She hadn’t lied to Ojo. Her ancestors did want her to investigate. In fact, it was the only thing they’d agreed on since the Golden Lord joined their ranks.
Of course, they wanted it for completely different reasons. All of her ancestors knew Mertika would be among the main suspects—and with good cause. The loyalists wanted her to clear the empire’s name. The Golden Lord was hoping she would prove its guilt.
Michiko didn’t know what she hoped for, or what she would do if she discovered the truth. She just hated the uncertainty, the feeling that someone had pulled a trick on the entire sky and was laughing as they all blindly lashed out at one another. And she hated watching Ojo and Kris hurt by it, when neither of them deserved to be in the center of this storm.
She wasn’t some sneak agent from Kakute’s glory days, to skulk around in shadows or disguise herself as a Herroki bravo, but she had the sense not to wear a warder’s finery down to the lower island. With her hair braided up under a kerchief and her clothing a motley assortment of pieces from various nations, she didn’t obviously look like Kakute’s junior warder. And if what Ojo said was true, she’d fit right in where she was going.
The noise was audible before she even reached the doorway, rising up from the depths of a warehouse’s cellar. Voices shouting in encouragement or frustration, and then the brassy clash of a gong, after which the roar subsided to only half of deafening. She’d found the right place.
Two women stood on either side of the door, one in a short Vanian gown and shin wraps, the other dressed much like Michiko. According to Yochno, this club had been started by Vanians—not battlemistresses, but their junior officers, looking for a place to hone their skills during shore leave. These days it attracted a wider clientele, but if she was looking for a place to find Vanians, he said it was a good place to start.
She hadn’t said outright that she was looking for hard-line anti-Rumikan zealots, but she had a feeling he’d guessed it anyway. As Ojo had predicted, Twaan neutrality didn’t prevent him from answering a question, so long as it was plausibly innocent.
The Vanian door guard nodded at Michiko’s blade. “You planning to fight?”
“Possibly,” Michiko said, doing her best to blur her Kakutan accent into something less easily placed.
“Entry fee is a single, a triple if you want to fight. And no, you can’t pay a single now and the rest later—you make up your mind now.”
I might as well give myself the option. She dug five singles out of her pocket and handed them over. Yochno had given her plenty of useful advice, including the fact that waving around the higher-denomination coins known as triples—for their emblem, the tiered islands of Twaa-Fei—would attract too much attention. What was she doing here, in a place where even something as simple as paying for entry with the wrong coins could get her into trouble?
But retreating now would attract attention, too. The other guard pressed an inked seal to the backs of both of her hands, then waved her down the stairs.
The cacophony below was almost tangible. On a raised stage in the center of the room, two women faced off. One Mertikan, one Herroki. The latter kept flourishing her sword in ways that looked impressive, but the Mertikan just waited patiently for her opening. It came before Michiko even made it to the bottom of the stairs: a swift slap of blades, sending the Herroki’s flying wide, and then a thrust to the shoulder followed by a contemptuous kick. The gong sounded as the Herroki crashed to the floor.
The Mertikan accepted her winnings and left the stage, followed shortly by her defeated opponent. A Twaan girl, no more than ten, scurried out with a long knife and executed a sigil Michiko had never seen before. In response, the Herroki’s blood rose from the floor and sank into a large cotton towel that obviously had already seen use that night. With the stage cleaned, the ringmistress called out for the next two combatants to come up.
The ringmistress was the reason Michiko had decided to come here. Yochno had told her that Phaedra Kouris permitted men to enter the club—excluding them would cut too much into her profits—but not to enter the ring. That wasn’t enough to definitively mark her as Apolytoi, but it meant those who were might drift toward her club.
It had seemed like a good plan at the time, but now that she’d arrived, Michiko was much less certain. Even if there were Apolytoi here, she could hardly expect them to stand around gloating about how they’d destroyed the Rumikan fleet—and even if they did, she didn’t stand much chance of overhearing them in this clamor. A thick ring of people surrounded the stage, watching and betting on the fights; more clustered around small tables, enjoying what food and drink the place had to offer. But they had to lean in close and shout to be heard even by their own companions. The only way Michiko could hope to eavesdrop was if she sat under the tables themselves—and they would certainly notice her there.
She drifted clockwise around the room, trying to look like her attention was on the stage. Maybe if she bought something to eat, then asked to share space at one of the tables? But unless she knew which group to approach, that would be nothing more than a shot in the dark.
There might not even be a group to approach. She was searching a haystack, with no certainty it even contained a needle.
Someone stepped into her path.
Michiko pulled up short, looking for another way through the crowd. Then she realized the man blocking her progress wasn’t a stranger—though she’d never seen him like this before.
Takeshi hadn’t disguised himself the way she had, with mismatched clothing and a kerchief over his hair. He’d just made himself . . . nondescript. His neatly trimmed beard looked mildly scraggly, his high-collared shirt and straight trousers a little shabby. Not to the point where anyone would wonder how he could afford the entrance fee to the club, but enough that nobody would take notice of him.
It was the body language, Michiko realized. Takeshi might not be the greatest bladecrafter in the Circle, but like the rest of the warders, he moved like a swordsman. Not here, though. He slouched, he shuffled; he behaved as if he’d never been in a fight in his life.
“What are you doing here?”
He asked the question before she could, leaning in so she could hear him. “I could ask the same thing of you,” she called back, pitching her voice just over the noise. “You go to Vanian dueling clubs for fun?”
“I like to watch,” he said. “Here—follow me.”
Takeshi led her to the corner farthest from the bar, where it was marginally quieter than the rest of the room. “It’s interesting to study them,” he said, once he could speak without straining his voice. “I don’t get many opportunities to observe certain birthrights in action.”
Her shoulders stiffened. “Aren’t the duels just to first blood?”
“Not all of them. Especially not when both combatants are Vanians.” He jerked his chin toward the stage, where two women were testing each other’s defenses.
Michiko whistled silently. The Vanian birthright was sheer physical toughness: stamina, pain tolerance, and a resistance to infection that meant they often survived injuries that would cripple or kill anyone else. If the ringmistress here allowed duels to go past first blood, this was the best place outside of warfare itself for Takeshi to study the effect.
So why did she get the feeling he wasn’t telling the whole truth?
“You haven’t answered my question,” Takeshi said.
No, she hadn’t. Michiko weighed her options swiftly. “The fleet,” she admitted. “I think . . . a certain country . . . might be behind it. Or at least people from that country. And this might be a good place to find out.”
Unfortunately, Takeshi was too smart to take that answer at face value. “Yes—but how do you know that? It’s obvious you’ve never been down here before. Someone told you about this place. Lavinia?” He shook his head before he was even done saying her name. “No. Yochno.”
“What makes you think that?”
He grinned. “Because he’s the one w
ho told me, a year ago. But why didn’t he . . .” Takeshi caught himself. “No, that makes sense. I’m not sure why you’re getting involved, though.”
What had he not said? This conversation was shaping up to be more hole than cloth. Michiko herself could hardly tell the whole truth, not with the Golden Lord hoping for Mertikan guilt.
But she could say a few things, at least, while leaving her ancestors out of it. “Because the two key parties are currently pointing fingers at each other, but it won’t be long before they start pointing them at our side. I’m hoping to give them reason to look in another direction.” There—that should be both plausible and innocuous.
Takeshi nodded, drifting off into thought. Between his unassuming manner and the way Bellona and Lavinia treated him, it was easy to forget that he was the senior Ikaran warder—had been for more than a year, and without a junior to support him. He might prefer aerstone theory to duels or politics, but that didn’t mean he was useless at the latter. He said, “How exactly were you planning to accomplish that?”
Here she had nothing but the truth to offer. “I don’t know.”
He didn’t mock her for it. Instead he said, “Behind me, over my right shoulder. See the three women leaning against the wall?” Michiko nodded. “The tallest one is Dione Galanis. She’s the kind of person you’re looking for. But if you want to talk to her, you’re going to need to prove you’re worth her time.”
In a place like this, his meaning was obvious—which was not the same thing as sensible. “You want me to challenge some random Vanian officer to a duel of blade in an underground club?”
A faint grin touched his mouth. Takeshi shrugged and leaned against the wall as if settling in for some entertainment. “You’re the one who decided to fly into the Mists. I’m just telling you which way to sail.”
Chapter 7
Takeshi
Takeshi couldn’t hear Michiko’s conversation with Galanis, but he watched the body language of the two women, and Galanis’s companions. The Vanians went from bored, to annoyed, to interested. So: Michiko had the sense not to start by insulting Galanis. It would have gotten her a duel, but not an entry point into Apolytoi circles.
After a moment, Galanis belted up her gown to a more practical length for fighting and led Michiko over to Phaedra Kouris, the ringmistress. Kouris entered them into her book, and Takeshi settled in to wait. It wouldn’t take long; Kouris had a habit of prioritizing Vanians, especially Apolytoi, who wanted to fight.
“Are you going to place a bet?”
He recognized the voice without turning around. “I never bet, Joshi. You know that.”
She leaned against the wall next to his seat, arms folded. Her gaze was on the stage, not him. “Yes, but this seems to be an unusual night. Friend of yours?”
It wasn’t a real question—not when she asked in that tone of voice. But Takeshi was never sure just how much Joshi knew, and how much she was pretending to know in order to lure someone else into spilling more than they should.
He said, “If you want to bet, be my guest. I’d put my money on the newcomer.” Galanis was good, but not in Michiko’s league.
Joshi merely shrugged. “I came by to see how you’re doing. You haven’t been at the clinic much lately.”
Training with Kris had eaten into Takeshi’s spare time. He still couldn’t believe he’d told them the truth—that he didn’t have a birthright. Even Joshi didn’t know, though he sometimes wondered if she suspected. They’d been friends since Takeshi first arrived on Twaa-Fei, as the junior warder to Fuwa no Yae. Joshi was a native of the tiered city, and the reason Takeshi had gotten involved with the clinic on the lower island, lending his medical knowledge to the work they did for Twaa-Fei’s poor.
There was no reproach in her tone, but Takeshi still felt guilty. “I’m sorry. Things have been . . . Well, there was the Gauntlet, and now we’re all adjusting to having a seventh warder. And then this business with the trade fleet—you heard about that?”
This time he was sure her nod wasn’t a pretense. “Is that why your friend is down here, delivering a very tidy thrashing to a Vanian officer?”
Takeshi’s attention had wandered badly. Michiko and Galanis had taken the stage, and true to Joshi’s description, Michiko had the upper hand. She could have won by now, he suspected, but she was holding back so as not to humiliate Galanis, who’d clearly had more to drink than she should have. The Vanian birthright didn’t do anything to mitigate the effects of alcohol. When Galanis bore down, Michiko evaded and counterattacked only once, a cut to the knee that was easily parried. If she’d pressed, she could have put Galanis back on her heels, off-balance and easy prey.
Takeshi might not be very good at focusing in his own battles, but he was perfectly able to analyze other people’s.
He shrugged in response to Joshi’s question. “That’s her business, not mine. Would you like me to introduce you?”
“No, that’s all right.” Joshi’s gaze was distant, calculating, as she watched the fight. “But I’ll make you a wager—no money, just a prediction. This will turn out to be a Quloi scheme in the end.”
“You’re only saying that because you don’t like Quloo.”
The look she turned on him was as cold as steel. “A country that once sank an entire island wouldn’t hesitate to destroy a few ships. Don’t forget that, Takeshi . . . because I guarantee you, they haven’t.”
The gong clashed. Michiko had won. Takeshi stood, applauding, and by the time the combatants had left the stage, Joshi was gone.
Chapter 8
Michiko
“Well fought,” Dione Galanis said after they settled into a booth. Seating might be hard to come by in the club, but the booth’s occupants had vacated without hesitation when Galanis arrived. She snagged the bottle they had left behind and poured Michiko a cup of something that looked like water and smelled like alcoholic licorice. “Though I wouldn’t expect anything else from the junior Kakutan warder.”
“You know me,” Michiko said, hoping Galanis couldn’t tell her heart had just given a painful thump.
Whether she had or not, Galanis snorted. “Did you really think you wouldn’t be recognized? When you’re the reason Rumika has a seat in the Circle now?”
Damn it. Michiko hadn’t even thought of that, and should have. She let her fury at herself color her voice, to make her next words more convincing. “Not by choice. It was my duty to stop them, and the fact that I failed keeps me awake at night.”
“Poor babe,” Galanis said dryly, and knocked back a healthy swig from her cup.
Michiko might have earned a modicum of respect from the woman for her performance in the ring, but that wasn’t enough. With a silent apology to Kris, she said, “Why do you think I came here tonight?”
That got Galanis’s attention, finally. The Vanian woman rolled her cup between her fingers, studying Michiko. “We’re not used to getting approached by Mertikans.”
We. Michiko held on to that word, letting it distract her from the complicated sting of being called Mertikan. It was the first Galanis had let slip that she represented more than just herself. “My senior warder wouldn’t exactly be welcome among you,” she pointed out. “Warder Junius might be—but that would require her to admit anything of value can be found beyond Mertika’s borders.”
This time Galanis’s snort was more amused. “Which Vania isn’t—not yet, anyway.”
“I’m not either of those people,” Michiko said. “I’m neither apathetic nor blind to the world around me. And I know there’s more to Twaa-Fei than just what happens on the top island. With connections down here . . .” She picked up her own cup, raising it to Galanis in toast. “There are ways and ways of interfering with someone’s efforts in the Circle.”
The drink burned like licorice someone had lit on fire. Galanis waited until Michiko had choked it down, then said, “Bold words from a junior warder who hasn’t even been on Twaa-Fei for a year.”
Michiko
resisted the urge to wipe her streaming eyes. Galanis might not be a battlemistress, but she was clearly the kind of woman who despised weakness. “The more effective I make myself here,” she said, “the sooner Warder Junius and the people back home will notice they could be represented so much better in the Circle.”
To her surprise, the words weren’t even a lie. She could do better than Kensuke—because she could bother to do anything at all. Even if she failed, that would be more than he’d accomplished.
Galanis considered that for a long moment. Then she lifted her cup, returning the toast. “To ambition, then—and the prospect of new allies.”
Chapter 9
Cassia
On a subconscious level, Cassia almost didn’t expect the sigil to work. She’d practiced it hundreds of times before with her own blade; she’d watched Penelope carve it with the ritual sword of the Vanian warder. But this was the first time she’d done it for real, with that sword in her hands, inscribing a quartered ring and its four inner marks over the water of the communion pool in the Warders’ Circle.
The surface rippled, changed, settled. And she saw Vania.
The communion chamber there, anyway. Cassia hadn’t seen Vania itself in years, and unlike Penelope, she didn’t miss it. Twaa-Fei was much more congenial, with people from a hundred major and minor islands passing through.
She returned the ritual sword to its sheath and saluted. The water reflected the images of the Trine, the three most senior and powerful battlemistresses who ruled Vania. They returned her salute, and Ione Nissou, the eldest of them, spoke. “Warder pro tem Petros. We hope you have a full report prepared on this matter of the missing fleet.”
“I do,” Cassia said, taking a sheaf of paper from a leather folder. Penelope had never required notes, but Penelope had years of experience under her belt. Cassia didn’t want to rely on memory and forget something, humiliating herself in her first communion with the Trine.
The three women listened in attentive silence, only breaking in with clarifying questions twice. When Cassia finished, the other two looked at Nissou, who nodded crisply. “Thank you, Warder pro tem. That was succinct and well ordered. Is there anything else you feel it is necessary to add, before you receive your orders?”
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