Chapter 56 (Patreon)

The Fall of Techantli was a ship in the same sense that a hole in the ground was a house.

It was a single-masted cog, broad and low-lying in the water, and it was a miracle that the thing still floated. No part of it was younger than a decade old, the hull had enough seaweed and barnacles hanging off they should count as extra cargo and the mast kept creaking like a dying man. Even the sail looked wan, like it’d not been properly dyed and then left out too long in the Glare.

It had been a blessed thing that Tristan was able to get around scaling the side of the ship to get in, because the cog was unarmed and without gunports getting into that hold would have been... tricky. The Fall ran a light crew by the standards of cogs, but that was still thirty-odd people on a ship was that was basically a deck, a hold and a mast. Not a lot of room for a Mask to hide, not from that many eyes.

Fortunately, Tristan had been provided with another way to enter the ship: as cargo. The thief shifted around in his sheath of rotten cabbage, pressing his ear against the side of the crate. It’d been more than five minutes since he had heard noise, it’d be time to make his move soon. Still, he was in no hurry. The smell was unpleasant but still a notch above what the Sacromonte canals smelled like in the summer, when sections were closed off and made to dry in the Glare so the bottom could be scraped clean.

Even the rats ran from that.

After another minute of patience, the thief reached for his tools. Shifting around the stinking cabbage, he wedged in the small crowbar and softly popped open the top of the crate. It was easy work, as the nails had been weakened when the cog’s sailors opened it to inspect the insides of the crate earlier – they were mandate by contract to take cargo from the patrol ship if needed, but not to take it blindly.

Hence the rotten cabbage. No sailor from the Fall had been inclined to do more than rummage around the top layer of that.

When Tristan first heard that Colonel Azocar suspected that Cao’s secret papers were on the Fall of Techantli, after cursing himself for not even considering the possibility of them being on a shup his following thought was a puzzled one: why didn’t Azocar just order that ship searched?

The answer to that proved, as was often the case with the Watch, both straightforward and complicated. Simply put? The ship in question, the Fall of Techantli, wasn’t actually under the authority of Colonel Azocar. It belonged to the Trebian Northwest regional command based on Lucierna, under Marshal Camaron. While the Tolomontera garrison did include two carracks, a barque and five galleasses, these were patrol ships meant to keep the island safe and prevent other ships landing.

How, then, did food and goods come to Port Allazei? The island was hardly self-sufficient. The answer was a flotilla of supply ships, and who those answered to was... messy. In theory the Conclave was the supreme authority over Tolomontera, but it had delegated this to the Obscure Committee. Said committee, however did not hold a military command. Their role was administrative. What the Obscure Committee did have was the right to pull on Watch resources, paying for them out of the budged assigned by the Conclave, and that was where the mess began.

A majority of Allazei’s supply ships came from the Garrison, but not all from the same part. A chunk was from the Merchant Fleet, another the Western Fleet and then there were barges and cogs from Lucierna. Together these made up about two thirds of the Tolomontera shipping, with the remaining third coming from Free Companies and auxiliaries contracted to fill in specific gaps. All of these ships were contracted with the Obscure Committee to ferry supplies to Tolomontera, but though Colonel Azocar was the committee’s man on the island his authority over these contracted ships ran from thin to none.

When they were docked in Allazei he could maybe push a little harder, but he could not touch them while they were out in the water without courting scandal.

It was the very reason Tristan suspected Azocar had so long refrained from making a move on the Fall of Techantli even though the colonel believed the papers he sought were there. If the colonel was caught meddling with ships contracted to the Obscure Committee the matter would go straight to them, and Azocar also believed that Cao’s coup had a backer among them.

Whoever that backer was would surely use the incident to get him reassigned, so instead he had sat on his suspicions and waited for an opportunity. Said opportunity then came in the form of Tristan Abrascal, who was not affiliated with the Tolomontera garrison in the slightest. Why, his brigade even had a well-documented feud with Chunhua Cao, which would explain why the Mask was after these papers should he be caught. The colonel’s ass was thoroughly covered.

Fermin Azocar was a canny man, Tristan had decided. If not necessarily a trustworthy one, considering how he was clearly prepared to throw the Thirteenth under the horse if this turned on him.

Not that Tristan was going to get caught, he mused as he cracked open the cover of the crate and checked his surroundings. This goat would be going scapeless if he had anything to say about it. The coast was clear so he emerged from the crate, careful to pick out any smudged cabbage pieces from both the ground and his cloak to put them back in the crate. It wouldn’t do to leave a trail.

As Colonel Azocar’s definitely-not-a-cutout had informed him on the ship he’d first set out to sea on, the hold of the Fall of Techantli was half-filled with cargo. Olive oil by the barrel, stacked bags of flour and containers of cheap iron gall ink. Scholomance classes guzzled up an endless amount of the latter, while the former two were the basic bricks of a functioning city. Tristan wove through the pallets and the nets securing what was stacked atop them, towards the back of the hold.

The section there was leaky even for an old ship, and since the Fall was too old to be worth repairing its captain had ordered a partition put up so the water wouldn’t touch the cargo. That might squeeze another few years of use into the ship, in the calm waters of the Trebian Sea. It also represented an opportunity from Colonel Cao: the door in the partition had a lock put in, and if Azocar was to be believed she rented the space for one gold rama a month.

That was not the kind of expense one took on without a reason, even on a colonel’s salary.

The lock on the door was a simple tumbler, the work of moments to pry open, but Tristan checked the inside carefully before stepping in. Cold bilge water was sloshing around the ground, kept inside only by the raised threshold of the door, and three shelves had been put up on the partition wall. There were a series of small treasure boxes on them, secured by net, and at the sight of their number Tristan breathed in sharply. That was more than he’d expected, did it mean...

No, the boxes were too small for this to be Cao’s blackmail treasure trove, the leverage that was her greatest shield.

Of the eight small boxes, only three had proper locks on them. The rest were kept in place by padlocks, and Tristan wasted no time popping those open. He was careful with the boxes themselves however, wary of traps, his caution was already rewarded by the second. There was a light powder inside it that forced him to snap the lid shut immediately. That was thief’s mark, an alchemical powder that was known for three things: sticking to everything it touched, refusing to dissolve in water and going up in clouds at the slightest movement.

Cao had left a way to check if her boxes got opened. We’ll go back to this one if the others are worthless. The other padlocks all proved to be exactly that. There was a second powder box, the other were filled with scrap parchment. A match lit under them proved there was no secret ink, so Tristan moved on to the last boxes. Those took work, if more from the small size and delicateness of the locks than actual difficulty. Tristan moved the picks slowly and gently, lest he scrap the insides.

A pouch of gems, was in the first. Tempting as it was to take it, he resisted. There might be something on them that could be tracked, and the only place on Tolomontera he could fence these was the Chimerical. That shop near Regnant Street wouldn’t move merchandise worth that much. Hage would ask where those gems had come from, and Tristan would rather not involve the Krypteia in this quite yet.

The second box was another powder trap, Cao apparently being quite fond of them, but the last finally yielded a bounty in the form of a thick stack of papers.

The first layers were a familiar sight, another set of copies of Colonel Azocar’s compromising correspondence to local powers – the letters where he sought help to get around the Obscure Committee. As he’d assumed, Cao was clever enough to make sure she had more than one set of copies. After the correspondence came a simple folded parchment with a list of book titles on them. Each title had a number besides it, no two the same, and after a heartbeat Tristan let out a soft laugh.

There it was. In Cao’s office within the Galleries he had found two things: inside a hollow book there had been stripes of papers with sequences of numbers on them, then a list of students and teachers with two numbers by their names. He’d not been able to match those, but now it seemed like he was looking at the key. One of the numbers by people’s names would designate the first in a  particular sequence, while the other designated the book it was applied to.

This was the key to the cypher that Colonel Cao must be keeping all her blackmail in.

He took the list without hesitation, tucking it away in the small waxed watertight bag he’d brought in case he needed to go for a swim. However useful, however, this was not what he had come for. Song had sent him to find, something he – and Colonel Azocar, evidently - agreed Chunhua Cao must have: an incriminating letter from her backer in the Obscure Committee.

Cao wasn’t a fool, after all. She’d badly miscalculated with Song, but in truth against most brigade captains her bullying would have worked. While the colonel had been slow to adjust tactics after Song exploded in her face, Tristan figured much of that was about not having access to her usual tools: Cao couldn’t pull rank, in Scholomance, and good fucking luck finding something to threaten Song with worse than the open knowledge of her being one of those Ren.

The combination of his captain being a thoroughly unreasonable woman who was also stubbornly not corrupt might as well be conceptual poison for Chunhua Cao. The colonel operated by leverage. Not only blackmail, favors as well, but Tristan considered her the equivalent of a miller. She knew how to get the grain, to grind it and turn it into something useful then put that flour into a bag for someone else to use. But she couldn’t do anything else.

She couldn’t make bread, because the only tool she knew how to use was the millstone and no matter how useful flour was you couldn’t eat it raw. Cao taught the Stripe students useful skills, essential ones, in how to navigate the bureaucracy and squabbling hierarchies of the Watch. The levers that worked and did not. She could not teach them anything beyond leverage, though, because that was the only tool she knew.

But the Obscure Committee doesn’t care, he thought. She’s not here for that. That was what Mandate and Saga were for, even Teratology to some extent – to make the argument for the existence of the Watch, why it was worth buying into and making sacrifices for.

Either way, Cao’s limited repertoire ensured that at the bottom of the pile Tristan found exactly what he’d come looking for.

The letter was in Antigua, a neat but cramped missive without so much as a single smudge despite being quite lengthy. The writer agreed to the outline of the covenanter ruling council for Tolomontera, urging the adoption of something called the ‘Khalkea Charter’ as a model. They then suggested that the senior officers of the local garrison should be reassigned as soon as possible.

Marshal Camaron of Lucierna should then be invited to float names for their replacements in order to secure his support, noting that he was a ‘well-connected Monocrat’. Some sort of Conclave faction, Tristan suspected. More interesting than the voting bloc politics was the that the author phrased both those suggestions with a firmness that spoke to the expectation that they would be followed.

Debated, maybe – the way they talked about the Khalkea Charter made it seem like a follow-up on an earlier letter – but ultimately obeyed. They saw themselves as the senior partner in this coup. The signature at the bottom, which no doubt Cao had insisted on, gave him the last pice he needed. Professor Fenhua He.

The College representative on the Obscure Committee, a high-ranking member of the Peiling Society, though that was the extent of the information he had on them. Huh. He’d been expecting the Stripe, honestly, or maybe Lord Asher. The latter did get a mention in the section discussing this supposed Charter, where Professor He wrote that the Krypteia would want a carve out for their traditional privileges but that Lord Asher seemed ‘disinclined to get involved in the matter’.

Useful confirmation that the Krypteia had known about the coup all along, not that Tristan had ever seriously thought otherwise. At no point in the letter did Professor He ever explicitly spell out support for the coup against Colonel Azocar, but between the heavy implications and the signing of their name Cao would have enough to drag them down with her if she was made into a scapegoat. Which was the reason this letter existed at all.

This was not a silver bullet, Tristan thought, it would not slay the beast in a single shot. Cao’s scheme was not against Watch law, and while Professor He’s interference in Scholomance affairs might get their fingers slapped it was not a major overstep of their authority as a sitting member of a committee overseeing that very school. No, this only became a weapon if the coup went to shit and the conspirators tried to push it all off on Cao – it was insurance, not a knife.

Neither Tristan nor the Thirteen could do much with this. What it would do, however, was give Colonel Azocar the name of Cao’s backer in the Obscure Committee and free him to move openly against the coup. Especially since now that they had proof a sitting committee member was plotting with Cao it would kill any impact revealing Azocar’s correspondence might have had otherwise: of course the man was trying to get around the committee, at least one of them was actively trying to fuck him.

Tristan tucked away the letter into the waxed bag as well, then cleaned up behind himself.  Back into the crate he went, to the homely reek of cabbage, and settled in for a nap. His destination was already set: the Fall of Techantli was headed for Port Allazei. It was why the carrack Tristan had officially boarded to swab the deck of was able to pass a handful of crates to the old cog: since the Fall was headed for port, it was mandated by contract to render assistance to patrol ships if feasible.

And since that poor carrack had been handed crates of bad rations, the Fall of Techantli couldn’t really refuse bringing those crates back to port for them when it was already headed that way. Even better, he’d be handed right back into the garrison’s hands: where else would bad rations go?

Tristan made himself as comfortable as he could and closed his eyes. He could use the rest: Azocar’s crew had insisted he actually swab the deck until the last moment, and it was harder work than he’d thought.

--

Commander Bouare was waiting on the other side of that crate top when it was pried open for him, nose wrinkled at the smell.

“Did you get it?” she asked.

Tristan climbed out of the crate, shedding greenery and shaking himself like a dog purely to be difficult.

“Well?”

Her tone had the kind of officer impatient timbre to it that made you want to stand at attention. It reminded Tristan of the Guardia in all the worst ways.

“Ah, there seems to be something of a misunderstanding,” he said, putting on his most affable smile. “I answer to Captain Song Ren, commander. Anything found or not makes it to her, and then she can decide what to do with it. Whatever bargain was struck with your superior is not for me to undercut.”

“I could order you searched,” Commander Bouare said.

“You could,” Tristan agreed, flicking off a piece that stubbornly stuck to his buttons. “But then I expect you might be undercutting whatever deal Azocar struck. Considering the stakes, I imagine he might be less than pleased.”

“So you have something,” she stated, eyes narrowing. “You are being too cagey otherwise.”

“I do have something,” Tristan said, smile widening. “It is called ‘every intention of walking out of this room within the next ten seconds’.”

Which he did. And despite Salimata Bouare’s bluster they did not try to stop him, fancy that. Almost like they’d been trying to pressure him on an empty hand into delivering the goods so Song would have less to bargain with. Tristan disappeared in the streets west of Fort Seneca and found a shallow slope leading into the sea, taking off his clothes – save for the waterproof bag hung around his neck – and took a dip in Allazei Bay to get the worst of the reek off.

There, that should be enough that he did not strongly reek of rotten cabbage walking through the streets on the same evening the Fall of Techantli had brought back crates with the stuff to port. It was unlikley anyone would make a connection, but it always paid to be careful. Tristan would have enjoyed getting back to the cottage for a proper wash in water that was not cruelly cold, but it was not to be: within moments of having put his cloak back on, he was found by a nervous kid.

His brow rose.

“Yes?”

“Hage sends for you, sir,” the boy squeaked. “Hage from the Chimerical.”

Tristan resisted the urge to poke fun at him asking if there was any other Hage. The Battle of the Barrels and Song’s forced march through the Trench had salvaged his reputation some, but he’d still shot someone in the back and poisoned them in recent memory. Of course the boy was scared, he might as well be carrying a message to an ogre.

“Understood.”

Only the boy still lingered, clearing his throat.

“Um, Hage said you’d have a silver for me. Sir.”

“A whole silver,” Tristan flatly said. “For two sentences.”

The boy raised his chin defiantly.

“Yes, sir.”

“That rate is robbery,” Tristan informed him, but after fishing it out still flipped him a silver arbol.

It bounced off the boy’s hand onto the ground and he hastily went scrabbling for it on all fours like he thought Tristan would take the coin back, then promptly ran off as if a devil were after him instead of having sent him here in the first place. The entire affair was surreal enough that Tristan was not able to muster much more than bemused irritation as he made the trek to the Chimerical.

The scent of roasted beans washed over him the moment he opened the door, followed by the hum of conversation: it was evening, past six, so the coffeehouse was full. A bevy of officers from both garrison and Scholomance were clustered around the tables drinking their coffee and nibbling on overly expensive desserts while talking in low voices.

Scattered across the room were a handful of printed dispatches from the Rookery, being read or gestured at. These were reports of the Conclave’s latest passed ordinances annexed with a list of what was on the docket for the next session. Such dispatches were usually meant for the commanding officers of Watch fortresses to keep them informed, printed on the Rookery and sent with supply ships, but Hage provided the latest to his patrons when he got it by mail along with his coffee beans.

It kept readers coming back, which was good business. It also got officers talking about subjects Hage wanted to hear their opinions on, which was Krypteia business.

The devil in question was standing by a table speaking with someone when Tristan entered, wearing his evening best: a crimson rimless cap and doublet, heavy with ruffles at the neck and wrists while a heavy gilded belt circled his waist. His hose was yellow and his shoes pointed, which Tristan vaguely recalled hearing was the fashion in Saraya these last few years. His teacher would have known of his coming before he ever opened the door, but still pretended to have just notice him when he turned.

“Oh, good, you’re here,” Hage said. “Silumko wasn’t able to make it for his shift, you will have to replace him.”

It took an effort not to clench his teeth. Gods, the anger so was close to the surface these days. The temptation was there to walk out, but Tristan made himself take it on the chin instead. Presumably Hage had a reason for this. Thankfully that reason was almost immediately revealed when he went behind the counter to pick up his apron and found several piles of paper neatly waiting there. Ah, the information he’d requested from the Index was ready – although there were more piles there than expected.

In between bringing drinks and cleaning up, Tristan carefully read through them. His priority had been finding out Nkosinathi Morcant’s whereabouts, as the man was a dangerous loose end, but there the Krypteia had little for him. Morcant had not taken a ship from the docks, but even when alerted to his absences in class his brigade patron had declined to declared him missing.

Lines in what was very clearly Cressida’s handwriting – a pang of grief, more what could have been than the woman he had known, was forced aside - speculated that Morcant had holed up inside Scholomance. Tristan bit at the inside of his cheek, rinsing and soaping a porcelain cup behind the counter. Morcant couldn’t hole up in the school forever, even if that were true. Even if he kept up with the general classes, there was only so long Cao could cover for his absence in Stripe lessons.

So what was the plan? He must have something in the works, Tristan couldn’t believe he intended to remain in Scholomance forever. Was he betting on Angharad dying in the delve? A risky bet, considering if she didn’t die she’d emerge with another laurel to her name while he’d be the coward that ran out and stayed in a hole. No, it didn’t fit Tristan’s reading of the man. Morcant was patient but not passive, so far he’d always had some scheme going on even when he wasn’t moving in the open.

The obvious read was that he was waiting on reinforcements, but who would those be? Morcant had a marker with the Ninth Brigade, but Sebastian Camaron did not seem eager to go to war with the Thirteenth – he was rattling his saber to keep his reputation, but had been very careful never to actually initiated hostilities. Though, notably, he had never stood down either. Does Camaron know something we don’t?

Tristan would need to look into brigade movements, see if there was anything like a muster taking place out of sight. Morcant had relied on numbers to carry the day when he ambushed the Thirteenth last time, and likely would again. In a place like Scholomance, gold was better at mobilizing crowds of averages than small elite crews. Few of the latter were lacking in funds.

The second set of papers was dry reading in comparison. Yaotl Acatl was now part of a holding brigade, not even its captain, and speculated to be considering taking her own life. Her former patron strongly believed she would not, however, and simply need time to realign her worldview after the thorough shattering that Izel had inflicted it. Support from the Watch in her moment of crisis would likely bind her to us with genuine ties of loyalty, Commander Quenmach wrote. Warrant Officer Fikile’s present approach of her seems likely to yield fruit, as he is a well-respected Skiritai senior to her.

As in Fikile Ironhound, the Skiritai for the First Brigade? Tristan committed that little bit to memory, but it did not seem all that urgent. Captain Lahiri liked to collect ties to those he deemed to have potential, ordering his Skiritai to approach Yaotl was not out of the character for him in the slightest. It was a small investment now, but could pay off greatly should she end up making something of herself in the Watch.

Back to Izel, the third set of papers was about the break-in inside the Workshop. The garrison believed to be  a tinker’s work, as nothing had been taken and whoever did it never actually left the building afterwards. Mhm. That wouldn’t make Izel any happier, Tristan thought. The tinker had been on edge about the entire affair. Enough so Tristan suspected that the strange Glare light machine Izel had been working on then had suddenly ceased talking about must be inside one of the chests broken into.

That didn’t seem like an immediate crisis, though, so it could be set aside.

“Aren’t you one of Wen’s little shits? You smell like old lettuce.”

Tristan paused, eyeing the woman who’d interrupted him on his way back behind the counter. Dark hair and strong nose, which could describe half of Old Liergan. Ah, the sneer! This was Dionora Cazal. Patron to the first incarnation of the Forty-Ninth, and now to one of the leftover brigades of the second years. The smart thing would be to ignore her, keep walking. But it felt like the knife was already in his hand and waiting.

Tristan glanced down at her empty cup, recognizing the particular tint of brown on the porcelain, and that was enough.

“People only buy Tariac beans when they can’t afford Uthukile,” he said without batting an eye. “Your taste is like your record as a patron, strictly second rate.”

One of the two women Cazal was sitting with began laughing, loud and sharp, and Tristan walked away with a glare burning at his back. He should not have done that, he knew. There had been no gain in it. Yet his hand clenched around the plates all the way to behind the counter.

There were two papers left, neither of which he had actually asked for. The first was short, a single sheet: Admiral Zokufa of the Western Fleet was headed for Tolomontera, and depending on piracy and winds could arrive anywhere within two weeks to a month. The last set was, to his surprise, about Ishanvi Kapadia. Ishanvi was slated to take her last general classes examination in two weeks, Warfare, which if passed would qualify her to take the end-of-year Arthashastra Society tests. More importantly, next firstday she would be undertaking her last trial room.

The Camino Carmesi, the Crimson Road. Anger. She’s doing the anger room. Better this than the grief one. Apparently it left scars even when it went well, something about being permanently numbed.

An amusing note was that Colonel Cao had apparently tried to block Ishanvi’s last trial, lodging a petition with the Obscure Committee to do so. The following morning the senior Laurel instructor on the island had paid the Galleries a visit, and before noon the petition was withdrawn. She’s losing the reins of her coup.

After an exhausting hour and a half, a first year girl arrived to relieve him of his duty. Small, Someshwari, and very likely a first-year Mask. Tristan made note of her name and retreated to the back of the shop to change and pick up his pay. Hage vaguely promised to add it to his month’s dues, which was sadly predictable, and put on a look of surprise when asked to reimburse the silver for the messenger earlier.

“I made no such promise,” Hage lied. “You were taken for a ride, dear boy.”

That fucker. Were Tristan not very much aware that the information he’d been handed tonight was worth significantly more than a half shift at the Chimerical, he might have done something about it. As things stood, though, between the free papers and the padding of those he’d only paid for the surface of he was he was admittedly making a profit. The Index wasn’t cheap, to discourage Masks from relying on it.

“I must have been,” he bit out.

Hage sharply grinned, then again inside that.

“Am I to understand you obtained what Azocar wanted from the Fall of Techantli?”

Tristan paused. Well, he’d already had it confirmed that the Krypteia knew about the coup. It was not much of a stretch from that to them keeping an eye on the warring sides of it.

“Enough to incriminate Cao,” he admitted after a moment. “And perhaps even her backer on the Obscure Committee.”

He’d thrown in that last part to get a reaction, but instead got a flat admission.

“Professor He must seem a strange bedfellow to Colonel Cao, from your perspective,” Hage said.

“You already knew she was backing it, then,” Tristan said. “Does the Krypteia lack proof to act, or willingness?”

“You should know how Asher hunts, by now,” his mentor chided. “Patience is the key to every lock. Besides, strictly speaking the Krypteia is not necessarily against a covenant administration of Tolomontera.”

“You want to give Cao run of the place?” Tristan skeptically said.

“We would allow Cao to give a council run of the place,” Hage corrected. “Seven sitters would be significantly easier to influence than a single Colonel Azocar. He is quite hostile to any interference in what he considers to be his backyard.”

“Oh, did he hurt the poor committee’s feelings?” Tristan drawled.

“The man being uncooperative is his prerogative,” Hage said. “We would not act to remove him over it, but neither is it unacceptable that he would be.”

A reminder that the Krypteia wasn’t there to nip every bureaucratic war in the bud but to quell treason and conspiracy. Most of what the Masks saw, they never acted on.

“Cao pulling off her coup is most definitely a problem for my brigade,” Tristan said.

He wasn’t sure to what extent the hostility she held for Song would splash onto the rest of them, but it hardly mattered. The Unluckies would not be changing their captain to humor the displeasure of the likes of Chunhua Cao.

“Then broker a reconciliation,” Hage replied, unmoved. “Your captain chose to publicly antagonize Colonel Cao knowing full well the depths of her influence and connections. No one forced the Thirteenth Brigade into that enmity, why should policy be changed to protect from the consequences of it?”

The old devil’s thick eyebrows rose.

“Indeed, some might argue that Cao remaining the head Stripe instructor regardless of the outcome of her attempted coup would be a fine lesson for the Unluckies regarding the wisdom of escalating conflict with superior officers they disagree with.”

Tristan paused. That sounded like a quote being repeated, which boded ill.

“How could she stay on if her coup fails?” he said. “She’d be an embarrassment, they would want her transferred out of sight as fast as possible.”

“Would they?” Hage asked. “That is an assumption. On the contrary, I imagine that should a vote be called on the matter the results would be three to one in favor of keeping her in place.”

The old devil drummed his fingers.

“Are you familiar with the tale of Duke Goronwy of Peredur, Tristan?”

He shook his head. What scraps of history he’d gotten his hands on over the years had spoken precious little of Peredur.

“When King Issay unified Malan for the first time, he was one of the few generals to ever wage a successful campaign on that isle,” Hage said. “Yet even he could not force the submission of all Peredur, so instead he struck a bargain with the greatest of their beaten queens. She would be made a duchess over the entire land, in exchange for fealty.”

Pragmatic of him, Tristan thought. The hardliners would turn on her, so she’d be forced to spend her strength on keeping them under her boot and become increasingly dependent on Malan to stay in power. The Six had loved to run that game, back when they still had delusions of empire.

“When she died of old age there was a rebellion against Malan, and after it was put down the matter of her succession had to be settled. Of the duchess’ three sons only the seconborn had fought with the rebels, Goronwy, and Issay surprised the kingdom when he declared that it would be that same Goronwy who succeeded his mother.”

Tristan blinked, but then it made sense.

“Because the rebel lords won’t back a rebel who was spared and put in charge, they won’t trust him ever again,” he said. “He’s either a failed warlord or a traitor, either way not someone they want in charge of them.”

He almost spat when he made the link to what they’d just been talking about.

“Three to one, you said. The Stripe votes for Cao to go away, everyone else votes against because Cao got her teeth kicked in – it weakens the Academy in Scholomance to have a cripple in charge of their slice of it.”

“She would be warned off interfering with the Thirteenth, naturally,” Hage said. “But you know well the limitations of such an order.”

She doesn’t need to get loud to sabotage Song. Cao need only refrain from offering his captain opportunities, to help along her rivals and slow-walk every request that passed her desk. Half of what Stripes did was elbow-rubbing, knowing that having tea with Song Ren put you on Cao’s shitlist for a week would be enough to severely curtain what Song could do. It wouldn’t be a single big blow but a slow poison, insidiously getting worse by the month as habits set in.

“And if we try to petition the  Obscure Committee we’ll have nothing usable to bring up and it might not matter even if we did - all the reasons why a majority of them want Cao to stay in place still stand,” Tristan said.

It wasn’t like the Thirteenth was particularly popular with them either. Between the Osian Tredegar treason, the Asphodel shipyard being damaged and the Watch deaths on the Dominion they all had black marks on their record. And any marker Tristan might have tried to cash in with Asher over the Ivory Library had been burned when he had that run-in with Lucifer. It felt like they were being fucked again, thrown to the wolves, but even worse than that was that Tristan knew this was not unfair.

The Obscure Committee didn’t have it out for the Unluckies, because a student brigade wouldn’t even register as something to care about when a decision about something like this must be taken. They were too small to weigh on those scales either way.

“This is my advice as your teacher,” Hage said. “You have found leverage, use it to make peace. Not every enemy can be beaten, or should be.”

“My captain won’t go for it.”

That wasn’t who Song was. Once someone was an enemy, they were an enemy.

“Then do not involve her in the bargain,” Hage said. “You have valuable papers, Tristan, but Colonel Azocar is not the only person they are valuable to.”

He breathed in sharply.

“You think I should trade them to Cao,” Tristan said. “To turn on Azocar, help her secure her victory.”

“It is my read of Chunhua Cao that she would abide by such a bargain,” Hage said. “Though, to be clear, I give only advice and would not be displeased by your refusal of it – we judge by result, not inclination. Though I must ask, has Colonel Azocar done something particularly deserving of your aid?”

He had not. The Thirteenth was a tool to Azocar, not an ally. But turning on him would sit very badly with several of the Unluckies. Song, probably Angharad as well. A toss-up for Maryam. It was ironic that Izel would probably care the least. Song of all of them would be the most furious, though, and see it as a betrayal of her trust. Which it would be.

But she would only be furious if she knew.

Hage wasn’t advising him to make that bargain openly. Tristan had made it into the Galleries once already, a hidden meeting with Cao wasn’t impossible.

“That is also part of the Krypteia’s duty, Tristan,” Hage said. “Making choices like this. Over the years we have countenanced many a time the victories of the cruel over decent souls solely because the consequences of an upset would be even more cruel. We are a restraint on doom, not on wickedness.”

The old devil cocked his head to the side, the angle of it just a little too steep.

“What will you do, Cryptic?” he asked. “What mask will you choose to wear, what cause will your knife cut for?”

Hage smiled.

“I look forward to learning this about you.”

Tristan realized, as his stomach tightened, that he was not so sure he could say the same.