Pale Lights

Chapter 60

The orphanage opening had not been a joyous thing.

Such institutions were not, Angharad learned, paid for by the Lord Rector or the local ruling lord but by whoever cared to offer coin to them. It was a very disorganized method, which she thought was sure to allow some of the orphaned to slip through the cracks. No wonder crime had such a grip on the capital, with these ‘basileias’ sprouting everywhere. Failure below could always be traced back to failure above.

At least it had proved an opportunity to speak with Lord Menander Drakos, something that had risen high in her priorities. The sooner this infernal forge business had an answer, the sooner she could begin climbing out of the pit. The older lord was just as eager for a private talk and it proved remarkably easy to get from him an invitation to the manse Lord Gule had mentioned.

The reason why could be summed up in two words: Song Ren.

Song’s heroics were the talk of the entire city, deservedly. She was said to have slain so many assassins her dress turned red and taken a shot for the Lord Rector that nearly killed her. Angharad knew the truth of the story, of course, having been told by a mellow Song the afternoon’s genuine events. A mellowness Angharad had deduced was not unrelated to the love bites the Tianxi should raise her collar higher to fully hide.

Scandalous, if not exactly unexpected. No woman spent as much time talking about someone as Song had about Lord Rector Palliades without having some sort of interest in them. It had been either sex or murder, and murder would have been messy.

Either way, for lack of the proper lineage Menander Drakos had not been one of the lords attending the Landing Day feast. He was thus keen to learn the details of what took place and knew that Angharad, as a watchwoman, would be able to provide them. The consequence of that was that she found herself received in the Drakos manse early in the afternoon of her thirtieth day on Asphodel instead of needing to wait until the regular dinner that Lord Gule had mentioned to her.

A pretext was even arranged for it, given how the ploy with the inheritance rumors would only go so far in erasing the taint on her reputation her visit to the country had left. Lord Menander was one of the patrons for the orphanage, which made him one of the men to speak with should one seek to arrange a charitable donation.

Song had even been willing to loosen the purse strings for it, though rather than out of philanthropic instinct it was because reclaimed brigade funds not spent directly on cabalists were often repaid in full by the bureaucrats of the Conclave. It would make no difference to the children.

Angharad avoided directly sponsoring one despite the offer and it apparently being the common practice, as such a commitment would tie her to return to Asphodel and she was not sure she would be able to. No, instead she donated to the cause of furnishing the children with an education. A more practical application of the funds, in her opinion.

Lord Menander seemed surprised when she sat with him over tea and asked questions as to the nature of the books and tutors that would be acquired, which was puzzling. All the more that he did not seem all that well informed on the particulars and had to send for his majordomo for answers. She hid her disapproval at his taking such a serious commitment so lightly, and let the subject pass after she was satisfied the coin would not be improperly used.

Lord Menander was much more taken with talk of the Landing Day massacre, most interested when Angharad hinted that there might have been Izcalli involvement. In truth there was little doubt those had been the same assassins Tristan warned them of. The Watch had obtained some of the flaky false faces the assassins had worn, and officers in Black House identified the substance as a kind of lemure corpse ash that could be used to make very convincing false skin.

The trick was, it was rumored, a favorite of the Obsidian Order. Between these getting on the wrong side of Song’s wrath and Yaretzi dying to her hand on the Dominion, she was viciously pleased to see the pack of assassins having a lousy year.

Still, now that the mustachioed lord was happily garnished with hints and secrets it was time to pull the rug from under him. Angharad set down her porcelain cup – Tianxi-made, its unique imperfections and details showing it had been crafted by hand in a display of wealth – on the matching saucer and smiled at the man across the table. Agreeable and empty, the way Father had taught her.

“Pleasant as this conversation has been,” Angharad said, “I am afraid that this time I came on Watch business.”

Lord Menander’s brow rose.

“By all means, I am at the disposal of the Watch,” he said. “How may I be of service?”

“It has come to our attention that you might be in possession of an artifact whose ownership is forbidden under the Iscariot Accords,” she smilingly replied.

The older man stilled, then swallowed.

“I suspect you were taken in by a false rumor,” he claimed with false calm. “All my dealings in the artifact trade have been legal and on record, I assure you. My account books are open for perusal if there is need.”

Angharad sipped at her cup. Let him stew.

“You did not buy the artifact in question,” she said. “It is part of the shipyard trove you… salvaged through the hidden passage. The one we assume was first found by your forebears around the reign of Hector Lissenos.”

Part of her, she would admit, enjoyed watching him go white as a sheet. After all the wheeling and dealing, how he had known he was too useful to refuse insights into Watch matters, to now tighten the screws on the man was a petty but distinct pleasure. Lord Menander licked his lips, eyes flicking to the door. Angharad sipped at her tea again.

“You are,” Menander Drakos said in a strangled voice, “formidably well informed.”

“Our brigade has proved to have some skill in matters of investigation,” Angharad mildly said. “Access to palace archives helped, admittedly.”

She drummed her fingers against the table, the small movement drawing the man’s wary eyes.

“While it is within the authority of the Watch to demand access to your collection for inspection,” Angharad said, “such a thing would be an official process. One involving the office of the Lord Rector, given that the justification for the demand invokes an article of the Iscariot Accords.”

And now Angharad had given him two things: first, a reason to fear a formal demand. Bringing in the palace would involve revealing to Evander Palliades that one of his nobles had helped himself to the treasures beneath Tratheke, and that the path to his shipyard was not nearly as secret as he might have wanted. Odds were even that Menander Drakos would die for this, Angharad would wager. Even should he not, he would be ruined.

On the other hand, a formal process would also publicly reveal the identities of at least some the Thirteenth Brigade since the cabal would be the one making the demand. Song, at the very least, would be definitively outed as a watchwoman. It might be that Angharad’s cover would survive the ensuing scrutiny, it might not. Either way the Thirteenth had good reason to want to keep the matter unofficial, and thus Menander Drakos had good reason to trust in their discretion.

It was best when reward and punishment were cut from the same cloth, Father had often said. It helped people grasp the swing of consequence.

“There is no need for such a thing,” Menander Drakos firmly said. “As I told you, I am at the disposal of the Watch. If a dangerous artifact inadvertently made its way onto my hands, it is my civic duty to remand it to the custody of the Watch.”

“A most praiseworthy attitude,” Angharad said, her tone only slightly ironic. “I expect that discretionary funds have been set aside by the Conclave to acknowledge such dutiful behavior, though I would understand if you felt such pecuniary matters to be beneath…”

“I would not risk giving offense to the Conclave by refusing its largesse,” Lord Menander hastily intervened.

It would be unkind, she reminded herself, to judge him too harshly for being so grasping. His house had nearly been driven out of the ranks of the nobility under the Lissenos dynasty, only claiming back a place at court under the Palliades – and reaching a new apex of influence under Menander Drakos himself, by the talk around the capital. Whatever his vices, the man had toiled long and harshly to restore the name of his house.

A respectable enterprise, if undertaken through less than respectable means. What kind of a man robbed his own liege lord?

“It may be that, as you said, this is mere erroneous rumor,” Angharad said. “It should be a simple matter to dismiss the possibility upon an inspection.”

He blinked.

“Today?” he asked, hesitating. “I was not prepared for…”

Of course you aren’t, Angharad thought. That is precisely why I am asking. She said nothing, only smiling pleasantly, and the man’s eyes eventually tightened.

“Of course,” Lord Menander said. “Allow me to make the arrangements, I’ll have a servant refill the pot.”

“That would be courteous of you,” Angharad replied.

It took the man half an hour to prepare, long enough she finished the second pot and some fine finger cakes with it. She’d never tasted that sugary almond cream before, it was a delight to the tongue. When a servant came to fetch her it was to bring her to a parlor on the first floor. Lord Menander was waiting there with a torch in hand, which he pressed against a burning candle to light up.

“Kindly lock the door, Lady Angharad,” he requested.

She did, turning to watch him slide open a wooden panel in the wall that was obscuring a dark and cramped stairway leading down.

“Careful with the steps,” he advised. “Despite my best efforts the stone insists on dampness.”

“Much obliged,” she replied, inclining her head.

Angharad gingerly made her way down the stairs, leaning on her cane. They spiraled downwards on a steep slope, until they reached a level that must broadly be equal to beneath the mansion. She found Lord Menander waiting at the bottom with his torch in hand. Telling that it was not another man doing it for him even when the smell of smoke was sure to cling to his oiled hair. The older lord did not trust even his servants with knowledge of the crypt.

“Come,” Menander Drakos said. “Let me show you the inventory.”

It was a walk of mere steps through the threshold and into a broader space. Though the insides were but a single room, work had been done here to turn some decrepit basement crypt into a showcase of stolen wealth. Red drapes covered the walls and beautiful panels of wood and glass kept pristine the riches obtained from far below Tratheke. Lord Menander lit the four braziers in the room one after another while Angharad limped across a thick Izcalli carpet, combing through the loot.

Much of what was on display here were mere trinkets of Antediluvian make, though even these were often worth a fortune. If not for the wealthy collectors buying them then simply for the materials from which they were made – Angharad found a brooch whose accents were in brumal silver, for example, and thus almost certainly worth thousands of ramas.

Rings and necklaces, bracelets and buckles. A spread of glass pearls containing colored, ever-shifting air. A pendulum whose weight went all the way around, uncaring of gravity. Two sculpted monkeys in Tratheke brass that moved the needles of an obsidian clock without hours. The further back she went, the larger the finds became. Some sort of glittering machine that knit the air in visible braids, though for what purpose she could only guess. A brass writing desk with shifting cogs inside.

And then, tucked away near the corner, the second-largest piece on display: a thing of gray iron, a too-large printing press with corkscrew handles pressing a large slab down on another adorned with so many cryptoglyphs it looked smooth at first glance. The infernal forge. It could be nothing else. Despite its size straining Angharad’s ability to believe it had been brought up through a crevasse, there was no sign of it being scuffed or damaged.

“Is that the one?” Lord Menander asked from her side, stroking his mustache nervously.

“Almost certainly,” Angharad replied. “If I may ask, how did you get it in here? The stairs are too narrow.”

“There is a passage to the Tratheke sewers behind one of the tapestries,” he informed her. “Much broader than the stairway, though I had it sealed to avoid the stink.”

She nodded, mind already spinning. It would be child’s play to obtain a map of the sewers in this part of Tratheke from the palace archives, she thought. And without being seen, too, if she used her daily vision to acquire the knowledge discreetly. She could accompany Maryam on one of her near-daily visits to the palace, find some excuse requiring her presence.

After that it would just be a matter of confirming the path to this crypt and coming here with the right tools. Tools, she thought, that Uncle Osian could obtain without trouble. It is in my grasp, she thought. Ancestors, but it is. She was not sure if the breath that rattled out of her was fearful or relieved. When you stood on the edge of the precipice, the line between the two could be thinner than one liked to admit.

“I believed it some manner of Antediluvian printing press,” Lord Menander spoke into the silence, as if afraid of leaving it empty. “Would be it indiscreet to ask what it truly is?”

Angharad almost told him it was but decided otherwise. Telling him of infernal involvement meant he would be most wary of trying to get rid of the forge or allow it to be stolen – it might be seen as colluding with Hell.

“The device is called an infernal forge and it is illegal under the Iscariot Accords for anyone but the Watch, or Pandemonium, to possess one,” she told him.

The older man swallowed.

“Is it… dangerous?” he ventured.

“Not unless it is used,” Angharad said then paused and clarified. “Not any more than the possession of a rare artifact others might desire generally is, anyhow.”

Especially when Lord Locke and Lady Keys had hinted at Song that the latter was a devil. Angharad might well be looking at the reason those two had come to Asphodel in the first place. If the Watch could hear rumor of such a device being on the loose, why not Pandemonium? Though it does seem passing strange that a treasure tucked away in a basement would cause any rumor at all, she thought.

Lord Menander shot her a wary look.

“I must rely, then, on your discretion,” he said.

“I have no intention of spreading the knowledge any further than I must,” she precisely replied. “Though once it is on a written report, that will be out of my hands.”

“Understandable,” he grudgingly said, the coughed into his hand. “When might I rely on the Watch to take custody of the artifact, do you think?”

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“Discretion will be paramount,” she said. “I will personally see to this matter, but it might well be days before you receive word. Until then, I would advise you to forget you ever saw the device.”

“Would that I had never obtained it,” Lord Menander grimly said. “My thanks for your assistance, Lady Tredegar.”

“It was a pleasure,” Angharad replied, inclining her head.

A pleasure to finally know for sure, mostly, but a pleasure nonetheless.

Lord Menander escorted her back up after, visibly eager to have her out of his home under the smooth manners. She did not fight it, allowing herself to be bundled off back into a carriage with absent-minded courtesies. She had much to think on, after all. She had the location of the infernal forge, a discreet way to get to it and two ufudu who wanted it. Now all that Angharad needed was a way to settle all her debts without dragging the Thirteenth into it.

She told Song, that night, not to send the report to Brigadier Chilaca immediately. That the Watch might be tempted to grab it immediately, thus interfering with Angharad’s infiltration of the Golden Ram cult. Song accepted, not thinking twice of it.

Angharad found she avoided her own gaze in the mirror that night. She dreamt of unlocked doors and creatures howling in the night.

--

Today was the tenth attempt, and she had learned much.

By the third try Angharad had begun relying on blowing open the door with a powder barrel, which neatly sidestepped her lack of lockpicking skills. By the fourth she had, mostly, learned to do this without killing herself. Difficulties unfortunately did not cease there. The fifth attempt taught her that too much powder set everything inside the room on fire, which was not ideal when attempting to read correspondence, then the sixth that too little powder only blew up parts of the door.

Which was a problem, as the Sign anchored in it would then keep functioning and eat through whatever flesh passed the threshold. Angharad was getting a little tired of having her arm devoured by Gloam, to be frank.

(The powder smoke tasted thick against the roof her mouth as Angharad limped in.

Chunks of the door had torn up the desk where Captain Domingo’s private papers were stashed but most of the papers were fine, if strewn all over the floor. There was nothing truly useful in the drawers anyhow: only paperwork, formal correspondence and some derivative attempts at poetry.

The locked drawer had cost her the seventh attempt, only to learn that beyond the vicious warding Sign was only a flat stone put there to add weight. She ignored the mess, heading straight for the trunk by the bed. Padlocked and barded with iron, the dead end of her eighth attempt.

She wedged a metal spike into the lock and waited until the warding Sign ate through it – ninth attempt – but the second spike settled in fine. Twice she swung the hammer, wincing at the way it pulled on her leg, and the padlock broke. Having learned her lesson from the locked drawer she lifted the trunk open with a long wooden spoon from the kitchens instead of even a gloved hand.

Nothing. No other Sign. Noticeable one, anyhow. Tristan had warned her of tracking marks.

Inside the trunk were silken clothes, tasteful jewelry, several books bearing no titles but whose first pages bore the sigil of the Akelarre Guild and finally a pouch of documents. Angharad touched that last with the spoon first, but it did not prove trapped either. She went through the papers then and there, reading them in the light from the hall – it was only a matter of time until Captain Domingo arrived, she must hurry.

The first paper was some sort medical recipe, she set it aside. The second was a formal document with a Rookery stamp serving as a promissory note good at any Watch branch for a significant but not unreasonable sum of money. Navigators were said to get some of the most lucrative contracts. The last however, was finally progress: a formal assignment from the ‘Lesser Committee for the Trebian Northwest’.

Skimming through, Angharad stopped cold when she got to the core of the duties outlined. Namely, assessing Brigadier Chilaca for undue influences. In particular that of the ‘Ivory Library’, an informal Watch research association and correspondence society.

Running in the hall. Time had run out.

“What manner of madness is-”)

Angharad breathed out, emerging from the vision, and frowned at the closed door.

That Captain Domingo had been given that assignment by the roster of officers who effectively ruled Scholomance implied either staggering incompetence on their part or good reason to believe that Domingo Santos was not a member of the Ivory Library. Considering that she was used to competence in the upper ranks of the Watch, if also an unfortunate degree of graft and intrigue, that likely meant Song’s deduction that the Navigator was the traitor was false.

Either Song’s other suspect was the one or the real traitor had gone unnoticed.

Rolling her shoulder, Angharad resumed limping down the hall on her way to breakfast. Now that she had answers, something to hold up as a favor done to Song for all the favors she had received in turn, she was finally comfortable having a conversation she had put off too long. Not that Song had broached the subject since her return either.

The captain of the Thirteenth Brigade was not difficult to find. Now that even Brigadier Chilaca had been forced to admit that sending her back to the palace would be effectively sabotaging the Thirteenth on their yearly test, she had been spending much of her free time looking into Lord Hector Anaidon as a prelude to grabbing him for interrogation. In an hour Song would thus be gone in the wind, but at the moment it was time for breakfast.

That rather simplified finding her.

Angharad limped into the eating hall, easing herself into the seat next to Song – opposite a scowling Maryam begrudging the world having been robbed a longer night’s rest – and leaning in for a whisper.

“Not Santos,” she said. “The Obscure Committee has him watching Chilaca for common interests with Tristan’s… acquaintances.”

Song stilled, then slowly nodded.

“I’ll want a full report,” she whispered back.

“Come up to the roof after breakfast,” Angharad told her.

She then leaned forward, helping herself to the plate of sausages. The Asphodelian seasoning had grown on her and using the vision always left her feeling strangely starved.

--

Angharad liked to oil her sword up here.

The view of the city was stunning, the great panes of the Collegium like a waterfall of glass under the light of the Glare, and it was rare for anyone but Navigators to visit and break the quiet. Hard to eavesdrop, as well, given the open grounds. Truly, the great difficulty of it was Angharad having to make her way up the stairs. These days she was no longer out of breath at the end, her lungs almost returned to her, but the weakness in the legs remained.

Waiting for Song, she lost herself in the work. Hers was an artfully crafted blade and Angharad intended to treat it accordingly. She had replaced her old washing cloth with soft sheepskin leather and now oiled the saber every two days instead of three. It was soothing, running the leather down the span of steel to rub the oil into it. Ritual and functional all at once, keeping the hand and mind busy.

She only looked up the once when she heard the steps, long enough to confirm it was Song sitting down by her side on the bench.

“Tell me everything,” the captain ordered.

It was not a long report. She could have recited the exact text of the Obscure Committee’s assignment, but Song was more interested in the contents than the phrasing.

“Not him, then,” the silver-eyed woman conceded. “I misread Shu Gong.”

“What had you set on Captain Santos, anyhow?” Angharad idly asked.

A moment of silence.

“General lack of conspiratorial acumen,” Song finally said. “Watching her be taken for a ride by every street merchant she encountered had me doubting her as an agent on the ground for the Ivory Library.”

“Likely she isn’t,” Angharad mused. “Their society seems influential, but it is hardly all-powerful – given the importance of the delegation to Asphodel, it may be that she was merely the only member they could get into the roster.”

“The reigning theory, now that Santos is discredited as a suspect,” Song acknowledged, leaning back into her seat. “She will at least be significantly easier to intimidate.”

Sleeping God, she ought to be. If Domingo Santos could kill her repeatedly using nothing but traps, she shuddered to think what he might be like in a genuine fight. Oh, signifiers had their weaknesses – direct Glare, for one, which was why so few rose to prominence in Malan – but there were few things that could strip them of their entire power. It seemed intrinsically bound to them in some way.

Sliding her hand down the blade, Angharad took a long breath and broke what was turning into a comfortable silence.

“Before I left,” she said, “I spoke of a conversation overdue between us.”

A moment passed.

“So you did,” Song acknowledged.

She did not raise her eyes from the blade, but then she hardly needed to. The noblewoman could almost hear Song tense, like an already-taut string being pulled to the edge of the snap.

“What truly happened that night, Song?” Angharad asked.

A silence followed, broken only by the sound of the mirror-dancer smoothing the oiled leather down the length of her saber. There was an odd sort of beauty to an oiled blade, she had always thought. One born as much from the satisfaction of the work as the lustrous tint leant to the steel. Song rose to her feet, by the sound of it folding her arms under her chest.

“What you are really asking,” Song finally said, “is how Isabel Ruesta died.”

Angharad’s fingers clenched, only the prospect of slicing leather onto the sharp blade mastering the twitch.

“Do not put words into my mouth,” she warned. “I asked what I asked, nothing more or less.”

There were things she regretted about the aftermath of that vicious trial, but to this day walking away from the Thirteenth was not one of them. She envied what had formed without her, the thought that she could have been part of it instead, but Angharad also knew better. Things had not simply changed after she left. They had changed in no small part because she left.

Not because she had been so beloved of all – ha! - but because her departure was simply too large a hole for the brigade to keep papering over.

“I shot her,” Song Ren suddenly said.

Angharad sharply breathed in, the hand on her blade stopping as her eyes rose to find a silver gaze shying away from her own. She had not expected so blunt a confession. Or for Song to suddenly turn into the sort of woman flinching away from the consequences of the choices she made. If anything, the Tianxi was prone to the arrogance of believing all the choices were hers to make and thus the consequences equally so.

“That is not the whole of it,” she said. “What else?”

Song hesitated and Angharad felt something cold sliding down her veins, halfway between rage and seawater.

“Oh, but would you just end this?” she bit out. “All of this, these… tiresome plays of half-truths and tricks. What is it you are so afraid of, Song? I will not commit violence on you, you ought to know that, and you have already survived standing low in my esteem.”

The Tianxi’s jaw clenched.

“I do not know if I killed Isabel Ruesta,” Song said.

For half a heartbeat Angharad felt like calling her a liar, but then she parsed through the sentence. The spoken and unspoken. I do not know if ‘I’ killed Isabel Ruesta, that was what was being said. Song had not been the only one trying. And Tupoc’s words were yet fresh in her mind. There had been more than one person up on the stairs before the tower, aiming a musket.

“Ferranda shot her as well,” Angharad whispered in horrified realization.

“A heartbeat before I did,” Song quietly admitted. “I shot through the smoke, so I do not know whose bullet slew her.”

The other woman’s tone was small, as if… Angharad didn’t know as if what. And was not sure she cared, because all she could think about was how it had felt that night, to turn and find Isabel Ruesta dead on the ground. How it had not even occurred to her that they might not all be on the same side when facing hollow cultists attempting to murder them all.

How, in that company surrounding her afterwards, there had been more liars than not.

“You watched me go to Ferranda,” Angharad finally said, tone dangerously mild, “and spoke not a word. Even as I tried to make a place with the Thirty-First you said nothing. Knowing what you just told me all this time, you still said nothing.”

Song’s jaw set.

“I knew Ferranda would not ill-use you,” she said. “That she would take-”

“Am I a child, Song?” Angharad softly asked.

The other woman frowned, then shook her head.

“I-”

“You must believe me a lackwit, then,” Angharad coldly interrupted. “Else why would you ever come under the impression that you should get to make that choice for me?”

Ancestors, she had left the Thirteenth believing it to be poison only to reach for another tainted cup without batting an eye. Made a fool again. And again, when Ferranda then judged her too much trouble and cast her out. And again, when she was forced to return to the Thirteenth a beggar. Every time she thought she saw a clear sky there was a storm in it, a bleak spot of Gloam her eye somehow missed. It was as if all of Vesper was conspiring to prove her the worst kind of fool.

Sleeping God, perhaps she was. She had been led around like one for long enough it might be half a lie to deny it.

“I have done you insult,” Song cast into the silence.

Tone resolute. As if this were a task to approach, a labor to undertake. And that was the droplet that tipped it, really. That Song still thought of this as work. Upkeep for the Thirteenth Brigade, not any kind of relation between the two of them.

“I don’t even care about the insult,” Angharad bleakly replied. “It is the disregard, Song. The… lack of respect.”

She let out a dark laugh.

“You know, even as we parted ways I struggled,” she said. “Because lowered as my esteem of you might have been, there was still respect there – enough to wonder at your reasons, at your choices. You earned that on the Dominion, and I thought I’d earned the same from you.”

Slowly, carefully, she set the saber down on the bench besides her. She itched to make fists, to scream, and though control stayed the impulse the levees would break. All levees did.

“I thought that because you treated me with kindness that meant you were kind,” Angharad said. “Or that because you had lied you were a liar. But you are neither. You were just… taming a horse, weren’t you?”

Neither the carrot nor the stick were a lie, they were just a method. Fool she once again, not to have seen them for what they were.

“Oh, get over yourself.”

The anger in Song’s voice startled her enough that she did not spit out what rested on the edge of her lips. Not until she turned and found Song Ren looking at her with cold anger in those silver eyes – brumal pools, unflinching in the face of her own anger. Good, she thought. Anger, at least, was honest.

“I shot Isabel Ruesta because she had a manipulation contract that she constantly and liberally used on the strongest fighter in our group,” Song harshly said. “I shot Isabel Ruesta because she was a useless parasite who schemed to get rid of other trial-takers and was growing increasingly desperate in her attempts to secure safety at any cost.”

“And you did not think to simply offer that safety instead of murdering her?” Angharad bit back, voice rising.

“No, Angharad, I didn’t volunteer to put my life on the line keeping a mind-altering leech feeling happy,” Song retorted just as loudly. “Mainly, I assume, because unlike you I wasn’t trying to fuck the leech.”

“No, just the Lord Rector of Asphodel,” Angharad scorned.

Song did not bat an eye. Or even acknowledge the hypocrisy.

“Tawang as my witness, but if Ruesta had lived through that I would have still killed her,” Song said. “She was too much of a problem to be allowed to fester.”

“She just wanted to live, Song,” Angharad shouted.

She did not remember getting on her feet, had not noticed before the ache in her knee.

“We all wanted to live!” Song shouted back. “Only either she could not control her contract, which made her a threat, or she would not control her contract – which made her even more of a threat!”

“We were mere days away from Cantica,” Angharad said. “She did not have to die, Song. You just decided that I needed protecting from myself, so you made another choice for me. You wanted a trophy mirror-dancer without attachments you disapproved of.”

She bared her teeth.

“So you shot the attachment.”

Song went red, flushed with anger, and her fists balled.

“Maybe it was not as cleanly tactical a decision as I told it,” she bit out. “I resented her, it’s true, for making a mess of the whole situation. But if you think for a moment I would kill out of resentment alone, then I wonder why you are bothering with this conversation.”

“Because I thought you were my friend,” Angharad hissed. “I thought I had left behind the smiling liars that were using me on the Dominion, only now I find that you were laughing at me the whole time! You never trusted me, Song. Not with any of the secrets you told Maryam, or even Tristan – who even when you looked at him like filth on your boots, you still treated like a man who made his own fucking choices.”

Her breathing was ragged, her hands trembling.

“This entire time, the secrets I have kept have been eating me up,” Angharad raged. “And I blamed myself, I blamed Tristan for being who the world made him into and Maryam for how I could not look her in the eye without seeing my home burning writ a thousand times – but, Ancestors, I looked everywhere but the right place.”

Even through red fury she laughed, the sound ripped right out of her throat like a sob with teeth.

“Sleeping God, Song, the poison was you the whole time.”

But not Song alone. Even with the rage in her blood, she remembered that. And she was so tired of it, the lies and the deception. Let it end. Let it be made clean.

“The Lefthand House is leveraging me,” she said, “like the Yellow Earth is you. They claim my father lived, that he is being held in Tintavel and only they can help me get him out.”

She shook her head.

“They are lying, I expect,” Angharad admitted out loud for the first time. “If not about his survival, then about helping me. But I will give them what they want anyway.”

Because it might be the truth. Because the hope was better than nothing, even if it was a fool’s hope.

“What did they ask?” Song quietly said.

She snorted.

“In what mad world do I trust you enough to answer that?” Angharad replied.

Like a forest fire, the rage had swept through her and left little behind. Ashes, exhaustion, the sense that something beautiful had been snatched away forever. She just felt tired now, too old in a too-broken body and a world that could not seem to croak out a truth no matter how hard you squeezed it demanding one. Song breathed out, smoothed her hands down her sides.

“I have been arrogant,” she said. “And you…”

The Tianxi licked her lips.

“You’re right,” Song said. “I had no right to decide for you. I should have told you everything from the start.”

That was not nothing. And Song had not lied to her, not outright. But the words were so very late in the telling.

“If you had told me that before we reached Scholomance, fool me, I might well have forgiven you,” Angharad bitterly said. “But you sat on it for months. Watched me make a fool of myself with Villazur, halfway kill myself in a layer achieving nothing.”

She clenched her fist.

“Would it have been so hard,” Angharad asked in an all too brittle voice, “to fight for me like you did the others?”

There was no apology in that silver gaze.

“I fought the battles I believed I could win,” Song quietly replied. “You were not one of them.”

The Tianxi passed a hand through her hair.

“It was not a kindness on either of us, for you to be forced back to the Thirteenth,” she said. “We were… you looked happier, when you lived with the Thirty-First.”

“That cottage felt like a prison,” Angharad bleakly said. “It was relief to leave it. But that relief was a lie.”

Song said nothing for a while, then breathed out.

“I won’t ask you to forgive me.”

That is what people say, Angharad thought, when they want you to forgive them anyway.

“You don’t forgive a wound,” she simply replied. “It heals or it kills you.”

She turned, snatched up her blade from the bench and sheathed it.

“I have work to do,” Angharad said. “A meeting to arrange with Lord Gule. It would be best if we did not speak beyond the necessary for a time, I think.”

Song silently nodded. Angharad belted her saber and took her walking stick, beginning the winding path down the stairs. She left Song to drown in that silence, alone on the roof. And though that talk had been a wretched thing – left a scar of disappointment where she had thought the skin too rough for scarring – some part of her felt lighter for it.

A little less like a wolf and a little more like Angharad Tredegar.

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