drawing room was smaller than most, a consequence of having one bedroom more than most houses on the street. It made for crowded common space but appreciable privacy when such was wished for.

“Good morning,” Angharad greeted them, claiming her own stool. “Were you out late? I didn’t even hear you come in last night."

“Shalini tossed me out at the eleventh hour, so no,” Rong drily replied. “As if she wasn’t going to be up burning candles over those novels of hers whether I tinkered or not.”

Not for the first time, Angharad eyed the other blackcloak for any resentment at their once workshop having been turned into her bedroom only to find none. The Tianxi seemed to find it somewhat inconvenient to have to walk back and forth between the houses, but remained otherwise indifferent. It had been a relief not to end up on the wrong foot from the start.

“I think we’re not supposed to know about those,” Zenzele noted, walking into the kitchen.

He slid into the stool between them, immediately reaching for the eggs. He was an egg hog, Angharad had learned, though surprisingly light on spices. Mother would have called the way he ate hollow food.

“Are they not explorers' journals?” she asked. “That seems an odd thing to hide.”

They were in Samratrava so the actual contents were unknown to her, but the covers sometimes had ship outlines on them.

“Something is getting explored in those books, all right,” Rong muttered, sprinkling turnip liberally.

“They are Someshwari filth about brave Ramayan merchant captains seducing pretty foreigners while becoming fabulously wealthy,” Zenzele amusedly explained. “Every other book an evil Tianxi admiral gives a monologue before losing to superior Ramayan charm and cunning.”

“The Yellow Earth tried to get them banned back in the Republic of Wendi on account of them being royalist propaganda, but they sell too well for the courts to allow it,” Rong sighed. “That’s Wendi for you – they’d sell pieces of the Circle, if the profits were good enough.”

“Tianxi are not alone in such habits. Pillow books about noble swordmistresses being captured and ravished by savage Sunflower Lords are quite popular with some circles, back in Malan,” Angharad admitted.

She then slid a slightly guilty look Zenzele’s way. Women’s talk, that, not the sort of thing one discussed around husbands. The dark-skinned man only cocked an eyebrow.

“The books for men are horrid,” he told her.

He popped an egg into his mouth, swallowed.

“Tree metaphors, Angharad,” he said, voice harrowed. “Tree metaphors as far as the eye can see.”

She choked on her mouthful of porridge, choking until Rong slapped her back. She sent them a grateful look and the meal was polished off with haste. The three were up earlier than trek to Scholomance would warrant, in part because the Tianxi tinker wanted to pick up some affairs from their workshop and Angharad had an appointment of her own. She began to bring away the dishes, as was her duty – unlike under Song, in the house tasks were split but did not rotate – but Zenzele stopped her.

“I’ve nothing but a lazy morning ahead,” he told her. “Leave me the dishes and see if you can get in early at the shop.”

“Ah, that’s right,” Rong said, turning to eye her. “Your dress for the banquet.”

“I planned my time so I could hold up my end,” Angharad insisted.

“I misplaced mine, so I need something to spend it on,” Zenzele said, shooing her off. “Away with you.”

“I cannot-”

“Tell me if Musa uses the wrong fork at any point tonight and we shall call it even,” he said.

It would have been graceless to push the matter further, so Angharad gave in. She returned to her room for a wash and a quick change. After her goodbyes, it was a matter of moments before her boots hit pavement.

--

Song had believed Tupoc Xical to be setting the time and place largely to inconvenience her, so it was a surprise to find he was actually hard at work.

Near the southern end of Regnant Avenue, just short of the barracks, were a few blocks’ worth of courtyard houses. The Lierganen equivalent, anyway, which was smaller and meant for a single branch of a family instead of the tree. The Watch had forbidden them from being used as housing so that the barracks wouldn’t be shooting at students if they had to turn their cannons north, leaving a row of surprisingly decent training spaces in the form of stone courtyards far from any lemures that no one had claim over.

And training was actually what Tupoc was using the house he’d directed her towards for.

Song stepped through the threshold to the sound of wood clattering against wood, finding a half-naked and barefoot Tupoc batting away the shaft of his cabalist’s spear. Expendable – Velaphi, that tragedy of a contract revealed his true name to be – growled and stepped in, trying to hammer into his captain’s chest with his grip. The Izcalli deftly danced around the blow, kicking him in the back of a knee and clicking his tongue as the amber-eyed man stumbled.

“Temper,” Tupoc chided. “Either fight with the beast or fight with your head: the middle ground is the worst of both worlds, and the gods know your best is still so terribly mediocre.”

Resting his spear against his shoulder, he then tapped a thoughtful finger against his chin.

“Also, stop holding your spear as if I were a warthog looking for a spit,” the Izcalli added. “If you flick and duck against a human, they’ll just gut you.”

“I’m not used to fighting people,” Expendable bit back.

“Pick fights with strangers,” Tupoc suggested, then revealed he had known she was there the whole time by flicking a sly look her way. “Why, hello there stranger!”

She almost rolled her eyes. The only reason she refrained was that he fed on others reacting to his antics, much like some discount Izcalli devil.

“Tupoc,” Song replied, the nodded a polite greeting at the other man. “Expendable.”

The Malani pulled down his hat over his eyes before turning her way and returning the nod, sweat glistening around his neck. Unlike Tupoc, he was fully dressed in a regular uniform.

“Captain Ren,” Expendable nodded back to you. “Good day to you. I was just leaving.”

The courtyard walls had iron spikes nailed into them, almost like makeshift racks, and the Malani hastily put up his spear there. Song entered the courtyard and moved out of the threshold to make room for him to leave, getting a grateful nod as Expendable all but fled her presence. Song turned to Tupoc, silently cocking an eyebrow.

The pale-eyed Izcalli was standing by a barrel in the corner of the courtyard, dipping a cloth inside and washing off his sweat. When he noticed her expression, he laughed.

“I have told my cabal you are a meddlesome witch who can read their thoughts with but a glance,” he casually informed her.

Most of the half-naked men Song had seen in her life had been gravely wounded, but she had seen enough aside from that to know that there was nothing natural about the perfect symmetry of Tupoc Xical’s upper body. And when she used perfect, she meant perfect: as far as her eyes could tell there was not a single asymmetry or imperfection across the whole of him, be it the muscles of his belly or the corner of his eyebrows.

“A pointless waste of all our times,” Song replied.

“Irritating you is always worth my time, Song,” Tupoc feelingly said.

The Izcalli dunked his head into the water barrel. Song’s eyebrow cocked even higher, as while he leant down she got a glimpse of his back and found there was a tattoo between his shoulder blades. An elaborate golden coin, displaying some sort of three-headed creature made of bones. Not any Izcalli coinage she knew of. He emerged after a few seconds, shaking his wet hair – which ended up settling perfectly with barely a brush of his hand – and sighing with pleasure.

“You wanted something?” Tupoc asked.

For you to put a shirt on, you immodest harlot, she almost said. That would guarantee he went half-naked in her presence whenever it was even remotely possible for months, however, so she refrained.

“I have work for your brigade,” she said. “Tonight. I’ve come prepared to offer appropriate payment for it.”

Setting down the cloth, the Izcalli padded away on the stone to pick up a larger towel and dry himself. He kept it hung loosely on his neck afterwards, which was no shirt but better than nothing.

“So you did lose Tredegar,” Tupoc mused. “Her sitting with darling Ferranda seemed significant but it was no sure thing. Unlike your needing to hire muscle.”

There had been no avoiding his figuring that out, but it was an open secret by now anyway. Song had come prepared to take it on the nose.

“She will be leaving the Thirteenth,” she acknowledged, then moved on. “The opposition I would hire you against is a-”

“No,” Tupoc easily said.

Song’s brow rose.

“No?”

“Without Tredegar you’re not nearly as interesting,” the Izcalli shrugged. “Maryam might warrant a second look if that spite ever translates into power but Tristan, you?”

He snorted.

“There is nothing more boring than a game I’ll win every time,” Tupoc said.

Arrogance, Song thought. He was better with a spear than she was with a sword – or a spear, for that matter – but he was not better than a bullet. If she caught him at a distance, or in a place where she could snuff out the lights, Song was confident in killing him. Idly, she wondered if he was truly refusing or trying to goad her into something unwise. By the way he was standing, loose-limbed and watchful, it might just be the second.

He'd love an excuse to get her in the ring, she suspected. He seemed like the sort who thought that you could only get someone’s measure by crossing blades or something equally asinine. Unfortunately for Tupoc Xical, she was less than interested in playing his games.

“If you do not let me finish my offer,” she said, “you will regret it.”

Pale eyes light up with glee.

“Are you threatening me, Song Ren?” Tupoc smiled.

Smelling a fight, he must think. It would be satisfying to pull out the rug under him.

“Of course not,” she replied. “If I were threatening you, Tupoc, I’d be telling you that the only thing it would cost me to ruin you is an inkwell and a stack of papers.”

She leaned in.

“A sheet in front of every door on Hostel Street, with your name and the knowledge that you cannot touch bats and spiders.”

The Izcalli stiffened for the barest of moments, tried to play it out as stretching. They both knew she was not fooled in the slightest.

“Admitting you can read contracts?” Tupoc mused. “Bold. A girl could get killed over that.”

They’re already trying to kill me, Song thought. Maybe Nianzu had been right, maybe there was no winning this, but they would not bury her cringing. What was the, if she spent her life toeing the line only to end up dragged into a hole so vengeful children could torture her to death? She had used her contract without truly using it, and that had to end.

“That won’t put your secrets back in the box,” she said. “How long will the little show with your cabal work, if they know killing you is easy as putting a spider in your bedroll while you sleep? The fear would be gone, Tupoc, and not only for them. For everyone.”

Because Tupoc, clever as he was picking his battles, only still drew breath because he was strong enough to fight those battles. So long as he was too dangerous to be worth tangling with over small matters. If that balance shifted even slightly, it all came down on his head. Pale eyes hardened.

“I would kill you over that,” he said.

Calmly, like it was a common and simple thing. No more difficult than drawing water from a well.

“You’d try,” Song shrugged, unimpressed. “But it doesn’t matter, because I’m not here to threaten you. I’m here to give you a gift.”

“Well, you certainly have my attention,” Tupoc drawled. “What do you have for me, Song?”

“One,” she said.

“Copper?” he said, looking her up and down. “I’m not unwilling, mind you, but it will take more romance. At least two candlelit dinners and perhaps some of that sultry Someshwari poetry.”

She eyed him with open disdain.

“I’d bed Tristan first,” she said. “At least I would not be risking rabies.”

“All right, with talk like that I’ll bargain down to the one dinner,” Tupoc conceded.

“One reading,” Song said. “Your choice.”

He opened his mouth to try to put a knife in her, but she had seen it coming from miles away.

“It cannot be a member of the Thirteenth Brigade, past or present,” she told me.

“Tredegar’s leaving you,” the Izcalli drawled, as if she had needed a reminder. “And still you’d extend her protection?”

“Congratulations,” Song said. “You can understand Antigua. We will make a civilized man of you in a decade or two, at this rate.””

“And if I insist?” Tupoc smirked.

He asked in Centzon, because someone somewhere had failed in their solemn duty to beat an acceptable personality into him.

“The terms remain unchanged,” Song replied in the same, cocking her head to the side. “Were you somehow under the impression that your pompous smugness would make a difference?”

A small twitch, almost impossible to miss, but with eyes like hers almost was more than enough.

“I could refuse,” Tupoc said.

Trying it out as a threat. He did that often, she had noticed. Putting the words out to see if the other would react, then playing them off a jest if they did not land as he liked. The parry to that was simply not to buy in.

“You could,” Song agreed. “But you won’t.”

Because what I offer is of great worth, and you are only probing to see if I am desperate, she thought. He hummed, stroking his hairless chin. He stretched it out, as if deliberating, but she could see in the way he stood that the balance had settled.

“And what kind of gift would you want in exchange?” he asked.

“The only thing you have to give,” Song said. “Violence.”

“Now you sweet-talk me,” he complained. “Who against?”

Song told him, and why, getting an impressed whistle as answer.

“And here I thought you were the boring kind of ambitious,” Tupoc said. “That sounds like an interesting evening.”

A beat.

“I could strike that bargain,” he said. “There is only one question I’d like answered first.”

He leaned in.

“My contract, you can read it all?” Tupoc asked.

“I have no reason to answer that,” Song said.

“I’ll walk on the deal,” he casually said.

Yet his eyes were cold, belying the truth of it. The Tianxi smoothed away her displeasure. Typical of the man, he had waited to leverage her until the deal was all but done – until there was something for her to lose. She would admire the deftness, were it not wielded to her detriment.

“I can,” Song conceded. “Though I do not necessarily understand the words.”

He seemed amused.

“What’s tripping you up?” the Izcalli said. “I might be of help.”

She rolled her eyes, called the bluff.

“Yekayotl,” she said. “I could not find a proper translation.”

“You wouldn’t, it is not classical Centzon,” Tupoc chuckled. “Temple dialect. It means ‘perfection’ as a finite state of being.”

Song frowned, surprised in two different ways. The first that he would share this at all, the second at the implication. Tupoc Xical’s contract had him forever towards moving towards yekayotl, which meant his god believed his current body to be perfect. Or perhaps a ‘perfect slate’ that any deviation from was corrected by his contract.

What he did was not healing so much as pulling on aether to fix the slate – which explained why he was capable of both ‘healing’ his wounds and purging poison. Poison was not part of the slate, so it was burned out.

It was a surprisingly narrow range of immortality he boasted, Song mused. A thousand cuts would force him to draw too much on his contract, likely killing him or inflicting sainthood, while the instant death of being shot through the head would kill him before his contract could begin mending the slate and so void the pact to his god by way of death.

Much anything else, though, he would survive. And anything lost would return in time, warding him from the accumulation of wounds and fractures that years of service in the Watch inevitably brought. Though she burned with questions – had he ceased aging, why was food still necessary when poison had no effect, how had the ‘perfection’ been decided on – she held her tongue. There was a difference between being told the meaning of a single word and pawing at the deepest secrets of his contract.

“I do not know what you did to catch such a god’s attention,” Song said, “but it must have been impressive.”

Tupoc laughed.

“They always believe that,” he ruefully said. “That because my lord Grave-Given is great and worshipped by millions, he must love only the most faithful priests and famous champions. That is a misunderstanding of what he is, Song.”

“And what is that?”

“Death,” Tupoc said. “Nothing before, nothing after. That is all the Grave-Given takes into his eyes: your death. You want to know how I drew his eye, Song Ren?”

He grinned.

“The darklings thought I was dead, so they threw me in the pit with the rest of the corpses,” Tupoc said. “They swaddled me in death, broken and delirious, for three days and three nights. I drank rainwater by licking at rotting skin, heard them feast and sing above as carcasses burst and I was choked by graven flesh.”

He leaned in.

“He came to me on the last day, when the shit and sickness had seeped into my wounds. When I was good as blind and more than halfway dead.”

Tupoc laughed, drew back.

“That is what a prayer to the Grave-Given is, Song. Not glory or honor or all the pretty feathers those society fucks put in their hair. Death is the only currency of any worth, and a man should know what he’s willing to spend his only coin on.”

Those pale eyes burned with fervor.

“Else he is good only for filling the pit.”

Song’s hands clenched.

“Why tell me this?” she asked.

“On the Dominion,” Tupoc said, “you walked around like an arrogant child. Now, though?”

He stretched out, folded his hands behind his head.

“You have the walk of someone who got a glimpse of the pit,” Tupoc said. “It has me curious.”

Words to haunt a woman in the dark of night, those.

“What is your coin worth, Song Ren?” Tupoc smiled. “I look forward to finding out.”

She forced herself to stay until she had his agreement to the deal, and not a moment more.

--

The tailor Lerato ushered her in even though she had come half an hour early, pressing tea into her hand and telling her to sit while she tended to another client. The middle-aged, homely Malani woman – southern, by the accent – intended for Angharad to sit in the front but their voices were overheard and the client in question called out.

“Is that you I hear, Lady Angharad?”

A voice she was familiar with.

“Lord Thando,” she called back. “A pleasant surprise.”

He was as pleased to see her, so instead she found herself ushered into the back to sit on a plushy armchair while Thando Fenya saw to the last details of his outfit for the very same evening she was to attend. The colorful doublet in geometric patterns was an almost nostalgic sight, though longer than she was used to. Perhaps in deference to the cool evenings.

The matching puffy trunk hose worn over breeches was pure Malani ostentation, however, a fashion that had never taken in Peredur where a nobleman was expected to be able to ride and run.

Given that Thando was somewhat plain of face and flabby-eared she would have thought the elaborate stylings might draw the eye to that plainness, but between his golden earrings and the cut the outfit rather distracted from it instead. Impressive work, though she wondered what manner of jerkin he might complete it with.

Lerato made adjustments to the shoulder fit of the doublet while they chatted, the Malani seemingly in a fine mood.

“- quite happy to hear you would be invited,” he said. “There are too many nobles from the south and the heartlands, I feel, some Pereduri blood will do the evenings good.”

“Am I to understand that House Fenya is of northern bent?” she asked.

“Our holdings are closer to the heartlands, in truth, but I was raised on the coast of Mirror Bay,” Thando said. “We own land and manors in the region.”

As did half the noble houses in Malan. Those that could afford it, anyhow: Mother had always balked at the prices, laughing that she would get more use of another carrack. They traded pleasantries about what the lands of Llanw Hall had been like – wet, more poetically said – and commiserated about how scorching weather could get in the heartlands.

The conversation turned to whispers once Lerato left the room.

“I must congratulate you on finding the shop,” Thando said. “We have been keeping it something of a secret.”

The nobly born, he meant.

“It was recommended to me by Zenzele Duma,” she said.

“A well-dressed man, Duma,” Thando approved, thumbing his ear absent-mindedly. “A shame that having him in the same room as Shange is apt to get one of them killed.”

Which would be unproductive, so only one could be invited. As Musa Shange had blood ties to prominent izinduna and greater connections within the Watch besides, so she expected from where they stood the choice had not been all that difficult to make. She could not even deny that Lord Musa had reason to be angry with Zenzele, much as she preferred the latter man to the former.

“It seems to me there are few enough of us,” Angharad delicately said, “that brokering some manner of peace would be to everyone’s advantage.”

The Thirty-First had done her many kindnesses, over the last two weeks. It was only proper for her to return them if she could.

“Ambitious,” Thando noted. “Some would call such an attempt ill-fated, but it does not seem impossible to me.”

Merely very difficult, he was implying.

“I have dabbled in ambition, should the occasion call for it,” she replied.

“Then I advise you to linger after your time,” the Malani said. “Unless I am mistaken – and I so rarely am - Musa is to visit the shop this morning.”

Given that there was only so much time left before she needed to link up with the others to begin the journey towards Scholomance, Angharad found that news heartening. Lerato could not have many visits lined up before the hour grew too late for it, meaning her odds of catching Musa were quite good. Thando finished the last of his fittings mere minutes later, and while the seamstress went to fetch Angharad’s dress the man leaned in and lowered his voice again.

“Tread carefully tonight,” he whispered. “You are Musa’s better on the dueling field, but I expect he might be a finer blade at such affairs.”

She scrutinized his face, finding it unreadable, and nodded. He had made a choice that did not please her, on the evening she fought that duel, but it had not been perfidious or unreasonable. She would not reject an expression of goodwill from him.

“It is not my first soiree,” Angharad said, “but I thank you for the warning.”

Lord Thando took his leave after settling his bill and adding a hefty tip, which she made a note to imitate.  With Uncle Osian’s gift, she could afford it. Angharad had withdrawn her part from the Thirteenth’s account after moving into the shared house, but much of that she had offered Ferranda. It was only right if she was to eat the Thirty-First’s food, draw from their powder horns and have her clothes watched by their laundress.

Her dress was exactly as she had desired, and she tried it on while Lerato prodded her with pins one more time.

“A little tighter around the waist, I think,” the seamstress muttered. “You have the shape for it.”

It did not take long for the adjustments to be finished, but Angharad claimed another cup of tea and chatted with Lerato until her next patron arrived. And, luck of lucks, it was another familiar face: tall, braided Lord Musa Shange bent his head to pass the threshold. She feigned surprise at his arrival, which he seemed amused by, and was extended an invitation to remain and chat while Mistress Lerato saw to his clothing.

Small talk about classes – more their shared Skiritai hours than the common ones – that stayed of little import, until Angharad thanked him for the invitation. He demurred receiving the thanks, as extending it had not been his decision alone, which was the opening she was waiting for.

“How are invitations decided on, anyway?” she casually asked.

“Nothing formal,” Musa said. “General accord, I suppose, is the most accurate description.”

“So any Malani nobly born that is not strongly objected to,” Angharad leadingly said.

His full lips quirked. He had caught the meaning.

“A stain on one’s reputation would disqualify,” he said.

She put on a smile.

“And these gatherings, are they are crowded affairs?”

“One might say the exclusivity is rather their point,” Musa replied.

A polite but thorough parry to her indirectly pointing out there were few highborn of the Isles present on Tolomontera. Angharad had not expected him to be easily moved, anyhow: this was more to gauge the strength of his distaste for Zenzele. Firm seemed to be a good word for it, though not so strong he extended his anger to those trying to work peace between them.

He would not have been smiling so amusedly at Angharad’s attempts otherwise.

As with Thando, the other Skiritai waited until Mistress Lerato had left the room to turn the conversation to subjects he would rather not be overheard. Unlike Thando Fenya, however, Musa invented blatant busywork for her rather than wait.

“It is an old conceit that who we were before the Watch does not matter,” Musa said, “but I expect you will know better by now.”

Angharad frowned.

“One can fall short of an ideal without renouncing it entirely,” she said.

“How genteel!” Musa exclaimed. “But that is perhaps kinder than is deserved.”

He shrugged.

“It is tempting, I’ll admit, to swallow the lies the Watch tells about itself,” Musa Shange idly said. “Purpose and honor, the hard souls standing between Vesper and the dark. Even the covenants cut pieces off the grand delusion and claim it for their own, as if to make it easier to swallow. Yet they are very much lies, in the end.”

Angharad shot him an appalled look.

“If you believe this, why enroll at all?”

“Why do men do anything?” he laughed. “I can rise high in the Watch. Higher than I ever would have in Malan, where the best I could hope for was being my sister’s sword.”

The lordling languidly shrugged.

“I do not mean to slight the black, Lady Angharad, only acknowledge the truth of what wearing the color means,” Musa said. “It is not some sacred calling but a career like any other.”

“Only a fool would attend the classes we have simply for the salaries promised us,” she said.

“Salaries,” he chuckled. “No one sent here who will ever matter cares a jot about that, my lady. Consider instead how few covenanters there are in the Watch, and how widely spread they are across Vesper.”

He waved around.

“Anyone who survives their years here will have ties to dozens of their fellow covenanters, a well-trained cabal to rely on and multitudes of contacts across all walks of the Watch,” Musa said. “Scholomance does not graduate mere cabalists, it is forging the ruling class of the Watch for the next century.”

“And filling more than a few graves with these supposed chosen ones,” Angharad flatly said. “Supposition is one thing, but looking at the facts it is clear we are being trained for steel and not politics.”

“With the Watch, they are one and the same,” he said. “Though I will grant that the use of that accursed maneating school is… noteworthy. I expect there is some kind of game afoot with the god within.”

“There may be some truth in what you say,” Angharad acknowledged, “but there is much room for misunderstanding in painting an object seen only through a curtain.”

He only seemed amused, which had her eyes narrowing.

“Besides, I fail to grasp why you would bring up this theory to me at all,” she added a tad sharply.

“You are strong and well connected,” Musa Shange calmly said. “Someone that might go far in the Watch, with a little foresight.”

He idly picked at his sleeve.

“Which is why I find it wasteful for you to wander about so blindly,” the Malani said.

Her jaw tightened, but he raised a hand in appeasement.

“Do not swallow the lie, Angharad Tredegar,” he said. “The Rooks will devour you whole, if you let them. Instead of considering the many ways you might serve them, you ought to consider how it is the order can be made to serve you.”

The tall man smiled.

“I will be an important man, one day,” Musa said. “And I will have earned that rank, not merely inherited it. That is the Watch can give me.”

He pushed off.

“Think on what it is you want, my lady,” he added. “And if going under Ferranda Villazur is truly the best way to get it.”

Angharad was beginning to suspect she was headed to a very different kind of gathering than she had thought she was.