Angharad clutched her saber as she strode out of the hospital.

Her knuckles all but turned white around the grip. The noblewoman’s teeth were clenched, her back straight and she ignored the smiling man by the door as she exited into the red-and-gold Orrery lights. It would have been simpler to simply be angry, but it was not so simple as that.

Well, Maryam being boorish was but not the rest.

Angharad marched past the guards and the pavement, hewing close to the dock wall as she chewed on the thorns she was being made to swallow. Song Ren had not, by words exact, broken with honor when killing Isabel Ruesta. The truce had been implicit, not sworn to, and though killing one fighting on the same side during a battle was reprehensible it was not necessarily dishonorable. There were precedents, if one cared to look for them.

On the other hand, Song had shot her own ally to death. It would be just and honorable for Angharad to kill her for that.

Only that was not whole of the matter either, was it? Weighing on the balance was that Song Ren had saved her life on more than one occasion, fought for Angharad’s safety and offered her a place at Scholomance. By principles alone this should change nothing, but… The Pereduri tugged up the collar of her coat and headed eastwards, along the shore.

She was not Queen Branwen, so embodying honor that she would keep rising from the dead so long as she never sullied it. It changed things some, their history. Song was not some cackling oathbreaker gone pirate, she was a respectable woman who had saved Angharad’s life on more than one occasion. The balance of duty and debt here was as a weathervane.

If she had said anything, explained herself… No, that might have been worse. Another secret being kept behind her back, known to all the Thirteenth save her. More smiles at her expense. The only certainty in all this was that Angharad could not remain under the command of Isabel Ruesta’s killer, so on that much she had acted.

To simply walk out of the Thirteenth tonight would punish more than Song, and neither Tristan nor Maryam – despite the latter’s best efforts – deserved it, so waiting in name until the end of the month was an acceptable compromise. The breach in honor would have been if she continued taking orders from Song, not by dint of some paper still deeming her subordinate to the Tianxi.

Chewing on her own anger, she looked up and realized she had no idea where she was. Near the docks, by the look of the wall, but she must have walked past the greater length of them without realizing it. Best turn back now, she figured, and cut north.

Angharad strode through the gutted remains of an old warehouse, gait still weighed with anger. The bones of the ruin allowed through stripes of golden light, like precious ribs painted on the ground. Only when she reached the doorway did she catch a snippet from the distant din of the Triangle. Her steps slowed to a halt, Angharad stopping before a long-empty doorway. She hesitated, as if stepping through would be a gesture of any meaning at all, and breathed in.

Her thoughts circled like vultures, each eager to tear off a stripe.

“Acts undertaken on the Dominion are under amnesty,” Angharad reminded the dark, and herself. “Song has not committed a crime.”

She was allowed to be angry over it, but only so much. The line had been walked and the Watch – who now carried her honor, as she carried the Watch’s – had deemed Song’s action no crime. Her fingers tightened around her uncle’s saber until the leather creaked.

It was a silly, foolish thing to feel betrayed. She hardly knew Song, for all the favor the other woman had shown her. Angharad had thought she learned a lesson on trust from the Dominion, but evidently she had not learned it whole. The details had all been there for her to put together, if she cared to look, but she had never thought to suspect Song at all. Because it meant suspicion of someone she respected.

It stung, the implication that she had not been respected back.

“Angharad?”

She was startled enough she almost drew her blade, turning to see a familiar face peeking through the doorway on the other side of the warehouse . Zenzele Duma, a bag tucked away against the belt tightening his regular uniform, looked as surprised to see her as she was him.

“Zenzele,” she replied, then remembered her manners. “Well met.”

“And you,” he said. “I thought you went to visit Song.”

“I just left the hospital,” she stiffly replied.

That mismatched gaze studied her a moment. He was all too seeing, for a man with only one true eye.

“And now you look fit to chew nails,” he observed. “Where are you headed?”

She looked away, the anger that had been in her bones melting away under scrutiny. It left little but weariness behind.

“Back to the Rainsparrow, I think,” Angharad exhaled.

“You might find that a slow trip,” he casually said. “There is something of a ruckus in the Triangle at the moment and the garrison is out in force. Some robbery went wrong and an officer was assaulted.”

Her brow rose. Ill news. She had thought Tolomontera largely free of crime, to the extent that Tristan’s petty thievery might represent a significant portion of what took place.

“Roadblocks?” she asked.

“Only inspections for now, but the lines for them are long,” he said. “If you have nothing better to do, you could accompany me in taking care of this. It will some time until it calms down, at least.”

He patted the bag at his side.

“And what is it ‘this’?” she asked, cocking an eyebrow.

He slid out the bag and tossed it her way. Snatching it out of the air, she pulled open the ropes just enough to get a look inside. She paused, unsure how to react.

“Breadcrumbs?” she finally asked.

He laughed.

“Come,” Zenzele said. “I’ll show you.”

--

It was not a long walk to their destination, just a few minutes eastward past the docks into a part of Allazei that the Watch had not judged fit to rebuild: row after row of ruins, reclaimed by nature’s greedy claws.

There was nothing obviously different about the house Zenzele led them into. The middle of the roof had collapsed, allowing through Orrery light, and nature swallowed most of what lay within. Tiles were covered with earth, weeds and thick moss while flowering vines covered the walls and what had once been the hearth now jutted out of a shallow pond like it was a decorative statue.

Zenzele’s reasons for carrying a sack of breadcrumbs were finally revealed: there was a family of ducks splashing about.

Bodied in a shade of ruddy brown with a black tail and a black head, the latter with a thick white stripe, they let out trills ending in an almost comical dry squawk as they welcomed their patron’s arrival. A repeat performance, was it? There were four ducklings with the adults, little balls of ruddy fuzz with two yellowish strips near the bill that made them look like pastry puffs. Their squeaks were high-pitched as they paddled about.

“That is dangerously adorable,” Angharad conceded.

Zenzele chuckled and guided her to a bench by the pond that, by the vine scars on it, had been stolen back from nature and cleaned off before being plopped down there. They sat and the Malani put down the bag between them, leaving the strings open. He threw the first handful, the ducklings racing each other to the shore and pushing each other off in their eagerness to feed.

“Do you happen to know the breed?” she asked.

“Alas, my knowledge of Lierganen ducks is sparse,” Zenzele confessed. “I can tell you that they disdain peanuts and love breadcrumbs, but little more.”

Angharad threw a handful of crumbs at the starvelings, which convinced one of the parents to make shore and peck at the mud. Though the entire affair was somewhat noisy, it did not feel like an imposition on the senses – more like being at a festival than a small, cramped room in a cottage while everyone emptied sacs of venom.

They kept feeding the ducks handful after handful, until the mother tried to slide her beak into the bag and Zenzele laughingly withdrew it out of her reach. This was, the duck swiftly conveyed, outrageous and unacceptable. She only realized how much she had been grinning when her cheeks began to ache.

“Thank you,” Angharad spoke out of the blue. “This was… not what I expected, but no less welcome for it.”

“I find the little joys in life to be most effective, when distracting yourself from the great sorrows,” Zenzele said, eyes on the ducks.

The mother, displeased at the lack of success delivered by her cacophonous campaigning, returned to the water to brood while the ducklings continued to beg for crumbs. The pair provided, one after the other. Zenzele Duma asked nothing, which Angharad thought was why she was tempted to talk. Had he asked, it would have felt like an interrogation. This felt like the opposite.

“I have decided to leave the Thirteenth,” she said.

He did not glance her way, instead nudging back a too-adventurous duckling with his boot. It squeaked in protest.

“May I ask why?”

She hesitated. The urge was there to simply tell him everything, but there would be a line there. Song had never outright confessed, which would make laying Isabel’s death at her feet supposition stated as fact. Too close to a lie for comfort.

“Song acted in a way I cannot condone,” Angharad finally said. “I do not wish to remain under her command.”

Zenzele hummed. He took his time answering.

“It is different from what we were taught, the Watch,” he said. “The duty is respectable, but the rooks themselves are not always deserving of such esteem.”

“There has been more corruption and venality than I expected,” Angharad murmured. “Much more, to be frank. I pledged an oath, and that will not change, but…”

“It is disappointing in some ways,” Zenzele finished, then waited a beat. “I once had a conversation not so dissimilar with my older brother, back in Malan, when he was on leave from the royal army.”

Zenzele Duma, she recalled, was the third-born of five. She had not known if those siblings were brothers or sisters, never thought to ask.

“He found corruption in the royal army?” Angharad frowned. “But they are…”

She gestured vaguely, but he understood her fine.

“The High Queen’s own blades, yes,” the nobleman said. “It seemed absurd to him that soldiers fighting under Her Perpetual Majesty’s own banner would lessen themselves in such a way. But he brought home tales of graft and bribery, of beatings and cliques.”

The dark-skinned man tossed the ducks a few breadcrumbs.

“Where there is coin there is malfeasance,” Zenzele said. “It was this way before the High Queen bound the Isles together and will remain so until the Sleeping God wakes. I think it wiser to look instead at what an assembly of men is meant to accomplish and judge them by whether they fall short of that.”

Angharad, for the barest of heartbeats, was reminded of society evenings in the Middle Isle. How the nobly born could have two conversations while speaking only one set of words, meanings behind meanings. Only Zenzele was not trying to corner her, to convey some sort of threat or boast, but was… extending a hand, using the same ways. Allowing her to choose whether she wanted to read into what he had said, matching the meaning to her parting of ways with Song.

Angharad looked at Zenzele Duma and thought she might be beginning to understand what the diplomats of the Watch had seen in him.

“It was not a crime, or strictly speaking a failing as a captain,” Angharad acknowledged. “The matter is a private one. Not something I can compromise over.”

If she did not draw the line at murdering an ally, where would she draw it?

“Trust is the foundation of a cabal,” Zenzele said. “Once that is gone, there is little left to hold it together.”

And the Thirteenth, she thought, had precious little of it to go around.

“It has been frustrating,” Angharad said, the words slipping out by themselves. “All of it. Ancestors, I cannot believe I am about to say this but Tristan has been the most dependable of the lot.”

The known thief who dabbled with poisons.

“Abrascal can be relied on to be Abrascal,” the Malani snorted. “That is to say, a man I would trust to keep his word but not leave unattended around the nice cutlery.”

“I did not realize it at first, but I believe he stole that cloak Maryam wears everywhere,” Angharad said. “She outright told me, too, only she made it sound like a jest.”

‘At that price it was a robbery’, indeed. It had taken Angharad much too long to put that one together, but she eventually had. And would have earlier, had it not been Maryam speaking the words. Angharad been too disinclined to question the rare spot of amiability to- she breathed in, breathed out. She reached for the bag and fed the ducks.

“I have not been getting along with Maryam,” she admitted once she felt calm again.

“You are from a famous sailing family and she is Triglau,” Zenzele said. “Cordiality, I imagine, must already feel like a concession on her end.”

“One she has not always been in the mood to make,” Angharad darkly said.

She clenched her fingers.

“Yet I have also given her offense, as was made plain to me,” the Pereduri admitted. “I have since been at a loss as how to balance these affairs.”

A pause.

“She is Izvorica, not Triglau,” she added. “A people within the greater region, as I understand it.”

Zenzele inclined his head in acknowledgement.

“I know precious little of the northern lands save what I learned at the isikole, which I expect differs from her own knowledge,” he said. “Still, it can be said Malan has been at war with her people for the better part of a century. Those are not easy waters to navigate.”

She slid a look his way.

“But.”

“It is a mistake to attempt to navigate these waters at all,” Zenzele frankly said. “Neither of us have answer to give to the ills that were inflicted on the – Izvorica?”

Angharad nodded.

“Izvorica,” he repeated. “Conquest is ugly business, Angharad, and while war need not be evil it always carries the seeds of evil within it. A woman who saw that darkness unleashed on her people argues not about rights and lines on a map but against the blood and screams of her kin.”

He paused.

“There is no good outcome to speaking of the subjugation of the northern lands with Maryam Khaimov,” Zenzele said. “The first lesson our teacher in the diplomatic arts taught us was that the conversations you choose not to have are just as important as those you do.”

“That is not unwise, for someone who sees her only on occasion,” Angharad evenly said. “However, she and I lived under the same roof.”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

And it was not as if she had gone out of her way to discuss the colonies, or even the Izvorica for that matter.

“The second lesson,” Zenzele gently said, “was that diplomacy is an exercise of trust. That it takes time. If there are no ties between nations when they are away from the negotiating table, a treaty becomes nothing more than an elaborate rag.”

“So it was my fault,” Angharad frowned.

Not what she wanted to hear, but coming from Zenzele Duma it was an opinion she was bound to consider.

“To think it terms of fault is a dead end,” he replied. “Different actions – from her as well as from you – might have resulted in a better relation. This did not happen. Pointing fingers does nothing to change this outcome.”

A pause.

“Decide what you want, what you are willing to give for it and what steps might best deliver that end,” Zenzele said. “The rest is distractions.”

“That does not sound like the way Malan practices diplomacy,” Angharad noted.

“It is not,” he said. “But I find that the Watch’s approach has a certain… pragmatic clarity to it that refreshing to practice.”

Angharad leaned forward, elbows on her knees, and let her gaze trail across the jostling ducklings. What did she want? Searching herself, she found the answer to be shallow. Politeness was rather the extent of it. She did not particularly want to befriend Maryam, who must have qualities but had shown Angharad little save sourness. The Pereduri had no real taste for sailing those ‘difficult waters’ again, and it was somewhat relieving to grasp did she not have to.

Maryam was not some ghost haunting her, she was entirely avoidable and they would both find their days lighter for it. The Thirteenth was not a cage, the door had been open the whole time. She had simply lacked the willingness to walk out.

“Were I to make inquiries with Ferranda,” she began.

“Yes,” Zenzele cut in, then leaned back. “You have been as a cabalist to us these last few days, anyhow.”

That too-sharp gaze lingered.

“But you will not be staying with us, will you?”

She felt a little uncomfortable at being caught out before she could say it, but she would not lie.

“Is it really a fresh start, if I merely move from one group of Dominion survivors from another?” she quietly asked.

“It could be,” he said. “But I would not blame you for choosing something I considered myself.”

She started in surprise, turning to watch his face. It was calm, but there was a tightness around the eyes.

“I had no idea,” Angharad said. “The three of you seemed so close on the Dominion, I assumed…”

“It was grief that pulled us together,” Zenzele quietly said. “I wondered, for a time, whether it was truly wise to embrace such a thing. If to begin anew with strangers would not be better.”

“Yet you decided against it,” she said.

He breathed out.

“I chose to believe there was more than grief to the ties that bound us,” Zenzele said. “That once it began to thin there would be something beneath.”

“And?”

“And I was right,” he said. “There was more to it. In some ways I regret that I will never learn who I would be away from them, Angharad, but then I suspect had I left I would we facing another set of regrets.”

He shrugged.

“Every choice carries its burdens, that is why the Sleeping God gifted us lives enough to learn from our mistakes. Paradise is earned piecemeal.”

“Redeemer talk,” she teased. “Does buying pork over beef bring you closer to eternal life as well?”

“Ugh, Universalists,” he snorted. “If my faith disqualifies, shall I find you a raised stone to ask advice from instead? I can even pretend the wind is forming words.”

“Alas, I shall have to settle for you and the ducks,” Angharad solemnly replied.

They traded grins and the conversation gave away to a comfortable silence, the ducks gorging on breadcrumbs until they tired of the meal and waddled back into the pond.

“Thank you,” she said again.

She felt him shrug at her side.

“What are friends for?” Zenzele asked.

She straightened, came to a decision.

“I would stay with the Thirty-First for a few months, at least,” she said. “Possibly the end of the year.”

“Ferranda will be pleased,” he simply replied. “You could sleep under her roof tonight, if you want to leave that awful room at the Rainsparrow behind.”

Angharad rose to her feet.

“Not tonight,” she said. “I have one last matter to deal with, I think, before I can face her and make the request.”

It was time to take up Imani Langa on that invitation to visit her. If Angharad was to break with the past, she would leave it half-done.

--

Angharad had considered the Rainsparrow Hostel a fine enough establishment, if somewhat unkempt, but she could now see why Song had been so eager to lodge at the Emerald Vaults instead: it had all the comforts of a lavish country manor.

Most of the rooms were individual, save the suites on the third level, and after asking directions at the front Angharad found herself padding past plush carpets and elegant Cathayan paintings. Tempted as she was to slow her steps and admire the masterful ink work – only Saimha portraits were held in higher esteem, back home – she had come to the Vault for a reason.

The attendant in front had confirmed that Imani was present, so now all that was left was to finish crossing the hall to the door marked with a nine in imperial numerals. That and quietly envy how the smallest room she had seen at the Vaults was easily ten times the size of the glorified closet she currently lived in.

Angharad breathed in, tugged her coat into place - idly wishing she had polished the buttons that morning - before rapping her knuckles against the door. Once, twice, thrice. There was the sound of movement on the other side, a muffled word that might have been ‘coming’ in Antigua and after a few heartbeats the door was cracked open. Only so much, the latch still in place as dark eyes peered through the opening.

“Angharad,” Imani Langa smiled, ivory on red. “What a pleasant surprise! Allow me a moment.”

The door closed, the latch slid and this time when it opened it was all the way. Angharad stepped back and out of the way, then froze at the sight revealed. Imani was dressed for bed, in a faded red sleeveless garment whose intricate beadwork neckline dipped generously. The hem ended above her knees and it hung on Imani’s frame unbelted but given the spy’s shapeliness there was nothing loose about it.

Angharad dragged her gaze up from smooth dark thighs, ignoring the smirk on the other woman’s face.

“Do come in,” Imani said. “The hall is cold.”

Angharad chose not to consider how her underclothes must be, not to show below the night garment, however intriguing that thought. I came unannounced, the Pereduri told herself. She did not dress for seduction. Not that Imani was at all unaware of the effect the sight of her in that night dress would have, by the sway of her hips as she headed into the room. Angharad remembered to close the door after a heartbeat. The noblewoman rested her hand on her saber, gathered herself.

She had not come here to play bedroom games.

The inside was spacious, a wooden partition draped in silks dividing the bedroom from a small salon and writing desk. Imani grabbed a blanket from the green sofa, wrapping it around herself before sitting and inviting Angharad to do the same on the seat across the table. Stiffly, the noblewoman did so. It did not seem a coincidence that while Imani had artfully wrapped the blanket as to hide much of her legs, it left her generous neckline entirely on display. Enticing as the sight was, it also stirred an ember of irritation.

Did Angharad seem so empty-headed that a pretty pair and a coy smile would be enough to make a fool of her?

Her jaw locked. Such flirting felt almost like a slight, now that she put it up against the reason for her visit. Imani leaned forward, grabbing from an elegant plate a long wooden pipe and a satchel of tobacco. There was a second pipe and Imani raised a questioning eyebrow.

“I do not partake,” Angharad replied.

Father had strongly disapproved of the habit, to the extent he had weaned Mother off it before she was born.

“Back in the Isles it is now the fashion to wrap tobacco as they do in the colonies, but I prefer the Izcalli way,” Imani said as she filled the pipe. “The desert sage eases the smell.”

The spy deftly cracked a match and lit her pipe, breathing in with a pleased sigh and blowing out a small circle of smoke. Angharad wrinkled her nose – it was not so bad as the tobacco sailors liked, she would admit, but the sage only helped so much.

“I am pleased you came to visit,” Imani smiled.

It was an inviting sight, the kind inviting gallant banter, the Pereduri let it slide over her.

“You told me,” Angharad bluntly replied, “that a prisoner was taken at Llanw Hall. By whom?”

“The hired swords that burned your manor, at first,” she replied. “Though they have since been moved to the property of an induna.”

Angharad’s fists clenched, but she welcomed the anger. There was no room for distraction in her while it burned.

“What is it exactly that you offer in exchange for retrieving this ‘object’ and delivering it to you?” she asked.

Imani pulled at her pipe, blew out a long stream of pale smoke.

“The Lefthand House is not well positioned to arrange an escape,” she said. “It could, however, pass a message and provide thorough information about where that prisoner is being held.”

The spy smiled languidly.

“As a gesture of goodwill, should you swear to undertake this task for us I will reveal the identity of the prisoner.”

Angharad fought down the urge to be grateful. Giving out something you first chose to withhold was not charity, it was a trick. Knowing she was being played did not make the choice any less tempting, however.

“For all I know, they grabbed a servant and that is the nothing you dangle before me now,” she said.

She was the lady of Llanw Hall now, so securing the release of a servant would be her duty just the same, but there was duty and then there was blood.

“Would a servant be worth keeping imprisoned?” Imani asked.

The Pereduri did not answer, so eventually the spy sighed.

“The prisoner is related to you by blood,” she said. “I have nothing more to say on the matter before oaths are taken.”

Angharad’s stomach clenched. Who? She had not seen her cousins die, or Uncle Arwel for that matter. They had been in the manor when it burned, so she had long assumed, but… She breathed in, reached for calm, but like sand it kept slipping through her fingers. Because she had not seen her father die either, in truth.

He had gone to lead away their pursuers after sending her down the secret passage, but while she had heard a shot she had not seen him die. No, that is a fool’s hope, she chided herself. It must be Uncle Arwel or one of the boys.

“This object, what is it?” she asked.

“Important enough I will not name it before assurances are made,” Imani said.

Angharad’s lips thinned.

“You claim it is the High Queen’s property,” she said. “What would it be doing on Tolomontera, then? She has never laid claim to these lands.”

“I claimed it is her rightful property,” Imani corrected. “As the Watch was involved in a mishap that happened to one such artifact, it is only proper that a replacement be obtained from its holdings.”

“Clever words,” Angharad flatly said, “but they make a thin veil to drape over theft.”

The spy smiled.

“If it is any balm to your Pereduri soul, the object in question would be laid claim to by the Watch in principle but it is not in their physical possession,” she said.

To Angharad’s disgruntlement, that did help.

“And should I be caught delivering it to you,” she began.

“Death,” Imani seriously replied. “After a very unpleasant evening in the hands of the Masks, I expect.”

Angharad studied her and found no trace of a lie on that face. This was not, then, a small matter.

“There is an issue,” she said.

Imani pulled at her pipe, breathed out the smoke.

“I am all ears, Angharad.”

She struggled to find a polite way to phrase it, then gave up the struggle after a minute.

“You are of the Lefthand House,” she bluntly said. “You uphold the honor of the High Queen, not your own. How can I trust your word?”

The ufudu could lie, break the laws of hospitality and act without honor so long as such deeds were in the service of Malan. By entering the Lefthand House they became the fingers of the Queen Perpetual’s left hand, no longer individuals of their own. It was a great sacrifice, if not one Angharad could speak of with admiration.

“You cannot,” Imani Langa candidly replied. “Were my queen to demand it, I would betray you without hesitation. Instead I will say this: if Her Majesty had wanted House Tredegar unmade, she would not have sent hired swords in the night. She would have cast down your mother in open court, before the eyes of all Malan, and ordered your deaths. None would have questioned it.”

Angharad’s jaw clenched, but she did not deny the words. The High Queen had been her mother’s patron at court, and not one of the izinduna would have spoken up for Rhiannon Tredegar had her sponsor turned against her. She had remained out of factions, so while she may have lacked enemies she had lacked protectors as well.

The High Queen’s favor had been her sole lifeline.

“House Tredegar’s fall was not her doing and she was not pleased by it,” Imani said. “The accusations brought before the court forced her hand in striking your line from the rolls of nobility, but she chose not to pursue the matter any further.”

“That is no balm to me,” Angharad coldly said, “when it was I was then pursued while my kin’s murderers ran free.”

“You underestimate the worth of that restraint,” Imani replied. “House Madoc was not so subtle in smuggling you south as they – or you – believed. You would never have stepped onto that ship in Asithule had the Lefthand House not been instructed to allow it.”

Angharad stilled. Nobles upriver from the Tredegar, the Madocs had been where her father sent her to flee – they owed him a debt, and while reluctant had discreetly taken her down the southeast roads to Asithule, near the border with the Middle Isle. She had thought their part in her escape unknown. Angharad breathed out, straightened her back.

Even if the Madocs were made to pay for their help, she was in no position to lend aid.

“Let us assume I believe the High Queen means me no ill,” Angharad said. “How am I to know that, having undertaken this task for you, you would not then hold it over my head and ask me to undertake further tasks?”

Dishonor compounded, after all. Once you had darkened a finger, the hand would always follow.

“Because I will be leaving with the object,” Imani said. “A death will be arranged for me and I will disappear. This task is the entire reason I was sent to Tolomontera.”

“And the Watch does not suspect you?” she frowned.

“No doubt I am on a list,” she shrugged. “But my name will be one of many, Angharad. Dozens of our year are spies or close enough to it there is hardly a difference – not only for the great powers, but for factions within the Watch itself. Something as momentous as the reopening of Scholomance drew many eyes from across Vesper.”

Imani light tapped the shaft of the pipe.

“Should I begin to act suspiciously I would earn greater scrutiny, but that is why we are having this conversation to begin with. You will not be watched so closely.”

Because Angharad’s connections in the Watch – her uncle, sailing for this very port – made her an unlikely suspect. The Pereduri’s fingers clenched. She let Imani pull at her pipe while she closed her eyes and thought.

She did not want to do this.

She wanted to shed all ties and complications, to make a fresh start with souls she could trust. Yet the thought of leaving her cousins behind, or her uncle… She did not know what use their jailers would have for them, but it must be vile. And the hard truth was that, when Angharad returned to take vengeance on the killer of her house, she could not afford to have the High Queen’s enmity.

Naming House Madoc and where she had taken the ship that led her out of Malan had been a warning in more ways than one. In the Kingdom of Malan, the ufudu saw much. If they were her foes, how many steps would she make it past the shore before she was grabbed?

Angharad could still remember the begging. She knew, in her mind, that it had not been real. That Scholomance had played a trick on her mind, that it had not truly been Uncle Arwel pleading a little longer, just give her a little longer. she will come for me, I know she… It had not truly been her cousins screaming, either.

But that did not mean they weren’t out there, screaming in the real world.

Did she even have a choice?

In the end, it was not that the words had truly marked her. They had not. It as how freshly they’d been said that brought them back to mind. Decide what you want, Zenzele had said, what you are willing to give for it and what steps might best deliver that end. How desperately she wanted not to do this, and… And the door of the cage was open once more, wasn’t it?

Imani claimed the High Queen wished her no ill, so why should the Lefthand House hunt her should she refuse this? Even if she learned of where her kin was held, it would be years before she could do anything about it. There was time to win the right to that information, ways to do it without bending her oaths to the Watch so much they cracked. She was not so cornered as Imani wanted her to think.

Angharad opened her eyes.

“No,” she said.

Imani studied her through her lashes, set down the pipe.

“No?”

“Did I perhaps stutter?” Angharad mildly asked.

The spy laughed.

“It is not often,” Imani said, “that people surprise me.”

“It sounds like an unpleasant way to live,” she replied.

Stiffly, she rose to her feet.

“I believe we are done here.”

The other woman idly stretched.

“You called me ufudu, a turtle, when we first met,” Imani said. “Do you know where the sobriquet comes from?”

Angharad frowned.

“The symbol of the Lefthand House is the shell of a helmet turtle,” she said. “Or so goes the story.”

It was not considered a flattering nickname because the helmeted turtle was a creature known for tucking in its head pretending it was not there when larger beasts came close. So did the Lefthand House, the joke went.

“So it is,” Imani said. “I wondered, as a girl, while the House chose such an emblem. Why not a cheetah, a caracal, or even an owl!”

“I imagine there is a reason,” Angharad politely replied.

“There is,” she said. “You see, helmeted turtles are sought out by great beasts because they will eat ticks and flies off them.”

The Pereduri blinked, waiting for something more, but that appeared to be it.

“Enlightening,” she said.

“Yes,” Imani said. “It was. Our duty is not handsome or pleasant, Angharad. We eat filth so that Malan might remain clean.”

She sighed.

“And sometimes that means doing unpleasant things to people who do not deserve them.”

She leaned forward, pulling up the plate with the pipe on it, and withdrew a small pile of papers. She laid them down facing Angharad, who glanced at them with a frown. And felt the breath steal out of her lungs as if she had been struck. The first paper was not covered by words but by a sketch. A man, tired and sallow-faced. Missing an arm.

Angharad would have recognized him even if there was but a finger left.

“My father,” she croaked out. “They have my father.”

“He has been moved to Tintavel,” Imani said.

Her head whipped back up to the spy.

“The prison-fortress,” she said. “The one that belongs to House Cadogan?”

Imani nodded. Sleeping God, what madness was this? The Cadogan were one of the most powerful houses in Peredur, the Tredegar had been so utterly beneath their attention none of them should even know the name.

“That,” Angharad began, then swallowed.

“The most impenetrable prison in all Malan,” the other woman calmly said. “And not somewhere the Watch will ever be able to help you reach. Even the Lefthand House has only been able to secure a foothold after many years and great sacrifices.”

Her fists clenched.

“You knew,” she accused. “You knew from the start there was no real choice. That I must either aid you or let my father die in a cold damp cell in fucking Tintavel.”

“I am a finger of the left hand,” Imani said. “I can be caught by surprise, Angharad.”

She smiled ruefully.

“But never unprepared.”

Angharad stared down at her, fingers clenched. She had neither drunk nor eaten inside the room. She was not, some might say, bound by guest right. But what would it really accomplish, to send her head tumbling on the carpet? The Watch would pat her on the back, but it would not force entry into the Black Mountain for such a small deed.

She could almost hear the cage’s door closing.

“I will need you to speak the words,” Imani gently said.

She breathed in. Breathed out.

“So long as the object is not a person, I swear to retrieve it for you,” Angharad forced out.

Imani did not smile in triumph, which was for the best. The noblewoman’s temper might have cut through her restraint if she had. After one last draw from the pipe, she set it down by the empty one.

“What do you know of the provenance of devils?” Imani Langa asked.

Angharad scowled.

“I was given to understand they come from the aether,” she said. “Not unlike spirits.”

“That is not untrue,” the spy noted. “Devils are an abomination under the Sleeping God because, unlike all other things, they were not crafted by His hand. They are an ancient evil from the First Empire, forced into existence by devices called Infernal Forges.”

Angharad grimaced in disgust.

“A foul thing.”

Neither Redeemers nor Universalists tolerated devils, but she had not thought the reasons given why were quite so literal.

“It is, but to keep Lucifer’s legions away from our shores it is necessary to learn what we can from such devices,” Imani said. “Such work was underway, but when the Infernal Forge in Malan’s possession was destroyed the studies stalled. It is the High Queen’s will that such an artifact be retrieved so that the work might resume.”

“I cannot imagine such a dangerous object would be under anything but heavy guard,” Angharad flatly said.

“It would be, if the Watch had it in its possession,” Imani mused. “It does not. Lucifer brought one when he made of this island his seat, you see, but when Tolomontera was invaded by the Watch it is said that the Morningstar cast it out of their reach in an act of spite. That he threw it into the aether.”

Angharad blinked.

“I cannot tread the aether,” she slowly said.

“Not the Empty Sea itself, no,” Imani agreed. “But the slaughter of that night left a mark, Angharad.”

And now it came together.

“The layer,” she said. “The Witching Hour.”

“Yes,” Imani said. “Though we cannot be sure it still dwells there. It is entirely possible that the Infernal Forge drifted into another layer over the years.”

The spy folded her hands over her knees.

“I have some further details to share with you, but only one that truly matters tonight,” Imani said.

“What now?” Angharad tiredly said. “Will you dig up the ashes of my cousin to desecrate if I displease you?”

The dark-eyed woman did not smile.

“You only have until the end of the year to get it,” Imani Langa said. “After that, our offer is withdrawn.”