We knew even as we were writing these scenes that they weren’t very good. They were crammed in at the end of . . . Chapter 17 or 18; not sure which at this point . . . but whichever one it was, we didn’t have a lot of wordage to spend on dealing with the Anduske. (Not even for values of “dealing with” that were never meant to be a full resolution of that plotline, just Andrejek breaking Branek’s hold over the group.) We wrote these scenes almost as placeholders, telling ourselves we would come back later and revise them to be better.

But before we got around to attempting that, we made the decision to scrap these scenes entirely. We relocated the Anduske confrontation to later in the book and took a completely different approach — only to scrap that version, too, postponing this whole bit of plot until Labyrinth’s Heart. It was much better that way, as you’ll see in a moment: among other things, this version relied for its success on a revelation we were vastly happier not to stage this early.

* * *

The Depths, Old Island: Canilun 10

One thing Vargo had become adept at in his rise to knot boss and noble was taking losses and transmuting them to wins. Nikory’s betrayal was no different.

“You want me to what?” Nikory had said when Vargo gave him his role.

“Conspire with Branek’s people against me. Tell them to pretend they captured you; you’re a big enough hostage that I’d hand over Dmatsos to get you back. But you get them to set up an ambush instead.”

Nikory was still staring. “You want them to ambush you?”

“Something like that.” The biggest challenge in getting Andrejek before his people was getting his people in one place. If Branek thought he could use the return of Dmatsos as a way to take Vargo out, though, he’d bring enough people to make sure it didn’t fail.

But Vargo wasn’t telling Nikory that part. Even if what Ghiscolo had done was fading, there was still a risk that Nikory would betray him for real. His head ached from keeping all the layers of planning together: the real plan, the plan Nikory knew, the plan as the Stretsko would see it, what they would do in response, what Vargo would do if — when — things hit a sandbar, the backup plan for that . . .

“No,” Nikory said, hands out like he could shove the idea away. “You shouldn’t trust me like that.”

I thought Varuni would be the hard part of this. Seemed Nikory’s guilt was made of thicker stuff than even Varuni’s duty. “Then don’t think of it as trust,” Vargo said. “You owe me.” And Nikory had grudgingly gone off to betray him.

Which was how Vargo found himself voluntarily entering the Depths with only Varuni, Sedge, Orostin, [name of lady fist Nikory saved], and their bound prisoner.

These part of the catacombs were in the south end of the point, not far beneath the temple Kaius Rex had carved into the rock — maybe even part of it, once upon a time — and as such were relatively dry. But the stone under their feet was pocked from the condensation dripping from above, and the walls revealed by their lightstone lantern were striated with the pale lines of calcium deposits.

Then it was augmented by light from up ahead. Alsius said, ::Branek just arrived. Four people with him, including Tserdev. About ten in the south tunnel. Andrejek’s inside woman is in the northwest tunnel with another eight or so.::

Normally, Vargo would have put guards on those tunnels to make certain their numbers stayed even, but Nikory had promised Branek there would be no guards to get in his way — and used his Nightpeace tipoff as proof that he had no loyalty to Vargo. Instead, Vargo had sent Alsius to lie in wait and watch the cavern for most of the day to make certain the ambush was going according to the right plans.

And the secret tunnel?

::He doesn’t seem to know about it.::

Good. Back-up escape plans number one and two were still in place. Andrejek’s plant was number three. It was as safe as any gamble on this scale would ever be.

“Everything’s set,” Vargo said. He’d long given up explaining how he knew these things, and his fists had long abandoned asking. Though at least one of them didn’t need to anymore, he realized when he caught the edge of Sedge’s grin. It was oddly comforting, and Vargo found himself grinning back. “Let’s do this.”

He strode out with Varuni and Sedge flanking him, and stopped just inside the edge of the small chamber. “Ča Branek. Where’s my lieutenant?”

Despite the muck of the Depths, Branek wore a fine panel coat thick with embroidery. It made a sharp contrast with the roughness of his pox-scarred face. He called back, “Where’s Dmatsos?”

Vargo smirked. “We could stand here all night playing this game. I can get a new lieutenant if I have to; I don’t think Tserdev can get a new brother. Show me Nikory.” One of the many ways this could go wrong was if Vargo wasn’t able to snatch Nikory back.

“Such loyalty,” Branek sneered, and Vargo bit back a smile and the urge to counter with ‘Such overconfidence.’ But Branek put his fingers to his mouth and whistled, and one of his fists brought Nikory stumbling out.

He looked no worse for wear, Vargo was grateful to note. It meant either Branjek had bought the ruse, or Nikory had played both sides of the river again.

Only one way to find out which it was. At a wave of Vargo’s hand, Orostin and [lady] brought out their prisoner.

Without giving Branek time to think — or to notice anything amiss — Vargo said, “They cross in the middle.”

He held his breath, counting the steps the two figures were taking towards each other. They hadn’t even gone a third of the way when Tserdev drew a knife. “That’s not my brother.”

Several things happened in quick succession: Nikory dropped to the ground, as did Varuni and Vargo’s lanterns. Vargo drew his own knife, Varuni her whip-chains. From the tunnels around them came a sudden rush of footsteps, Branek’s people charging forward to attack.

And Koszar Andrejek lifted his head, shaking off his false-tied bonds and wig.

In a voice that echoed off the walls of the Depths, he said, “I call forth the children of the dreamweaver to hear my accusation! Before you stands a knot traitor — but that traitor is Ustimir Hraleski Branek, who turned on me and beat me near to death while the cord of the Stadnem Anduske was still whole around my neck. And whole it remains.”

Clutching his collar, he yanked it low, exposing the woven tapestry of a dozen stained and fading knot charms, generations of Anduske leaders tied together in an ongoing chain. “You have been lied to and betrayed. Will you deny the truth?”

“Liar!” Branek spat. “Liar and slip-knot. You are the traitor, Andrejek, the one who turned against the ideals of the Anduske –”

“I backed down from a plan that would have killed many of our own people, when it became clear that plan was tainted beyond retrieval by the manipulations of Mettore Indestor. If with me you disagreed, you were free to walk away. But I betrayed our people not. Have you not told them all I cut my knot in front of you, that I took money from Novrus to leave Nadežra? Yet my knot I still wear, and in Nadežra I remain.” Andrejek spat at Branek. “Foul as a traitor is, fouler still is one who leads others down his path. Your lies prove your guilt even in your own mind.”

As their shouted accusations echoed off the vaulted ceiling of the cavern, the people who’d been poised for ambush drifted out of their hiding places. But while they didn’t attack Vargo, neither did they rush to support Andrejek.

“You call them my lies, but is [x] lying? Is [y] or [z]?” Branek gestured at one of the women with him, and two men stationed in the ambush parties. “You have only your own word, and you back it with a cuff who honors no ties to anyone.”

“No. I back it with the words of those who were also there. And with one who sees the threads of pattern itself.”

That’s her cue, Vargo told Alsius, because this was going belly-up faster than he expected.

::Oh, she knows,:: Alsius said, as Arenza Lenskaya emerged from the shadows of a fourth tunnel.

 

The Depths, Old Island: Canilun 10

Ren doubted that, when the Praeteri inscribed her into the register of their cult, they ever dreamed she would make use of it to bring two Vraszenian radicals into the Depths.

Like every part of this plan, it was a gamble. She and Vargo calculated that it must be possible for outsiders to pass the ward that kept people out of the Tyrant’s temple; otherwise their Praeteri sponsors wouldn’t have been able to bring them in for their initiation. They didn’t know if it would require more than just the presence of a cult member, though. And while Renata had queried Tanaquis and determined that there were no formal rituals planned for the temple tonight, that didn’t guarantee no member would take it into their head to visit the place on their own.

At least the whispers between Idusza and Ljunan told her they chalked up her ability to pass the door no one could open to the fact she was a powerful szorsa.

The wait was long enough that she wished she dared pass the time playing nytsa. But Idusza was too wary of Arenza’s involvement with Vargo for card games, and besides, they were all too busy worrying about how the plan might go wrong. But finally Arenza’s pocket watch told her the time had come for Vargo’s meeting with Branek, and she slipped back down, listening as the voices rose and the accusations began to fly. Until —

“I back it with the words of those who were also there. And with one who sees the threads of pattern itself.”

Arenza stepped out into the chamber.

Enough of the Anduske had seen her before to recognize her. For the rest, Andrejek’s ally among Branek’s people muttered, “That’s the szorsa who helped us!” A satisfying wave of reactions swept through the chamber: they’d heard Idusza’s tales of what she could do.

It bought a brief silence into which she could speak. “You call yourselves the faithful children of the dreamweaver,” she said, “yet with each other you fight. Have the Ižranyi passed from your memory as they have passed from this world? Or is it that you care not that you tarnish it?”

Scowling at Andrejek, Branek made a contemptuous gesture in her direction. “You think to make your case like this? She is not even Anduske. We have no reason to listen to her words.”

“And what of my voice?” Idusza asked, coming out from behind Arenza, with Ljunan at her side. “I was there also when you attacked Koszar and broke your knot oaths.”

“Mezzan’s whore,” Branek snarled.

“You were happy enough to attack your knot leader to follow Mezzan’s plan,” Iduzsa shot back. “Who was his whore, then?”

While they spat accusations at each other, the murmuring among Branek’s people was growing louder. Many of them drew knives and cudgels — those who didn’t already have them out — but no one attacked yet. All of them still claimed legitimacy as the real Anduske . . . which meant that whoever struck first would be turning against their own knot. And no one was willing to cast off that binding by cutting their charms, because that would cede the Anduske name to their opponents. Instead they edged away from each other, some toward Andrejek, some toward Branek. The growing space marked the growing schism… but far too many were drifting toward Branek’s side.

“Enough.” Tserdev shot a glare at Branek, who scowled but fell silent when she stepped between him and Andrejek. “I too am not Anduske, and your knot’s business is not mine. Where is my brother?”

Vargo was leaning against the cavern wall as if watching a somewhat tedious play, but Ren could read the tension in his posture. This hadn’t fallen apart yet, but it hadn’t come together, either. He said, “Safe. And I’ll give him to you as promised — if you give me your sworn word that you’ll stop your attacks on my Lower Bank knots.” He nodded toward Branek. “I trust your word more than his.”

“And your word I should trust? No. You will give me my brother, or I keep –”

Tserdev’s words died as she looked to where Nikory had been, and found that in the confusion, Nikory had escaped to Vargo’s side.

Vargo shrugged, grinning. “Sorry. I sent him to you. Only way I could be sure of getting this meeting to happen.”

The mood in the chamber surged ugly. Because Tserdev wasn’t sworn to the Anduske, she could knife anybody she wanted without breaking an oath. And if she started the violence, Arenza doubted it would stop short of people dying.

Before that could happen, she strode to the center of the chamber. Into the gap between the two groups; into the path of danger. With nothing more than a deck of cards in her hand.

She held up Warp and Weft, turning in a slow circle for all to see. The card of union . . . or, when masked, the card of permanent dissolution. “My reputation you already know, and I tell you now that you face a choice. Whether you will bind together, or tear apart.” She drew a second card: Constant Ivan’s Oath. “Whether trust will rule you, or betrayal. But before you decide, consider this.”

A third card: Orin and Orasz, the twin moons, and the card of duality. “When I tell you that Andrejek speaks true, know that I say this not only as a szorsa conceived during the Great Dream. I say it as one touched by Ažerais herself.”

With a street performer’s flourish, she made her deck vanish — replaced by a piece of lace.

She measured the impact of her transformation in the reactions of those around her: in Idusza’s startled gasp and the widening of Andrejek’s eyes. In the way Branek’s hand shook as he drew his knife, and the curse that slipped from Tserdev’s lips.

In Vargo’s smirk, Varuni’s slow blink, and the hand Sedge splayed over his face.

Bowing hand-to-heart, her gaze swept the room and the startled Anduske. “I say it as the Black Rose.”

“A–a puppet of the ziemetse,” Branek stuttered, thrusting his knife in her direction, as several of those who’d edged toward him started to edge away. “Is she not the one who handed [x] and Šidjin over to them?”

Ren spread her black-gloved hands. “I don’t deny it. But everything I do is to protect the children of Ažerais.”

Against Branek’s frightened accusation, Andrejek’s voice came like a wash of cool water. “Nothing will be solved here, like this, with so many of our brothers and sisters not present. I ask not that you choose now. Only that you follow long enough to listen without the interference of outsiders.” He gestured at Vargo, at Tserdev. And even at the Rose herself. Then he held up his empty hands. “And without the threat of violence.”

Branek’s expression twisted ugly again. “There is nothing in you worth listening to. Your spine you have lost, Andrejek. The Anduske need better than you.”

“That is for them to decide,” Andrejek said calmly.

And they did — at least for the moment. No one threw a punch or a knife; as Andrejek began heading for his exit, the ones who had moved to his side went with him. So did some of those nearer to Branek. Not all . . . but to Ren’s eye, the end tally was roughly an even split. For a meeting that could have ended in disaster, with her and Vargo’s crew fleeing for the safety of the warded temple, that was a victory.

But Tanaquis’ words haunted her. Tricat in the dream was affecting them all. How much of this schism could be laid at her own feet, because she let that medallion fall?