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Chapter 25
🕑 Added 2023-12-22 05:00:07 +0000 UTCTristan turned in his blanket for the fourth time in ten seconds.
Eyes stubbornly closed, he turned again and put his feet against the wall. The stargazing tower was all cramped squeezes and windows, which usually the thief thought of as a selling point. Only one way up from the inside, and Tristan had undone the screws on the ladder the first day: he could topple it with a single well-placed kick any time he wanted. Not that he needed to.
But he could.
He turned in his blanket again, feet sliding down to the floor. The door down there was closed and he’d set the easy cousin of a tripwire - a metal goblet atop the latch – so there would be no entering without waking him if he slept. Fortuna would be keeping an eye out for him, too. Only Fortuna could be seen, could be worked and planned around, and that changed things. Made bedrock certainties altogether more porous.
Tristan turned once more, then cursed and pulled himself up. His goddess wasn’t around, though he caught a glimpse of red out on the roof, and his eyes strayed to the open trap door to his side. To the top of the ladder, which he could still make out in the gloom. It was too late, reason whispered into his ear, for Song Ren to still believe killing him would be enough to bury this whole affair. Questions would be asked, obvious inferences made.
Tristan forced himself to get up, to undo the latch one of the windows. Well-greased, it opened without a sound. He was presented with the sight of the Lady of Long Odds leaning back against a thatched roof as if it were some painting: waves of red and gold bathed in the distant light of the Orrery, eerily still until she turned to glance his way.
“Still awake?” she asked, half-surprised.
“Can’t sleep,” Tristan replied.
He leaned past the windowsill, breeze long robbed of the salt of the sea lazily combing through his air.
“Still feverish from the scrap downstairs, I imagine,” the Lady of Long Odds mused. “It takes a while to wind down.”
It would. But it had been hours and the fighting tense had long left him. Tristan knew why he couldn’t sleep, and it was the same reason part of him squirmed uncomfortable at showing his back to the ladder even though the door downstairs was locked and trapped.
Without noticing it he had gotten comfortable, and now that’d he noticed it he could not unsee it.
His fingers clenched and he smoothed away the discomfort of that understanding from his face. Not that it served anything when faced with the goddess that had known him since he was barely more than a child.
“It got ugly,” Fortuna acknowledged. “Song-”
“She is not going to creep in the night and slit my throat,” Tristan sad, and he believed the words as he said them.
“But if she wanted, she could,” the Lady of Long Odds said.
Yes. But she could.
If it came to a straight fight, he would lose. She wore that blade like someone used to wielding it and he had never seen her miss a shot. He was barely taller than her and though unsure who would be physically stronger she – he grit his teeth.
“She can see you,” Tristan muttered. “If she wanted to take me by surprise…”
She could work around Fortuna. He’d never even considered that might be something people could do, before Song. Before Hage’s casual reminder that the world was always larger than you thought.
“Tredegar would not brook silencing you that way,” Fortuna said. “And Maryam-”
“Maryam left me here,” he hissed. “With a better killer whose life would be made easier if I-”
He forced himself to stop there. It had been an ugly scene, and he blamed no one for wanting to leave it. Tredegar had, if anything done so with dignity. But part of him had assumed that when it came to flight he and Maryam would be headed the same way.
Another false comfort.
“I won’t fall asleep here,” Tristan said. “Not more than the hour and change I’ve already stolen.”
Fortuna half-rose, long curls swept back by the wind.
“Where to?” she asked, smiling.
“To do the work I should have begun the moment I walked off those docks,” Tristan grimly replied.
He was already dressed, save for the coat, so it was only a matter of grabbing. his affairs. He slid down the side of the stargazing tower onto the roof, closing the window behind him, then shimmied down. The thief was gone with barely a whisper, through the garden and down the stairs.
It was simple due diligence to have another place to sleep, to have a stash ready in case it all went south, and he would rest when the proper precautions were taken. It was a dangerous failing on his part not to have handled this already. Tristan had let himself be distracted by the threats and mysteries, taken in by the illusion of safety. In a sense, the earlier… dispute was a welcome reminder: nothing could ever be taken for granted.
Your things were yours only until someone larger cared to take them. The cottage was a fine hiding place and he now regretted sharing it, but there was no putting that pot back together. He would have to find another, perhaps something closer to the docks. The port was thick with opportunities for a thief, and it would be unwise to stash stolen goods in a house to which Angharad Tredegar had access.
Making his way under the dark blue light he’d heard some soldiers called the Indigo Moon – it swept through Allazei only between one and three in the morning – he kept to main streets despite disliking the open grounds. At this time of the night there were sure to be lemures skulking around the cottage’s vicinity, so haste won over discretion.
His instincts were not wrong: a pair of shades watched him from rooftops as he hurried, slender silhouettes standing unnaturally still. Yet though Tristan was alone and not particularly large, he was carrying steel and did not look wounded. Not so easy a target. They followed him for a few blocks but ultimately chose not to try their luck. A relief. Shades were scavengers and bottom feeders – in Sacromonte, they were best known for snatching infants – but they had long, sharp nails and feverish strength.
The thief doubted they would have killed him, but they would have likely bled him and the smell might have drawn in something nastier. It was still a long way to dockside.
Haste proved enough to get him there without incident, at least this once. It might be time to look into obtaining some scent that would put off lemures – Hage was sure to have something, although in even the most favorable outcome to asking the question the devil was sure to wildly overcharge him for it. The thief knew shades disliked the false fruits of yew, but he was reluctant to put on necklace of them without knowing if the smell might draw the curiosity of something more dangerous.
It was slightly before two in the morning he reached Regnant Avenue, the hour of a city’s exhale: when the last drunks stumbled out, the last lights dimmed, when dark and silence swallowed street after street. On another night Tristan might have tried his hand at snatching a few things off drunks near the docks, but tonight he had other priorities. Instead he prowled the small streets, keeping to alleys and shadows, and took the measure of the town as he ghosted through it.
It felt a little like coming home.
Port Allazei, mused as the Indigo Moon began to wane, really was a town camped in a city’s corpse. The ruined city was mostly empty, with the parts that were safe and largely rebuilt – the Triangle, the streets closest to the docks and barracks – packed to the gills with students, teachers and townsfolk. Yet though the inhabited portions of Allazei was small, even in that small space Tristan found room to disappear.
In a place like Sacromonte it was best to disappear by becoming a drop in the sea, but Allazei was a warren of nooks and crannies. You just had to find one large enough to fit you.
Leaving the overflowing streets of the Triangle, the thief skirted just past the edges of Regnant Avenue and Templeward Street where the numbers began to thin. That was the sweet spot lay, as far as Tristan was concerned: far enough no one ventured there without a reason, close enough he was well within the regular patrol routes of the garrison. Easy meat for neither lemures nor men. Now he just needed to find a building that met the right standards.
On the Templeward side, about ten minutes away from where Wen and Mandisa had settled, he sniffed out a derelict two-story house with broken stairs and a mostly intact attic. Perfect. Tristan stashed away a blanket, two silvers and a pilfered knife in the attic before hiding rope top climb under the kitchen rubble. He checked the surrounding houses for risks, particularly rooftop access to his hidden perch, but the sole roof that had not collapsed was angled the wrong way and playing host to a bird nest besides.
He sat on that rooftop for a moment, the tiles digging into his legs as he snacked on a few sesame seeds, and let his gaze wander the city’s skyline as the last drops of the Indigo Moon bled out of the sky. Soon the Orrery’s next ring would spin along, bringing in pale and gold, and-
“Huh.”
“Finally in a talking mood again, I see,” Fortuna said.
He glanced to the side, finding her perched near the edge of the roof with her dress’s folds cascading over it. She was leaning away from him, peering down at what he suspected was the bird’s nest tucked away between two broken tiles.
“Something like that,” Tristan said. “There’s a light on the horizon.”
“You know pretending it didn’t happen won’t make it true,” the Lady of Long Odds said. “You should reach out to Maryam, at le-”
His jaw clenched.
“There is,” he flatly repeated, “a light on the horizon.”
A long silence. A sigh.
“Some sort of tower, you think?” Fortuna asked.
He hummed. It had to be, the thief thought. Out in the east of Port Allazei, short of the empty canal that delineated Scholomance grounds but well past the inhabited slice of shore, a silver light was shining. Higher than a three-story house, at a guess, and for the burn to be that stable and visible he would almost think it some sort of lighthouse. Only what would a lighthouse be doing so far inland, and in an abandoned part of the city to boot?
“It’s too far out to be the workshop the Umuthi Society set up for their students,” he said. “There shouldn’t be anything out there, as far as I know.”
“Could be a trap,” Fortuna said, enthusiasm noticeably rising at the prospect.
“Could be,” he agreed. “Only I’d never heard rumors of there being some kind of cursed tower out east, and the soldiers would gossip about a ghostly light. Which means they know what it is and they’re not worried.”
“That or they’ve been told to keep their mouths shut,” Fortuna added.
Tristan nodded, chewing at the inside of his cheek. Either way, it meant that tower its silver light were related to the Watch.
“Something that’s only out there if you find it?” he finally said. “Sounds to me like Mask business.”
Even if he was wrong and it turned out the Watch simply had some sort of hidden fort out there, that was valuable information as well. His instincts weren’t leaning that way, though. This felt like another test in this island overrun with them, and his covenant fit the bill better than the rest.
“Yesss,” Fortuna grinned. “We’re going to the trap cursed tower, aren’t we?”
Tristan decided not to confirm it, lest her further enthusiasm talk him out of the idea. If he didn’t spend his seventhday chasing down a mystery, he might just have to look back instead – and he dared not.
“Come on,” he said instead. “Let’s find out if that attic lets the wind in.”
--
After a pleasant and surprisingly windless nap, he was back on the streets come the sixth hour.
One of the fancy bakeries on Templeward made the mistake of leaving out fresh baskets, so at the cost of one pebble tossed strategically against a kitchen pan to distract the attendant Tristan acquired a breakfast of two freshly baked sweet buns. He scarfed them in a nearby alley, wishing he’d grabbed more. Potato flour, like they used in Old Saraya, but those little bits on sugar on top were delicious.
He dipped seaside to wash his hands free of incriminating stickiness and draw from one of the garrison wells for water, then began heading east as Port Allazei woke up around him. The thief would have likely kept to side streets even were enemies not out to collect the bounty on his head, but that turn gave particular reason to a general practice of caution. Not that even the ‘main’ streets were anything to be impressed about, once you were five minutes east of Templeward.
The wide road the garrison used for patrols was cleaned of debris, but it was missing quite a few paving stones and those holes would be turning into puddles when it began raining in a few hours. Seventhday was the rain day, after all, from nine to nine.
Tristan missed his tricorn.
Past the ruins of what had once been a market – and a large one, too, not just a shopping street – Tristan found that a park had swallowed an entire chunk of the city. Trees and thorny bushes had taken over streets and houses alike, casting shadows in the silver morning light, and overgrown roots slid across streets so full of dead leaves and dirt they might as well have been forest ground. If he’d not misremembered the tower’s direction, going through this was the quickest way to get there.
Tristan took one look at those winding paths and eerily rustling leaves, then took the long way around.
“Coward,” Fortuna complained.
“A long-lived one, I hope,” he agreed.
He went further east, skirting the edge of the forest while keeping a wary eye out for anything that might be inclined to crawl out. It felt a safe assumption the woods were a nest of lemures, at the very least. Yet when he caught sight of movement it was not out in the trees. A pair of blackcloaks, muskets in hand, were strolling across a small street while chatting. A patrol? They seemed too few for this far out in the city. Slipping into the alleys, Tristan followed them.
He wrinkled his nose at how easy they proved to tail, barely paying attention to their surroundings.
The pair walked along the edge of the woods westwards, much like a patrol would, but the thief never got close enough to eavesdrop on the conversation. Their carelessness was interesting – people only acted like that when they felt safe, or at least like others would bail them out should there be danger. Were there other watchmen out here? Their ‘patrol’ came to an end after another five minutes and they headed back the same way they’d come.
Tristan followed behind, keeping a safe distance until his steps went past where he’d come across them and the continuing east. Five minutes later, he came to a halt while sucking in a surprised breath.
“That’s a fort,” Fortuna helpfully pointed out, biting into an apple.
She made the crunch of it obnoxiously loud, no doubt on purpose.
“I can see that,” Tristan replied, rolling his eyes.
Across an open plaza from the edge of the woods, the Watch had built what looked like a fortified village. The walls were made from stones visibly from half a different sources but they stacked a solid fifteen feet high, armed guards waited by open gates. Inside he could see a well near the entrance, then barracks and a cluster of buildings spread out along three cramped streets.
The two watchmen out on patrol stopped to chat with the pair in front before entering, leaving Tristan to weigh his chances. Those walls were to keep lemures, not men – not with so many jutting handholds – so it would not be impossible for him to climb over. He’d have to remain hidden the whole time, though. He was in fighting fit, not the rank-and-file uniform. A risky enterprise, if the Watch was hiding something here. It was tempting to simply go up and ask if students were allowed entry, but they’d be on guard for him trying to sneak in if they refused.
While debating whether he should avoid the fort entirely, swing around and continue northeast towards the tower, Tristan frowned as he saw someone come up to the well and work the crank. That was not a regular’s uniform, and the dark-skinned woman wearing it was young. Student age. Two more people approached her, another in a coat and the last in a formal uni- Oh, Tristan knew that one. He was looking at Captain Tristan Ballester, of the Forty-Fourth Brigade. He of the impressively well-groomed mustache and mediocre ability to read the room.
That settled it. The guards at the gate looked him over when he emerged onto the street, but not with any particular intent. When he approached, the taller of the two cleared her throat.
“Plaque,” she instructed.
He produced it. The Someshwari watchwoman took a look, then handed it back.
“Welcome to Scraptown,” she told him.
The other guard snorted.
“Stop calling it that to students, the captain’ll put you on night watch again,” she said.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the Someshwari beamed her way, then her eyes slid back to him. “The student dormitory’s at the end of the street to the left, one copper a night. If you’re headed for the hunting grounds, I’d recommend you swing by the board first – it’s got all the last reports nailed on.”
She looked him up and down.
“Not that you look like much of a hunter.”
“My skills are legend, tia,” Tristan protested. “Have you never heard of the many brave deeds of Ferrando Villazar?”
The shorter guardswoman squinted at him.
“Aren’t you a woman?” she asked. “And blonde. I thought you came for that lemure bounty a few days back.”
“Any resemblance in names is coincidental,” Tristan lied.
Hopefully this wouldn’t make it back to Ferranda, who was well-armed and touchy. If so, he always could try to exploit another coincidence in names and frame the captain of the Forty-Fourth for the whole matter. He made sure to give the students at the well a wide berth, though at least one noticed him passing through, and tread the length ‘Scraptown’ street by street.
It was more an outpost than a village, a strange contrast of buildings made in fine stone and bricks – salvaged from nearby houses, at a guess – and muddy streets. There must be at least fifty watchmen posted here by the size of the barracks, but Scraptown seemed built in part to cater to students: Tristan could not think of a reason for there to be a pair of shops selling arms, equipment and foodstuffs on the main street.
The student dormitory was a run-down in with a badly patched roof consisting of a large common room and a communal kitchen, but the ‘board’ proved more interesting. It was large wooden board under an awning, with a map of the environs nailed on – including a large portion of the forest, which was named the ‘Nettlewood’. Different parts of the map were attributed numbers, and reports put up around the large parchment outlined lemure sightings in those numbered zones. At a glance, most of the lemures around here appeared to be lycosi and shuttle-spiders, though there was apparently a seiren nesting deep in the Nettlewood.
Tristan sent a discreet prayer of thanks to the Rat King for the plentiful boons of habitual cowardice.
Less pleasing was that the northeast of the outpost was apparently thick with lemures come evening time, including a pair of headless men. Nasty beasts, those, and reported to wander about where Tristan believed himself headed to. It would be best if he could be back from seeking the tower well before the Tolomontera night settled.
It was only when he reached the back gate of Scraptown that he saw why the locals had given it such a sobriquet, however. The back of the town did not have a stone wall like the rest instead but two large pieces of metal between which a makeshift gate had been squeezed in. That open gate led out into a graveyard of scrap metal, wind blowing dust through rusted iron ribs.
There were four guards at this gate instead of two, and they seemed much more alert. Tristan was asked to present his plaque on the way out, then cautioned to avoid cutting himself on the metal.
“Blood will wake up the blems,” he was told. “Last night they came close enough to get shot, they must be getting hungry.”
Blems was an old Trebian name for headless men, meaning those words were very much worth heeding. Tristan was not sure he’d win a tussle with a lycosi, much less the kind of creature that would kill them for sport. He thanked the watchmen for the warning and only ventured out with cautious steps and leather gloves on.
The grounds here were worn stone and rust-red sand, with spikes of metal jutting out like teeth and worn, twisted iron forming into crescent shapes. It felt like walking through a maze of open maws, his surroundings ready to snap up and swallow him at any time. Between making sure he didn’t step on anything capable of piercing his boots and keeping an eye out for lemures, a simple walk proved genuinely exhausting.
It was a relief when the worst of the scraps began to thin, giving ground to stairs leading up to what must be shrines – and, excitingly, a shape towering over them that might just be what he came for. There was still metal around but now it was a brass alloy instead of iron, most of it massive pipes. And the word was no exaggeration, for they were large enough he could walk through one standing upright.
Chunks of that pipework had fallen from the frames that’d once held them u, but in his mind’s eye the thief could see what it must have looked like when still hale. Some sort of web-like metal aqueduct leading towards the shrines, though what it would have carried was anybody’s guess. But after walking in the shadows of ancient wonders on a mercifully stony ground, Tristan finally found what he’d come looking for.
Part of it, anyway: at the heart of the shrines a tower of smooth stone did rise, but about two-thirds of the way up the structure abruptly ended. There was no trace of the pale light he had seen on the horizon last night, and given how brightly it’d shone it should be impossible to miss.
“Part of it is missing,” Tristan muttered. “Aether machinery?”
“The air here is thin,” Fortuna told him. “It is most unpleasant.”
Definitely some kind of aether machinery, then. Wary as he was of such things, the only way he would find answers was by having a look. He crept in the shadow of the ancient edifices, reaching the bottom of the shrines accompanied only by eerie silence. The seven machine-shrines had likely been built the same but time had cut them differently enough only traces of that remained: the brush of time had graced them all with their own shade of decay.
They still looked like sisters, mind you. The structures were all squat, almost pear-like in shape, and their roofs were rounded domes in metal long covered by green patina. They were a mixture of machinery and stone, and the great brass pipes from earlier fed into their sides at a rate of two a shrine. The gates that were the only visible way in were tall and narrow, made of carved iron splashed with patterns of gold.
Together, the seven shrines formed a rough circle surrounding what must be the bottom of the half-hidden tower. The style of it reminded him of the structure at the heart of Old Fort back on the Dominion, especially the seamless stone, but he was no expert on Antediluvian works.
Though two of the roofs had been damaged – one dome outright collapsed – Tristan first took a look at the gates. There were no locks and no rings to pull. Tossing a pebble at one did not see it turned into smoke or ash, which was promising, but trying to push them open was like, well, trying to move hundreds of pounds of metal with his arms. Not a winning cause, that.
“The true key is self-improvement,” the Lady of Long Odds sagely told him. “You must first become a musclebound fellow, capable of-”
“One of the pipes broke down just a bit back,” Tristan noted. “If I climb up, it’ll bring me straight inside the shrine.”
“-listening to the wisdom of your goddess, who ever shows you the way,” Fortuna hastily adjusted. “Good eye, though you were slow to pick up on my hints."
"No doubt,” the thief drily replied.
The pipe on the ground proved a fine perch to climb on so he might shimmy up onto the one still connected to the shrine. It was, however, pitch black in there. Tristan hesitated – should he press on? Fool thought, he decided after a moment. The shrines weren’t going anywhere, but he had only the one life. If some shuttle-spider was nesting in there, eyeing him hungrily, he’d never know until it was too late.
He’d come back with a lantern.
--
The first drops of rain began to fall on his way back. Perhaps he should see about acquiring a hat along with the lantern.
The guards at the gate asked him about lemures while he presented his plaque, surprised when he said he’d not seen hide nor hair of one. The thief hummed as he headed into Scraptown, weighing the inconvenience of walking back to Port Allazei proper against the price hike the shops here were sure to give their goods. He was going to have to head back to the cottage at some point anyhow. Stealing his meals too often was sure to get him caught, and he’d contributed funds to the Thirteenth’s cellar so he was owed a cut.
That and he should leave a note to mention he had not been abducted, for Maryam’s sake at least. Even if she’d preferred to leave him with Song instead of letting him escort her to the – Tristan breathed in, out. That kind of thinking would not get him any closer to the tower, which was what mattered. Finding a second Mask teacher, securing his place at Scholomance. Making it certain that even if the Thirteenth fully shipwrecked he would still have a place on the island.
It was only due diligence.
Clenched up and drawn into his thoughts, he only noticed he was about to run into someone half a heartbeat before it happened. The decision was a snap – he could see no one else, the angle was right, so why not? The collision was light, measured, Tristan’s hand slipping inside the woman’s coat and snatching a small bag. He grunted when her shoulder hit his chest, pulling away.
“Watch where you’re going,” he growled, deepening his voice.
He continued past her without looking back, to give her the least look at him possible, while undoing the ties on the bag. Four silvers and nine coppers, he counted, with some rag scraps to mute their tinkling. Pouring the silvers into his hand, he reached for his own pouch. And reached again.
It wasn’t there.
“Son of a bitch,” a woman’s voice said.
Cursing, Tristan reached for the closest weapon – the pistol, loaded from earlier – and pivoted to face a curved knife pressed against his guts. He held the pistol steady, pointed at her chest, and frowned at a face he’d not recognized in passing but revealed itself as rather familiar on a second look.
“Tristan Abrascal,” Lady Cressida sneered.
“Cressida Barboza,” he answered with a charming smile.
With her hair pinned under that hat – black velvet with a golden rope around, curved top and short rim – his gaze had skimmed over her, but now there was no missing it. The noblewoman had a sharp, narrow face with a surprisingly delicate button nose and slender eyebrows that would have better belonged on a courtier than someone whose brown eyes were so cool.
“Give me my coin back,” Lady Cressida ordered.
They were alone in the street, he saw. The light drops of rain preceding the deluge had chased inside everyone not on guard duty and those guards were out of sight. They might come if there was shouting, though. Not yet.
“Give me my coin back,” he countered.
“You savagely elbowed a lady,” she said. “The least you can do is pay for my meal.”
“You elbowed an orphan,” he easily replied. “Alms are in order.”
There were three coppers more in her pouch, by his count, he was more than willing to keep the trade. It was a nicer pouch, too, and that rag scrap trick was inspired. Her eyes narrowed.
“My coin,” she said, “or I’ll open your belly.”
There was not a flicker of hesitation in her eyes. It was no idle threat.
“I’m sure you’re quick,” he said, “but quicker than squeezing a trigger? That is impressive confidence.”
“I’ve seen you shoot in Warfare,” Cressida replied. “You couldn’t hit a barn door if it was leaning into the shot.”
Which was fair, but Tristan snorted.
“From this close? Even if I miss I’ll hit something.”
Brown eyes met his. Neither blinked. A moment passed, then Cressida sighed.
“Two steps back, throw my pouch and I’ll throw yours,” she offered.
Tempting, but.
“There’s a problem with that,” Tristan said.
“And what would that be?” she asked, slightly pressing her blade into his coat.
“You’re Nineteenth,” he said. “I couldn’t trust you on the color of the sky, much less returning a courtesy.”
She frowned.
“There’s no grudge between our brigades,” she said. “What’s this about?”
Lady Cressida looked like someone trying to obscure her surprise, not someone lying in his face. Which did not mean she was not lying, only that she was a better liar than he. Tristan’s trigger-finger itched, but that business with the Nineteenth had only ever been guesswork. He knew that.
He still felt like pulling the trigger just in case.
“Adarsh Hebbar,” he said instead.
“Pardon?” Cressida blinked.
That confusion, damningly, was too genuine to be faked. No one was that good a liar.
“Bait,” he corrected.
The other Lierganen guffawed.
“This is about the business with the Fourth?” she said. “Put it to rest, then. Tozi traded the invite for information on you Dominion recommended. If you’ve a grudge there, we have no trouble: there have been no further bargains.”
Hmm. Tupoc reaching out to an Izcalli captain with a spare invitation was a simpler explanation than the Nineteenth being after his bounty. On the other hand, someone out there was still after Tristan. Dev had been supposed to meet people and that’d been work too subtle to belong to the Forty-Ninth. Clinging too strongly to the notion his unseen enemy was the Nineteenth, however, would be a mistake. It was simply uncomfortable for him to consider he might have no idea whatsoever who was after his head.
Not that he was putting suspicion of the Nineteenth to rest.
“Two steps back, but you throw first,” Tristan counter-offered.
“You’re a thief,” Cressida said.
“You’re a noble,” he pointed out. “That’s just a thief with a fancy hat.”
And though hers was mercifully bereft of feathers, that rope was golden.
“Sacromontans,” she sneered. “Wasted air, but what are we to expect out of the Old Empire’s arse except farts?”
“Colorful,” Tristan conceded, “but my offer remains unchanged.”
“Fine,” Lady Cressida said. “On three. One, two…”
They both moved on two, casual petty treachery that had him suppressing a twitch of the lips. She tossed his pouch, which he picked up while keeping his pistol upright, and idly counted the contents. As he’d thought, a silver was missing. He casually plucked one out from her pouch before tossing it. She scoffed but did not argue.
“I’d say it has been a pleasure,” Tristan cheerfully said, “but it hasn’t been and I dislike you.”
Cressida blinked at him, face displaying put-on surprise.
“Are you still here?” she asked.
He flipped her off, which she replied to in kind, and they went their own way. The whole affair, inexplicably, rather lifted his mood.
--
It took longer than he would have liked to swing by the cottage to leave a letter – and eat - then hit Regnant Avenue for a lantern. The Watch supply depot, at least, offered remarkably cheap black caps that were treated against the rain.
The walk had not gotten any longer, but the pouring rain slowed everything down. Tempted as he was to call off the expedition, Tristan grit his teeth and made the trip back to Scraptown. Come tomorrow there would be classes and he would not have as much time to spend on this. The outpost’s streets were deserted, most shops closed, and the guards at the gates were no longer the same. Showing his plague got him let in and then let out.
The scrapyard out back looked like it was bleeding.
The rust-red sand had turned into liquid slop that lapped at his boots, hiding away the waiting metal spikes. It took him twice as long to make it through the scraps this time, and the rainfall had him feeling blind the whole time. His only comfort was that the wetness was sure to hide his scent and he knew of no lemure that enjoyed standing out in the rain. Even monsters had better sense than he, it seemed. By the time he reached the stairs his pants were thoroughly drenched. Though his coat, boots and cap had been treated with wax the cloth of the pants was not and had drunk in the rain eagerly. Hopefully the inside of the tower would be dry.
He did not realize it until he was mere feet away, blaming it on the rain, but when he reached the end of the pipes there was something of a minor issue.
“Fuck,” Tristan cursed, looking at nothing.
A taunting nothing, where the shrines and tower should be.
“It’s gone,” Fortuna said, choking on a laugh.
“Thank you, Fortuna, I can see that,” he bit out.
“I mean, you can’t,” the goddess replied. “Given that it’s not actually th-”
“Where did it even go?” Tristan complained. “You can’t just disappear towers. That is not acceptable tower behavior.”
“At the risk of repeating myself,” the Lady of Long Odds mused, “evidently they ca-”
“Fuck,” Tristan cursed again. “All right, this might be a little trickier than I expected.”
“We should check if it’s only invisible, at least,” Fortuna suggested.
To his disgust, it was a reasonable suggestion. Throwing a pebble at the empty space only resulted in a thrown pebble. His little finger, which he touched the empty with, also found nothing but air. Irritated and curious, Tristan doubled back to a broken pipe and took a thumb-sized sliver of bronze alloy that had flaked off. Whether or not that metal was magic, the empty space reacted not differently to it.
“We should do this every day,” Fortuna happily said, watching him make a fool of himself.
A weapon, maybe? Stabbing at the empty space with a knife made no difference. Food, something that used to be alive? His last sesame seeds were washed away. He’d judged packing something like jerky too much of a risk for wandering through lemure hunting grounds, but he might have to try that. See if ‘flesh’, even dead one, made a difference. Until then, there was one thing he should do.
He spread a few cheap iron ball bearings on the ground where the shrines should be. He’d come back tomorrow, see what had happened to them.
“So what now?” his goddess asked, leaning against his shoulder. “While I’m all for watching you get progressively wetter and angrier, it won’t be as funny if a blem eats you at the end.”
Tristan sighed.
“I’m going to have to ask advice,” he said, “from the only person I know that’s worse than you.”
--
“Stop tracking wet all over my floor, boy,” Hage called out.
“Think of it as my passing a mop,” Tristan replied, bending down to scratch Mephistofeline’s ears.
The cat immediately plopped belly up, squarely in the way of the closing door. When it pressed him into the wall he let out a plaintive meow, but still made doe eyes in hopes of continued scratches. The thief spared him one, then eased him out of the way of the door. His reward was getting his sleeve clawed and Mephistofeline bounding away like a malcontent balloon.
“I will take that as your volunteering for the work,” the devil said without batting an eye. “The mop is out back.”
“I’m here as a client today,” the thief denied.
Hage’s impressive eyebrows raised skeptically even as the devil’s gaze discreetly swept the room. Looking for Fortuna, Tristan suspected, but his goddess had no intention of returning to the Chimerical. The requirement of an apology before being allowed entry into the shop had prompted her to require an apology from Hage for daring to ask such a thing from her.
Given the relative immortality of both entities involved, Tristan suspected that the fiercely petty standoff might well last until the end of time.
“I require payment up front,” Hage told him, leaning his elbow on the counter.
The thief snorted, sliding into the seat facing him.
“No you don’t,” he said.
The devil only smiled, teeth behind teeth. Hage made it a habit of habitually lie to him for no good reason, calling it training. While Tristan could have done without looking for the ‘white-painted bucket’ for an hour last week, he must admit he had gotten better at discerning when the devil was lying to him. Their kind did not have the same tells as humans did, but under the shells they wore there was a body just as inclined at revealing their true thoughts.
In some ways devils were sloppier than humans, since they could control their shell’s expression like a puppet and thus rarely learned to mask their own tells.
“If you are not here to spend coin on coffee, I expect tales to be bought instead,” Hage warned him. “What is it that interests you, boy?”
“That tower out east,” he said, “with the silver light on top.”
No change in expression.
“I have heard of it,” the devil said.
“I had a closer look,” Tristan revealed. “It was partially gone this morning, and by afternoon it and the shrines around it vanished into thin air.”
The devil drummed his fingers against the counter, eyebrow rocked. Tristan frowned, reaching for his pouch and palming coppers, then grit his teeth. A silver arbol tumbled across the counter, snatched up by the devil in a heartbeat.
“What do you even do with the coin?” he complained.
Hage leaned in.
“Is that what you want to know?”
Tristan sighed, shook his head.
“The tower,” he said. “Is it a Krypteia instructor?”
If not, it would fall down his list of priorities. There were mysteries enough on this island for nine lifetimes.
“It would be against the rules for me to answer that question,” Hage mildly said.
So yes, but confirmation was not allowed by the rules of the game. Or was the devil misleading him? He looked for the flicker of movement for the eyes under the eyes, the way legs pushed up at the neck muscles near the shoulders that signified restlessness. None of the hints, but then Tristan was not so deluded as to believe the devil was not teaching him to look for those tells. If he really meant to lie without getting caught, then… No, that was going in circles.
Hage was an information broker and had taken the coin. That weighed the scales towards his hint being accurate. Tristan chewed on his lip, trying out questions in his mind. If he asked for too much the devil would refuse or ask for further coin, both things he wanted to avoid.
“What made the morning different from the afternoon?” he asked.
Hage laughed.
“Clever boy,” he said, and pointed a finger upwards. “What on this island always changes but ever remains?”
He was no great riddler, but that was one was obvious.
“The Grand Orrery,” Tristan muttered.
So the difference was the light. The morning silver light – and thinking back, had the light atop the tower during the night not been silver as well? – was the key. He passed a hand through his hair, then slapped two coppers on the counter.
“Sparing me a few hours of asking around,” he said. “If I were to ask guards from Scraptown the hours where that part of the island is reliably touched by silver light?”
Hage clicked his mandibles inside his mouth, took one of the coppers and flicked the other back across the counter.
“Seven to ten of the morning,” the devil said. “With wiggle room.”
Tristan took back his copper and frowned.
“Well,” he said. “It seems I’ll be skipping a few classes, then.”
Comments
Leaf
Tristan giving Indiana jones vibes
Jasus
Future mask comrade?
sarvashaktimaan
It got stolen when their room was raided.
Jaz Hare
I loved that sequence with Cressida. I hope we see more of her in the future.
AsuraKyoko
Wait, what happened to Tristan's hat?
Jasus
I mean he is retreating. It is just productive procrastinating.
ppbrro
Ooh i wonder what the new mask instructor might teach
A. E.
Annnnnd Tristan missing class suddenly makes a lot more sense. It's not that he's scared or retreating, it's that he's found a mystery worth more than the classwork. I have a feeling that at least *certain* teachers prize that more than attendance.
