Angharad sat on her folding chair, sipped at her cup and let the sounds of the bustle inside the cottage wash over her.

It was a quiet evening, after a quiet day – Theology had been straightforward, Professor Artigas more interested in revision and laying out a plan for the year than new material, while her ban from the Acallar had left her with a largely free afternoon she spent buying up supplies in town for tomorrow's departure to Lamb Hill.

Song had not outright stated that attendance to dinner tonight was mandatory, only heavily implied it, but none of the Unluckies were fool enough to make the mistake of having other plans. With Tristan finally allowed out of his cell the full brigade had come together at the cottage and some extra funding from the common coffers been rustled up to make it… well, not exactly a celebratory meal but certainly an elaborate one.

Song had bought a shoulder cut of pork, seasoned it with something that smelled of honey, soy sauce and spices, and was now roasting it over the fire. It smelled delicious, as did the elaborate vegetable-and-noodle dish that Izel had been delegated to supervising after he finished his dessert.

As usual, after fetching the water buckets from the well and cutting some produce Angharad had been sent outside with a cup of beer to sit in the garden, relegated into exile alongside Maryam. The signifier had been chased out even earlier, after picking the vegetables in Tristan's plot. It was customary for the two of them to be sent out in the garden - Song allegedly found the sight of them sitting in the drawing while she cooked 'primordially irritating' - but that Tristan should be put out to pasture with them was new.

He was usually trusted with busywork, not simply employed to set the table then expelled from the premises. Angharad was not sure whether it was a mark of favor or not that he had been sent out with them, but if pressed to guess she would go with not. Song was not the sort to punish twice for the same offense, but she was not above expressing her disapproval in the slightest.

Leaning back into the creaking folding chair she suspected had not been paid for, Angharad kept sipping at her maize beer and snuck a look at Maryam. The pale girl was sucking at her goblet of wine, stiff-backed in her own chair, while Tristan sat in the grass besides them and tossed small red berries at Sakkas. The great magpie was perched on the skeletal remains of a scarecrow, a final insult to an enterprise fated to failure, but leaped down in a flutter of wings to chase the berries with pleased squawks.

"So this is what you two always end up doing?" Tristan finally said. "Drink in the garden while the rest of us handle the meal?"

Angharad politely pretended not to have heard the question. Maryam coughed, and her sister peeked her head out of her shoulder.

"Pretty much," Lady Hooks confirmed. "Only they don't even do it enough to get drunk, it's horribly boring."

"I should have started shooting people in the back ages ago," Tristan mused. "It would have freed up so many hours."

Maryam choked on her drink, beginning to cough while her sister slapped her back with a grin and Angharad sent the thief scolding look.

"Tristan."

He raised his hands defensively.

"Don't worry," he told with her with a charming smile. "I've run the numbers, it's not sustainable in the long term to shoot a student over every meal."

Angharad frowned.

"Really, not even counting the first years?" she asked, then coughed into her fist. "I mean, let us not resort to violence for such a petty reason."

He solemnly nodded.

"That would be wrong, yes," he agreed, then paused. "Five hundred and forty meals, give or take, so even if I get away with it the casualty rate might make Scholomance close."

Nine months of Scholomance, two meals a day. The numbers held up at a glance.

"Lady Knit might allow for repeats, though," Angharad mused, then cleared her throat. "Which, to be clear, would be morally reprehensible."

"Of course," he said.

"Of course," she said.

A moment passed.

"But I think you could probably shoot the same student at least ten times before they ran out of things to barter away for healing," Angharad suggested.

Let out the last of her cough, Maryam drew a wheezing breath.

"You two can't just drop something like that on me while I'm drinking," she complained. "And Tredegar, stop talking him into it."

"I am not advising he do this," Angharad defended. "Only saying that, theoretically speaking-"

A cleared throat had all five of them turning to look back, and she found Song Ren wearing an apron and looking at them with a deeply unamused look.

"Supper is ready," their captain said. "Finish your drinks and wash your hands."

She received an embarrassed chorus of agreements in response, like children caught tracking mud on the carpet. Song wiped her hands clean on the apron then scoffed.

"Five forty assumes we eat two meals a day here every day the entire school year," she said. "More realistically you would be looking at around four hundred twenty."

Angharad choked and everyone was too taken aback to reply, Song walking back into the cottage with a smug look of satisfaction on her face. Tristan was first in, throwing one last berry to Sakkas before disappearing inside with a chuckle. Angharad drained the last of her beer, gone lukewarm, and politely waited while Maryam did the same with her wine.

Her eyes strayed across the garden, both Tristan's plots and the still-overgrown greenery they had inherited from the last owner of this place, and in the shade of the trees stood-

Angharad froze. Cai Wei stood there under the leaves, expressionless. In the shade she was only half-visible, twice a ghost. Staring, staying nothing. Not that she needed to: her very presence was a reminder that Angharad's time was running out, slowly but surely. The ghost smiled and it had her stomach clenching. She had not expected to see her here, in the cottage. It felt… wrong.

"Angharad?"

She swallowed, turning to find a concerned Maryam looking at her.

"What is it?" the signifier asked.

She swallowed, struggling for words.

"There is a spirit present," Angharad said. "A soul."

A moment passed between them, then Maryam suddenly gave her a cold smile.

"I know," the other woman said. "I just needed to-"

Darkness boiled around her hand like a living thing, strings scattered across the ground and invisible until she pulled them taut. Cai Wei let out a shout of surprise, nailed to the ground by a crisscross of chords.

"- get the drop on her," Lady Hooks finished slipping out of Maryam's shadow. "We know you're here now, ghost. Did you really think you could keep slinking around unseen?"

"You can't kill me," Cai Wei gasped. "I'll-"

The strings pulled taut around her and the ghost let out a shout of pain. There was some satisfaction to the sight, Angharad would admit, but more fear.

"Maryam," Angharad said in a forcefully even tone. "If you harm her, it might harm me."

"Oh, we're not going to harm her," Maryam said. "Are we, Hooks?"

The apparition knelt by Cai Wei, smiling.

"Not at all," Lady Hooks said. "Only remind her that good guests behave themselves. May we?"

Angharad's eyes strayed from one Khaimov sister to the other. Should she? Do I trust them so close to my soul? No, it was simpler than that. Did she trust them with her safety? She thought of Misery Square, then, of the flock of crows that scattered past her without so much as brushing her skin. Yes, she trusted them. Wordlessly, she nodded.

Lady Hooks, without hesitation, jabbed her thumb through the ghost's forehead. Cai Wei's eyes opened wide, as did her mouth, but she let out no scream. Instead her limbs convulsed once and she let out a ragged gasp.

"What did you do, you fucking hollows?"

Angharad's eyes narrowed. Would that Wei were solid, so that she might be taught manners.

"We sealed your belly," Lady Hooks chuckled.

"That won't stop me," Cai Wei snarled. "I still get to take from her."

"That's true," Maryam conceded. "We don't know how to stop that, not yet."

It was unfair, to feel a pang of disappointment. And still.

"But what you take," Lady Hooks scorned, "you will not get to consume."

"You do not get to eat my friend, you fucking parasite," Maryam Khaimov coldly said. "If she dies, you don't get to puppet the corpse. You die with her."

Angharad tottered on her feet, feeling as if something inside her had just been forcefully wrenched, and by the time she got her footing back Cai Wei was gone. Hooks slipped back into her sister's shadow, and while Angharad tugged her uniform back in place Maryam coughed into her hand.

"Sorry," the signifier said. "I had to move fast, couldn't ask you first."

Angharad licked her lips, finding them dry. Almost cracked.

"What was that?" she asked.

"We slapped a seal on her, the idiot child version of what the Watch did to the Hated One," Maryam said. "She'll keep eating away at your life, but she doesn't get to actually consume anything. And she won't get to slip under your skin like a dollmaker even if she sucks you dry."

Oh. That had never been a concern, in truth, but then Angharad had only told the Thirteenth of her troubles in the broadest terms – she was sworn not to betray the secrets of the Acallar. Without knowledge of the eldritch mechanism in the depths, it would seem as if the ghost was trying to possess her. Angharad crossed her arms, warmed that Maryam would take such offense at the thought on her behalf. A heartbeat later she recalled the exact phrasing.

"You called me your friend," Angharad said.

"I don't remember that," Maryam replied without batting an eye. "You might have misheard 'fiend', I think."

She grinned, for despite the swift denial Maryam's cheeks had slightly reddened. It was very visible on such pale skin.

"My fiend," Angharad slowly repeated, as if tasting the words. "That rather sounds like a term of endearment, Maryam. The sort one might use with a-"

"I should have let the damn ghost eat you," Maryam swore. "It would have been marginally less embarrassing than whatever this is."

Angharad smothered her smile, though it still peeked out around the edges.

"We can pretend it never happened," she said as they set out towards the cottage.

She wouldn't, but she could have. Bumping her shoulder against Maryam's as they headed inside, she cleared her throat.

"I consider you one as well, you know."

"Kill me now," Maryam Khaimov groaned, lowering her face into her hands.

They had dinner instead.

--

They'd not had so large or elaborate a dinner since last year, when Captain Wen had confirmed that they had all passed their final examinations and 'weren't the greatest disappointments he had met, by a pretty narrow margin'.

Once Angharad would have expected that celebration meant eating at a restaurant, but she had learned that was not how Song accounted things. Their captain considered coin and pomp lesser to time and effort, at least when it came to the brigade itself. Song certainly enjoyed creature comforts as much as Angharad did, but she seemed to consider access to them a sign of professional accomplishment instead of something to seek out personally.

Angharad helped carry away the empty plates, the pleasant dullness of a fine but heavy meal settled in her belly. Not that it was finished yet. Izel had baked a cake, meant to be dipped in cacao sauce that she'd been skeptical about until he mentioned it was sweetened with honey. He'd never steered her wrong on pastries before, so she would grant him the benefit of the doubt – it was the bitterness she disliked in xocolatl, not the spices.

While Izel brought the large plate of 'dipping cake' to the table himself Angharad rinsed her hands in the washbowl and took the plates Tristan was offering her before returning to the table. She leaned in, discreetly inhaling the smell from the small brown sauce bowls, and found it pleasant. Not unlike coffee, but sweeter and milder. Now rather curious she hurried back to her seat, sliding in between Maryam and Song, while their captain drained the last of her wine and rose to her feet.

That drew eyes, surely enough, and Izel drew back from his creation to lean against his chair. Song set down her cup, having been granted silence without ever asking for it.

"I will endeavor to remain brief," she told them.

Their captain sighed, for once looking as tired as a woman keeping to her hours would be.

"It may be some time before we can all gather together like this again," Song said. "Neither of the undertakings we swore ourselves to can be taken lightly, and to be frank the stakes are high enough that none of us would even if we could afford it."

Angharad inclined her head in agreement. Song was charged with her sister's life, while Maryam must now pay the price of freeing her countrymen. Neither were small burdens. As for she and Tristan, well, hours were as much their enemy as the Lord of Teeth – and all the more fearsome for the way neither steel nor contract could reach them. Their captain's lips thinned.

"I wish I had a neat solution to all our tangles," Song Ren admitted. "I do not. Our debts pull us in different directions and no amount of comradery can paint over the bare reality of that. We have made choices that were necessary but not kind."

Angharad's fingers clenched under the table. It had stung, that even with her life on the line Song had chosen to lend her gun to another cause. She understood that promises had been made, deals struck, but it remained that when steel came out it was Tristan and Izel at her side and no one else. It would take time to pick the thorns out of that truth.

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

"I don't think apologies would mean anything," Song quietly said. "Or not as much as the choices that were made, anyhow. Instead, if I may yet ask anything of you, it is to remember this: we are all holding the same rope."

Song leaned in.

"That feels like an obstacle when we are pulling in different directions, as we now do," she acknowledged.

Silver eyes swept them.

"But we can also choose to pull the same way, when trouble comes knocking, and when we do I don't believe there is much of anything that can withstand the Thirteenth."

Song breathed out, drew back.

"So ask," she told them. "When the time comes, when we hit the wall, ask. Please."

Abruptly, she nodded at the table and peeled away to the kitchen. Tough she truly was making tea for the rest of them, Angharad could well recognize flight when she saw it. She thought it telling, sometimes, what embarrassed her friends. Maryam would not tolerate anything tender to be seen, like a porcupine afraid of losing her quills, while Izel seemed terrified of ever revealing his principles. It reeked of a man whose virtues had been mocked too often.

That Song and Tristan both recoiled away from sincerity as if it were open flame was, Angharad thought, one of those subtle similarities that had helped them grow close after the first clashes passed.

By the time Song returned with the teas, Izel had carved up his cake and distributed the small bowls of dipping sauce. Angharad found herself impressed with the taste after trying it out – it was rich in a way that honey alone was not, and the faint touch of heat that the sprinkled spices added contrasted pleasantly with the cake. She told Izel as much.

"The dipping cake is largely the same across all Aztlan nations, but that sauce is a Totochtin recipe," he told her. "I prefer the traditional Valley one, myself, but its bitterness is unpopular outside the heartlands."

"Totochtin sweets sold for a fortune, back in Sacromonte," Tristan contributed from across the table.

"They are quite popular in Mazu as well," Song agreed. "Which is rare with Izcalli desserts."

"The Totochtin League is almost more Trebian than Aztlan, in some ways," Izel shrugged. "They don't do a lot of traditional food."

In the highest of compliments, the dipping cake swiftly disappeared and even the bowls of sauce were cleaned out – Maryam fetched bread from the kitchen to soak up the last of it. While it was unspoken tradition that the least useful in the kitchen of the Thirteenth would handle the washing of dishes and putting away of the leftovers, when Angharad moved to handle it Song laid a hand on her arm and shook her head.

"Izel has been looking like he's mustering up the courage for something all night," she whispered, leaning close. "I can handle the dishes while the two of you speak with Tristan."

Angharad paused. She was not surprised that Song had read the situation right, but she was at another detail.

"You do not want to be present?"

Song grimaced.

"I am not sure I have a right to ask that, at the moment," she said. "Tristan already knows what I think, regardless. This is between the three of you to settle."

Angharad slowly nodded. That had been her personal belief as well, but the fact remained that Song was captain of the Thirteenth: if she wanted to be there, it was her right.

Angharad thought better of her for not asking.

As she wanted to avoid the perception of this being either an ambush or arm-twisting, Angharad fetched them both to sit down in the drawing room. The two of them facing each other across the table, herself on one of the seats between. She had once told her father it seemed pointless to pay attention to such details, but he'd been firm in his rebuke. The thinking mind is like a reef, Father had said. Only the smallest part is what is seen. Details are the foundation of impression, and half of diplomacy is impressions.

She began, thus, with the straightforward talk.

"We are to meet the Thirty-First tomorrow at eight, to set out to Lamb Hill together," Angharad told Tristan. "Unless you've an issue with the arrangement?"

He shook his head.

"No, that suits me fine," Tristan said. "I will want to get the lay of the place before we set out anyway, so early is good."

A pause.

"And I'd like your own impressions of the Lamb Hill camp," he said. "All I heard was second-hand, if not third."

Izel was eager enough to lay out the basics of how the fortified outpost was being raised, as if desiring to push back the talk he'd come to have, and Angharad added a few garnishes of detail here and there. Mostly where brigades were settling, and her suspicions as to why. It had not escaped her attention that brigades higher ranked according to the Academy had claimed all the campsites nearest to the top, while the independents were left to sleep near the palisade.

"The garrison moved in cannons this morning," Izel said. "It will be a proper fortified outpost by the time we arrive."

"Did they set the prices for supplies yet?" Tristan asked. "I'm curious how bad the gouging will get."

They shook their heads, though Angharad shared that a quartermaster had been designated for the outpost so at least they knew who they must address to find out. Lieutenant Lu seemed agreeable enough, though his Tianxi accent was quite thick.

"As to how we approach the hunt itself, however," Angharad said, "there is much yet to determine."

She flicked Izel a look. Now would be the time. He swallowed, straightening his shoulders.

"Tomorrow," Izel said, steeling himself. "I want to clear the surroundings of the camp of lemures instead of heading towards the Old Canals."

Tristan was smiling, but that meant less than nothing. He cocked an eyebrow at her, inviting her to voice an opinion.

"It seems wise to me that we should secure the area before moving out," Angharad said. "The Thirty-First agreed to the notion in principle."

Tristan's eyes narrowed.

"Did they now?" he said. "Ferranda wouldn't, not on those terms. Most nearby lemures will have been chased away by the noise and numbers over the last two days, those that remain will be the sort that dig in and ambush. Which means fewer bounties, which means falling behind."

He leaned in.

"You two promised her something else. What?"

Izel looked uncomfortable, glancing her way as Tristan had, but Angharad only cocked an eyebrow at him. It was his plan, and his duty to stand by it. The sooner he learned he had a seat at the table and the right to voice his thoughts, the better.

"I offered that we should open the effort to any independent who wants to join us," Izel admitted.

Quicksilver anger flashed through those gray eyes, but it never so much as touched his face. It concerned Angharad more than if it had, in truth, all the more because she was uncertain exactly what had angered him so. A long moment passed.

"There are advantages to doing this," Tristan said. "The Nineteenth cannot touch us while we do, for one."

"It would raise our reputation with the students we help as well," Angharad mildly said.

"Sounds worthless," Tristan honestly replied. "The Marshal set us to compete, we won't be able to spend that coin in a way that's genuinely useful. But I'm not opposed to a more sedate pace when learning to fight alongside the Thirty-First, especially if it neatly ties up our main threat."

He paused, turned to Izel.

"What are the odds that after seeing us do it the princess would feel compelled to spend a day on it as well?"

Izel frowned.

"Low," he finally said. "She would see it as spadework, something for the rank and file. She will be aiming for the bounties, trying to prove her worth."

Angharad almost scoffed. A princess should know better. There was no work worthier than protecting those you were sworn to defend.

"Well, can't have everything," Tristan philosophically said.

A year ago, Angharad would have thought him in a fine mood. Now she knew better. The Mask had few tells, and fewer now than when they first met, but she had found one that remained: when angry, when he felt threatened, he tended to glance at the ways out of the room where he was.

Tristan had twice glanced in the direction of the cottage door in the last minute.

"I can agree to that, so long as the arrangement's temporary," Tristan continued. "I would not see us turn into the shepherds of that flock, Izel, when two among this company have a flipped hourglass to beat."

Izel couldn't seem to decide whether he was relieved or aggrieved. Angharad was neither, as she had never doubted Tristan would accept. It wasn't that Izel was wrong, when he said it was necessary to gauge where Tristan stood. Merely that she had never thought this to be a functional test, as the Mask was certain to sniff it out.

Besides, Tristan Abrascal did not turn impatient when he lost his temper. He turned callous, and this had been no measure of callousness.

"I would not ask that of you," Izel finally said.

"That is good to know," Tristan mildly said. "But Ferranda will almost certainly try to use this as a stepping stone to consolidate the independents into some sort of league, so I expect of you that you will be prepared to stand firmly by that line in the sand when she brings it up."

Angharad's brow rose.

"And how do you know she will?"

"Because I specifically bargained to avoid being dragged into such an effort," Tristan said, tone gone cool, "before Izel went and tossed that concession back to her under the impression she was doing us a favor."

Ah. Angharad sighed. It had struck as odd how easy Ferranda had been to convince, and that Zenzele had argued against it – or at least a delay until everyone was present.

"Shit," Izel said. "I'm-"

"-putting me to the test, so don't bother to apologize" Tristan flatly replied. "You seek to ascertain whether I am rabid. Fair enough."

He was, Angharad judged, genuine in his lack of affront.

"Though, a word of advice - you were too obvious. You treated the matter as more important than a tactical discussion, which betrayed what it actually was."

Angharad nodded thoughtfully. That was good advice. Izel looked vaguely nauseous.

"What you propose is not the approach I would have used, but it is a valid method and costs us only a day even should it fail to yield results," Tristan said. "I will not argue against it when you have already made the arrangements."

His eyes narrowed.

"But you did not bargain well," Tristan said. "That I take issue with."

Izel flinched, the thief breathed in.

"Fault runs aplenty here," Tristan Abrascal said. "No point in wasting time portioning it out. Let us make sure we are of one mind going forward so we don't get had again."

Angharad smiled at him. Good. The anger, it would not go anywhere. It was not something that was smoothed over by time or tenderness, and she would not ask such a thing of Tristan. Only that he take that blade and point it at their foes instead of at the rest of the Thirteenth. No amount of water put out a forest fire, you had to let it run its course.

"Agreed," she said. "I've some thoughts about how we should go about finding the Lord of Teeth, but killing it will require a great deal of planning."

"It will," Izel got out, clearing his throat. "I am preparing a means to stun it, but to finish the device I need to bring the gear relatively close to it at least once."

Tristan slowly nodded, studying them, and Angharad watched as some knot in his shoulders loosened. They were not in the way, she saw him realize. They would help.

She would make him realize that as often as it took until it was the expectation again.

"Let's hear it, then," Tristan said.

They made themselves comfortable in drawing room, speaking until late, and by the time they went to bed it no longer felt like there were knives half-drawn.

--

Angharad waited in a crouch, holding her breath with her saber at the ready.

"Pulling," Shalini said.

One. Two. Three. Four. Fi- like an arrow shot the lemure burst out of its burrow-hole, a streak of revolting whitish scales ending in mouth whose insides were a carpet of small teeth. Angharad let it spring for half a beat, then swung. The edge of the blade caught the agusanado just past the edge of the head ridge, carving into the softer flesh and scales that let orient its head.

It shrieked and flopped, halfway skewered, and Angharad let out a grunt of effort as she ripped free her sword. The lemure was wounded but not dead, flopping around uselessly on the ground bleeding ichor. She'd cut far enough that the tendons on the front legs had been sliced through.

Angharad swung again, without grace. Like a lumberjack she put her whole weight behind the blow and felt a satisfying crunch as she carved through cartilage and bone to sever the lemure's head. It continued flopping around for a solid thirty seconds after, to their shared disgust.

"After the cages it doesn't feel like much of a threat," Shalini noted, "but gods does it look ugly."

Angharad let out a grunt of agreement. The greater legless lizard, also known as the Trebian spade lizard and informally to Lierganen everywhere as 'agusanado' - the 'wormy' – looked like the bastard child of an earthworm, a snake and a lizard. It had the thickness of a young tree and two legs in front near its head that were somewhat spade-shaped and helped it burrow into the earth, but the rest of its body was somewhat like a snake's. If one whose white scales looked disgustingly… fleshy and whose body remained large throughout, wormlike in that regard.

Its ridged head was dotted with six small eyes, and though its teeth were hardly thicker than a nail the roof of its mouth secreted a mucus that coated them and induced fits of spasm in whatever it bit. Their kind, from what Angharad recalled of Teratology, killed by taking a bite then hiding until the mucus had taken effect, then slipping back out of the burrow to choke their prey with their coils. They then gnawed off limbs, taking them back in their hole, and left the greater carcass to other animals – to serve as bait.

They also always favored killing humans to animals, which classified them as lemures instead of lares.

"And it is the fifth we dug out today along the easiest path back to Lamb Hill," Angharad grimly said, flicking the ichor off her blade. "That would have been quite the nasty surprise for anyone coming back late."

Shalini, today dressed in her fighting fit, remained a sight as she drummed her fingers against her still-sheathed pistol. The uniform was not form-fitting, between the cloak and the coat, but now that Angharad allowed herself to see it she could not miss how it contained… ample curves. Even wearing a curtain Shalini Goel would look shapely. And she knew it, too, because the way she laid her hand against her hip and straightened drew attention to the fact in a way that Angharad did not believe to be an accident in the slightest.

"And we're winning," Shalini happily declared. "Between the two spade lizards and those lycosi we picked off we're far in the lead."

"It is not a competition," Angharad said.

She cleared her throat.

"Though if it were, we would be crushing them all mercilessly," she conceded, to the other woman's grin.

She flicked a look back, watching the spread of their company across the long avenue that she'd already heard Tristan name the 'wormway'. Further up the avenue there were broken warehouses, but the collapsed and overgrown buildings on either side had likely been shops and houses instead. They were smaller and nestled against each other closely. The better part of twenty students were scattered across the length in groups of two or more, checking the ruins for burrow holes and nests.

Ferranda had been quite thorough in putting out the word that their brigades were open to independents joining the clearing of the thoroughfare.

"In large part due to your contract," Angharad added. "You've greatly progressed in its use."

Shalini grimaced.

"Well, it's an improvement that I can trigger it at will," she said. "But I'm no closer to shutting out the involuntary draw. My patron is corresponding with some contract specialist on the Rookery for insights, but the letters are slow going."

Entirely believable, as the Rookery was near the northern mouth of the Trebian Sea while Scholomance was decidedly to the west.

"Did graduation help you any?" she asked.

Shalini shook her head, then stopped.

"Well," she hedged, "maybe. It definitely made drawing smoother, but it didn't help the way I wanted it to."

Cheers erupted further up the street, two of the students crowing as they showed off the carcass of a large hairy creature that Angharad suspected might actually be a lares and not a lemure. Tristan was with them, she saw, and theatrically mourned as he flipped one of them a copper for the bet he had lost. One of them caught the spinning coin, bowing as he taunted her brigademate. In good fun, though, not pointedly.

This morning half of them had flinched whenever Tristan's hand came close to his pistol, now half of them treated him like a long-lost cousin.

"He's a charming little son of a bitch, isn't he?" Shalini admiringly said. "I always thought that was the most dangerous thing about Abrascal."

"He is also a decent shot, these days," Angharad drily replied.

"Most of us are decent shots," Shalini dismissed. "It's smaller number that can talk the rest into showing their back to the gun."

"He would not turn on an ally," Angharad firmly told her.

"I did not intend to belittle him," the other woman said. "It's not so different from what Zel does, really."

Shalini then grimaced, eyes flicking to where Ferranda Villazur and Zenzele were quietly speaking with Izel. It was not the first time today she had that expression while looking at them.

"You seem concerned," Angharad said.

Shalini's gaze returned to her for a moment, considering, and she sighed.

"They're fighting," she admitted. "She was disappointed not to make it into the top ten of Cao's rankings so she's… driven to correct that, but he's been saying she's missing the forest for the trees."

Angharad kept silent, for she had little pleasant to say about Ferranda Villazur and the infanzona was Shalini's friend and captain.

"I'm not happy our evening out was delayed, either," Shalini lightly said, eyeing her from the corner of her eye.

Angharad hummed.

"Good things come to those who wait," she replied.

"Do they?" Shalini asked. "I have been waiting for some time, you know. That's a lot of good stacked up."

Angharad caught her gaze, held it and smiled just a little hungrily.

"I am confident," she said, "we can make up for lost time."

A moment passed, then Shalini swallowed. She looked away, cleared her throat.

"Now I'm really pissed about the delay," she muttered. "Come on, let's get moving. Any more of that and I'll be dragging you back to Lamb Hill for a resupply."

Angharad hummed again, smirking in satisfaction, and picked up the lemure's head to toss it into the bag they had brought for that purpose. It was all well and good, being seduced, but she preferred being the huntress. There was little left of the avenue to comb through, after three hours of work, only a broken house near the mouth of it – close to what had once been the waterfront of the Old Canals. They were intercepted by Zenzele and Izel while making their way to the forefront.

"We found something," Izel quietly told them. "The boar mole that they just caught dug deep enough it hit another tunnel."

Ah, so that'd been a boar mole. A lares indeed, so hopefully they would not try to turn in the scalp.

"Why are you sounding so worried?" Shalini frowned. "It's not rare for critters to tunnel into each other."

"Because the tunnel it ran into is tall enough for a man to stand," Zenzele flatly said.

Angharad straightened.

"How broad?" she asked.

"At least ten feet," Izel said. "It could be man-made, some old smuggling tunnel, but if it isn't…"

"Then there is a large beast dwelling within walking distance of Lamb Hill," Angharad completed.

Already the existence of such a large lemure would be dangerous, but if it could dig through rock then the entire camp was in danger. It could collapse the promontory during the night, like a sapper, or sneak in and snatch a few students as they slept.

"Ah, good, we're all on the same page."

Tristan and Ferranda briskly joined the circle, voices pitched low. It had been the former who spoke, and he continued.

"The mole dug its own burrow large enough we can make it into the larger tunnel by crawling," he said. "Yet it seems to me a bad idea to take our entire company below."

"We don't need to head below at all," Zenzele said. "We could report it to the garrison and leave it to them."

While not insensible, it was not a popular notion with the others and Angharad would confess to preferring otherwise as well. If there was a monster beneath her feet, she wanted to know.

"A small team," Ferranda suggested. "While the rest of us stay up here, overseeing the independents."

"I will go," Angharad immediately said.

"Count me in," Shalini carelessly added.

Ferranda frowned at her for it, but said nothing.

"I hate tunnels," Tristan sighed. "Still, someone needs to carry the lantern while the Skiritai slay our foes. Izel?"

The large Izcalli nodded without missing a beat.

"I as well."

Rong Ma had not joined their council, still out with a pair of students, but the two remaining members of the Thirty-First were staring each other down. Zenzele looked away first, openly irritated.

"I will go with you," he said. "My eye might be of service."

The veiled reference to his contract, the power to see connections between individuals and concepts as strings of color, had the others nodding thoughtfully. Angharad, smiling thinly, pressed the bag containing lemure heads into a startled Ferranda's grasp.

"I entrust this to you, then," she said. "The rest of you, check your weapons. We head down immediately."