Pale Lights

Chapter 65

On the fourth morning of his captivity, Tristan Abrascal began the plan.

It was quiet, despite Rhea’s attempt to welch. All it took was beginning to raise his voice while speaking of cards in sleeves and she folded, leaving him to disappear into the crowd and then past it. The thief lay back against the warehouse wall, eyes on the cramped tables where hostages were tearing through breakfast in rotations of thirty. Patiently he watched, chewing on the old black bread he’d swiped on his way through. Taking his time. If he didn’t, he might just choke on this veritable stone he was wetting against his teeth.

“I don’t get it,” Fortuna muttered, standing next to him. “She’s bad at this and you stole the knife yourself, so why aren’t you doing it this time?”

The Lady of Long Odds had changed her dress again, going native. She wore layers of scarlet silk, a sprawling peplos dress like on old Trathekan statues, over which she had laid some sort of half-cloak pinned to her right shoulder by a golden brooch. A matching red shawl and tinkling golden bracelets rounded off the look, lending her a respectable air in an old-fashioned sort of way. Alas, long acquaintance with the goddess in question precluded Tristan falling for such a blatant misrepresentation.

He didn’t immediately reply, continuing to chew on his bread until one piece was wetted and mulched enough to actually consume. Only when he swallowed did he cover his mouth to hide a murmur.

“That is exactly why I told her to do it,” Tristan replied.

Both their gazes slipped past the pair of tables where the hostages crammed their faces with the fare of the revolution – mostly beans, but also some chicken – to the sprawl of bedrolls where an almost painfully shady Rhea of Tratheke was stealing a bottle of rotgut on Tristan’s behalf. That liquor would be smuggled into here was, of course, inevitable. Over a hundred people winning coin every five days with nothing to spend it on except gambling, held captive solely by mercenaries and merchant guards?

The amount of smuggling that’d ensued was almost obscene, though the mercenary officers at least had the good sense to come down hard on anything even vaguely weapon shaped.

Anyhow, finding out who brought in liquor had been trivially easy considering there were at least a dozen bottles floating around the warehouse at any time. Finding out who had bought some of that liquor had been slightly more difficult, given that the guards did in fact confiscate contraband if they caught hostages with it. Drink was shared with your circle, though selling out another hostage would see you made a pariah – as some had learned the hard way.

The trick was to look for sudden changes in popularity. When a sullen prick like Heavy Halia became everyone’s favorite friend overnight it meant there was something in her pack, in this case an old wine jug filled with firewater. Tristan ought to know, he had gone and checked during the night.

“Shit,” Fortuna muttered, leaning forward. “That mercenary saw her, Tristan.”

The thief broke off another piece of mollified black bread, swallowing it. Terrible, terrible bread this. He’d eaten loafs with sawdust cut into the flour that were easier on the gullet.

“Finally.”

The tall, broad-shouldered man in a brown surcoat currently clearing his throat at a teary-eyed Rhea was called Karolos. He had the morning shift every odd day and always stood in the same cornerwhcih meant arranging for him to catch c Rhea red-handed had been trivially easy. His sacrificial lamb’s sole trick, getting weepy, did not do much when Karolos caught her removing a wine jug from a bedroll. Despite her protestations that it was ‘medicinal, for her cough’, the mercenary confiscated the jug and sent her off with a stern warning.

Nothing more, though, even though Karolos was known to lightly justify a heavy hand on the hostages. That, too, had been predicted: after all, if he made a fuss he’d have to hand over the jug to his captain and that wasn’t what he wanted to do with it. It’d helped when planning this to be mostly certain that no punishment would be dealt out to his pasty, meaning the risks of her trying to turn it around on him were minimal.

Tristan had come down to a third of the bread by the time Rhea slunk up to him, already prepared to cry. The cheat, well aware that he still had her over a barrel and she had failed to accomplish the favor he’d called in as payment, put on her most pitiful face.

“I did all I could,” Rhea pleaded. “Only the man had eyes like a hawk and greedy, greedy hands. Now he’ll keep an eye on me, and if Halia learns I was in her pack-”

“She won’t,” Tristan replied. “But you’re right there’s heat on you. Lie low for a while, we’ll revisit this in a few days.”

“Of course,” Rhea happily smiled. “So clever of you, wise Ferrando. We must be patient, rush nothing and-”

“Run out the clock to the rising so you can stiff me?” Tristan drily asked.

“Ah, I think I hear another voice calling for me,” Rhea hastily replied. “Let it not be said I would ignore any friend in need."

She fled under his amused gaze. Fortuna harrumphed in displeasure. The goddess disliked Rhea, no doubt because part of her divinity resonated with the surefooted uselessness of the mortal crook.

“She botched it,” Fortuna grumbled. “You should rob her as retaliation, Tristan. I’m sure she has more of those fake silver coins stashed somewhere.”

That was, in fact, quite likely. Having the intertwined oaks on both sides of a silver arbol was blatant enough a flaw Rhea would find it quite hard to pass those and she was just the kind of short-sighted swindler not to wonder why the counterfeiter was selling those coins so cheaply in the first place.

“I won’t,” he said, faking a yawn. “She did what I wanted, got the bottle in Karolos’ hands.”

Fortuna eyed him skeptically.

“Why do you want him to have a bottle of rotgut?” she asked. “He’s an ass.”

“Because tonight I will be going into the pit,” he replied. “There always two guards down there, which are sure to see me at some point while I climbed down forty feet of ladder. Now, I have a way to rid myself of one but I need that bottle for the other.”

“Karolos won’t be down there, the guards that work morning don’t work nights,” Fortuna sneeringly pointed out.

“No, they don’t,” he agreed, which took the wind out of her sail.

“What’s this about, then?” she asked.

“Wait and see,” Tristan replied, pushing off the wall.

He swallowed the last of his rocky black bread, squaring his shoulders. The first part was done, now he must see to the second and that would be… trickier, to the say the least.

His Tianxi acquaintances were no fools.

--

The first obstacle to sabotaging the cannons was that the artillerymen were almost obsessively watchful of the pieces.

As many of the dangers in using cannons came from continuous use, when the metal heated and firing shots in a row risked powder or other filth accumulating in the body, but even though the Tianxi rarely shot their bronze pieces more than twice times a day they were extremely careful with their care. Which was not unwise, considering that the Trade Assembly had sent them old cannons and there was no guarantee of quality for the foundry work.

Tristan had spent the last two days looking for an angle only to find himself repeatedly stymied by simple competence.

Could he clog the bore with filth or debris? No, the cleaning was always double-checked by another artilleryman. Might he oil up the wadding to mess with the ignition? The attempt was caught on the way in and the entire crate of wadding set aside for thorough inspection before any was used again. It’d be impossible to spike the gun with so many eyes on him – ramming a metal spike in the bore was not exactly subtle – and none of the gunners let him anywhere near the vent hole, the orifice through which the powder bag was pierced and the fuse inserted.

Struggle as he might, Tristan was dragged kicking and screaming to the conclusion that he would have to use his contract.

That was playing with fire in an altogether different way, not the least because if someone got hurt by the use of his contract the backlash would turn vicious. It always did, when the luck hurt someone. That and he’d rather not hurt any of the artillerymen, who had been largely pleasant to him after he broke through their initial hostility. And if they wanted to fight the aristoi, well, he took no issue with that so long as he was not between the nobles and the shot.

So it was with veiled nerves that Tristan pulled at his contract when, shortly after breakfast, the three bronze pieces were pointed at the back wall.

Breathe in, breathe out. Now.

Tristan released the luck immediately after pulling, barely leaving time for a single tick, in the hope that his price would pass as part of the coming accident – and it did, thank the Manes. There was a loud crack from the leftmost cannon, the breach half-shattering, and the four Tianxi manning it threw themselves to the ground. Before the thief could even blink, the fuse was blown out of the vent hole by a gout of burning powder wind.

He flattened himself against the ground like the Tianxi, which was the only reason he kept his eye. The cracked breech burst open, belching flame, and heated bronze shrapnel flew. A piece hit Ming in the shoulder, to the old man’s hoarse shout, and razor-sharp heat sliced just above Tristan’s left eyebrow. He hissed in pain, and as the spent powder charge billowed up in a cloud of smoke he reached for his face. Fingers came away red, the cut narrow but deep.

A strong grip dragged him up to his feet, Dandan patting him down with a worried look on that ever-severe face.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “Where you hit anywhere else?”

“I don’t think so,” Tristan replied, a little dazed.

His mind focused. Recalled what he’d seen and…

“Shit,” he said, turning. “Ming, are you-”

He turned to find the old man had taken off his shirt, revealing skinny ribs and spare chest hair. More importantly, Ming was also not bleeding in the slightest. He was laughing, picking at the bronze shards stuck deep in what appeared to be a wooden shoulder prosthetic.

“Battle Yun Shan,” he explained, grinning toothlessly as he rapped a knuckle against the wood in demonstration. “Kuril bastardos shot it out, had to replace.”

“Lucky,” Tristan croaked out, genuinely relieved.

He would have lived with the guilt. Wearing black, up there, he sometimes had the luxury of clean hands. Down here, though, he was just another rat. He would have lived with the guilt, yes. But he would live better without.

“You too,” Dandan grimly said. “That was almost your eye.”

“You man now, Ferrando,” Ming told him, seeming pleased. “Gunner without scar not gunner.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Dandan muttered. “He’s from the southern prefectures, they’re all mad. They think it’s a rite of passage to get mauled by tigers.”

“I think I need to sit down,” Tristan admitted, not entirely feigning it.

He was allowed that comfort, and duly kept an ear out for the chatter between the Tianxi. With a cannon blown and the manner in which it had broken hinting that the Trade Assembly had sent them something shoddily cast, the artillerymen were more than willing to call a halt to drills. They would not work, or fight for that matter, until their contracted right to be ‘properly equipped’ was again fulfilled.

Three cannons, that was what Dandan said the Tianxi counted as the strict minimum. They now had two and no inclination to do the magnates any favors.

The thief let out a long breath, passing his hand through his messy hair. If not for Ming’s wooden shoulder, he suspected the misfortune might well have slashed out his eye. There was a reason he was reluctant to use his contract near anything that could explode. But he had had what he’d come for, the second part of the plan: now the rebels would have to switch out the broken cannon, dragging it up in its crate before lowering a replacement. That crate would be passing through the guarded stairs, and that was his way out of the warehouse.

Now he just needed to get inside of it.

--

Sex was the solution. Not a thought that often occurred to Tristan, for whom desire was not much of an acquaintance, but sex proved to be how the pieces fit together.

Now, the thief needed to be inside the broken cannon’s crate when it was taken out of the basement and he knew he had until the morning to do it because he’d had Dandan’s gossip confirmed by several sources as well as his own eyes. Namely, the brown surcoat mercenaries were lazy and they always left the job of bringing powder barrels up or down to the merchant guards. Those guards only came for the morning shift, usually at five or six, so by four at the latest Tristan needed to be inside.

Which meant he had to get around the two mercenaries that would guard basement overnight, theoretically keeping an eye out for trouble though in practice they usually spent most of that time playing cards.

Even pulling on his contract as hard as he could, Tristan doubted he would be able to make it all the way down forty feet of ladder into an open basement and then have the time to cross the floor and hide before either guard noticed. His luck let him skew the odds, not fold them into a paper crane that then miraculously came alive. That and for such a deep draw the backlash was sure to be… unpleasant. He’d almost lost an eye this morning, he was not eager to roll the dice again.

As a boy he’d been more careless with his contract, a child with a new toy, but he’d quickly learned that using it was a crutch - and in the Murk, there was only one fate in store for someone going around hobbling. Fortuna’s gift was best used when things were already bad, to change his trouble into one he might be able to overcome instead.

Besides, there were limits to what the luck could do. He’d tried grand works as a boy, a few times, and little had happened. The backlash, however, had been matched to the borrowing. That falling roof had nearly killed him.

So to get around the guards, he had done the work. The first step was picking his moment, which was not difficult: the company hired by the Trade Assembly was not a large outfit, their shifts were regular and did not seem to change week from week. A few casual questions had given him the rosters, or at least the visible rosters. No telling what went on upstairs.

And tonight, after he broke the cannon, the two guards in the pit would be Marcos and Cymone.

Marcos was the reason he had chosen that shift in the first place. The mercenary had taken up with one of the warehouse workers for the Delinos, Phoebe, and Phoebe had admitted once or twice that they found it frustrating how hard it was to find the time to sneak off and fuck. That they couldn’t take their time or expect real privacy. So he had sown in conversation the seed of an idea for her to pass to her lover: using the night shift for privacy. He could not be certain, of course, but he liked his odds: if Marcos had an opportunity to desert his post to spend private time with Phoebe, he would likely take it.

That left Cymone as the key to providing that opportunity.

Cymone was, thankfully, a drunk. One whose habits were being contained only at the order of her superior officer – who had forbidden her to buy liquor, only allowing it with meals - thus implying an exploitable lack of restraint. At least out in the world. Down here, where liquor was a smuggled good? Handing her a bottle of strong liquor before the beginning of her evening shift would have been wildly suspicious, and left too large a trail that could lead back to him. A broken cannon, and shift in disarray and the man who’d handed Cymone the bottle went missing? Someone would figure it out.

Only, what if someone else gave her the bottle instead? Sex once again came of use, a turn of phrase he had deeply regretted using in Fortuna’s presence and since heard so many times the words no longer sounded like words to his ears, only a litany of regrets. Cymone, though of regrettable habits, had attracted the attentions of another mercenary: Karolos. His affections went unreturned, but that was even better. Made him more predictable.

It meant that when Karolos caught Rhea with a bottle of rotgut this morning, Tristan knew exactly what was going to happen. He was going to keep the affair quiet, confiscate the bottle and then offer the apple of his eye a gift she could not obtain on her own.

And since Cymone was forbidden to drink save at meals Tristan knew exactly when she would crack open that bottle. Knew exactly why the other person on that watch, Marcos, would keep his mouth shut about it.

And so everyone got what they wanted, Tristan Abrascal most of all.

--

The lanterns were put out, save the one at the doors and the bottom of the pit. The latter revealed the sight of victory: Cymone in her brown surcoat, a jug of firewine in hand as Marcos pretended not notice.

Now it was all over but the waiting.

--

It took an hour and a half before Cymone was snoring away the drink and Marcos had hurried back up the stairs to shake awake Phoebe. Within moments the lovers were sneaking off to a dark corner, giggling. Tristan breathed out, centered himself and took the knife he’d slipped under his cot. Not that he intended on any violence tonight.

Only one of the stairs was currently guarded, by a bored-looking man picking at his fingernails and a gray-haired woman loudly snoring. The other door was barred, the pair guarding it having gone for a meal. They would be back, though, so Tristan made use of the unexpected opportunity as best he could: angles and patience did the work, neither too quick nor too slow. There was a greater risk of waking up other hostages creeping by them than being seen by the mercenary, truth be told, so despite knowing his hourglass only had so much sand in it he did not hurry.

It would be difficult to make these ‘coincidences’ line up twice, he could not afford a blunder even should he go uncaught.

It took ten minutes to make it to the ladders, crawling and creeping and pretending to be one sleeper among many. Another minute waiting for the nail picker to be facing the wrong direction for even peripheral vision to catch his getting onto the ladders. Once he was there, however, he moved down swiftly. He could not stay in the open long, even with Cymone asleep. Fortuna was down there, keeping an eye on the drunken mercenary, so he kept his breath even and moved.

Halfway down the goddess let out a cry of warning and he froze. Cymone slumped against a crate, knocking over a pile of cards and splattering them over the floor. But though she stirred, the mercenary did not wake. Breathing out, Tristan hurried the rest of the way down.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

His feet touched solid ground to a sense of triumph, but it was too early to celebrate. Skittering across the brass floor, he headed for the crates. As expected, the broken cannon was already packed away for lifting in the morning. The lid of the crate was nailed in, though only enough to keep it slipping off, and there was a line of red on the wood so the merchant guards would be sure it was the right one when they lowered the ropes.

Knife in hand, Tristan cast a look at the snoring Cymone to reassure himself and then wedge the blade between the head of a nail and the wood. He would have to be careful to leverage out the nails without snapping the blade, but it would have to do. There had been no hammer at hand to steal, the few down here carefully packed away by the Tianxi gunners after each drill.

“A gamble, but a measured one. It is an acceptable plan for a young Mask.”

In a heartbeat he turned with his knife blade pointed, only to find he was not facing an enemy but something altogether stranger. Half-naked in a brown shift that was more akin to sleepwear than his usual, Hage sat atop a pile of crates to his left with his impressive eyebrows raised. And there was a scent of… Tristan sniffed. Well, no need to ask where the devil had come from. He might have cleaned himself of the muck, but he still smelled like sewer.

There were advantages to not needing to breathe and being stronger than currents. Ah, one more reason to sleep lightly. It wasn’t like he had been in danger of running out.

“Sir,” Tristan replied, sloppily saluting. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“You paid for a dead body,” Hage quietly replied. “The Krypteia always delivers.”

“Guessing by the way you smell,” the thief said, “the defenses upstairs are solid?”

“Yes,” Hage unhappily said. “It will take months to scrub all the sewer out of my shell, Abrascal, and sometimes it never washes out entirely. I am debating an inconvenience fee.”

“Take it up with my captain,” he replied without batting an eye.

Any silver that could be pried out of Song Ren’s thrifty grasp was entirely earned, as far as he was concerned. The devil clicked both sets of teeth disapprovingly, then flicked a finger to his right – where Tristan had missed a large waxed bag lying atop a row of crates. About, the thief mused, the right size to contain a corpse. That would help a great deal if it were true. His bet had been that there would be enough time between the crate being brought up and his disappearance being noted that he would be able to make it out of the facility, but that would still leave him as sticking out in the aftermath.

No one would be looking for him if he was dead, though.

“Can you still make it look like an accident?” he asked.

“You are going to fall from upstairs,” Hage replied. “It will destroy your face, but your clothes will be recognizable. I brought a set for you to change into.”

“Splendid,” Tristan smiled, not unhappy to be getting out of his current set.

He was going soft, being displeased at a mere few days without fresh clothes.

“Now, I don’t suppose you might be willing to lend me a hand with…”

The old devil raised a hand, rubbing thumb and index.

“Fine, I’ll pay the fee,” the thief sighed. “I just need you to nail the lid back into place properly behind me.”

He’d been intending to only remove some of the nails and then squeeze through the gap into the crate, but having them properly back in place would only improve the deception. Well worth some silver, as coin could be earned back but he only had the one life to spend and they were hard to come by. Hage inclined his head in agreement.

“Should you escape instead of being caught and tortured, I will find you,” the devil said. “I established a supply stash close by.”

“I can always rely on you for encouragement, sir,” Tristan drily replied.

“Asphodelians were once fond of casting large bronze bull statues that were hollow on the inside, then heating them up under flame and forcing traitors inside to die in screaming agony,” Hage told him. “I believe the execution method is still used behind closed doors in some outlying parts of the island.”

A pause, a friendly single-teethed smile.

“Do you now feel encouraged to succeed in your escape?” Hage asked.

Tristan sighed. There went his nap inside the box, nightmares would likely give away his presence.

“Let’s get this over with,” he replied.

Hage was worth the hiring, at least: the devil plucked out the nails by hand and nailed them back in just the same. Within minute Tristans was comfortably crammed atop the broken cannon, the lid shut back over his head with just enough give air would keep entering. Within minutes there was a wet thump on the ground as a corpse hit the basement floor wearing his clothes.

It was half an hour before someone noticed the dead body.

--

As far as crates went it was not the worst he’d spent a few hours in, though hardly the best either: the broken cannon made for an uncomfortable perch despite the straw packed around it.

But he did not lack for entertainment, listening in on how the rebels dealt with finding Ferrando’s dead body.

It was Marcos who found it, coming back from his tryst. The still-drunk Cymone had all the blame pushed onto her, though she argued that the dead man must have fallen down from the edge of the pit and no one could have helped that. After dragging the dead body out of sight, coincidentally not far from Tristan, they went to fetch officers. Not just a mercenary one either but one of the merchant guards as well, for those were the magnate’s own men and so higher up the ladder of hierarchy.

Tristan’s false corpse was identified by the clothes and hair as ‘the Kassa boy, Ferrando’, followed by a quick discussion of whether or not he was someone who mattered. The resulting verdict was that besides having been taken under Temenos’ wing he did not, so the corpse was unceremoniously dumped in the sewer. It was agreed on that losing a hostage would reflect poorly on them to ‘Mistress Maria’ – presumably Maria Anastos, the magnate – so it was best kept secret.

The officers settled on telling Damon in the morning that his fellow Kassa hostage had been moved to another hideout to further his training in cannonry. There’ll be corpses by the hundreds on the night of the fighting, one of the officers claimed. We can add him to the tally then. Not a bad plan, Tristan considered, so long as no one talked. Considering one of those relied on for silence was a habitual drunk, however, he had some doubts on the secret being kept unless the rising happened soon.

No one so much as checked on the crates, leaving Tristan to rest his eyes in packing of straw until the merchant guards came on shift and someone began tying up his vessel. He tensed as ropes were attached and pulling began, but the guards were careful – likely more to avoid breaking the crate than out of tenderness towards what lay inside. There was grunting and cursing aplenty after they dragged up the crate on solid ground, several men pushing it up on a wooden pallet where it was fastened with ropes so it could be dragged without damaging the bottom of the crate.

They dragged him across the warehouse, up the stairs and then down a hall. Several unkind things about the artillerymen and Tianxi as a whole were spat out, blaming them for the work, but even more venom was reserved for the mercenaries – who were ‘useless layabouts’ and whose captain should be lashed for the insistence that they’d been hired as guards and not laborers so they could not be asked to move crates unless a better rate was offered.

It took the better part of an hour for him to be lifted out of the basement and onto the presumed storage room where the merchant guards left him. Ear pressed to the crate he heard the door closing and a key being turned, but that did not necessarily mean he was alone in the room. He waited for a few minutes more, ear pricked for breathing or movement.

Nothing.

It was mildly tricky pushing up the crate’s lid without making noise, but Hage had proved worth his fee: he’d pushed down the nails at depths and angles that made it easier from the inside. A quick look around revealed a dark room, but Glare light was filtering in a few rays from a boarded-up window. All around where crates and woven baskets, though the room was too small to be the main storage for a hideout of so many men. Considering the few open baskets he could see were filled with trash like broken jugs and metal scraps Tristan gave it good odds he was in the base’s dump – though a dump for materials that were expensive enough to be worth keeping.

He slipped out of the crate onto a wooden floor, careful not to make the shoddy wood creak, and snuck to the door to press his ear against it. Breathing. There was a guard on the other side, or at least close. Best find another way out, then. The window he’d seen earlier was boarded up with thick wooden planks, but the work was sloppy. It was easy to find out why the shoddy workmanship had been allowed to remain: they were on the second story, at least fifteen feet above the street. Maybe closer to twenty.

He took the time to close his crate, cleaning up his trail, before going through the room for – ah, and there they were. A hammer and prybar, left on atop a crate near the window. Easier to leave the tools here than bring them every time you needed to open a crate inside here. The prybar was what he picked up, taking a closer look at the boarded-up window. Trying the wood and nails, he’d guess that it was going to give if he applied pressure.

It wouldn’t give silently, though, which brought him back the problem of the guard. Pressing his face to the window boards, Tristan judged by what he could see of the hideout wall – wood for this level, stone lower down – that he should be able to climb down without snapping his neck. Not quickly enough to avoid pursuit if someone was pursuing, however, which meant he’d have to be patient. He settled in to wait, though not before preparing a hiding place in case the door was opened again.

It was at least another hour before there was movement on the other side of the door. Whoever approached the guard stopped to chat and Tristan risked approaching so he might catch more of what was being said.

“-ess Maria said to treat them as guests.”

“Sure, they’re guests,” a woman’s voice replied. “Creepy guests. There’s something off about that man, I tell you.”

“Not our problem,” a man said. “They’re just here waiting for Anaidon anyways. I’ll be a pain to wheel them up all the way to the top of the watchtower, but they’ll be gone by tomorrow.”

“Fucking noble,” the woman cursed. “Can’t believe we have to let him in, peacocking around like he owns the place.”

“A small price to pay to have someone on the inside in the palace,” the man shrugged. “We’ll lose enough men taking Fort Archelean as is, let’s not turn down traitors.”

“This is why I can’t talk politics with you, Teo, you’re always so reasonable,” the woman sighed. “Come on, go get your grub. I’ll have a walkabout and then I can guard this tactically crucial hallway boasting both a storage and latrines.”

“There’s a whole cannon’s worth of bronze in the storage now,” ‘Teo’ amusedly said. “Lots of coin in that, if you know a smith.”

“Away,” the woman repeated.

There was chuckling, then the sound of someone walking away. Tristan kept his breath shallow, almost silent. The other guard, despite her words, was staying there.

“Come on, Lia, he laughs at your jokes and you know you’re not that funny,” the guard muttered. “Just ask him out for drinks, it’s not that fucking hard. What’s the worse he can do, say no?”

To Tristan’s mild amusement, ‘Lia’ then cursed and then stalked off. He bade her good luck in her quest, then got to work. He’d picked out the two planks that would be easiest to remove to make an opening, and though the first went off without a hitch the second splintered when he leveraged it out. Fuck. Well, so much for leaving no trace. He put the splintered plank into one of the baskets, hoping one of the guards would get blamed for it, then popped his head through the opening to get a better look.

About a twenty-foot drop, like he’d thought. And the street was empty, which would not last forever, so there was no time to waste. He did what he could to wedge the surviving plank back into place behind him, half-hanging off the window, but did not have the leverage to put the nails back in more than symbolically.

Or the time to screw around trying to do it better.

The only trouble climbing down under the Tratheke daylight was splinters since he was doing this all without gloves, but he grit his teeth and made it down to the stone of the first level, resting on the edge. He leaped down the rest, which had his knees aching but he managed mostly silent. And just like that, he was out.

Now, to find Hage.

--

The devil had promised to find him, and he did. Just in time, too, for the basileia hirelings of the Trade Assembly were patrolling the streets. Loosely, but even bored men had eyes.

Hage pulled him off the street into a gutted house, then through hidden stairs into a basement where waited two surprises: a packsack’s worth of equipment and a menagerie. Mephistofeline had made bedding out of a pile of likely stolen correspondence, the burial mound of fur and fat purring loudly as he crinkled stolen secrets. On the other side of the room, a bundled Watch uniform served as a perch for a happy Sakkas.

The magpie trilled happily at the sight of him, which the thief had to admit was rather endearing. It was a fine little abomination, it was.

Tristan went to stroke its soft head, getting a pleased warble, and pointedly ignored Mephistofeline – who meowed plaintively at the favoritism even though he had until a moment ago been pretending to sleep.

“They do not check the houses,” Hage informed him. “There will be no trouble so long as we remain quiet.”

He was back in his usual, high-collared doublet and hose with his neat little beret, but still smelled faintly of vinegar. Drastic measures had been taken to get the sewer smell out of the mustache, evidently.

“Understood,” Tristan replied. “Are those supplies for me?”

“The uniform, blackjack and poison box,” the devil said. “For anything more…”

“There will be a fee,” he finished with a sigh.

He took the time to change into the regular’s uniform Hage had brought him, pulling it all in place save for the black cloak. Tristan felt… stronger, with it on. Almost armored, even though it was nothing save black cloth. What an odd thing. The blackjack went up his sleeve and he checked on the poison box – his own and nothing was missing – before straightening and turning to face Hage’s expectant gaze.

“Report,” the old devil ordered.

He laid it all out, how he had been taken and how he went about escaping, what information he had gleaned during his captivity. Hage stoked at his chin thoughtfully.

“Anaidon is the piece that stands out,” the older Mask said. “Your captain’s current theory is that elements of the Trade Assembly were coopted by the noble coup, but the Yellow Earth’s involvement contradicts this. We are looking at two different coups, almost certainly, but…”

“Either House Anaidon is playing both sides with an implausible degree of success,” Tristan said, “or Hector Anaidon, suspected cultist, is involved with this rebellion.”

He paused, put his thoughts in order.

“Which also seems passing odd, considering the noble coup and the cult of the Golden Ram are essentially the same organization.”

“The cult could be attempting sabotage,” Hage said. “Or intending on using the Trade Assembly’s move as a distraction for their own.”

Tristan could believe the latter, at least. It’d be one Hell of a distraction for a mob of workers, sailors and mercenaries to take to the streets and ram themselves bloodily against the walls of Fort Archelean – expecting traitors on the inside to silence guns or open gates. The fighting would draw the lictors down to the fort, draw the Lord Rector’s eyes there as well, and then the nobles moved to seize the unprotected palace. There was, however, a problem with that.

“This Anaidon was considered high up the ranks of the conspiracy by the mercenaries,” Tristan said. “That means whoever they are must have rubbed elbows with the Yellow Earth at some point. I can buy them fooling the magnates, but the sashes too? The Yellow Earth would have gone digging for every skeleton in that closet as a matter of course.”

“We are missing information,” Hage calmly agreed.

The devil said nothing more, but then he didn’t truly need to. Tristan grimaced.

“I’m going to have to go back in,” he said. “Grab him for interrogation.”

“Song Ren has, in fact, been attempting to abduct Hector Anaidon for similar reasons over the last few days,” Hage said. “Only he went missing, as if disappeared into thin air.”

“You think Hector’s our mystery visitor, then,” Tristan said.

“I think that the chaos rising within these walls is all too organized,” Hage replied. “The thread that ties it all together is the cult and Hector Anaidon is likely to be a member of it.”

The thief hummed, then glanced to the side.

“My thanks for the help in getting out,” he finally said.

“Your plan had fine odds of succeeding without my help,” Hage replied. “As expected of Nerei’s student.”

The way he spoke the words, they sounded as much of an insult as a compliment.

“My false death keeps it all quiet, that’ll make a difference,” Tristan replied, then quirked an eyebrow. “Why did you bring Mephistofeline here, anyway? The neighborhood kids would have loved feeding him, I’m sure.”

They loved the cat enough to make him a little necklace of scrap metal sickles, after all, some obscure reference to an Asphodelian death god that ate bodies buried in the ground.

“Ah,” Hage said. “We had to make our escape when Locke and Key attempted to assassinate us.”

The thief stilled.

“They struck at the Watch?” he asked. “That’s…”

“Nothing new,” Hage said. “It would not be the first time they slew me, either.”

Tristan swallowed. It wasn’t that he’d thought of the old devil as invincible, but the thought that the funny little pair had been capable of killing him more than once was difficult to swallow.

“That they came for my cat, however, I take personally,” Hage muttered. “Though I expect they would argue that I started it by looking into their schemes.”

“You tried to find the infernal forge?” Tristan asked.

“There isn’t one,” the old devil replied. “I tracked down the source of these rumors, Tristan, and they began circling the capital only shortly before Locke and Key arrived. As if preparing the grounds for that very arrival. It is a smokescreen to obscure what they are truly after.”

“Which is?” Tristan asked.

The old man’s face twitched and there was a sound of clicking teeth and mandibles.

“I am still unsure,” Hage said. “They were invited by the Lord Rector, but they seem uninvolved in the plots infesting the court. That is… unusual, for them.”

“They didn’t seem like the type to leave trouble well enough alone,” Tristan agreed.

“They are mad,” Hage flatly said. “Quite irremediably so. Either way, I must remain out of sight lest they try for me again. It is poor timing, given how things are coming to a head in the capital.”

“The magnates will make their move soon,” Tristan slowly agreed. “By month’s end, I was told. Or is there more to it than that?”

Hage laid out the reports Song had been handing in while Tristan absented himself being a hostage, and the thief’s brow rose. The Obsidian Order had made another attempt at fulfilling their contract for Evander Palliades’ death and committed the tactical mistake of being rowdy at a party attended by Song Ren, with predictable consequences. Real stickler about heckling, Song, in the sense that she would stick you with a sword for it.

And now the other brigades were back, bringing with them talk of grisly rituals in the hills and hidden temples. Song apparently believed the yearly tests might be connected to each other, and Tristan was inclined to agree. So was Hage, for that matter.

“There is a greater work afoot,” the old devil said. “Asphodel is a powder keg that should have blown off months ago, Tristan. All these plots that are months or even years in the making, all slowly falling into place? Someone holds the reins here.”

“Seems like a lot of trouble, all this for a throne,” Tristan frowned.

Nobles liked to pretend there something mystic about nobility, but as far as he could tell nobility was mostly a matter of having enough steel and gold to kill anybody inclined to argue with your being in charge. If your family managed to do that for long enough inertia started to work for you being on top instead of against, and you got to paint a nice title over the generations of successful violence.

Taking the throne of Asphodel might not be as simple as putting a bullet in Evander Palliades’ overly haired head, but it certainly wasn’t as complicated as the mess in Tratheke seemed to be.

“It does,” Hage approvingly said. “And that schemes remaining hidden for so long to begin leaking now is not coincidence. If the enemy were sloppy, they would be long caught. I fear that we begin to catch their tail only because they are reaching the end of the game and coming into the light has become unavoidable.”

“So I need to grab that Anaidon,” the thief grimaced, “or we’re going to stay in the dark.”

“Weigh the risks and decide, Mask,” Hage simply said.

Tristan passed a hand through his hair. Well, when he put it like that. Anyhow the thief had been missing for too long, he shuld bring back something useful to appease Song. His captain was reportedly doing her level best to catch up to Tredegar’s body count, best not give her an excuse.

He closed his eyes, considered the approach.

“I can’t grab him on the lower levels,” Tristan said. “Too many ways for that to go wrong. I might, however, be able to ambush him up in the tower where he’s supposed to be headed.”

He’d gotten a look at the entire edifice from outside, and it was impressive enough. The ground level, where he had been kept prisoner, was a typical large Tratheke building in stone and brass. The two levels above that, however, were wood. And from the depths of the building, near the eastern wall of the city, a tall but ramshackle tower led to some sort of chamber set in the wall. Not one that could be climbed by stairs, only by a hand-pulled lift that was essentially a glorified metal box hanging on pulleys.

“And how will you get him out?” Hage asked.

“I’ll need someone to work the lift for me on the way down, handle the guards there,” Tristan admitted. “I don’t suppose you’d do it for a fee?”

The old devil hummed.

“As Hector Anaidon is a figure of interest to the greater Watch, I will wave the fee this once,” he finally said. “I will, however, not involved myself beyond infiltration and working the lift to lower you.”

“You could help me carry him out you know,” Tristan peevishly said. “If it’s really Hector Anaidon I saw him back in the palace, he’s pretty heavyset.”

Hage’s brow rose and Tristan sighed. For a fee, yes. Well, if he was going to get robbed he might as well get the most of it: he went to inspect the supplies. Unsurprisingly, there was climbing gear in there as well as weapons and thieves’ tools.

“I’ll need the climbing gear,” he sighed. “How much?”

Hage answered, and Tristan stared at him for a long moment.

“This is extortion,” he finally said. “A full arbol to rent rope, pegs and a hammer?”

With a fee for keeping them too long, as well, which retroactively justified any and all wars mankind had waged against Pandemonium.

“Prices are set by the demand, that is the basics of trade,” Hage serenely replied.

If you were a devil, maybe. Although, thinking about it, maybe he could…

“I’ll take it,” he said, putting on a resigned look.

He put the gear in a pile, then made a show of reluctantly handing his silver. The devil cocked an eyebrow.

“Did you really think that would work?”

Tristan sighed and put the false coin back. Hage hadn’t even needed to look at the second set of intertwined oaks stamped on the side instead of a griffin to know it was counterfeit coin. Rhea had been right, the fake silver was difficult to pass. With genuine reluctance this time he handed a real silver, then his eyes drifted to the pair of leather gloves by the thieving tools.

“And these?”

“A silver as well,” Hage smiled, teeth and teeth.

At this rate he was going to leave the basement heading straight for a debtor’s prison.

“The leather’s not that nice,” he said. “Ten radizes seems more reasonable.”

He had a pair at Black House, that was the worst part. Not his finest one, he had left that on Tolomontera, but a nicer pair than this and he’d not had to pay a silver to buy them – much less rent!

“All prices are final,” Hage smirked.

The several unkind things Tristan was in the process of rephrasing in ways that wouldn’t result in added fees were frozen by the sound of a dry retch. He turned, as did Hage, and found that Sakkas was standing on his dirty clothes and shivering. The magpie twitched again and Tristan eyed it warily.

“You’re not sick, are you?” he asked. “I’m not sure I can keep Mephistofeline from eating you if-”

The bird’s jaw unhinged and it let out a ghastly retching sound, wet and raspy. The thief backed away, reaching for his knife, but Sakkas’ throat bulged and it began vomiting out… something, inch by inch, letting out that horrid noise. When the magpie finished he preened, hopping on his feet, and Tristan warily approached. It had thrown up a mass of leather and it was – gods.

“These,” he slowly said, “are my good gloves. Which I am very sure I left at the cottage.”

The magpie trilled affirmatively.

“The cottage that is back on Tolomontera,” Tristan reminded the bird.

The bird hopped on his feet again, trilling confusedly and perhaps a little plaintively.

“He is being very rude,” Fortuna agreed, though she showed only through her voice.

She avoided Hage even outside the Chimerical, though he suspected she saw it as punishing him by withdrawing her presence.

“Say thank you, Tristan,” she continued. “Do you know how hard it is to regurgitate a satchel that size?”

“Do you?” Tristan demanded, disbelieving.

“Perhaps not,” she airily replied, “but is it harder than saying thank you?”

Sakkas trilled again. Sighing, Tristan stroked the soft head feathers.

“Good bird, thank you,” he said, to a fresh bout of preening. “I’ll get you fresh plums when we get back to Black House, but we will also be having a discussion about this later.”

Sakkas trilled in confusion.

“I’m not falling for that,” the thief informed him. “Not after your magically vomiting an object several days of travel away by sea moments after I thought about it.”

Sighing, he squared his shoulders and turned to an amused-seeming Hage.

“I won’t be taking the gloves,” he told the old devil.

“Surprising,” Hage replied.

Tristan rolled his eyes, then set about picking up his supplies. He’d need to keep watch for Anaidon’s arrival, timing his climb correct, and there was no telling how long that would take.

Best get to work.