Tredegar was out in the garden, swinging her saber at the air. Presumably she was winning.

Maryam watched her through the window, having dragged a chair from the kitchen table to sit there while eating her meal and waiting for Song to return. Tristan, leaning against the windowsill, was eyeing the exercise with polite disinterest as he went through the last of the bread.

“It was mostly mathematics and memorizing star charts,” Maryam said. “We haven’t so much as glanced at a ship yet. You?”

The Sacromontan tore a piece from the loaf and popped it into his mouth, scarfing it down like a starving man. The meals of Scholomance were filling in his cheeks, smoothing away some of the lean in him. Maryam had thought him handsomer before, but this was certainly better for him.

“Professor Xiomara started us out dissecting green plague corpses,” he said.

Her head whipped his way in surprise.

“Weeding out the faint-hearted, I think,” Tristan mused. “We were thirty-two when class started but getting elbow deep in guts and pus probably ran out a third of that number.”

Maryam eyed him uneasily.

“You washed after, right?”

He blinked.

“I wiped my hands,” he said, like that was good enough.

A moment passed as she searched the thief’s face, which was just a tad too bemused. The tension left her shoulders.

“I almost bought that,” Maryam admitted.

The gray-eyed man cackled.

“We all wore gloves and overclothes during and we still scrubbed before leaving,” Tristan told her. “Mind you, the professor says the green plague isn’t contagious when the corpse is older than a day.”

Between the monsters that Tredegar was fighting underground and the plague corpses, Maryam was developing a degree of pity for the captains in charge of supplying Port Allazei.

“The worst Professor Sibiya sprung on us was language requirements,” she offered. “Fluent Antigua and enough Umoya to get by.”

Maryam had been ready to dislike the Malani professor for it but his reasons were unfortunately sensible. The Kingdom of Malan’s explorers had named most of the moons and constellations in the deep Aeolian Ocean and they had the only reliable charts leading through it to the western lands. Some degree of capacity with the language was needed if one was to ever sail beyond the Five Seas.

“You know Umoya?” Tristan asked, sounding surprised.

Maryam mutely nodded. Her father had insisted and Mother thought it a sound notion as well – if for different reasons. She was hardly fluent and had been told her accent was thick, but she understood the language well enough.

“Some Centzon as well,” she said. “My mentor is Izcalli.”

“Even Tredegar is fluent in two languages,” he muttered. “I might need to expand my horizons.”

Neither of them bothered to mention Song, whose arsenal of languages was simply not worth comparing to. And speaking of that particular devil, before Tristan could finish devouring the loaf the Tianxi swept in through the front door – putting away her clothes and weapons so habitually she did not even need to look at what she was doing while doing it. Tristan moved to stand by the Izvorica as silver eyes glanced their way. Their captain sighed.

“Why are you still pickpocketing Maryam?” Song asked. “It hardly serves as training.”

Maryam turned to glare at the thief, who smiled innocently. He offered back the bronze-rimmed coin he’d taken, and also two silvers. He cocked an inquisitive eyebrow.

“I thought more coins would make it harder to steal,” Maryam said. “On account of them tinkling together, I mean.”

“You would need more,” he informed her. “And I’d still be able to skim from the top with little noise.”

The smug bastard. She might have put a mouse trap in that pocket to wipe the look off his face, if not for the real chance she might forget it was in there and snap her own fingers instead. Pointedly turning away from the gray-eyed man, she smiled at Song.

“How was your class?” she asked.

“Interesting,” Song replied. “The first two months are to be spent studying the composition and doctrine of the armies of the great powers before we move on to the strategic aspects of the class.”

That sounded horribly dull, but Song’s aim was to rise up the ranks of the Watch so that sort of thing seemed right up her alley.

“I am glad you are enjoying it,” she diplomatically said. “Tristan and I already ate, but I am not so sure about Tredegar.”

Song nodded.

“I will call her in, then, and we can sit together before we go.”

It was a short enough meal that Maryam did not have time to be irritated by the company, so it was in a decent mood they all departed for Scholomance.

—

This whole thing stank, Tristan thought.

The Trial of Contest had smacked of bad news since the start, but the moment they were greeted at the plaza outside Scholomance not by some bored sergeant but Professor Tenoch Sasan the thief knew this was going to be more trouble than it was worth. Sure, there were three more soldiers present but that their Saga teacher had decided to use the second half of his sixthday to accompany them was a warning sign. It was, unfortunately, too late to retreat.

“We are still waiting on another,” Professor Sasan informed them. “It should not be long.”

His eyes were on the bridge behind them, which Tristan found interesting. That meant coming through the ruins, with all the dangers implied – the lemures were learning not to attack near the main avenue, but everywhere else was still hunting ground – yet the way the Izcalli had phrased it there would be only one more added to their party. The four of them stood there with the blackcloaks, shuffling awkwardly while armed to the teeth in their fighting fit, until the promised silhouette appeared.

A Tianxi, Tristan saw, and wearing those loose black robes that Navigators seemed to be able to use as a uniform. Long black hair kept in a braid and burn scars on the side of her face, which were not so half as interesting as the way Maryam stiffened at the sight of her. He leaned in.

“Familiar?” he murmured.

She nodded, then raised the pitch of her voice so all would hear.

“That is Captain Yue,” Maryam said. “She is the senior Akelarre on Tolomontera and head of the local chapterhouse.”

As well as the officer who’d taken his blue-eyed friend under her wing after her teacher washed his hands of her. Only Maryam had seemed more worried than happy about that, which was telling. Looking up the woman was on his list, though his inquiries to Hage had only yielded that the Navigators were a viciously private lot and he should tread lightly. Captain Yue seemed in a fine mood and greeted them happily, trading a few quips with Professor Sasan – they appeared acquainted – before straightening her collar.

“Shall we get a move on?” Captain Yue asked. “The Lugar Vacio is not easy for the school to move, but it has done it before.”

Song cleared her throat.

“May I ask what-”

“Where your trial will take place,” the other Tianxi interrupted. “Get your feet moving, Thirteenth. You are the first takers of the year so you have my curiosity, but I do have other plans this afternoon.”

Song had that look on her face that she always put there when she felt like she had been slapped but didn’t want to show it. Tristan instead kept his eye on Captain Yue, and found she was not acting like a Kang – she was not paying Song enough attention to be out to get her.

She merely had poor manners.

There was no arguing with that order, however, so het moving they did. Tristan had a scheme to obtain more information, naturally, which relied on the way that he had never met a single scholar of history that did not enjoy expounding about it at great length when asked. As they passed through the open doors of Scholomance, walking grounds covered with stained glass light, the thief slid into place by Professor Sasan’s side. The brown-eyed man shot him an amused look.

“So here comes the Mask, hungry to get the inside track,” the professor said. “You could set a clock by the skulking.”

Ah. The man was an old friend of Wen’s, so perhaps Tristan should have been more careful in his approach. He’d been caught out in his intentions but retreat would help none, so he was left with audacity instead.

“It’s the stubble, sir,” he said, smiling brightly. “It makes you look gullible.”

Professor Sasan choked, letting out a burst of laughter that startled the rest of the group. He could feel Song’s stare on his back, weighing whether or not it wanted to be a glare.

“Thank you for the advice, soldier,” the professor said, lips still twitching. “Ask your questions before my good mood wanes.”

Tristan eyed him for a moment. He did not give it good odds that the Izcalli would outright tell him what the trial was, so an indirect angle would yield more.

“What is it about the Trial of Contest that warrants the personal attention of a professor and the senior signifier on the island?”

The man pushed up his spectacles.

“Clever,” he praised. “I cannot speak for Captain Yue, but my interest lies in the fact that this will be the second use of the Lugar Vacio since Scholomance was closed. The first was the better part of a year before I arrived here, so this is my first opportunity to behold it with my own eyes.”

Tristan’s brow rose.

“So this Trial of Contest is not some fresh invention?” he pressed.

“It has been in practice almost as long as the Watch has used Scholomance as a school,” Professor Sasan replied.

That was less than reassuring, considering that Scholomance was rumored to have closed because too many students died even by the harsh standard of the blackcloaks. Which reminded him, while he had a historian at hand…

“Why did Scholomance close, anyway?” Tristan asked. “The Watch cannot own so many aether wells it would leave one unoccupied without good reason.”

“There was no single reason, but admittedly one did tip the balance the way of closure,” Professor Sasan mused. “We are a stubborn folk, our order – but even we balked at continuing to send children in after the third year in a row that the entire roster died.”

Tristan winced. About what he’d feared.

“So what changed since?”

The man laughed.

“The blood dried,” Sasan said.

Tristan extricated himself as swiftly as possible after that, returning to his cabal. For such a cheerful man, Tenoch Sasan had one of the bleakest senses of humor he’d ever seen.

The friendship with Wen made more sense now, he’d admit.

—

Scholomance could be beautiful, Angharad thought, as the deadliest of things tended to be.

It was an eerie sort of beauty but no less moving for it. Their company strode through broken halls painted with the light of some pale moon, a passage of faded mosaics whose colors must have once been bewitching and a strange garden whose every flower and stalk of grass was marble. Captain Yue stood in the lead and traced symbols in the air with Gloam every few minutes, sometimes changing their direction strangely afterwards – going through cramped stairs downwards to end up on the second story, or taking a closet door to end up in a great hall. Her curiosity must have been visible, for it received answer.

“It’s a Sign,” Maryam quietly explained. “Didactic.”

“I am not familiar with the meaning – as related to your arts, that is,” Angharad said.

“Didactic Signs are both external and internal, relating to abstract concepts,” the Izvorica recited. “On the Bluebell, when the captain enclosed the Saint inside invisible walls, it was a Didactic Sign as he used.”

The other woman frowned.

“This one appears to be about connection,” Maryam said. “Two things being one. It must be some kind of pathfinding trick, like a Gloam compass.”

Angharad inclined her head in thanks at the explanation, receiving a grunt as answer. These were not impressive manners, but the noblewoman let it pass. She could not take issue with it when she had yet to find a way to make restitution for her own lacking courtesies. After one last turn through a forlorn dance hall whose checkered tiles were strewn with broken glass from fallen chandeliers, they emerged into a small antechamber of bare stone with a small door half-ajar.

Captain Yue traced her Sign again, then glanced through the door and gave a satisfied nod before shooting a glance at the ceiling.

“Tried to waylay us with the Basilisk Garden, did you?” she said, clicking her tongue. “Come now, I know my filters. You’ll have to do better than that.”

“I find that when arguing with immortals one rarely gets the last word,” Professor Sasan noted.

The Tianxi signifier glanced at him with a hard smile.

“There’s no such thing as immortality, Tenoch,” Captain Yue replied. “Even the Gloam will end.”

The man rolled his eyes behind his spectacles.

“If you insist on being part of a cult, Yue, you could at least pick one with good festivals,” he said. “There’s a temple out in Totochtin that-”

One of the blackcloaks behind them cleared his throat, loudly. The professor appeared somewhat chastised, but not so the signifier.

“We can go in,” Captain Yue said. “It’s the right room.”

The pair preceded the rest of them in, Angharad was first in their wake. She had not been sure what to expect, but somehow it had not been this: the room was surprisingly mundane.

It could have passed as some lord’s solar back home, with that pretty wooden paneling on the walls and floor. Geometric tapestries hung on the sides, a little heavy on the red for her tastes but more than acceptable, and the lanterns were delicate ironwork. Only there was no furniture and the floor paneling had been scraped, as if heavy objects were dragged out of the room – and in the very center, bursting out of the floor like a jutting nail, stood a doorway.

An arch of stone, simple gray blocks perfectly interlocked.

An empty doorway leading to nowhere, she thought, but then she thought she glimpsed something through and it was not the back of the room. It was… Angharad frowned, taking a step closer, and pricked her ear. She could almost hear a song, faint as it was. A voice was singing, slow and light, but there was also something more. An undertone, deeper. It was not coming from the other side.

 The Pereduri swallowed drily when she realized that the other sound was the Fisher humming along.

A hand came to rest on her shoulder, shaking her out of her trance.

“Easy now,” Professor Sasan said. “Crossing that doorway without first taking the proper precautions would be unwise.”

Angharad swallowed again when she saw that she was three steps closer to the doorway than she recalled.

“What lies beyond, professor?” she asked.

“A complicated question,” the Izcalli said. “By itself? Not much. Something that failed to become a layer and was subsumed by Scholomance.”

The noblewoman licked her lips.

“I could make out a song,” she admitted.

The professor’s brow rose above his spectacles.

“That makes you one in a hundred,” he said. “I can’t hear so much as a whistle myself. There must be great deal of fear in you.”

Angharad went stiff as a board at the insult.

“Pardon me?” she forced out.

“That is what lies on the other side of the doorway, Tredegar,” Professor Sasan said. “Fear. To be precise, a great moment of terror that was too short-lived to form into a layer but still left a mark in the aether.”

Before Angharad could bite out that she was no coward, and what would an Izcalli know of courage anyway, Song cleared her throat and stepped between them.

“You mentioned that it was consumed by Scholomance,” the Tianxi said. “What has it become now?”

The man pushed up his glasses.

“There is Izcalli a plant called the butterwort,” he said, “whose viscous leaves trap insects that land on them, slowly dissolving and digesting them.”

Professor Tenoch Sasan spoke calmly, almost mildly, as if they were discussing nothing more than the weather.

“The Lugar Vacio, the place beyond the doorway, is much the same. It will bring out your deepest fears, make you lose yourself within and then feed on you until either your mind or body shatters.”

Angharad swallowed again. There was a long moment of silence.

“Usually I’d say something about this not being the worst way I spent a sixthday,” Tristan noted. “But this honestly might just be it.”

Angharad turned a half-fond look on the shrugging man, Maryam choking out a laugh. The look on Song’s face, however, did not change: guilt. She was regretting roping them into this. Angharad understood why, but did not share the doubt. If the Watch did not believe the trial worth taking, it would not have been put up on that wall for Song to take.

“I would not expect the Watch would indulge in petty torments,” Angharad said. “Surely there is some purpose to this trial?”

It was not the professor that answered, to her surprise.

“It’s soul-tempering,” Maryam said. “My people’s signifiers have a tradition not unlike this, though a little god rides your soul instead.”

“Experiencing emotional extremes strengthens one’s soul,” Captain Yue agreed. “Especially when it happens within an aether well – you’ve had Theology already, so you should have an inkling as to why.”

Professor Sasan cleared his throat.

“It is also preparation for field conditions,” he added. “There are gods and lemures that can inflict terror, and to have lived through such a thing in controlled conditions significantly increases your chances of survival.”

Sensible, Angharad thought. Scarred skin was tougher when given time to heal. Tristan cleared his throat.

“If any emotion will do, I don’t suppose there’s a joy doorway lying around we could take instead?”

“Oh, they banned that one back when Scholomance was last open,” Professor Sasan idly said.

He shrugged.

“The suicide rate in the aftermath was simply too high.”

No one was quite sure what to answer to that.

—

Song went first.

It would have been beneath her not to, after what they had heard. A general led from the back, but a captain led from the front and Song yet claimed to be captain of the Thirteenth Brigade. She stood before the doorway in silence, Captain Yue slowly circling around her as she traced Signs in quick sequence – shimmering, oily darkness hung in the air for the barest heartbeats before fading. All that Song felt from the sorcery was a shiver of cold, until the other Tianxi traced one last Sign and closer her fist around a piece of darkness that almost looked like a Cathayan character.

She felt it then: she was tethered.

“You have bound my soul,” Song said.

“More accurately, I tied a rope around it so that I will be able to pull you out,” Captain Yue replied. “You will only remain two minutes inside – any longer and Scholomance will have nibbled away at the rope.”

She had a southern accent, Song noted.  Maybe Sanxing, though she could not know for sure without hearing Yue speak Cathayan.

“What will two minutes achieve?” she asked.

“Enough,” Captain Yue snorted. “It won’t feel like a short time to you, Ren. Nor will you remember crossing the threshold.”

No, she thought, but I will see through the illusion. That might just give her an edge. She glanced back and found that Professor Sasan had cracked open a small leather journal, scribbling notes in it as he kept an eye on her – and was that a sketch of her standing in front of the doorway? It would have been improper to glare at a teacher but the urge was there. The soldiers were near the door and looking on with nothing more than mild interest, but her cabal at least was displaying some concern.

Abrascal’s face was a blank mask and Angharad looked as if she was pressing down her worries – no doubt to avoid giving insult by implying Song would not rise to the occasion – while Maryam was biting her lip. Song gave them a nod, then breathed out and turned to Captain Yue.

“I am ready,” she said.

“Then cross the threshold,” she said.

One, two, three steps and Song was-

—

Song Ren was no longer young.

She looked down at her hands, saw the wrinkles on her palm and strength on the wane.

It was not real. It was an illusion, Song Ren saw the truth of things and this was false-

-all her life Song had seen the world as an illusion, an unexpected repercussion of her contract, but she whatever her eyes might say she could feel the truth in her limbs. They ached as she walked up the path, her steps halting as she climbed the stairs on the side of the hill. How many years had it been since she last came here? Decades, not since she was a girl.

The stone steps were worn and strewn with leaves, the walk slippery enough she had to slow down for fear of falling. Song was out of breath when she reached the summit of the hill, barely forty years old and already worn out like a rag. Signifiers had kept her alive but even they could only do so much against the curse.

The funerary altar was half-rotten, a single candle shivering atop it. Someone was kneeling in front, an old woman burning a paper crane in a bowl, and from that thin flash of light Song made out rows of tombstones in the grass. Dozens upon dozens. Gods, so many. The old woman turned to look at her, tightly pulling her white robe around her frame.

“Song,” she said. “You come home at last.”

“I do not know you, elder,” she replied, softly approaching.

The laugh that earned her was unkind.

“Am I now your elder, jiejie?” she said.

Song’s breath caught in her throat. Jiejie – elder sister.

“Aihan?”

“Can you not recognize me at all?” the old woman bitterly asked.

“Yixiao,” Song croaked out. “I- how can…”

She had six years on her youngest sister, who now looked like she had thirty on Song.

“We do not all have the Watch to hide behind,” Yixiao said.

She fell to her knees by her youngest sister’s side, shying away from the contempt she found waiting in those dark eyes.

“Who are you burning the crane for?” she asked with a clumsy tongue.

Their kin would all be here, sleeping below the grass. Ren were always buried on raised ground, it was tradition.

“All of them,” Yixiao snorted. “Who else is left but us, Song?”

“Aihan-”

“Sickness took her two springs past,” Yixiao said. “She barely fought it, after a third child died in her.”

The worn woman that was her sister scoffed.

“She asked for you on her deathbed, in the throes of fever. For you to braid her hair like you used to.”

Song licked her lips.

“I left for you two,” she pleaded. “So that the curse would not sink into you like it did Mother, with the sickness and the miscarriages. So I could save us all.”

“Am I saved, then?” her sister thinly smiled.

Song swallowed and did not answer.

 “What is it that you even did for all these years, Song?” Yixiao challenged.

“I became a commander in the Watch, the regulars,” Song replied. “I lead near a thousand men.”

On an island garrison, where the greatest threat was fat seals honking on the beach. A glorified supply depot where dead-end careers were sent to molder. Song had gone to the regulars after her cabal failed to make a mark, but her name had been a rope around her neck. She had stalled, and when the curse began weakening her she was judged too compromised for combat postings – her late promotion to commander had been a sop, a gesture of pity.

“Have you won great glories, then?” Yixiao asked. “Did your honorable deeds redeem our family name?”

Song stared down at the overgrown grass, shamed.

“No,” she forced out.

“You abandoned us,” her sister harshly said, “and it was all for nothing. After you left Nianzu blamed himself for driving you off, did you know? He drank himself to death. The grief killed Mother.”

Song trembled.

“Haoran finally turned up after ten years: floating bell-up in a Jigong canal, his throat slit. That was the end of Father, I think. He hung on for a decade more, saw Aihan and I married, but he had nothing left to live for.”

A pause, a cruel twist of the lips.

“He went in his sleep.”

“I didn’t know,” Song whispered.

“Did you want to?” Yixiao said. “Did you even look back, after you fled to the Watch?”

“I thought I could break the curse,” she said.

Her sister snarled, sweeping the bowl off the altar and sending it crashing as she rose to her feet.

“You thought you could save yourself, you selfish bitch,” Yixiao roared out. “The arrogance of you, pretending yourself a savior because of some petty contract. Look out with your silver eyes, Song, look in the distance and tell me what you see.”

She did not dare disobey. Lights to the north, the remaining Luminaries bathing the republics in light. Only among the thriving cities there was a hole in the world, a dark stain – Jigong, or what had once been it. Now a land of ghosts and wild dogs, a broken and empty wasteland.

A graveyard of five hundred thousand souls, all of which had died cursing the name Ren.

“You failed,” her sister said. “You failed us, you failed them, you failed every soul that has ever been in the Circle and that will ever be.”

Yixiao took a knife out of her pale sleeves, but the edge against her own throat.

“No,” Song pleaded, but her limbs were aching and heavy as lead.

“If you had been better, you could have put an end to it,” her sister said. “But you can’t even prevent th-”

Something was tugging at Song, but she fought it. She could not abandon her sister again, she had to-

—

Captain Yue grunted as she tightened her grip around her Sign, giving the air a hard yank – and Song came stumbling out of the empty doorway she had disappeared in. She fell to her knees before them, shivering, and Tristan felt his blood run cold as he matched the red-ringed, dead eyes of the Tianxi.

“Gods,” Song wept. “Oh Gods.”

She shivered once more, then was noisily sick over the floor. Tredegar and Maryam went to help her up, leaving the thief subject to Captain Yue’s unimpressed gaze and raised eyebrow. He was already regretting having volunteered to go second.

“Come on,” the Navigator said, raising her hand. “No time to waste, Abrascal.”

Tristan swallowed and stepped forward to let her cover him in Signs before he ventured through the archway.

—

Click, snap, bang: red sprayed on stone, wet and coppery.

The furthest drop stopped barely a foot away from where he hid, clutching his knees and biting his tongue. Father’s corpse stayed upright for a heartbeat before toppling forward slowly, inevitably. There was a ruin of flesh where a face had once been but Tristan could not mistake the hair, the stubble. His eyes watered, his limbs shook. It should have been grief, but instead all he could think was this – when they picked up the body, what if they looked under the table?

“Better luck in the next spin, Abrascal,” Cozme Aflor said.

A woman’s scoff.

“Better that you pray for our luck, if anyone’s,” Doctor Ceret said. “He was one of our most stable subjects; his deterioration is terrible news.”

“You still have three living,” Cozme shrugged.

“Three is too few,” the doctor said. “I need another batch of subjects, and not vagrants grabbed off the street. Contracted-”

“Do not grow on trees, Lauriana,” a man mildly replied.

Mild, always mild. Like smoke, gentle until you choked on it.

“I am sure Lord Lorent can afford your fees, Ceferin,” the doctor dismissed. “House Cerdan may not be as rich as the Six, but they can fill your pockets plenty.”

“Gold is sweet,” Ceferin agreed, “but not so sweet I would forget to fear lead. We are beginning to draw attention, doctor. Desperate contractors die easy, but not often so many or so quickly.”

“We are near a breakthrough,” Doctor Ceret insisted. “The first subjects died in weeks but this batch lasted months. Our benefactor believes that the contract it gifts can-”

Cozme Aflor tucked his pistol into his belt and stepped closer to the table, crouching down to grab Father’s splattered collar and hoist up the corpse. He had his back to Tristan but the boy froze with fear, knowing that the smallest movement, the smallest noise, would be enough for- He didn’t even do anything. That was the most unfair part of it.

Cozme just happened to turn as he moved the body, and there was the boy plain to see.

“Shit,” the mustachioed man said, and reached for his knife.

Tristan ran out, slipping through Cozme’s grasp. Between the dark-haired doctor and the man with the mismatched eyes he fled, heart beating so fast it might burst. Shouts behind him, shouts ahead. Shadows twisting and writhing, barrels dripping blood – holding limbs like a grocer’s might apples. Lifeless eyes and trembling half-corpses, but he was running for the hatch they had come in through and he slipped, red under his feet and red on his knees as his trousers tore.

Cozme Aflor caught him by the neck.

He wrestled and fought and screamed and bit, but all it earned was Ceferin striking him across the face until he stopped. The doctor took his chin, studied him, and smiled with yellow teeth.

“Contracted,” Lauriana Ceret happily said. “Strap him in.”

 Contracted? No, he had not met-

-and Fortuna was shouting, swinging fists at Cozme and Ceferin as they dragged him to the table. But she could not touch them, could not hurt them, and though Tristan fought it he was struck in the face until he was dazed enough they could fit his limps to the straps. Lauriana Ceret stood over him, chirurgeon’s mask over her head: like an executioner’s leather hood with green glass for eyes. The point of the silvery blade in her hand rested on his belly.

“Let’s see what’s inside,” Doctor Ceret said, a smile in her voice.

And she cut and she cut and he screamed. Hours, days, months, until his limbs were not his own – sown on, twitching and aching – and his tongueless mouth rasped air beneath his sole, mangled eye. Until he felt a hand rest on his face and looked up to see golden hair above a splash of red.

“I’m sorry,” Fortuna whispered. “It’s too much, I can’t…”

And somewhere inside of him, somewhere not even the silver knives had reached, Tristan Abrascal felt a warmth end. A hearth empty.

She had left him behind.

—

When Tristan Abrascal was tugged out of the Lugar Vacio he did not vomit or shake or fall to his knees. His eyes were dry and his hands did not tremble.

He walked out of the room and did not come back.

“One of you follow him,” Professor Sasan ordered the soldiers. “We don’t want him to…”

He mimed a pistol pointed at one’s head, which set Angharad to grimacing. She left Song with Maryam, approaching the impatient Captain Yue – whose eyes kept straying to the pale-skinned woman. She came here to see how Maryam will fare, it is the only thing she cares about, Angharad realized.

That thought was of no comfort as the signifier warded her before sending her through the doorway.

—

How long had she been doing this?

Parry, turn, sweep the leg – the man tripped and Angharad’s saber sliced through his throat until it hit bone. She ripped her blade out of the flesh, the blademaster’s corpse blooming red on the floor, and stepped forward. Angharad could see him waiting at the end of the hall, the fat man with the eyes like ice. The one who owned the others, who had pulled the trigger that ended her mother’s life. All she needed was to take a hundred steps, one tile after another, and she would have him.

Only another blademaster walked out, black ink on black skin, and his sword was sharp: Angharad fought.

First she fought with honor. Cleanly, with salutes and rules and duels. But that only won her a step or two forward, so slow, and somewhere deep in her bones she knew that if she waited too long the man would leave.

So she bent the rules, ever so slightly.

She peered ahead with the Fisher’s foresight, took lives without thought to kindness or fairness. Only there was always another blademaster, another body in the way, and just peering was not enough. So she let him in a little further. She could not trust the old spirit but they both wanted to reach the end of the hall, to take bloody revenge on those responsible for it all.

Angharad struggled and killed and gave away piece after piece of herself, the Fisher turning her blood to seawater and her teeth into coral. But for every man she killed three rose, endless empty faces bearing swords. She howled and tore into them, but even now that the sound of the tides roared in her ears every step she took closer to the end of the hall was but a passing thing – every gain ended in reverse. Always.

And even as her wounds bled the sea and her bones turned to stone, as the Fisher wielded her for their rage entwined, she saw how it would end: Angharad was going to lose.

It had always been beyond her, utterly pointless from the start.

There was nothing glorious about the fight, nothing romantic. Her sacrifices had weighed on the scales nary more than a feather: she had made herself a beast and yet she could not get a single step closer. Their blades found purchase one after another, tireless killers running her down like a lion, and Angharad fell to her knees. That was when she heard them through the roar of the sea. The pleas.

“A little longer,” Uncle Arwel begged. “Just give her a little longer. She will come for me, I know she-”

Her little cousins, crying and promising she was only moments away. That she would save them if their executioners would only wait a little longer. Only Angharad was kneeling, bleeding and broken. She tried to rise, but her limbs were mere shreds. A man came to stand in front of her, protecting her.

“We are of the Watch,” Uncle Osian bit out, “you cannot-”

The blade burst out of his back and Angharad screamed, loud enough it drowned out her uncle’s shout of pain. She fought and struggled but there was nothing left to move. She had spent it all, and she had failed.

She did not come to him, in the end. He came to her, leaving his end of the hall as the shadows parted like curtains. The tall, fat man with the eyes like ice. His pistol slowly rose, came to rest on her forehead as he stared down at her.

“It was the wrong choice, Lady Maraire,” he chided. “All the wrong choices.”

The finger pulled the trigger and Angharad Tredegar knew noth-

—

Tredegar was bleeding from the eyes, when she stumbled out. Captain Yue looked interested for a heartbeat, before passing her off to Professor Sasan – who was visibly itching to draw the ashen-faced noblewoman letting herself be guided around like a child.

Maryam swallowed, meeting Yue’s eyes.

“Come, Maryam,” the captain smiled. “I have been wondering about this one all day.”

—

“Savage ways,” Tredegar smiled, “lead to savage ends.”

“It would not have come to this if you had made an effort,” Song said.

Tristan looked away.

“Too much trouble,” he simply said.

The soldiers that escorted her onto the ship said she was merely expelled, but Maryam knew better even before the butt of the musket struck her in the back. She struggled, clawed and shouted at her attackers, but the watchmen knocked her out and put her in the hold with the others. It was the same as the one she’d seen as a girl: bruised, angry men shackled to rings set in the floor and wall. A crowded, sweating pit where men were made into merchandise.

She was half-starved and half-mad by the time she got out. How long had she been down there in the dark, failing to trace a Sign that might save her. Maryam need not be a slave if she could just prove she could learn, that there was not something wrong in the marrow of her bones, slithering through her veins. That she was not born to be clasped in chains.

Captain Totec waited for her on the shore, even as the others were sent to fields and mines to die in labor like all those bought and sold. The white-haired man with the gentle eyes looked mournful, as he clapped the irons around her wrists. Put the collar around her neck.

“It is my fault,” he said. “I overestimated you, Maryam. I thought your block was temporary, that you would overcome it. I am sorry that I expected too much.”

The gentleness was so much worse than a whip would have been.

“I can still learn,” she pleaded. “I sought help, Captain Yue-”

“Found you worthless,” Totec told her. “She is the one who decided to send you here.”

That should have hurt, should have burned, and for a heartbeat it did – but then Maryam felt empty. Hollow. Captain Totec frowned.

“Do not worry, you will not remain in our hands,” he said. “We will sell you to the Malani and-”

Maryam blinked. This… no, this could not be.

“The Watch does not practice slavery,” she slowly said. “And Captain Totec hates slavers. This doesn’t sound like him at all.”

Through the void inside her she could hear a voice whispering, subtle and sibilant. It is just a front, he thought you were useful, they are just waiting for you to prove you are worthless to-

“That was before-” the false thing began, but she struck at it.

Her hands passed through smoke, undoing the specter for a heartbeat before it coalesced again in Captain Totec’s shape. Its face was blank.

“Dun?” it asked.

A wave of pure, unadulterated terror bowled Maryam over. She staggered back, limbs twitching as she – and then her soul emptied once more. It was not instant, as she had first thought. It was as if there was a hole somewhere in her and the terror poured out through it.

“No, lucent,” it said. “But worthless.”

—

Maryam’s back hit the floor, which still reeked faintly of vomit, and it beat the breath out of her. The first thing she saw above her was Captain Yue’s fascinated expression.

“It is over?” she asked.

“Probably,” the older Navigator said.

Maryam frowned.

“What do you mean, probably?”

“It means that you were only in there for thirteen seconds,” Captain Yue said. “I didn’t pull you back, Maryam.”

The Tianxi grinned.

“Scholomance spat you out.”

Tristan had never been the sort to find mindless labor soothing. He had seen too many people break their bodies stacking stones and scraping canals to believe there was anything noble about work, no matter the talk about the dignity in sweating for one’s wage.

Horses were patted and fed carrots, but when they got old they were still made into glue.

Still, the thief was not afraid of work when it had good reasons and there were plenty to weed the garden. For one he had seen Song laying out the beginnings of a chore sheet, so it would be best to get ahead of the tide and position himself as the designated gardener to avoid being volunteered for something worse.

The sheer quantity of soap the Tianxi had bought promised an unfortunate amount of mopping lay in someone’s near future.

“Oh, this one’s red,” Fortuna enthusiastically said. “Do you think it’s poisonous?”

Tristan eyed the weed in question, whose stem was pinkish and bore oval red leaves covered with thin white strands that were somewhat hair-like. It was not even the most suspicious plant he’d come across in the remains Sakkas’ ancient garden, which had him glad he had bought leather gloves.

“If this is the prelude to the usual suggestion I try to make tea out of it, I refuse,” he told the goddess.

“Coward,” the Lady of Long Odds accused, slumping down by his side.

Her red dress impossibly fluttered as she sat, her fingers sweeping back her golden hair to expose the choker on her neck – a riot of rubies and pearls he could only grieve not being able to pawn in the material. Eyes on the weed, Tristan carefully caught it and ripped it out with an eye to getting all the roots. Once satisfied he had, he tossed it onto the pile behind him.

“You don’t listen to me anymore,” Fortuna continued, tone growing whining.

“I’ve never listened to you,” Tristan absent-mindedly replied, ripping out another weed.

“You could let me test Song, at least,” she pressed. “You know you’d planned to, before Maryam chewed you-”

His gloved hand ceased short of another weed as he turned to glare at her, which only had her grinning.

“We had a disagreement, that’s all,” Tristan said.

Fortuna answered with a strange, poorly executed gesture that only the accompanying sound of ‘wu-paah’ let him understand was meant to be a whip being cracked.

“Come on,” the goddesses wheedled. “It doesn’t have to be in the middle of dinner, I can wait until it’s just the three of us in the room and make like I’m punching her in the-”

He ripped out the weed and threw it at her face, sailing right through.

“Rude,” Fortuna glared.

“We will test her, that hasn’t changed,” Tristan said. “But she gets a few more days of reprieve.”

The goddess, already grinning again, opened her mouth but he raised a hand to silence her preemptively.

“And no, Maryam is not why,” the thief said, then frowned. “Also that’s not what a whip sounds like, you’re doing it wrong.”

Fortuna spluttered in genuine offense, beginning a diatribe about how she’d once had whips of pure gold dedicated to her honor and no one in Vesper better knew what the crack of a whip might sound like. He rolled his eyes and returned to weeding.

Getting cornered by Maryam had not been pleasant, and there was perhaps some truth to her claim he had pushed too far with Song, but Tristan had not been convinced then and he was not now. A reminder that if Song turned on him he had the means to ruin her was not a threat, it was evening the score. Considering how rattled she had been that night he could have gotten much more out of her, so as far as he was concerned he had shown a great deal of restraint.

Maryam was evidently of a different opinion – ‘kicking her when she’s down’ had come up a few times – but he had given ground largely to end the conversation. Which she had caught on to, and been twice as angry about, but truth be told nothing she had said since moved the needle. Song Ren was not his friend, she was someone Tristan occasionally traded with. To keep the Thirteenth functional he was willing to throw her the occasional bone but he owed her nothing.

That Maryam evidently did count her a friend would weigh on the scales going forward, but that was all.

“I don’t understand why I should wait,” Fortuna pouted. “You want confirmation she really sees me, and since you insist your lady friend is not enough to stop then there should be nothing holding us back.”

Tristan sighed. He had been going to wait only a day or two, originally, so she was not being a pest entirely without reason.

“Teratology, this morning,” he said.

“The man with the skinny mustache who likes to hear himself talk,” Fortuna said, then cocked her head to the side. “Oh, he did pick on her some I suppose. Why do we care?”

Sometimes it was easy to forget that the Lady of Long Odds was not human, for all that she wore one’s guise. ‘Pick on her some’ was an interesting way to describe the public humiliation of Song Ren before a hundred of her peers, neatly destroying her reputation and marking her as poison to the touch for everyone in the room – and then most of Scholomance by day’s end, no doubt. Professor Yun Kang had known precisely what he was doing with that speech.

But Fortuna was a goddess, so neither humiliation nor being made a pariah weighed all that much on the scales of her mind. She would not be harmed by such a thing, so she could not truly see it as the attack it was.

“About Song? We don’t,” he replied.

Fortuna frowned.

“Then why?”

“Because we do not,” Tristan evenly said, “side with landlords.”

And that was what Professor Kang was, when you stripped him of the black cloak and title. Just another petty king sitting atop his land and rationing your right to have a roof above your head. A landlord of knowledge instead of houses, this one, but Tristan well knew the likes of that tone and that little smile. Yun Kang was the worst of the breed, those that promised they would delay your rent if you sold out the other tenants. No, you never sided with the landlord even when it cost you to hold back.

It was only a matter of time until it was you they came to bleed dry: there could be no peace with a leech, only truce until it grew hungry again.

Professor Kang had marked Song publicly in the hopes that the rest of them would turn on her, and no doubt he would toss little favors to those that went out of their way to trip her. But Tristan knew that game and he would have no fucking part of it, so Song Ren had from him a reprieve – she would be tested only when she had found her footing again, because he refused to let his own actions help the plans of the likes that man.

“So we dislike the professor more, that’s fair,” Fortuna mused. “I could punch him instead, if you’d like.”

He glanced at her, brow rising.

“What is it with you and throwing hands lately?”

“You said I can’t take revenge on Hage,” she said.

“I told you to apologize to Hage,” Tristan corrected.

She dismissed his words with a wave, then made a moue.

“And I have been feeling restless,” the Lady of Long Odds admitted. “Something about the air here is invigorating.”

Fortuna with greater vigor? Now there was the stuff of nightmares. She was pest enough while lazy.

“Is it because Tolomontera is an aether well?” he ventured.

Gods were like fish swimming in the aether, so perhaps the metaphorical change of water had been good for her.

“Maybe,” Fortuna muttered.

Much as he would have been inclined to keep pursuing that, the goddess rose to her feet in an indication she was so disinclined. Best not to push, he decided, or she’d get contrary about that subject in the future. Instead Tristan returned to the business of weeding until he had finished the whole rectangular field he had earlier outlined. It would take days more to clean up the full garden, at this rate, but he would begin sowing before that. They had already bought seeds with brigade funds and he was itching to use them.

It was a few trips moving the piled of ripped weeds to a corner of the garden where he would let them dry for a day before burning them, careful never to let anything touch his bare skin. He doubted that any plant that’d so long survived near the cottage of an archbishop of the Sunless House was entirely harmless.

Though he was done with the work he’d decided on for the day, the thief elected to scope out the boundaries of the garden one more time. Tredegar clearly intended on using some of the space for her exercises, which he supposed was fair enough, and he suspected that soon there would be a push for a shooting range as well. Best to delineate those areas now so the arrangements were not haphazard later. He had already put numbers to the dimensions with a measuring rope, but accounting for where the bushes and the-

“Huh,” Tristan said, stopping.

Fortuna leaned over his shoulder.

“You didn’t dig that, did you?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “I did not.”

So why was there recently dug earth in a corner of the garden, tucked away behind bushes? He was curious enough to go fetch the shovel and find out. He found nothing, and begun to think someone had dug as simple exercise – sounded like something Tredegar might get up to – until around a foot and a half deep he hit something solid. He loosened the earth around it then finished digging up by hand, revealing what appeared to be… stripes of chicken starting to rot. Frowning, Tristan examined the pieces and found some of them were lightly charred on the bottom.

Who had cooked these was not in question, but why she would have buried them was.

“Bait for animals?” Fortuna suggested.

No, they did not seem to find their way through the protections Sakkas had left. Tristan had not seen so much as a rat around, though there were insects so the filtering was demonstrably not universal. He put the stripe back into the hole.

“We wait until next week to test Song,” he finally said.

“Come on! If anything, ruining a chicken should lose her a day,” Fortuna protested.

“Only an idiot jostles for position with someone standing on the edge of a cliff,” the thief grunted back. “Maryam was right.”

Not for the reasons she had given him, but merit where it was due. He reburied the chicken and smoothed out the ground before scattering some twigs and dead leaves atop it. Tucking his gloves into his belt after he was done, he stretched out and sighed. Enough work for the day. He put away the shovel and went around the increasingly visible garden path to head back inside, finding that another had arrived while he was distracted.

Angharad Tredegar was seated at the low table by the windows, uniform loosened and a cup of wine in hand. They’d bought and brought new chairs yesterday so she could have sat at the kitchen table instead of on the ground in the drawing room, but he supposed the view was nicer where she sat. They were still missing furniture around the low table, though. Tristan had been disappointed to find out that the very comfortable armchairs he’d sat on in the Witching Hour were rotten through, though there would not have been enough for all of them anyhow.

“Evening, Tristan,” Tredegar said, turning to face him, and he froze.

The dark-skinned woman had what appeared to be a swelling black eye on the right and some bruising on the opposite cheek. Gods, what had she been attacked by to actually be hit – Lucifer’s own retinue? Only she seemed in a fine mood, not fuming, so she must not see herself as being defeated.

“Evening,” he slowly replied, then cocked an eyebrow. “Did you get that cleaned up properly?”

“Water is enough for bruises,” she began, “surely-”

He sighed and went to fetch the physician’s kit he had acquired from the Watch depot for a desultory sum – though the officers there had noted his name and brigade, so he could not buy them by the dozen and sell them to others at a markup. He touched a soft rag with alcohol and sat down by her side, gesturing for her to face him properly. Though Tredegar seemed faintly embarrassed and muttered something about fussing, she let him clean her face. Some of the cheek bruises had broken skin so the touch of the rag must have stung, but her face did not even twitch.

“What happened?” he asked. “I was under the impression you did not have Skiritai class today.”

“It was not obligatory,” Tredegar said. “The Marshal arranged rounds of sparring with each other to assess of our capacity with steel, powder and fists so we might best pick our companions for the fight on fifthday.”

Tristan’s expectations of what might be asked of Skiritai students had been high, but somehow he still had been surprised that ‘open a mystery box full of maneating monster’ had turned out to be their introductory lecture and the marginally improved situation of being allowed to pick the next enemy with foreknowledge was going to be a weekly occurrence. He cocked an eyebrow at her.

“I take it the fisticuffs turned on you?” Tristan asked.

The noblewoman grimaced.

“Muchen He is a devil up close, which I should have inferred when he sought me out for the fight,” she said. “Mind you, I trounced him with a blade. He pulls left and his footing is weak on the retreat.”

“Did you get him to use his contract?” he curiously asked.

Simultaneously he made to clean an already clean cheek as a distraction while his hand subtly crept towards the side of her coat. It should still be in the pocket.

“Marshal de la Teverin forbade their use,” Tredegar informed him. “He insists that-”

He barely felt her fingers catch his wrist before she slammed it into the table. He yelped, snatching back his hand when she released it, and sighed as he stopped falsely cleaning her cheek.

“What gave it away this time?” he asked.

The noblewoman smugly smiled.

“You always try with your right hand,” she said. “I have begun keeping track of when you obscure my line of sight with your left.”

He hummed. That was a bad habit, he would need to work on it. Tredegar’s own hand went into her pocket, producing the iron coin with a copper border he had been trying to steal.

“Do you need it back?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Keep it,” Tristan said. “I need to keep practicing. Hage says that in two weeks regardless of my progress he will have me begin to practice the opposite.”

“Planting coins?” Tredegar asked, amused. “How charitable.”

Best that she did not consider what else he would be able to plant, once he knew the tricks. Still, it was somewhat amusing to him that in Sacromonte he had considered himself too fine a thief to practice something as risky as pickpocketing but that as a Mask he was being trained in it.

“Thanks for the help,” he honestly said. “Maryam never notices, so it is little help.”

And Song had declined to participate, which he was starting to believe might be for the best.

“It helps keep me on my toes,” Tredegar happily said. “It is good training for me as well.”

Tristan rose to his feet, putting away his physician’s kit, and stretched out one last time. In other circumstances he might have been tempted to take a nap before getting started on the readings assigned by Professor Sasan, but he found his gaze straying to garden.

“I will be cooking tonight,” he decided.

Tredegar perked up, interested.

“Oh?”

“Something my mother taught me,” Tristan said, rolling his shoulder. “Sopa de colcha.”

“Quilt soup,” the Pereduri translated. “A strange name. What is it made of?”

“Whatever’s left,” he drily replied. “Come on, you can help me make it.”

Her main contribution ended up fetching water from the well, but at least she tried.

—

Considering how often Tristan had to go digging for secrets, it was a pleasant turn when answers were dropped right onto his lap.

He had expected Theology class to be of only accessory use to him, and little of what he first saw disabused him of the notion. They sat in the same hall used for Mandate, even settling at the same table – Song had sat there, and since yesterday everyone was treating her like glass even though she remained outwardly calm no one dared suggest another spot. This time the professor began at precisely the announced time rather than studying them through the eyehole as Professor Iyengar had. Professor Malba Artigas was tall, fair-haired and prone to frowning rather ferociously at the smallest of distractions. The thief was also fairly certain she was corregida – that is, a woman once believed a man.

Professor Artigas introduced herself as a signifier from the Akelarre Guild, speaking naught else of her qualifications or even her rank, and when a student muttered something in the back of the class she traced a Sign and swelled his tongue to the size of a sausage for half an hour. It hung out of his mouth, tar-black like some sort of leathery slug..

No one dared to chatter after that.

Her way of lecturing had more in common with Professor Kang than Professor Iyengar, only rarely calling on answers from the class and expecting copious notes to be taken. She laid out the nature of what would be studied in the first year – essential metaphysical forces, divinity and the infernal, the boundaries of contracts and Signs – only to then suddenly earn Tristan’s full attention.

“The introductory concept I wish you to leave this class with today is one of the foundations of Theology, the ‘Necalli scale of orders’,” Professor Artigas said. “It is also called the ‘order of entities’ by some, after its most common use.”

Tristan, who had only recently read that Fortuna was determined not to be a ‘second-order entity’, leaned in eagerly. There were faint murmurs in the back of the hall, but this time the professor did not raise her hand to punish the guilty.

“For those among you not on the Savant track, surprise at hearing the name Necalli spoken without a following curse is understandable,” the professor conceded. “To those yet in the dark, Necalli Suchil was a great border lord who reigned in the northeast of Izcalli in the years during and after the unification of that kingdom.”

Oh Manes. Bad took on a different depth of meaning when paired with the mention of an Izcalli noble with troops near a border. Professor Artigas folded her arms.

“Necalli was deeply concerned with the decay and destruction of Glare devices in the region, to the extent that he elected surrender to the House of Toxtle as a vassal rather than warring to remain a king,” she said. “He then spent the better part of thirty years and a massive fortune studying the deepest mysteries of Gloam, Glare and aether on an unprecedented scale.”

That did not sound too bad, but the faint grimace on the blond woman’s face told him otherwise.

“In that process, Necalli is believed to have enslaved, murdered and tortured somewhere in the vicinity of sixteen thousand souls,” Professor Artigas said.

And there it was.

“Yet, unpleasant as that reality is, Necalli Suchil is the father of the modern discipline of Theology,” Professor Artigas continued. “His writings are foundational and his great work, the scale of orders, has become the scholarly consensus.”

A look around the lecture hall revealed dark looks by the dozen – Someshwari and Izcalli both. The Kingdom of Izcalli had been unified in what, the Century of Loss? The man must have been despised beyond rival, for his name to still cast such a cloud after five hundred years.

“Necalli’s first contribution to the discipline is the principle of occupancy, which is as follows: the same discrete quantity of aether cannot hold two affects simultaneously, while remaining susceptible to pressures of mass.”

Professor Artigas took the time to write it out on the slate, her looped handwriting ornate but easy enough to read.

“In simplified terms, the same aether tainted by a man’s anger cannot also be tainted by someone else’s sadness, but an entire city grieving will push out a single mother’s rage. Since a god in their incipient state is essentially an aggregate of tainted aether, this means that gods cannot ‘overlap’.”

She turned a steady look onto the class.

“That is the reason why, for example, there are thousands of regional war gods instead of a single such entity for all of Vesper.”

Tristan cocked his head to the side, only barely following. So gods were like petty kings out in the Murk, each collecting from a handful of streets and kicking each other in the knees so none could ever get on top and collect from too large a territory. Greater gods like the Manes would be the equivalent of the large coteries, then, who had carved out a larger slice of the city and gathered enough roughs that no one could edge them out anymore.

“Having proved the principle of occupancy through his experiments, Necalli then went on to create his scale orders: it is a measure of the conceptual ‘space’ an entity occupies in the aether simply by existing.”

So a rating of coterie sizes, Tristan mused. How large a territory they would be able to claim. The professor drew a six on the slate.

“Animals,” Professor Artigas said, “are sixth-order entities. This is the lowest order and means that their trail in the aether it the smallest of all living beings. Their emotions, limited as they are, cause such little emanation in the aether that until late in the Second Empire they were believed to have none.”

Above the six she traced a five.

“Humans are fifth-order entities,” the professor said.  “A single’s soul emanations are measurable but not mathematically significant. The overwhelming majority of beings in Vesper are fifth-order entities, however, so by sheer dint of numbers this order has the most significant influence on the aether.”

A four followed.

“Fourth-order entities are the least of the beings we call gods – that is to say, aether intellects that fed on a particular spectrum of aether taint until they became defined by it, forming into a continuous entity.”

The professor traced a long line, as if to separate the orders that would follow from the rest, then drew the three.

“Third-order entities are what we call ‘manifested’ gods,” Professor Artigas said. “Gods that took a physical form. This order of entities contains the most degrees of variation of any on the scale, the weakest in it being prone to overpowering by fourth-order entities while the greatest can be an object of worship across entire nations – the Moon-Eater of Izcalli and the Thousand Eye Lord of the Someshwar come to mind. Third-order entities have stabilized their existence and barring harm done unto them will continue to exist forever.”

She turned a steady look on them.

“This is not necessarily a blessing,” Professor Artigas said. “A god that manifested in the material but had its ‘space’ in the aether squeezed out by other entities will enter what we call rampancy: loss of intellect combined with an existential need to create masses of aether taint it can feed on to reclaim its space.”

That didn’t make sense, Tristan thought. Fortuna was weak enough she could not even dislocate, so how could she be of an order that stood above that of manifested gods? Why would the Watch even think that possible?

“Second-order entities are the highest ever recorded,” the professor continued, marking the number. “These are gods not only manifested but which have become such integral part of a concept they are fed by its mere continued existence in human consciousness.”

Now he rubbed the bridge of his nose, idly glancing around. Fortuna did not appear to be there – she usually wasn’t, during classes – so hopefully she had not heard that. The last thing he needed was for her to get delusions of grandeur about her being the incarnation of luck or somesuch nonsense.

“Standing in the presence of such an entity will kill most humans, as they are so large and solid within the aether that they are nearly impossible to dislodge by other pressures,” Professor Artigas mildly said. “Your soul, unable to emanate your emotions into the aether, will swell like an overfilled wineskin until it pops.”

Tristan grimaced at that, and he was not the only one. The professor brushed back a strand of hair escaped from her elaborate hairdo – curled, twisted and pinned up – and smiled for the first time since she had entered the hall.

“The only known way around this difficulty is to expose individuals of an age to have begun but not finished coalescing their soul to high-density aether,” she said. “For a period of time of several years would be best, over time allowing the soul to become… elastic, for lack of a better term.”

None in the hall were fool enough, Tristan thought, to be unaware that Tolomontera sat on one of the largest aether wells in Vesper. Or to miss what the professor was hinting at.

“It would not create immunity to the effect, unfortunately, but it would allow such individuals to stand in the presence of such a god without simply metaphysically suffocating to death,” Professor Artigas said, and then smile was gone.

The last number, one, was drawn almost as an afterthought.

“First-order entities are entirely theoretical, but they are the logical conclusion of the Necalli scale of orders,” she told them. “Such a being’s will would be absolute within the aether, and through conceptual symmetry it would be able to shape reality with but a thought.”

She shrugged.

“The Sleeping God, should he exist, would be such an entity.”

The lecture did not continue for long after that, and Tristan was only half-listening anyhow. What was it about Fortuna that had led the Watch to even consider she might be so high in the scale of orders?

And why was it that the more he learned, the more answers turned to questions in his grasp?

—

Warfare boasted two teachers and a horde of assistants.

The pair introduced themselves as Captain Rhys and Captain Nandi. The former was a Stripe, the latter Skiritai, and they shared the surname of Khota. Married, he decided after watching them a bit. Rhys sounded Pereduri – name as much as accent, which had much in common with Tredegar’s – while Captain Nandi was markedly darker of skin as well as near a foot taller. Captain Rhys was handsome enough he got admiring looks, two golden studs in his lip moving every time he smiled, while his wife had so many scars Tristan would believe it if told she’d fallen into a pile of razor blades face first.

The day’s class was to take place on a drilling field tucked away between two wings of Scholomance, only a short walk away from the plaza outside. The spikes hammered into the ground were much rarer, with longer distances between them, but the walk there was no more pleasant for not being inside the halls of the school. Silhouettes seemed to be following them from rooftops, shadows hid pits and unsettling windows. The students had moved as a group without someone stepping up to propose it, dim unease making them close ranks.

The pair of captains was not alone on the field, either, with a small horde of officers around them. Captain Rhys explained that Warfare was to alternate between individual practices led by Captain Nandi  and the cabal-based tactics studies which were his half of the class. His wife kept picking up his sentences where he trailed off and the other way around, which Tristan found annoying but many around him seemed to find charming. What the Malani explained was that, more than any other of the general classes, Warfare was to be loosely evaluated.

Unlike Professor Kang’s promise of a test every two weeks at the minimum, neither of the captains intended on following their students all that closely.

“Basic marksmanship with a firearm of your choice and an acceptable standard of armed or unarmed close combat will be all that is required of you to pass to the second year,” Captain Nandi said. “I expect at least many of you would be capable of passing that evaluation today.”

“There will be a test at the end of the year, both written and field, for the tactical half of the class,” Captain Rhys said. “That is all.”

“Warfare exists for two reasons,” his wife continued. “The first is to bring the recommended from non-combat covenants to an acceptable field standard.”

A fair concern, Tristan mused, if they were to be sent out on assignments where all cabalists might be drawn into the fighting. The Watch was not going to pour years and a fortune into training a Tinker just so they could be eaten by the first lemure to sneak into camp at night.

“The second,” her husband said, “is for those of you who want to sharpen your skills to have the opportunity to do so. You will get from this class what you put in, nothing more or less.”

“It is your right to coast through,” Captain Nandi acknowledged. “Some of you will.”

“And among those, some will live to regret it – if they live at all,” Captain Rhys bluntly said. “The Old Night does not care what covenant you belong to.”

And on that charming note, they laid out how the class was to take place. The drilling field was to be split into three thirds: one for firearms, one for armed combat and one for hand-to-hand. Students were invited to head where they would prefer, and could even move from one group to another during the class as they wished. The captains and the other blackcloaks on the field were to serve as instructors for one of the subjects, with the emphasis on the first day being evaluating if a student was currently capable of passing Captain Nandi’s end-of-the-year evaluation.

The mass of students exploded into chatter at the announcement, cabals pulling together to discuss. The Thirteenth was no exception.

“I will be heading to the armed combat,” Tredegar immediately volunteered.

“Aren’t the only ones likely to give you a challenge Skiritai?” Tristan noted. “You already train with those.”

“Captain Nandi moves likes a swordmistress,” the noblewoman said, eyes bright. “I would test myself against her.”

“The firearms for me,” Maryam contributed. “I would find out if I am fine enough a shot with a pistol already.”

He slid a glance at Song, expecting to hear the same. She must have caught his unspoken meaning, because she shook her head.

“I would not learn anything,” she said, which should have sounded like a boast.

It did not.

“Armed for me as well,” the Tianxi said. “I could use the practice.”

Eyes went to him, as the last holdout, and he grimaced.

“Hand-to-hand,” Tristan said.

He was tempted to find out if someone could teach him the knife – close up and thrown – but weapons could be taken from you. Your hands could not.

Well, not without a hatchet and some effort but if it came to that he’d have more pressing worries.

“Wise,” Maryam praised. “They won’t let you throw the pistol here, and that’s your best shot with one.”

He glared at her. Mostly true, but still.

“Unarmed is a fine choice,” Tredegar praised. “We could practice at the cottage on evenings!”

“Let’s see how bad my bruises are first,” the thief snorted.

“Remember not to take risks that will see you wounded,” Song reminded them. “Tomorrow afternoon we are to undertake the bounty.”

A round of agreements and they parted ways, breaking up as most of the other cabals were. The subject Tristan had picked turned out to be the least popular, so comparatively the twenty or so headed the same way as him should benefit from more attention by the instructors. Only the thief found himself getting a little too much attention when one of the instructors picked him out from the pack immediately.

“This one does not even know the basics,” Sergeant Mandisa said. “I’ll put him through a remedial.”

“Surely that’s not-” he began.

She dragged him off by the scruff of the neck, other instructors answering his pleading stare by pointedly looking away. He could not even be angry at them for it: Mandisa was terrifying. She released him only when they reached a circle of white paint in the sand, and none too gently.

“A pleasure to meet you again, sergeant,” he charmingly smiled. “Why-”

The slap on his right cheek wasn’t hard. It didn’t even hurt, really, the sting was mostly from surprise. He had barely seen her move.

“You little rat,” Mandisa smiled. “Did you really think Wen wouldn’t notice you went through his things?”

Ah, unfortunate. It would have been nice to get away with it.

“It was the assignment,” he said, which was largely true.

“You entered my home,” she coldly said. “My room was unlocked, m underclothes in the open.”

Tristan eyed her with open confusion at the odd turn.

“What would poisoning you gain me?” he asked.

More confusing still was how baffled she looked at his answer. He wasn’t the one implying the use of a probably expensive contact poison on underclothes to rid himself of a Watch officer who’d yet to even act against him.

“Pois- what are you even saying?” she said. “I mean stealing them.”

He cocked his head to the side, studying the madwoman.

“For burning?” Tristan asked.

Surely they couldn’t be that expensive. No, by the look of her face he’d missed his shot in the dark.

“Ah, of course, for washing,” he tried, injecting confidence he did not feel.

Although why she would be angry at him doing a choice for her he could not say. The sergeant stared at him for a long, unblinking moment before sighing. He had… passed a test, maybe? Or perhaps been disqualified, it was hard to tell.

“All right,” Mandisa said. “I won’t be breaking your nose purposefully.”

“I think you mean accidentally,” Tristan said.

“There was not,” she beamed, “going to be anythingaccidental about it, I assure you.”

“I don’t suppose I could have another instructor,” he tried.

“I’m a qualified hand-to-hand instructor who places well in tournaments,” Sergeant Mandisa said. “You have the best possible instructor already, Tristan.”

He sighed.

“Try not to give me another black eye,” he asked. “The last one is just starting to get better.”

“Sure,” Mandisa lied.

—

He was not qualified in hand-to-hand or with a pistol. It was going to be a long year.

Chapter 18

Song was the first back to the cottage.

She came in, wiped her boots and hung her cloak. Her musket was placed against the wall – until a proper weapons rack could be acquired – and she put away her powder in a bag she had hung from the wall for that very purpose. The sword belt joined the cloak as the last step, but for once putting away her affairs in an orderly matter brought no comfort. She felt… she wasn’t sure, in truth. Empty? Perhaps simply tired. It had been a long day.

The Tianxi made her way to the kitchen, trussed up her sleeves and got started on the evening meal. Chicken, rice and fresh tomatoes. No spices save salt, which was cheap and plentiful in Allazei. Her mother would have disowned her for a meal like this, but though it was simple fare the portions would be plentiful and it was not difficult to cook. It could serve as a placeholder. By the end of the week Song intended to begin a rotation so that responsibility for meals might not be entirely on her shoulders, alternating between the members of her brigade.

She had also been considering a chore sheet, considering the amount of work yet in need of doing. The cottage was still filthy, the library needed to be catalogued, the garden emptied of weeds, furniture needed to be bought and carried… the list went on. And though Song knew that when she was finished with the meal she should change into the work clothes she’d acquired in town and get to cleaning, the thought was frail. As if she were not certain of her own intentions, as if she were…

“I am not buckling,” Song hissed down at the pot of rice.

So there had been a setback. Colonel Cao had marked her a fool before her entire set of peers at Scholomance and her name would remain on that board until she erased her shame. That did not mean she would fail. It had been a lesson she must learn and the sting would only help her remember. The colonel was right, her approach had been lukewarm: she had neither hidden what she deduced to secure an advantage nor revealed it to everyone so she might earn gratitude.

The worst of both worlds: she well deserved the loss of a point.

Song set to preparing the chicken, carefully cutting and sprinkling with salt as she went. It went into an iron pot which was placed over the flame. Her distress, she decided, was only because she needed to purge the curse. She would ask Maryam to have a look tonight. It had not been long since the last purging, but it may be that Tolomontera – a great aether well, she had been told – made matters worse. Yet what she needed even more than that was a plan. A way forward, a way to rise.

Song did not anticipate her brigade would be too difficult to convince to take the trial, but that alone was not enough. She needed a way to redeem her reputation. A way to turn the tide, to catch up to… Her fingers clenched. Always behind, Nianzu had told her, slurring. You can’t fight fate, Song. No matter how we struggle, we’ll always end up behind. But what would he know?

“Should I follow you and disappear down a bottle, gege?” she bit out. “I won’t-”

It smelled burnt. Swallowing thickly, Song looked down and saw that in her fugue she had left the chicken unattended too long. The top was still pink, but when she flipped the cuts she saw they had charred stripes. The Tianxi swallowed. If she cut them out perhaps it wouldn’t show? No, they’ll still see I cut out parts. Perhaps if she sliced every piece in two, then – no, idiot, they would notice the quantity was too small. One of them would ask. They would know.

Hands shaking, tearing up like a fucking child, Song did the only rational thing she could: she put the pot off the fire, went outside with a shovel and dug a hole in a corner of the garden. She emptied the burnt chicken into it – she’d have to buy another to replace it from her own funds – and filled the hole. She had to hurry, they could be back anytime now. Song opened the windows to get rid of the smell and cleaned the iron pot before doing the recipe properly this time.

When her cabal began arriving one after the other, Song was ready. She welcomed them with a smile and a meal and her hand remained on the chisel as they all sat together and ate. Like a proper brigade, led by a proper captain.

“Would you mind if I closed the windows?” Angharad asked, polishing off the last of her rice. “It is getting rather chilly.”

Song’s hand twitched. The windows. Utter fool that she was, she had forgot to close the windows.

“I’ll do it,” she said, hurriedly rising to her feet.

Only she was sloppy in her haste, her knee caught the table and the shake tipped over a cup of water and – Abrascal caught it before it could spill. Her jaw clenched so tightly it hurt.

“Song,” Maryam slowly said, “are you-”

“Fine,” she bit out.

She strode to the windows and closed them abruptly. When she turned back towards the table it was to the sight of two concerned faces and Tristan Abrascal’s mask. And why wouldn’t they be concerned, when she was making a scene like a child throwing a tantrum? She forced herself to breathe out, smoothed out her tunic.

“My first covenant class did not go as I would have preferred,” Song said.

Some of the tension left the room. That was no achievement, when she had been the one to put it there.

“Mine either,” Maryam volunteered. “Our professor effectively washed his hands of me and I’ve been forced to make other arrangements.”

She made her way back to the table, carefully. As if her feet were made of porcelain.

“That is highly improper,” Angharad frowned, and Maryam tensed. “It is a professor’s duty to attend to all students as equally as they can.”

The Izvorica shot her a look and said nothing, which still a stark improvement over the entire last month. Song crossed her legs and sat on the floor again, back straight. She reached for her cup.

“I found a teacher and framed the Forty-Ninth’s patron for arson,” Abrascal casually said.

She choked on her mouthful of water, glaring at the thief since that timing had most definitely been deliberate. He smiled back innocently.

“Is that what Masks do?” Angharad hesitantly asked.

Meaning – is this otherwise dishonorable act permitted because it is your duty, and thus honorable in a different way? The Pereduri was not difficult to understand, once you grasped the tint of the spectacles she looked at the world through.

“You probably don’t want to ask too many questions about that,” Abrascal honestly replied. “Still, I can tell you I’ll be working at the Chimerical two afternoons a week. I’ll let you know the days as soon as I learn them.”

“My own afternoons will be filled four days out of five,” Angharad contributed. “Third day is to be a rest day.”

Maryam cleared her throat, earning glances.

“And how was your class?” she asked, sounding almost challenging.

“Six of us died,” Angharad replied.

Gods. The silence that put into place lasted until the plates and remains were taken away and Song brewed a pot of Someshwari tea. It was cheaper on Regnant Street than the Republican leaves, and with good reason – their tea was inferior in every way. Only Abrascal declined a cup. It was Song who broke the uncomfortable quiet.

“There is a price to the privileges of Stripe students,” she said.

She took out the trial bounty she had taken from the board, carefully folded, and set it down on the table. It made its way around, getting a raised eyebrow from Maryam and an interested look from Angharad. Abrascal was harder to read, but if she must she would peg him as thoughtful.

“It must be complete by next week or I will be sent away,” Song frankly told them. “Every Academy recommended is in the same situation.”

The only man among them snorted.

“Ouch, poor Forty-Ninth,” Abrascal said. “They’ll be stuck doing two.”

A fine argument for why few cabals would want two Stripes, and also for why no Academy recommended would want to command a cabal of leftovers. An incompetent brigade would not bring up your score high enough to pass by the year’s end, however eager they might be to obey you. Besides that, the way the thief had phrased his sentence was promising. It implied he was willing to participate, and Abrascal had been the most likely holdout in her mind.

“This is all we have to go on?” Maryam asked, staring at the paper.

She had been the last to receive it.

“It is.”

The Izvorica sighed, passing the bounty back to Song. She did not fold it again, and made a note to smoothen it out later tonight with weight pressing down on the sides.

“Well, I won’t turn away the coin,” Maryam said. “When did you have in mind?”

“Sixthday afternoon,” Song replied.

After the elective classes, though she would leave a wide margin of time to avoid possible inconveniences. She would have been more comfortable earlier in the week, but it was better to let her brigade settle in properly instead. They confirmed the split of coin and where in the city they would have to journey before they could be escorted to the trial – a place on the outskirts of Scholomance, which had them speculating the trial would be within the school.

The conversation soon trailed off. Maryam volunteered to wash the dishes, Angharad went out into the garden for her evening exercises – most nights she spent half an hour out there doing drills with her blade – but the surprise was when Tristan lingered at the table with her. Song had reason to remain, not being done with her tea, but he himself had none. Unless he wanted to speak with her, that was. The Tianxi cocked an eyebrow and waited.

“I need information,” the gray-eyed man said. “How can you see gods?”

Her heart clenched. She put down her cup of tea before it became visible there was a tremble to her fingers. Her hands went down onto her lap, hidden by the table.

“Pardon?” Song said.

“You can see contracts,” Abrascal elaborated. “But do you know of a way people could see gods?”

Not her, she realized with relief. He did not mean her. She kept her face smooth.

“I expect there are contracts out there that might allow this,” she said, mouth gone dry. “Why?”

He grimaced.

“All right, cards on the table,” he said. “Do you know of a way for devils to see gods?”

“Once annealed, devils become a fixed shape in the aether,” Song mused. “It may be that lets them sense gods, though outright sight seems a stretch.”

“Hage could see my patron god,” the thief flatly said. “Hear them, too.”

Song let out a low whistle. Her own god did not visit enough for this to be a risk, but it was useful to know.

“Thank you for the warning,” she said, inclining her head.

He hummed.

“Well, I suppose it’s not like I got nothing for it,” Abrascal said.

She sipped at her cup.

“No?”

“Hands are expressive,” he said. “Those with training, they often keep them out of sight when trying to hide something.”

As she had at the start of this conversation, damn her. Had she given herself away? The gray-eyed man studied her face, half-frowning.

“Well, there are things we don’t ask,” Tristan Abrascal said. “I’ll leave you to your tea, Song.”

He backed up from the table and rose to his feet even as her fingers clasped the side of the cup so hard her knuckles paled. He was not so smug as to wave her way before heading up the stairs, into that stargazing tower he had claimed as his bedroom, but it still felt like she had just been slapped in the face. Abrascal had no reason to keep her secrets. If he told the others… It could turn their entire year against her, the knowledge she could peer at their deepest secrets with nothing but a glance. Even those who cared nothing for the Dimming would-

“Easy now.”

Song sucked in a breath, finding there was hand on her shoulder. Maryam was half-kneeling at her side, arms wet with a sheen. She smelled like food scraps and wetness.

“Think of the sea,” the other woman said. “Tide comes in, tide goes out. Make yourself see it in your mind.”

She barely felt Maryam take the cup out of her hands and set it on the table, struggling to do ask asked.

“Match your breath to it,” the Izvorica murmured. “It comes in…”

Song breathed in.

“It goes out.”

By the time her heartbeat had settled, she did not dare to meet Maryam’s eyes.

“What did he say, Song?”

The tone was flinty.

“Little,” Song tiredly said. “It is-”

Staring down at the table, she sagged.

“I am, by score, now the last of the Stripe students,” she confessed. “I have failed you all.”

“I doubt that,” Maryam said, sitting down by her side. “What happened?”

The story tripped its way out of her, every word of it sounding like pathetic whining to her ears.

“That colonel sounds like a real bitch,” the Izvorica mused.

“Maryam,” Song hissed.

The pale-skinned girl shrugged.

“We agreed we’d be honest with each other, when we started this,” Maryam said. “So I’m being honest: that Cao woman sounds like a real bitch.”

“She’s a highly respected officer,” Song told her.

“Agree to disagree,” Maryam easily replied.

“The last time you used that sentence, you saddled our cabal with Tristan Abrascal,” Song muttered.

“And it’s been lovely having him,” she replied, then frowned. “Though he should have known better to prod you when you’re like this.”

Song straightened.

“I am not like anything,” she said.

Maryam said nothing, then sighed and passed a hand through her dark hair.

“The first I took a ship,” she said, “I wasn’t able to keep down a meal or sleep for three days straight.”

Song’s eyes snapped her way, the surprise plain on her face.

“They had to drug me,” the Izvorica said. “And I wasn’t much better when I woke from that. It took time before I learned I could close my eyes and not wake in chains, but before we docked I had learned. And no sailor on that ship ever mocked me for it.”

Maryam leaned in, squeezed her shoulder.

“Your ship is still out there on the black, Song,” she said. “But you’ll get there, I’m sure of it.”

She stayed there long after the Izvorica had left, until Angharad had returned from her exercises, sitting there along in the lamplight with a lick of cold tea at the bottom of her cup. Staring at the leaves mucking up at the bottom, the silver-eyed Tianxi wondered if this was how it had begun for her brothers.

And if one of her sisters would sit down, one day, and wonder if this was how it had begun for Song.

—

Their first class had taken place in an impressive lecture hall, but Saga took place in what could only be called a library.

The room was all tall stacks and chandeliers, filled with sets of tables fitting ten each. Only the library was near empty of books, with only a few stacks near the bottom filled with volumes. They were all copies of three books, which the professor insured were to be claimed once each per cabal. Professor Tenoch Sasan, still as disheveled as yesterday, had used much of the empty room to prop up large polished stone slates. After yesterday’s… eventfulness, Song found the professor’s assertion that his class would be more classical a relief.

“As a class, Saga will seem like the odd man out to many of you,” Professor Sasan said. “Compared to Warfare and Teratology, or even Mandate, I will concede that its direct use is less obvious.”

The man was a good speaker, Song thought. Engaging and easily heard.

“In practice, however, you will find that much of our work involved digging up the secrets of the past,” the professor said. “Vesper is riddled with the scars of old wars, with buried horrors and wonders. My charge in this class is not to teach a love of history – though if I can, I will – but to equip you to understand what you will encounter out in the world.”

He cleared his throat.

“You need to be able to tell Antediluvian ruins apart from those of the Second Empire,” Professor Sasan said. “To understand why Cathayan is spoken in some parts of the Someshwar, why realms bordering Izcalli share the same gods and customs while being estranged from the Grasshopper King’s rule.”

The professor grinned.

“You need to understand why Sacromonte remains one of the great powers of Vesper while commanding less than a tenth of the territory of even the smallest of its peer powers,” he said. “And while we can answer all these questions through the realities of the present, those answers will be incomplete – because the end of a trajectory cannot easily be understood without knowing its source.”

He marked the largest slate thrice.

“We look back, students, so that we might better understand what is ahead,” Professor Sasan said. “And despite the best efforts of time and men, there is much that was left behind for us to learn from.”

He opened his arms.

“Our history, as a rule, is divided into three periods. Who might give me the name of the very earliest?”

Tianxi history was divided into eleven periods so for once Song was entirely in the dark. Both Angharad and Abrascal were among those that raised their hand, however, and the latter was called on.

“Antiquity,” he said.

“Indeed,” Professor Sasan enthusiastically said. “As in all things historical naming an era is a contentious issue, but ‘Antiquity’ is the most common term used for the period beginning with the First Empire, the realm of the Antediluvians, and ending with Morn’s Arrival – that is, the wave of desperate refugees arriving in the wake of the First Empire’s destruction who founded Vesper as we know it.”

He filled in a line with the word Antiquity, then lowered his hand to the second.

“The second period is the Imperial Calendar,” the professor told them as he wrote the words, “so named for the way it broadly matches the span of the calendar used by the Lierganen Empire – though that calendar was, as we will cover, largely fantasy. It ends with the Second Empire itself. The most popular date used for this is the Thirteenth Betrayal. and as a scholar I must agree: it effectively ended Liergan as a state and unleashed the Succession Wars.”

The professor opened the question to the class again for the third period, and this time most raised their hand – Song included. It was an easy enough question, which a small Izcalli girl answered quietly enough she was twice asked to repeat.

“That is correct,” Professor Sasan said. “The third and most recent period is that of the Centennial Calendar, which began eight hundred and three years ago. Barring eventfulness, all of you will end your lives in the current century – that is, the Century of Smoke, which has only barely begun.”

After that opening the professor spent the better part of an hour getting the class to fill in the three periods with lesser stretches of times and great events – adding the Old Night, the Tumult, the Iscariot Accords – as he sorted through answers and explained what went on and what stayed off. As answers began to trail off, he eased them to the end of the exercise.

“While I would love to continue talking you ear off,” Professor Sasan said, “all of we general classes teachers are under instructions to give nothing more than a short introductory lecture this week – so that you might better settle into your covenant classes.”

He set down his chalk.

“Before dismissing you, however, I leave you with a thought and an assignment,” he continued. “History is partial, my students. It takes sides, damns and justifies, because we do and it us to who write it. Never confuse it for a cold science squabbling only with facts – and understand that the distinctions we draw within this discipline are not some ultimate truth but very much for our own won convenience.”

He gestured towards the great slate he had filled.

“Consider this,” Professor Sasan said. “These three periods of history, are they the sum whole of all that ever was in Vesper?”

A click of the tongue.

“Of course not,” he said. “This world existed before the Antediluvians came.”

Professor Sasan grinned.

“That is my assignment for you,” he said. “Crack open the books you’ve received and find me the answer to this question: what existed before the First Empire, and how do we call that distant era?”

—

After Professor Sasan’s jovial lecture, Song was not quite sure what to expect when the following morning saw the Thirteenth dragging themselves through the bowels of Scholomance to the buried crypt where they would be taught Teratology.

It had taken them a mere quarter hour to reach the Saga classroom once they’d entered Scholomance,, but this time it was easily twice as long to follow the spikes in the ground adorned with the yellow ribbons. Song watched the god of this place follow them from the corner of her eye as they passed through halls and hallways, a half-sunken chapel whose deep waters no one dared approach and finally circling stairway surrounded by a darkness that seemed to swallow all light.

“I will dare to hope Scholomance shuffles the journey to here next week,” Abrascal breathed out after they reached the bottom of the stairs. “That last part was unsettling.”

“I could do without the chimes in a wind that does not exist,” Maryam admitted.

“I am nearly certain I saw something moving under the water, back in that chapel,” Angharad grimaced.

“We are nearly there,” Song assured them.

The Teratology classroom, described to them as a crypt, lived up to the words. It was all arching stone and dim dampness, with lined up writing desks beneath oil lamps and walls covered with lemures stuffed or embalmed. Not only small ones, either, for a winged snake with exquisite rainbow-colored scales hung off the ceiling from one end of the room to another. The four of them claimed desks near the middle, where nothing loomed so close that Song would keeping looking back, and settled in. They were not the only ones unnerved by the journey to the classroom, or uneasily eyeing the jars and silhouettes on the walls. The crypt was more broad than long, and the front was a slightly raised stone dais where a desk had been placed. Their professor sat behind it.

He was a tall, slender man in his forties wearing an elaborate black tunic. Tianxi, his long black hair kept in an elaborate topknot held in place by a phoenix-shaped pin. Thin mustache and goatee were carefully styled, his eyes black as a beetle and almost as shiny. He watched the students enter impassively, sweeping to his feet only when the last had arrived.

“I am Professor Yun Kang, of the Peiling Society,” he announced, his voice smooth as velvet. “I will teach those of you capable the essentials of Teratology.”

Passing by his desk, he snatched a long baton of dark wood. It was polished enough to reflect lantern light.

“You will call me professor or sir,” Professor Kang informed them. “Anything else will see you ordered out of this room.”

He began striding across his low dais, forcing the students to follow him past pillars and the heads of their fellows.

“Teratology is the study of the monstrous,” he said. “That which has been changed by the touch of aether or Gloam, the lares and the lemures. It is the knowledge that will save your lives out in the dark, allow you to tell apart pithy and peril when encountered in service of the Watch.”

He scoffed.

“Scholars have dedicated their entire lives to Teratology and found this time to be all too short,” Professor Kang said. “My sole expectation of you as students is that most will learn the bare necessities and a handful of fortunate souls will rise to understand the sheer breadth of this discipline.”

The dark-haired man came to a stop.

“We have barely begun to plumb the depths of what exists beyond our small islands of Glare in this sea of darkness,” the professor said. “And the little we know shifts decade by decade, as the world does.”

Professor Kang strode across his stage, arms folded behind him.

“Teratology is an ever-changing field,” he lectured. “Not only must we follow the whims of nature and of the Ancients, but the foolishness of men can also change a land and fauna.”

The professor’s dark eyes swept through the desks, almost lazily. Song felt her stomach sink. There was something about that stare…

“Indeed, near the turn of the century an entire region that had been under regular Glare for centuries was condemned,” Professor Kang said. “Besides the colossal amount of death and ruin this caused, it is worth nothing that an entire scheme of fauna and flora was also irrevocably changed. Even should the Glare be returned, many of the changes will remain.”

He paused. Song swallowed.

“Can anyone name the region in question?”

A dozen hands went up, but Professor Kang did not so much as glance at them. Those dark eyes pinned her like a butterfly to a wall, and his lips quirked unpleasantly. A hand left his back and he pointed the baton directly at her.

“Captain Song Ren of the Thirteenth Brigade,” he said. “Answer the question.”

She breathed in.

“It is the Republic of Jigong,” Song replied with forced calm.

“Very good, very good,” he thinly smiled.

He turned away, making as if to stride across the stage again, but she knew better. A heartbeat later he had turned back towards her, tapping his baton against his chin pensively.

“Song, if you would,” Professor Kang idly said. “Would you happen to know what foolish, accursed family was responsible for the worst disaster Vesper has known since the peak of Succession Wars?”

She grit her teeth.

“The Ren family, sir,” she replied.

“Why, Song,” he said. “That happens to be your surname. Surely that is a coincidence.”

The silence in the hall was almost oppressive. Song sucked in a breath.

“Answer me, Ren,” Professor Kang coldly said. “Or walk out of this hall. I will not suffer disruptive students.”

“It is not a coincidence, sir,” she forced out.

“Ah, I do recall hearing something along those lines,” the dark-haired man idly said. “Your grandfather was the one responsible was he not? You are from the direct line of descent of the single worst traitor in the history of the Republics.”

She kept staring ahead.

“Ah,” he silkily said. “I understand. Such a famous girl, you must believe yourself above answering when your teacher addresses you.”

“I do not know what to say,” Song woodenly said.

“Understandable,” Professor Kang sighed. “I can only praise you for recognizing the utter worthlessness of any words you might utter.”

He tucked his hands behind him again.

“If you must inflict your presence on me, Ren, you will at least have the decency to never speak unless spoken to,” the professor said.

She swallowed.

“Yes, sir.”

He thinly smiled.

“I did not give you leave to speak,” he said. “This is your third and final warning.”

Humiliating as that had been, the stares that came after were worse. It felt like half the class was watching her face, some smirking and others contemptuous. The stares with pity in them burned the harshest.

“The teacher is in front,” Angharad coldly said when the student of her turned to her eye like an animal in a cage.

It shamed those closest to stop staring, but the attention only barely waned. And Professor Kang was watching it all from the front, just waiting for her to speak up and give him reason to cast her out. Once it became clear she would not give him the excuse, he chided her for distracting the class and announced that the entire first month of class would be dedicated to the study of what set apart lares and lemures from animals.

“Teratology is best understood not as a state or a catalogue but as a natural system,” Professor Kang said. “To best allow you to grasp this early in our time together, we will study a well-documented occurrence of such a system shifting.”

And as Song’s stomach sung, the professor went on to explain how for that entire first month they would study how the Dimming had changed the lands of Jigong, their fauna and flora and inhabitants. Every excruciating detail of the consequences of her grandfather’s sin, not only dragged out for everyone to see but studied and tested on. Only a hundred of the four hundred and three students of Scholomance were in this room, but she knew without a doubt that by the end of the day word would have spread through all Tolomontera. The Dimming and her family ties to it might as well been nailed to her forehead.

Captain Wen had warned her that one of the teachers had it out for her, had he not?

Well, Song had found him.

Musa Shange and his three were the first down.

Angharad would give him this: the man might be arrogant, but he was no coward. It was but moments after he disappeared down the stairs that the jockeying began, not for seats but for alliances. Now that it seemed certain all of them would journey down into the Acallar to fight everyone wanted to stand with the strongest they knew. Shalini pulled close, almost as if staking a claim, and Salvador had been sitting to their side the entire time.

“We should look into a fourth,” Shalini quietly advised. “Best to fill our ranks as much as possible.”

“Agreed,” Angharad murmured.

She did not believe herself unskilled with a blade, but there were monsters against which blades only helped so much. She flicked a glance as Salvador, who grunted in agreement. Good, she could begin looking for-

“Hello.”

Angharad’s hand still went for her saber after she saw who it was addressing them. Shorter than her and almost skinny, the Malani boy that Tupoc had introduced as ‘Expendable’ wore a particularly thick cloak and a wide-brimmed black hat that was pulled down to hide as much of his face as it could without obscuring his vision entirely. There was a hunter’s spear trapped to his back and an unusually thick pistol at his belt. Despite the hat Angharad could still see a slice of those strange eyes, black and amber like a wolf’s.

Even as he spoke and faced them, Expendable stared squarely down at the ground.

“Good afternoon,” Angharad stiffly replied.

One’s affiliation with Tupoc Xical was not sufficient reason for rudeness, against all odds.

“Tupoc said I should go to you if there’s fighting,” the Malani said. “That you owe him for the Dominion and for saving you earlier in class.”

“Untrue on both accounts,” the Pereduri coldly replied.

Expendable shifted uncomfortably on his feet.

“He says,” the boy coughed into his fist, “that it’s bad manners to be a welcher.”

Angharad twitched and her saber was an inch out when Shalini caught her wrist.

“Not here,” the gunslinger said. “We’re causing a scene.”

The noblewoman’s lips thinned as she realized that dozens were looking at the scene she was causing – Muchen He from the Forty-Ninth, was smirking – and she had likely chased off half their prospects for a fourth squadmate. Reluctantly, she sheathed the blade.

“That and he knows something about the death of someone called Isabela Ruest,” Expendable continued.

He had not so much as flinched, Angharad belatedly realized, even when she moved to bare steel. Had he not seen it for his staring at the ground? No, he must have.

He’d simply been unafraid.

“Do you perhaps mean Isabel Ruesta?” Shalini asked.

Expendable let out a noise of relief.

“That’s the one, yes,” he said. “Lierganen names, you know?”

“Preaching to the converted,” Shalini drily replied.

“What does he know that would matter?” Angharad demanded.

Expendable shrugged.

“He didn’t tell me,” the Malani answered. “But if you take me on for today, he’ll say.”

Angharad frowned. Isabel had died in battle, had she not? Tupoc had been there that night, but not anywhere near her as far as she could recall. Yet while the Izcalli was a liar and a man without honor, usually he bargained in good faith – if only so that others might bargain with him again. And if he offers this in bad faith, the noblewoman thought, I would be rid of any ties to him. She turned a look on Shalini, who sighed.

“What can you do?” the curvy Someshwari asked.

“I am good with a spear,” Expendable said, “and I have salt munitions for my pistol.”

“Contract?” Salvador rasped out.

“Yes,” the Malani flatly replied. “But it would best I do not use it.”

Curious as she was, Angharad did not step across the unspoken line.

“Fine,” Shalini said. “We’re looking too messy to draw in anyone good at the moment, so we might as well get someone whose death I would not mourn.”

That was a rather savage thing to tell a strange, the noblewoman thought, but Expendable did not seem moved in the slightest. Considering what Tupoc had named him, perhaps that should not be surprising. Salvador caught her eye and nodded, which along with Angharad’s own agreement settled the matter. There was no more time to talk, however, as someone let out an exclamation and she found that down below Musa Shange’s squad was readying for a fight.

The Marshal, showing no sign of leaving, let them pick their cage and opened it himself before getting out of the way.

After the onjancanu Angharad had expected some other great brute, but instead what came out was a blur of movement. Musa’s squad had been lying in wait and the two with muskets took their shots, but they hit nothing save the insides of the cage. It was the fourth, a woman with two silvery hatchets, who let them all get a good look at the lemure when she put them up just in time to catch the snapping jaws of a feathered, winged serpent.

It was an entirely different sort of fight from the Marshal’s. The lemure – which looked not unlike some of the drawings Angharad had seen of great Izcalli spirits – was no lumbering giant but a darting, poisonous little thing. It was no larger than a sheep and had no arms, but the feathers of its long tail were razor-sharp and its jaw was powerful enough to snap a musket when it caught one of the students unwary.

Several were cut, though the wounds were not too deep and they all avoided that deadly bite.

To Lord Musa’s honor, he quickly grasped that having spread out his squad was a mistake and that the creature would try to pick them off one by one. He gathered them all together, and when the lemure still risked an attack they finally caught it. The woman with the silver hatchets threw one, which missed, but then there was a flare of silver and the hatched came spinning back to her hand. The lemure banked down to avoid it, towards the floor, and there Musa caught it with his blade.

He went for the wings, prudently, and after the winged serpent could no longer fly a quick and inglorious death followed.

“I wonder why it did not try to flee,” Shalini mused. “No one could have stopped if it flew up.”

“Spirits can’t leave this place,” Expendable quietly said.

He had only looked at the fight with small glances, never a stare. Angharad frowned his way.

“Why?”

“I don’t know why,” the Malani replied. “I just know.”

Expendable spoke like a man from the Isles, not someone raised abroad, so she refrained from outright calling him a liar in the privacy of her own mind. He would have been taught better. Tough Angharad suggested they be the next down the stairs, but Shalini instead suggested they wait another two fights to get an idea of what the lemures faced might be like. It felt like profiteering to her, but the others were in agreement so she conceded the matter.

The second fight was much quicker: the lemure was a horse with two curved horns, and though it proved dangerous when it breathed out a gout of flame at the squad facing it the four killed it with practiced efficiency. Shot in the sides with muskets, then a spear to the head. It emboldened the next squad to venture down with only three.

Only one got out, and missing a leg.

A seemingly harmless lemure, looking like a boy whose lower half was a goat’s – though the upper half only seemed human, the way the muscles moved beneath all wrong – brutally took them apart. It danced out of the way of the shot that opened the fight, stole a blade and a cut Someshwari’s girl throat with it before she could even scream. Another of the three slammed a spear into its neck as he did, but the lemure stabbed him in the eye in return.

The neck was half-cut, head dangling listlessly, but there was no ichor in that flesh. Only cartilage.

Only when the last student shot it in the belly did the lemure let out a scream, a mouth opening in its belly with teeth like a goat’s horns, and it tore through the last student’s leg before the girl stabbed into it enough it ceased moving, screaming and weeping all the while. She had to be carried out by the blackcloaks keeping guard behind the grate, unconscious. Two more came and carried out the corpses as the Marshal waited, silent.

“Next,” he simply called out, looking at the stands.

A deadly stillness had fallen upon them as the corpses were carried out, every last whisper silenced as they faced the reality that their professor had watched two students die and third be crippled for life with polite disinterest. There was no secret safety here, no ancient device preventing deaths or making any of this safe.

This wasn’t a class, it was a culling.

Well, nothing for it. Angharad pushed off the railing, adjusted her coat and the sword at her side before checking her pistol. Perhaps she would even use it.

“Shall we?” she asked the others.

She got blank looks in return.

“Two and then we descend, that was the arrangement,” she reminded them.

“It was,” Shalini softly agreed, then licked her lips. “All right.”

Salvador’s face was a mask of calm, and as far as she could tell Expendable was only barely paying attention. Angharad nodded their way, then took the lead down the stone steps. She could feel the weight of the stares on their back, and again when she emerged out onto the broken grounds of the Acallar. The others followed behind, none of them in the mood to chatter.

The Marshal waited for them at the heart of it, and laughed when he saw them.

“Of course it would be you four.”

“I don’t follow, Marshal,” Angharad frowned.

“You’re a mirror-dancer, girl,” the old man said. “Unlike those children up there, you were never under the illusion that your life might not be on the line.”

“I expect disservice is being done,” she calmly replied.

The Marshal shrugged, then wordlessly invited her to choose a cage. Glancing back, Angharad found that none of the others seemed inclined to do so. The noblewoman eyed the closest cage and-

/a large golden lion prowled out, unblinking red eyes set in its fur/

-decided it would do.

“This one,” she pointed.

She knew not the beast, but she would much prefer something committed to the ground rather than bearing wings. The odds of her contributing to a victory with her pistol were unfortunately low.

“I will take the front,” Angharad said. “Shalini-”

“I’ll hold back until you have it in place, then unload,” the Someshwari said.

“I go with you,” Salvador said, catching Angharad’s eye.

She would have objected, but he shook his head.

“Hard to kill,” he smiled.

It would have been an insult to refuse him, so she set aside her concern.

“Then I will hit the flank,” Expendable muttered. “After-”

The cage opened, Marshal de la Tavarin having wrenched open the gate before retreating out of sight, and just like in Angharad’s glimpse a great lion prowled out. Expendable’s voice caught.

“Please let me kill it,” he suddenly said. “Cripple it and let me kill it.”

Eyes turned to him, baffled.

“Why-” Angharad began.

“For my contract,” he said. “It’s… I might be able to leave the Fourth if I kill it. Please.”

Shalini cursed.

“I make no promises,” Angharad said, then hesitated. “But if the opportunity comes, I will hold back from slaying it.”

A roar told made it plain that the time for talk was over.

The noblewoman shot forward, drawing her blade as she did. The monster, she saw, was closer in size to a bear than the lions of Malan – and inside the hair-like man unblinking red eyes watcher her approach even as it yawned, revealing its fangs. Its tail swept behind casually as Angharad closed the distance, choosing her angle, but to her surprise Salvador ran past her with his blade in hand.

“I’ll distract,” he croaked out.

Before she could reply the man turned blue and hazy – or so she thought, before realizing that Salvador was the same but leaving a trail. Contract. She adjusted her approach, circling towards the left as most of the lemure’s eyes turned to the Sacromontan. What followed she almost missed, so quickly did it happen.

Salvador had gotten close, enough to dart in with his sword, but the lion lazily stepped past the blow. Then one of the red eyes burst, spit out like dart of blood that hit the Sacromontan in the stomach and ripped right through. Angharad would have shouted, but the man flickered blue and heartbeat later he was elsewhere entirely.

Behind her, when he had first stood when he’d begun leaving a trail, and entirely unharmed.

Angharad’s eyes widened at the implication, but she had no more time to spare than that. The lemure had turned its attention on her, leaping,  and a glimpse told her to follow her sidestep by a roll as another eye burst and tried to clip her shoulder. Instead she rose into a strike at the beast’s back leg, scoring a blow on skin that proved tough as old leather. She cut it, but not deep enough for ichor.

Roaring, the lion turned to swipe at her and that was when Shalini Goel unloaded into its side.

Four shots, in such quick succession Angharad could barely tell them apart. The lion screamed, but she could hardly hear it with the racket made by dozens of cages suddenly being rattled by the beasts inside them. Salvador had returned to the lemure’s back, hazy once more, and Angharad spared a heartbeat to notice that he seemed exceedingly careful about never stepping in his own trail.

After that, it was a dance with the mirror.

The beast was fast and tricky, once almost tearing Salvador’s throat out after he snapped back to the beginning of his trail, but Expendable was keeping an eye on them – he shot the beast in one of its eyes, then forced it away with his spear. They were quick on their feet, however, and Shalini was one-woman artillery. She never ventured too close, waiting until they trapped the beast to tear into it with her pistols.

Soon the lemure was bleeding from every side, more meat than monster, and to Angharad’s disgust it began to fall apart. The same red it had shot at them with began wriggling out of control, an entire leg turning into a puddle of blood suddenly, and after a few more careful blows from the lion was soon no more than a wriggling, pulsating mass of flesh and blood.

It was no longer fighting, at least, and the others joined her to catch their breath. They had a few scrapes and Expendable’s coat was ripped, but otherwise they were unharmed.

“I am unsure how to kill this,” Angharad admitted, eyeing the red. “Salt munitions?”

“No need. I’ll end it.”

She turned to Expendable, who for once was standing straight. He began advancing towards the lion, undoing his cloak and letting it drop before tossing his spear and pistol the same way.

“What are you doing?” Angharad called out, baffled.

“Using my contract,” Expendable replied, and took off the hat. “Don’t come close, I won’t be in control.”

His eyes, Angharad saw, were no longer like a wolf’s.

The Malani boy even took off his tunic and his boots, advancing in hose towards the wriggling lion remains. He looked a madman, until the first spasm. As he screamed hoarsely Expendable’s right arm wrenched back and burst into claws and fur with a wet squelch. Convulsing, screaming in pain, another form burst out of the boy one squelch at a time. Long clawed legs and a striped coat, a thick chest and large triangular ears a dog’s muzzle.

It would have looked like a hyena, if they grew the size of carriages.

No, Angharad knew what this was and so she did not dare to move so much as an inch. The black stripes on the monster’s coat rippled like living shadow, snaking along the ground, and as the creature let out a cackle she blurred – and emerged at the tip of the extended shadow, sending a shiver down Angharad’s spine.

“Gods,” Shalini whispered. “What is that?”

“Doom-caller,” she whispered back, dry-mouthed. “Ukusini.”

The Slow Death, they were called by some, for the ukusini took their time slaughtering caravans – snatching and bleeding, not because they could not murder their way through the lot in moments but to make the caravan into a larder of meat and terror. Ancestors, how had this boy come into a contract that turned him into one? The monster fell onto the wounded one with relish, tearing into the flesh and gobbling it up.

It didn’t make it quick.

The ukusini turned towards them, when the last strip of flesh was devoured, and let out a shuddering cackle. Angharad swallowed, taking a careful step back. Would the Marshal step in, if it were a student attacking them and not a lemure? She was not to find out, for instead of advancing the creature let out a dismayed cry and began to convulse. It was the horror they had seen earlier in the reverse, flesh and bone and tendon sucked into a too-small body as the ukusini was forced back inside Expendable.

The boy was left lying on the ground, completely naked.

Angharad had thought that the end of it, for a moment, but Expendable kept convulsing. Things moved under his skin as he wriggled on the ground, gasping, until the sudden end. He stayed there for a moment, until he closed his eyes and slammed his fist against the ground.

“Fuck,” he snarled. “Fuck. How is it not strong enough, Sleeping God fucking damn you.”

When he opened his eyes they were wolflike again and he looked set to weep. He gathered himself to sit with little regard to his modesty.

“It’s done,” Expendable tired said. “Thank you for trying.”

Shalini brought him his cloak and hat, something like pity on her face, and they picked up his affairs before leaving together. They were taken to the guardhouse, patched up and sent back to the stands. They sat there, watching as the hour stretched and cages opened one after another. By the time the fights ended, six people had died and three were wounded badly enough they had to be taken away.

When the Marshal called them down, the sixty-six remaining students were silent as the grave they were standing on.

—

“Do you know our words, Maryam Khaimov?”

Captain Yue looked like ease put to canvas: she was barefoot and wearing a billowy white shirt, lying back on a black coat laid atop the grass. With her thick black braid pulled to the side, Maryam could not see the burn scars she knew were on her cheek and ear. And the older signifier’s brown eyes, however half-lidded their gaze, studied her without blinking.

“Beyond the Horizon,” Maryam recited.

She sat cross-legged in the grass facing the other woman, cloak pulled tight around her like a shield.

“That’s right,” Captain Yue agreed. “We inherited those, did you know? I’ll spare you the twists and turns of history, but our lineage as a guild can be traced back to Second Empire officials called the cazadores.”

Maryam frowned. She had known of the Akelarre Guild’s ancient roots but its rise to prominence had only begun well into the Succession Wars – why cling to such a distant past? Her bemusement was visible enough to warrant answer.

“They weren’t Gloam-users but mapmakers,” the captain said, sounding strangely amused. “Their role was to explore past the borders and chart the lands there so that the emperors of Liergan might better plan their conquests.”

The blue-eyed woman mulled over that.

“So when Liergan grabbed everything under Glare they could reach, that meant going out into the dark,” Maryam said. “They turned into Gloam-users.”

“That and a mystery cult,” Captain Yue said. “The Orden de Cazadores got into its head that it was going to save us all by finding a land beyond the horizon where the Gloam could not reach, a paradise beyond even the reach of gods.”

It sounded not unlike what her people called the Nav – but that was a land for the dead, not the living.

“I have not heard of such a place,” Maryam said.

“They found Hell instead,” the Tianxi drily replied. “Bit of disappointment, I imagine.”

Maryam twitched, surprised that even through her nerves she could be amused. Captain Yue did have a way about her. It was the calm, the Izvorica figured. The older woman seemed so deeply unmoved by the world around her you could not be helped to be drawn into her pace.

“If they failed, why do we keep their words?” Maryam asked. “The Guild has folded hundreds of practitioner cults into itself over the years. Surely one would better deserve the honor.”

“The words stayed because they don’t mean the same thing they used to,” Captain Yue said. “After they found Pandemonium, the Orden cult broke. It only knit back anew under a new dream.”

The Tianxi theatrically swept her arms out.

“To find the edges of the world,” she said. “It is only logical, Maram: we have firmament above and the ground below our feet, but Vesper has walls. Limits. The last of the cazadores and those who came after themwanted to chart the entire world, know the span of it and hold it in their palm.”

She shrugged.

“So a-chasing they went.”

“And we carry that dream still?” Maryam asked, honestly surprised. “That is not much like Captain Totec taught me, or even what I learned on the Blind Isle.”

“Some of us do,” Captain Yue said. “But that dream bled out, Maryam, for the same reason so many other things have: the Succession Wars.”

The shadow cast on every lesson about mornarichistory, the great wars that had ravaged their realms and scarred them deep. The Triglau had known war, both within their peoples and with the broken kingdoms beyond the Dead Lands, but never anything so shattering. What rank madness it would be, to lessen the lights of the world when there were already so few.

“War took away the taste for such pursuits, I take it,” Maryam said.

“It did a lot more than that,” Captain Yue smiled.

She had not moved an inch, yet the Izvorica could not help but feel there was no longer anything casual about the way she was lying on the ground.

“When half of Old Liergan went dark, it ripped the veil off our delusions of supremacy,” the Tianxi said. “The Watch, it was born from that sudden anguished realization that we’ve been at war with the encroaching dark since we first fled down into Vesper and that, despite our most desperate efforts, we are losing.”

The simple, heartfelt belief in that last word shivered across the Meadow. Captain Yue had spoken it without room for a speck of doubt. The older woman pushed herself up, legs crossing in a mirror of Maryam’s, and rolled her shoulders.

“But listen to me rambling, and after saying I’d spare you the history!” the Tianxi sighed. “Here’s the important part: by the reckoning of the finest minds of our order, only somewhere around a third of Vesper exists under the Glare.”

The blue-eyed woman felt her stomach clench in unease. She had never heard a number put to such a thing before, and the one she was being told was distressing. Maryam not thought most of the world would be under light, but surely at least close to half? A mere third sounded… fragile. Captain Yue, far from distressed, seemed enthused.

“What you have to understand, Maryam, is that the rest of the Watch are poor doctors,” she said. “They hunt the evils of the world and measure them as if it that can save anything, but all that attends to is the symptoms.”

She shrugged.

“It is not unworthy work, and some of necessary, but at the end of the day they cannot face the reality that two thirds of the world is the province of Gloam,” she said.

And that let Maryam put it together. Captain Totec had not come to the land of her birth as an explorer, not really. And there was a reason he had taken her under his wing even knowing it would offend the Malani.

“But we do,” she said. “The horizon in our guild’s words, it’s not one that can be sailed to.”

“No,” Captain Yue agreed, sounding pleased. “It’s the horizon that’ll find us, sooner or later: the last third going dark. And when that day comes, if there is anything to remain of us, then we need to have mastered Gloam. Made it ours. Else none of us will ever see what lies beyond that horizon.”

She raised her hand, clenched it into a fist.

“The Signs, all they are is an alphabet,” the captain said. “One that in time will make the words of the language that will be mankind’s salvation.”

The Tianxi opened her fist, revealing a ball of roiling Gloam that she snuffed out with a single breath.

“But that work will not be finished in our time,” she said. “We pass it on, Maryam. We learn and write and pass the book so that those after us might finish the page.”

The Izvorica kept silent. She could already smell the refusal, or worse. What could she add to this Akelarre book? She doubted there was a single signifier in the Abbey that could not make at least twice as many Signs as she.

“That’s why Baltasar is wrong about you,” Captain Yue mildly said.

Blue eyes snapped to her.

“He’s a brilliant signifier of the Watch, and a fine instructor, but that is all he is,” the older woman said. “I imagine he was quite dismissive of whatever Triglau tradition saw you obscure your brain before puberty.”

Maryam swallowed, mouth gone dry.

“He was.”

Not unkindly, but he had been.

“That’s where he fails,” Captain Yue smiled. “He sees that, sees how your Grasp and Command are absurd, and sees someone who cannot excel at what he is to teach.”

The captain folded her arms.

“He should be wondering, instead, what it is you weremade to excel at,” she said. “There is a mystery in you, Maryam Khaimov, and mysteries have been the death of many a signifier.”

The dark-eyed Tianxi bared her teeth.

“But they’re also how we fill the page.”

“And what would that mean, for me?” Maryam quietly asked.

“You give me two afternoons a week,” Captain Yue said. “I’ll assign you readings and exercises. Sometimes, I will take measurements.”

“But you’ll fix my signifying,” the Izvorica said.

“Oh, I’ll do more than that,” the Tianxi chuckled.

She leaned back, fingers riffling through the pockets of the coat on the grass. She slid out a folded paper, which she handed Maryam. The blue-eyed woman opened it, throat catching as she read the lines. It was a report from a garrison officer, a lieutenant describing the encounter he’d had last night near a red line in Port Allazei.

And unless there was another pale-skinned signifier on the island, it was her being described out there in the middle of the night.

“I had it buried,” Captain Yue idly said. “Officially, you were out on business for me.”

And you’ll keep burying it, Maryam understood, so long as I do what you say. She licked her lips. That alone was enough to leverage her even if she were not already desperate.

“Can you really help?” she asked.

“I’ve been called a lot of things, over the years,” Captain Yue said. “Witch, bitch, the butcher of Caranela, a hundred different variations of madwoman and even ‘Necalli with tits’ the once, but there’s one thing they’ve never called me and that’s a liar.”

There was a glint in her eyes, something and dark and cold but not cruel – at least no crueler than a deep river was when it drowned the unwary.

“Help me understand why you have twice lived through something we believe to be certain death,” she grinned. “And I’ll make sure you’ve mastered enough Signs to stay on next year.”

Maryam chose the side of the coin she could live with, and shook the devil’s hand.

—

Hage was cleaning the counter when Tristan came in.

The devil glanced at him, cocked an eyebrow and then went around the counter. Mephistofeline was sleeping by the front window, his dainty snores blowing off little motes of dust with every breath. Fortuna hurried to him immediately, trying to wake him with a sudden shout that had Tristan tensing but the cat only flopping belly up and stretching a bit without ever ceasing to snore.

“You have made a deadly enemy today, Prince Mephistofeline,” Fortuna hissed. “I’ll have you know an entire language was once crafted for the sole purpose of making hymns in my name and that-”

Fighting down the secondhand embarrassment and habitually glad no one else could hear the goddess, Tristan slid into a seat facing Hage. The devil set down his rag, leaning a single elbow against the counter and cocked one of those impressive eyebrows.

“I read my dossier,” Tristan said. “What do you want to know?”

“What did your father do for a living?” Hage asked.

“They have him marked a cellist.”

The devil hummed.

“Who put a price on your head and why?”

“The Ivory Library,” the thief replied. “And it didn’t say why, but it did mention that Officer Nerei complained that it was an abduction of a Watch member for the purposes of experimentation.”

His face remained unreadable. Tristan supposed that was easier, when the only facial expressions you had were those you faked with mandibles under skin.

“Tell me an Item of Interest,” Hage said, “for another member of your cabal.”

Tristan widened his eyes and put on an offended air.

“Why would you think I looked at their private matters?” he said.

The devil leaned in.

“Is that your final answer?”

The thief grimaced.

“Song’s family is so hated a curse-god is forming from that hate,” he said.

Hage hummed again.

“Why did you not simply ask Wen instead of making an elaborate plot with a fire?”

“Because if he refused he’d be on the lookout for me and all my other guesses at where dossiers are would be much better defended,” Tristan honestly replied.

The devil had mentioned four transcripts. Hage would have one as a Krypteia teacher, Wen would have one as patron of their brigade and likely that office in the port with all the papers would have one as well. The most likely guess for the fourth transcript was the Ninth Brigade, whose princeling might have leaned on the local garrison to get a copy of the Thirteenth’s transcripts after Angharad batted around their finest swordsman.

No, it’d been Wen or Hage from the start and however clever the bespectacled Tianxi was he was nowhere as dangerous as the old devil. Said devil wiped the wet rag across his counter once more.

“You qualify for my lessons,” Hage conceded.

Tristan hid his relief.

“You will work afternoon shifts here twice a week as a cover,” the devil said. “And I will assign you work to fulfill on your own time.”

The thief’s brow rose.

“Am I going to be paid for the labor?”

“Poorly,” Hage happily replied.

It figured. Fortuna, having tired of swearing gruesome revenge on a sleeping animal whose brain was the size of a handful of nuts, drifted their way. She slumped on the counter theatrically, hair sweeping to the side.

“We must retreat,” she told him. “I need to summon my legions, Tristan, for these insults cannot be borne. We may have to burn this place to the ground.”

The gray-eyed man cleared his throat.

“Are we done for the day, then, sir?” he asked.

“No,” Hage said. “And there will be no burning my shop.”

It took him a second for the words to truly sink in. Tristan stilled, blood going cold, and as Fortuna pushed herself up to look at the devil the ancient monster lazily stretched out his hand and flicked her forehead.

And without a sound, she was gone. Disappeared.

“You could see her,” Tristan choked out. “Hear her. This whole time?”

Hage gave a twofold smile, teeth behind teeth.

“Why were you ever so sure I could not?”

The thief licked his lips.

“She’s…”

“Dismissed,” Hage said. “I expect better manners of her should she enter the Chimerical again.”

Would it have hurt? Could Fortuna hurt, the way a human could? Even when they had faced that sliver of the Red Maw, she’d not seemed on the back foot the way she had been just now.

“There are some Masks on this island who would take you on simply because of who recommended you,” the devil said. “That is the worth of Nerei’s name. But I’ve found that while she has a knack for finding exceptional prospects, she doesn’t really prepare them.”

Hage studied him.

“She breaks off the part that wouldn’t fit under the mask, then tosses them our way,” the devil said. “I rather dislike that method.”

That last sentence, Tristan thought, had been spoken in the same venomously casual tone he thought the devil might use while chewing on someone’s leg.

“Entering the Krypteia should always be choice, not a shipwreck,” Hage said.

“Was it for you?” Tristan quietly asked.

“Oh yes,” the old devil smiled. “Hell did not cast me out, boy. I walked out of Pandemonium’s gates with my head held high.”

He licked his lips.

“Why?” Tristan asked. “The Watch was besieging Hell, wasn’t it? They must have called you a traitor when you walked.”

“To tell you the stories that would let you understand a genuine answer might take days,” Hage said. “But a simplification is this: I believe in what the Krypteia is.”

“And what’s that?” the thief asked.

Tone forcefully casual, but the question was utterly serious. Hage laid a hand on the rag, though he did not wipe with it again.

“Our world, Tristan Abrascal, is a graveyard.”

The devil leaned in, voice smooth as silk.

“There are empires in the dark whose rise and fall you shall never hear a whisper from, wonders and horrors buried beneath our feet whose like we will never see again,” Hage said. “We built our homes on the ashes of a hundred broken kingdoms and for those who know how to listen the wind still echoes of that merciless fire.”

The devil’s fingers clenched around the rag,

“The great powers forget, as all power does, the sea of blood that saw them rise,” he said. “In every corner of Vesper ambitious souls sharpen their swords and dream of empire, unheeding of the simple truth that they can only hold the world if it is made small enough to fit the palm of their hand.”

Tristan thought of the grim look on Professor Iyengar’s face, that morning. Of that matter-of-fact tone. More soldiers died in the first two weeks of the Succession Wars than over the entire span of the entire Kuril Dance, she’s said.

“Izcalli burns while Sacromonte butchers,” Hage scorned. “Tianxia apes broken miracles and Malan tries to steal entire kingdoms out of sight. The Imperial Someshwar? If it breaks, it breaks Vesper with it – and it would be worse if it did mend itself.”

All five of the great powers cut in a handful of sentences, though by some counts the Watch was considered the sixth and the devil had spared it.

“All of them digging and digging and cutting deals with whatever god might listen so that when wars comes – not just war but the war– they’ll be kings of the ashes.”

“And our spying on them will change that?” he asked, disbelieving.

Hage shook the head he wore.

“The Krypteia are not spies, Tristan, though we spy. Nor are we thieves, though we steal, or even assassins though we have murdered men like a man cuts grass.”

The devil’s voice was flat.

“We are gravekeepers.”

“That could mean anything,” the gray-eyed man challenged.

“It means,” Hage said, “that we make sure the things that should not be exhumed stay buried deep, that all those grasping hands never break the seal on the wrong tomb. We tend the grounds, cutting the throats of the intrepid and burning the libraries of the too-curious, so that the horrors we half-broke the world to murder stay sleeping in their graves.”

Tristan swallowed.

“Without us, there is no Watch worth the name,” Hage said. “Every other part of it, covenant and conclave and companies, they are the limbs and blood of the beast. We are the duty, the reason it was born.”

The devil put away his rag, temper soothed – though not before he had torn strips with his grip.

“You will not get to be proud and brave and true, Tristan Abascal,” Hage calmly said. “To swagger like a Militant or earn a Stripe’s accolades, to make and learn like a College man.”

Those were never a choice, Tristan thought. He was no soldiers, no scholar, not even a captain. He’d half-tried his hand at it once and how many of those he had banded with on the Dominion made it through?

Only the one already a blackcloak.

“We will ask damned, ugly things of you before this is done,” the devil said. “The kind you won’t even find it in you to whisper to those you love in the small hours of the morning.”

There was something almost hypnotic about Hage’s voice, the way he spoke.

“You will be taught to stare into every shadow and find the lie in every miracle, to trust neither love nor blood and taste even the finest meals for poison. What we teach will wound you, somewhere deep, in ways that you cannot yet understand.”

“And this,” he said, dry-mouthed, “is meant to entice me into joining up?”

“No,” Hage said. “This is.”

The devil caught his eyes.

“Here is the promise of our order: we will use you, Tristan Abrascal, to snuff out a hundred Theogonies.”

The boy’s fingers clenched.

“To slit their throats and set their works aflame,” Hage said. “To bleed out the poison they would spread. In that work we heed no border and obey no law, care not for crowns or gods or how many bodies pile up.”

The old devil’s voice was almost gentle.

“We will barter everything of what we are, what you will be, save for one thing: we hunt the night, and all that would bring it.”

Hage stepped back.

“Think on it,” he said. “Come back tomorrow.”

Tristan had hardly spoken, but he was the one who felt out breath. But it didn’t matter, did it? Time was of no use to him, it was already too late. When I found you, Abuela had said on the ship, our hunt was already carved into your bones.

“There’s nothing to think on,” Tristan said, laying a hand palm up on the counter. “The choice was already made.”

His hand was larger than it had been back then, he thought.

Maybe one day it would mean more than grasping a larger tile.

—

‘What purpose does the Academy serve?’

Song pondered Colonel Cao’s question as her fellow students tried and failed to answer it. Some tried to get clever – ‘to teach’, ‘to make Stripes’ – while others attempted more elaborate answers that were more seriously entertained by both their teacher and the assembly. In the end, however, it was an unfortunately familiar place that elicited a reaction from their teacher.

“The Academy is the true ruling organ of the Watch,” Captain Sebastian Camaron said.

“Oh?” Colonel Cao exhaled. “I did not expect anyone to come so close.”

The man, to his honor, did not outwardly preen. He simply smiled and leaned back into his armchair like a satisfied cat. Were he less pretty it would have looked smug, but he had been blessed with good looks so instead it looked confident. There was nothing worse than a pretty boy who knew it, Song thought.

“It can be said that the Academy’s purpose is to run the Watch,” the colonel elaborated, “and that is the first half of the answer. The second half, naturally, is the why.”

She gestured at the room around them, drink in hand.

“Is it ambition that drives us as a covenant?” Colonel Cao asked them. “Duty, tradition, any of half a dozen other pretty words?”

No one quite dared to risk an answer as the older Tianxi set down her drink

“It is not a simple question to answer, but the effort is worth it. We begin with the two contrary, unpleasant truths of our order: the Watch needs to exist and the Watch cannot be governed.”

That was a bold statement to make, and it landed into utter silence.

“Consider how the order stands,” Colonel Cao invited them. “The Conclave rules us, but who is it made of?”

She flicked a finger at her drink, the noise resounding in the room.

“The captain-generals of free companies spread across half of Vesper, who if not for the rules of the cloak would be as likely to war with each other as the night,” the colonel said. “The many lieutenant-generals of the Garrison, each a jealous petty king elbowing at their rivals for a greater cut of the treasury.”

Song was amused to notice that quite a few faces in the room had soured. As well they should, considering who had sent them to Scholomance.

“Even if the Conclave had half as many seats it would struggle to make decisions,” Colonel Cao said. “It hasn’t been able to elect a Grand Marshal since the Century of Dominion, and smirking men will tell you it is all on purpose, that this way more power remains in the hands of the Conclave, but that is a shallow conceit.”

She sneered.

“No one would be able to get one elected even if they tried, the votes simply split too many ways.”

The colonel raised a finger, as if to ward off objections.

“That is why we have committees, you will say,” she said, and indeed there was a faint rumble of agreement. “The Conclave is too large, goes the argument, so it gives authority to smaller, leaner assemblies that may exercise its will.”

Colonel Cao did not hide her disdain at the notion.

“As if that were not merely cutting up fresh fiefdoms in an order that’s made up a thousand too many.”

That argument, Song noted, was landing better with the free company students than the Garrison ones. Not unexpected, considering the Garrison was much closer to the Conclave as a rule – most of its funding came through it.

“You’re not to be Laurels so we don’t get lost in the philosophy, and you’re not to be Masks so don’t go chasing shadow plots,” Colonel Cao said. “Authority is a coin minted in gold and steel, and if you follow these you will find that the Watch creaks because it is ever pulling itself apart.”

A hard smile.

“The free companies chafe under the rule of the distant Conclave, which they say takes gold and gives precious little back. They fight and die on foreign shores while bureaucrats feed their rewards to ingrate militias.”

More than a few smiles from the free company crews, but that was unlikely to last.

“The Garrison complains that they must clip their wings to appease the captain-generals, who hoard wealth and glory so they might have no rivals. All the while they suffer insults for doing the duties glory hounds cannot be bothered to.”

As if a lever had been pulled, the smiles moved to the other side of the room.

“The Conclave complains it faces a hundred demands and no compromises, both sides of the abyss complaining of the tightrope it must walk.”

No one seemed taken with that particular position, Song mused, which in a way went to prove the colonel’s point.

“At the end of the day,” Colonel Cao said, “policies that benefit the free companies often hinder the Garrison and the reverse is equally true. Compromise displeases both sides and appeasement only whets appetites.”

She took her drink in hand again.

“So why hasn’t the Watch come apart at the seams? You wonder.”

She drank, set it down.

“We are why,” the colonel said, and though she did not raise her voice something about it had everyone sitting at attention.

“There is a Stripe in every free company, every fortress, every session of the Conclave,” Colonel Cao said. “We sit at every table, speak at every council and conspiracy of the black.”

She leaned forward.

“We do not merely raise officers but induct them, for when one gains great success they are invited to study at the Academy,” she said. “We bring in the influential and stack committees, teach Stripe to promote Stripe. We’ve spent centuries and mountains of gold on making the Watch a culture, from something as simple as the color of our cloaks to establishing jargon enough it might as well be a different dialect.”

The colonel smiled, unpleasantly.

“We are not a covenant, children, we are aconspiracy.”

And despite the severity of her expression, whispers bloomed at that. How could they not?

“You want to know what our purpose is? The Academy is the largest, richest and best organized conspiracy on Vesper and its sole purpose is to ensure that the Watch keeps functioning.”

The colonel laughed.

“It’s why we’re larger than all the other covenants put together, why every time we overstep and offend the others never sink the knife too deep,” she said. “Because they know that, for all our arrogance, without us it falls apart.”

The dark-haired woman leaned back against the counter.

“We make free companies share bids instead of fighting for contracts,” Colonel Cao said. “We make garrisons send their powder to their rivals instead of hoarding them, break deadlocks and broker compromises and do everything necessary ensure that the cogs keep turning no matter how many grains of sand get stuck.”

The older Tianxi wagged a finger in warning.

“It doesn’t matter who sent you here, whom you owe and what they want,” she said. “You are Stripes, now. You have a higher calling, a duty to make the decisions that need to be made so that the wall between Vesper and horror keeps standing.”

The colonel snorted.

“Look around you,” she ordered. “Some of those faces will belong to rivals and enemies, for that is the nature of ambition. But do not ever forget, not for one moment, that those enmities are personal. That they must be set aside for the greater good of the Watch, no matter how bitter the pill to swallow.”

She drank the last of her drink, bringing down the cup.

“And you will swallow that pill,” Colonel Chunhua Cao flatly said. “Or soon you will find yourselves out in the cold, and believe me – after being inside, there is no worse place to be.”

—

Marshal de la Tavarin sat on his wall, the rest of them standing beneath him on the same grounds where six of them had died over the last hour.

“As the man charged to initiate you into the Skiritai, I am meant to teach you our ways,” he informed them. “As all the teachers sent by covenants will, each of them giving you tests and speeches and sharing little secrets.”

He snorted.

“Nowadays, well, the Watch isn’t what it used to be,” the Marshal said. “Like an old lion grown more mane than mangle. We’ve been at the top too long, children, it’s made some of us tack on some fancy notions to the truth of what we are.”

He idly twirled his cane.

“Now, the Stripes they like to think they run the Watch and through it the world,” he flashed a grin. “Most of the time it’s worth it to let them keep thinking that so you don’t have to deal with the forms.”

A sigh.

“The College is all questions,” the Marshal said. “What’s this light, law, this clock? And yet somehow they forget to ask the most important question of all.”

He leaned it, to the very edge of the wall.

“Who’s paying for all this?”

There was a spatter of laughter in which Angharad did not share.

“Masks are spies you don’t get to hang, which is the worst sort of spies,” the Marshal continued. “You’ve got to rattle their cage now and then, remind them that blackmail only works if the other side doesn’t put a bullet in your brains.”

Only for the end of the list did he straighten.

“The Akelarre, our cousins in the Guildhouse, they’re sensible enough,” he praised. “You can count on them in a tight spot, if they don’t end up melting their brains.”

He wrinkled his nose.

“The trouble is their witch’s circle is older than the Watch, and sometimes they forget they’re part of it. Don’t complain too much about that, though, since they pay most of our bills.”

The laughter was even thinner on the ground. Nervous would only squeeze so much out of them.

“All these other covenants, they’ll tell their children they’re what keeps the Watch going,” Marshal de la Tavarin informed them. “They’re the most important part, the crowning glory. I’m not here to tell you that, because the truth’s a little simpler: in every way that matters, you are the Watch.”

This time when he smiled there was nothing roguish or foolish about it. It was a cold slice of ivory and silver.

“Everything else exists to serve us,” the Marshal said. “The other covenants were made to arms us, to inform us, to find our enemies and bring us where we need to be to kill them. They are the spear-carriers of the Skiritai Guild, nothing more or less.”

He exhaled dismissively, mustache fluttering.

“Our order’s gotten long in the tooth so all these philosophers sprang out of the woodwork to tell you all the special things that the Rooks are,” he contemptuously said, “but those are just words. Our order is a gun, and you are the bullet: without you there is no point.”

It sounded true, Angharad thought. And sensible enough

“You are Militants: the god-reaping sickle, the silver swords of Iscariot. The army that thrice slew Lucifer and shut the gates of Hell.”

Angharad straightened, as did many around her. Thrice? She had only heard of two.

“Look around you, at this fine fellowship of valor,” the Marshal encouraged. “Take it in.”

It was a hesitant thing, but smiles were shared. They died at the words that followed.

“By the time you leave Scholomance, half of those you see will be dead.”

You can’t be serious, someone called out, and many mutters matched it. Not that the old man seemed displeased.

“Why, children,” he grinned in silver, “did you think we came by all those fancy titles by accident?”

He set his cane on his lap.

“It takes seven years of flawless service or a victory against impossible odds to be considered for the Skiritai, out there in Vesper,” the Marshal said. “Scholomance is different, you’ll tell me. We are the finest, the handpicked, the chosen.”

He shrugged, as if conceding the point.

“That you were,” he agreed. “You were chosen to undertake a process that makes only two things: corpses and silver swords.”

Angharad was not sure she would truly have believed him, had she not seen blackcloaks drag out six corpses in the span of an hour. Now she knew better.

“They gave me five years to make Militants out of you, and that leaves no hour to spare for kindness,” the Marshal said.

His tone was mild, conversational.

“I will burn weakness out of you, children,” Marshal de la Tavarin said. “Cruelly and ways that will scar you for the rest of your days. But it will never be without purpose, and those of you who survive will be worthy of being called Skiritai.”

This time he did not get so much as a whisper.

“I tell you true, this is your first and last warning,” the old man said. “So go back to your beds, children and decide if the reason you’re here is worth risking your head. I will allow students to withdraw until the hour of tomorrow’s class.”

His mouth smiled, but not his eyes.

“After that, the only way out you can leave is in a coffin.”

The legwork took around an hour and a half.

Some of it was hitting pavement and casing the place without looking suspicious, but the real sweat came when Tristan had to consider how it would all go wrong. Half the time spent rustling up a scheme, Abuela had taught him, should be considering how to get out when it turned on you. Unfortunately, he was no longer fooling around with halfwit coterie thugs: unlike the rare Guardia patrols out in the Murk the local garrison wasn’t likely to keep walking if they stumbled onto a crime looking like too much trouble to handle.

Not that a plan needed enemy action to go sour: ambition was as much your enemy as the other side. The trick, he had come to believe, was to keep it as simple as you could. Keep a straight line of intent, then account for everything you knew about and leave a little loose rope for what you didn’t. Too many moving parts made for a wreck, not a clock, and fortune was just as fickle as Fortuna. It was better to home in on a single weakness and slide that knife in as deep as you could, then exploit the advantage for all it was worth.

In this case, the weakness was that Tristan knew where Captain Wen Duan lived.

It had been necessary for the man to tell Song so she might pass on the Thirteenth’s choices of electives, and caution had seen the thief learn it himself. Tristan had since made sure it was a house and not some office, then taken the lay of the land. The single-story house was just past Templeward Street, near its end, and in a street that was mostly empty buildings. Nobody lived on either side of Wen. The figured that their patron had come late to Tolomontera to get one of the nice houses in what he’d heard garrison men called the ‘Triangle’: the nice part of Port Allazei delineated by Regnant, Templeward and Hostel.

First complication? Wen appeared to live with Sergeant Mandisa. Not only did the tall sergeant reek of danger, she was hard to get a grip on. Tristan knew some of what made Wen Duan angry and happy, could pull those strings if he put in the work, but Sergeant Mandisa? He’d not been able to get a read on her, on what made her step or hold. He could make guesswork, but guesswork made for a mighty fragile lifeline. Better to make her irrelevant to how it all fell out if he could.

Then cut the time by half and be twice as careful. Just in case.

After that came supplies. Buying would have left a trail, in the seller’s memory if not in their ledgers, so Tristan stole instead. It was as simple as waiting for another watchman to be headed into the right shop on Regnant Street, then cut ahead to buy an apple from the greenmonger and snatch a jar on the way out. Casually, almost slowly. The kind of movement that would not make the monger look away from their other client until he was long gone.

He picked the alley, the house and the place to stash the goods. Penned the note on the paper, blew it dry. Someone looking for him would try the back, he figured, because they would expect him to be sneaky about it. It was not a sure thing, never was, but he liked his odds. They’d want him, want what his head on a pike meant. Yeah, they’d be headed out back.

After that, most of what was left was bribes.

To open he found an urchin. Port Allazei was remarkably short on those for a port town, but there were always a few if you knew where to look. A slip of a girl, Lierganen and fair-haired, was skulking around the part of Templeward where there were teahouses – and so occasionally freshly baked goods insufficiently watched. The moment he approached she scowled.

“I’m not going to school,” she firmly told him. “I don’t care what Mom says, they’re teaching us triangle stuff.”

Her voice strongly conveyed this was a fate worse than death.

“I agree with her,” Fortuna mused, leaning against his shoulder. “They feel more arrogant than squares and they don’t even have as many sides.”

Tristan forced himself not to engage, instead looking down at the kid.

“What’s your name?”

“What’s it to you?” she challenged.

“I’ll call you nina,” he threatened.

A pause.

“Arabella,” the girl grudgingly conceded.

“Arabella,” he said. “I’ll give you a copper if you wait for me at the bottom of Templeward for…”

He fished out his watch, estimated the back and forth.

“Twenty minutes,” he said. “Then I’ll be back and I’ll give you another copper for either passing someone a paper or forgetting all about this.”

Arabella considered him, low cunning alight in her brown eyes.

“I’ll do it for your watch,” she said.

“Two coppers now,” Tristan said, “a third if you have to pass the paper.”

“Deal,” she hastily said.

The thief rubbed the bridge of his nose. No, that just wouldn’t do.

“That’s not how you do it,” Tristain said, finding his voice had taken the Sacromonte cant. “You tried too high then settled right away. What you do is go just a little higher – five or six coppers instead of two – and let yourself be bargained down to four. If you only shuttle between copper and gold, you’ll never make silver.”

Arabella squinted at him.

“Six coppers,” she tried.

“I like her spirit,” Fortuna noted. “You should pay her.”

He snorted, at both attempts.

“I’ve already paid you with a valuable lesson,” Tristan said. “Our terms stand.”

“For another copper I’ll throw horse shit at someone’s door,” Arabella earnestly offered.

He scratched his chin.

“I might trade for that later,” the thief admitted. “But not today. Deal?”

“Deal.”

They spat on their palms and the little girl solemnly shook his hand. Their parting of ways was pleasantly brisk, leaving him to arrange a bribe that would not be half as well deserved as strode towards the docks. It was not far, and he knew the way. The detainment house was not a prison, despite Maryam’s insistence to the contrary. Tristan had seen prisons, and the chairs weren’t anywhere as nice.

There also tended to be significantly more torture.

Getting in was as simple as knocking and presenting his brigade plaque. Fortunately, it was early enough in the day that the man he was looking for was still there. Sergeant Itzcuin Hotl had spent the latter half of his detainment with him when he was sent here after his little jaunt through the Witching House and seemed happy to see him again – as he should, given how much Tristan had made sure to lose at cards. The thief was quickly ushered into an empty room.

Of course, the thief suspected those card games were not the only reason for the enthusiasm. It might even be said he had bet on it.

“I need a favor,” Tristan said with a winning smile.

Sergeant Hotl raised an eyebrow, so the thief replied in a straightforward manner by reaching into his coat and putting down twelve copper radizes on the table, spreading them smoothly in a line. The eyebrow rose even higher.

“You have my attention,” the sergeant said.

“In an unfortunate misunderstanding, my visit here will be misconstrued as my being under arrest and a message sent to Captain Wen that he should come fetch me,” Tristan said.

The Izcalli sergeant chewed on that for a moment.

“Full silver,” he finally replied. “If he complains, it could leave a mark on my record.”

The thief was likely being sold a line, but he was in no position to argue. And, in truth, did not even have much time to bargain. The coppers were swept back into his hand and tucked away in a pouch, replaced by a single silver arbol that the sergeant immediately snatched.

“Pleasure doing business with you, Abrascal,” Sergeant Hotl grinned. “I’ll send a runner as soon as you’re out.”

Tristan bowed his thanks and took his leave. Instead of rushing back, however, he ducked into an alley across the street and kept to the shadows. Eyes on the only door in or out of the detainment house, he waited. A blackcloak walked out, quick on his feet.

He did not head in the direction of Captain Wen’s house. The second blackcloak, who left a minute after, did.

“Why are you smiling?” Fortuna asked, leaning in.

“Because I had him pegged right,” Tristan said. “And Arabella is going to be making that last copper after all.”

—

Down the circling stairs they went, holding a candle in their hand.

Each of the Abbey cells had a number painted on the door, matching the cabal of the student it was to belong to. Maryam forced herself, even through her rising fear, to keep an eye on those ahead of her. Most of the first twelve brigades of Scholomance had a signifier among them. She kept an eye on the numbers she remembered from elsewhere: the Third had one, a Someshwari boy looking half-asleep, and that scowling girl from Tupoc’s cabal slammed the door of her own cell. The Ninth, those fuckers, also had one – though the hood kept Maryam from learning anything about them save that they were tall.

Soon Maryam was pulling open her own door, setting down the chamberstick in a small alcove carved into the wall before closing it behind her.

Cell, she thought, was a good word for a room like this. The door might lock only from the inside but the barren walls seemed like a prisoner’s punishment. Bare stone all around, save for a mat of woven straw painted in fading green that presumably she was meant to sit on. There was nothing around her, and once her gaze stopped shying away Maryam beheld the Nothing that was before her. There was no fourth wall to the cell, only an absence revealing the pit of depthless dark.

Carefully she sent out her nav, the soul-effigy feeling out the cell, and she found that the aether here was almost forcefully placid. There were no currents at all, nothing swimming in the waters even though she was mere feet away from a hole in the world. There was nothing natural about this – someone, something was keeping the aether calm. She withdrew her nav, unwilling to risk sending it out too long in such a place.

The Izvorica sat on the mat, which was only mildly uncomfortable, and crossed her legs. How long before the professor came? Not long enough, she thought. He would start from the first cell and work his way down, so there were all too few before the knock came at her door.

Maryam should have spent the time feeling out the boons of the Abbey, how they might aid in her learning, but instead she bit her lip and sat there dreading the coming knock. It was almost a relief when it finally came, a gentle rap of the knuckles on the wrought iron door. She mumbled for the professor to enter, and after the tall scarecrow of a man shut the door she cleared her throat.

“I see no need to use the Kuru Maze,” Maryam said. “I have sufficient understanding of where I stand regarding the Measures.”

Professor Baltasar cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Unfortunately,” he said, “for you it isn’t a choice.”

She grit her teeth. She had been ready to be questioned, but not outright refused.

“You have attracted Captain Yue’s interest,” the older man said. “This is but the first of a several measurements she will want you to undertake.”

Maryam’s jaw clenched.

“I did not enroll in Scholomance to become a test subject,” she bit out. “Who is Captain Yue, that I must indulge her curiosity?”

“She cannot force you, should you refuse,” Professor Baltasar acknowledged. “But as the senior Akelarre on the island, she canmake your life very unpleasant should she be so inclined.”

He paused.

“Unless you have a pressing reason not to, Maryam, I would use the Maze and take this one on the nose. Making a few early concessions will make her look tyrannical should she punish you when you elect to refuse her later on – she will want to avoid the perception.”

Maryam almost cursed. Should she refuse anyway? No, that was pride talking. The fear of shame. Surely Professor Baltazar would not simply throw her out of the class when he saw her results. If anything, she grudgingly admitted to herself, she could use the help.

“Fine,” she forced out, anger still tight in her throat.

Professor Baltasar passed her the stone disk, which she inspected closely as he began to explain how it was to be used. The maze was little more than furrows in stone, but there was something about the pattern… it felt solid in her thoughts, even more so than the stone it was carved on.

“Put your thumbs on the side of the disk,” the professor instructed. “You must then grasp as much as the Gloam as you feel you can and pour it into the stone – it will spread out from the notch in the center, then begin spreading in all directions.

Maryam breathed out, began to sharpen her mind as she placed her hands as indicated.

“Instead of allowing it to spread you must contain the center then command a tendril to follow along the maze, always turning left. The further you get in the maze, the more difficult commanding the Gloam will become.”

In and out, letting distractions fall away.

“The measurable results of the Kuru Maze are limited to a Grasp of ten and a Command of fifteen,” Professor Baltasar continued. “It cannot easily withstand greater strength, making it of only marginal value for older signifiers.”

Maryam narrowed in her being, tempered it, then felt for the Gloam. The dark she carried in her.

“Begin.”

It was like breathing in with endless lungs.

Maryam drew on the Gloam, let it pass through her, only she need not wield her nav as a hand and trace a Sign to be filled. Instead she poured the cold nothingness into the stone disk, widening the channels within her until the torrent filled her very being – and almost scraped at the sides, pinching and aching. I am the riverbed, she recited. I dwell through passage, act through stillness. Roiling Gloam bubbled out of the notch at the heart of the maze, settled instead of volatile.

And it poured, poured, poured.

Maryam took hold of her nav, tried to guide it to the left, but it was like taking a bucket out of the tide and calling it a river. Like a sea of ink the Gloam spread heedlessly through every turn of the Kuru Maze, breaking through the symmetry meant to slow it. Only as it approached the edge did it slow, stopping but a finger’s breadth away from the end of the stone. She could not move it further.

“Release your grasp,” Professor Baltasar said, voice unreadable.

She did, inch by inch, and the Gloam receded. Maryam handed the professor the disc, unable to look him in the eye.

“Nine Grasp, one Command,” he said after a moment. “Perhaps two. It is difficult to assess.”

Professor Baltasar started speaking, then paused. A moment passed, then he cleared his throat.

“This is absurd,” he finally said. “That gap is too large, you should be long dead.”

“I am aware,” Maryam stiffly said.

Too large a gap between the Two Measures nearly always resulted in the signifier’s death. For her own affliction – strong Grasp and weak Command – the reason why was easy enough to understand. A Gloam-witch delving too deep into powers beyond her control was the cornerstone of many stories for a reason. In principle, however, a strong Command and weak Grasp should not be lethal. How could a surfeit of control be a danger to you?

In practice, however, the result was spurts of uncontrolled obscuration as the signifier tried to draw on power that did not exist. Captain Totec had told her that, according to the Akelarre Guild’s records, borderline cases leaning the way of Command died more than those leaning the way of Grasp because they tended to believe themselves in control even when they were not. That was only for borderline cases, however, the equivalent of perhaps a seven to a three.

Maryam’s nine to one was an effective death sentence.

Professor Baltasar continued staring at her, as if further and further scowling would brand answers onto her forehead for him to read. He sighed after a moment, stroking his beard.

“You struggle with everything but Autarchic Signs,” he said.

The statement had a lilt to it, the unspoken question of is-this-a-lie, but Maryam nodded. It was the truth, and the look of bafflement on his face was entirely warranted. Of all Signs, the Autarchic were the most fragile. They required great precision and a delicate touch.

“You should not be able to even breathe in one’s direction without shattering it,” Professor Baltasar said. “Even a simple memory Sign at your level of Command should cook the inside of your head like a boiled egg.”

It was a vivid enough image she winced.

“My teacher,” she said, “believes it derives from the way I obscured my brain before puberty.”

“That’s another death sentence,” Professor Baltasar noted. “Usually, anyway. I understand you undertook your first obscuration before you were taken in by the Guild?”

Maryam nodded. He looked sympathetic.

“Traditional practices can sometimes cripple one’s potential as a signifier,” he said. “There are reasons for our ways.”

My mother could have snapped Captain Totec like a twig, Maryam thought, and she went through the same ritual I did. No, if there was a flaw then it was in her.

“Are you going to send me away?” she asked, looking down at the floor.

A long silence, then a sigh.

“I would,” Professor Baltasar frankly said, “but I do not have that authority.”

She looked up at the thin man, daring to hope for help, but the earlier sympathy was gone.

“I am here, Maryam, to help guide what is meant to be the elite of Akelarre youth,” Baltasar said. “Barring great changes in circumstances, you are unlikely to ever be one of them.”

She swallowed. No lie had been spoken that she might grapple with. It burned twice as much for it.

“You’re not going to help me,” she said.

“You will have of me what is owed as your teacher,” Professor Baltasar said, “but nothing more. I only have so many hours to spend, and to be blunt they are better spent elsewhere.”

Maryam fought the flinch, but it ripped through. The professor tucked away the Kuru Maze into his robes.

“So what am I to do?” she quietly asked. “What am I supposed to do?”

Hand on the handle, the professor hesitated for a moment. He turned to meet her eyes.

“I gave you a piece of advice, on the day we met, about not interesting Captain Yue too much,” Professor Baltasar said.

He grimaced.

“It might be best for you to ignore it, after all.”

He closed the door behind him, the sound of iron on stone like a tolling bell. Maryam sat there, numb and alone in the waning candlelight. And for a long time she stayed there, as light dimmed and flickered and her thoughts circled like vultures. Mother had once told her that decisions were made hard only by the muck of the mind, all the attachments of the world tainting the pure truth within you. They could be made simple again by flipping a coin and asking yourself this: what outcome can you not live with? The other side, however bitter, was always the path to undertake.

So within her mind Maryam flipped the coin, watched it spin, and asked herself the question.

It was not a pleasant path she saw laid ahead of her. It would be… difficult in more sense than one. Maryam was not unaware she had a temper. But she still rose to her feet and brushed off her gifted cloak. What few comforts she had stolen back from the world she would not surrender, so the answer was clear.

Maryam would seek out Captain Yue and strike a bargain.

—

Half the class were on their feet in the heartbeat that followed, rushing towards the boards like the bounties were on fire.

Song, instead, calmly rose and faced as much as the wall as she could. She blinked, once, and breathed out. The sheer number of details was… Hand on the chisel, the Tianxi reminded herself. All the bounties were in Antigua and they were divided into five smaller boards. The smallest and emptiest, which she discarded immediately, was bounties set by students. One board was dedicated to covenant bounties, another to those set by the professors, and the largest by far was ‘general’ bounties. The last bounty board, which seemed to have the same five sheets repeated by the dozen, displayed ‘trials’.

“Song?” Ferranda asked, standing by her.

A reliable ally, she decided, should be granted the occasional favor.

“Second board from the left, near the bottom,” Song told her. “There are Skiritai bounties with a decent payout that requires only three lemure corpses.”

And with Shalini in her cabal, Ferranda Villazur would find attracting lemures into trapped grounds trivially easy.

The Tianxi’s silver gaze never moved from the boards, having marked an interesting detail: the covenant bounties, trials and around half the general bounties appeared to have a promised reward in ‘score’ as well as coin. Never a number larger than six – that highest score belonging the ‘Trial of Night’ – but she was finding it difficult to put together a common thread tying together those rewards. She would have used the gaze-trick again but now there were so many students in the way there was hardly a point.

Song, instead, went to the rightmost board. The trials were only described in the broadest strokes, but given how many times the sheets had been hung cabals would likely be forced to take them at some point in the year. Why not get ahead of the curve? If the Thirteenth did well, it would be information worth trading.

The Tianxi set aside all consideration of the bottom three, which rewarded most richly but also appeared dangerous enough the Thirteenth was not ready for them. The first two, however, had potential. The Trial of Mirrors was described as a ‘test of intuition and trust’ while the Trial of Contest was a ‘test in overcoming personal weakness’. To fill the latter bounty the entire cabal must undertake the trial, and the reward was two silver a head and a score of four.

“Half the time left,” Colonel Cao informed them from the bar.

Tempted as she was to pick the Trial of Mirrors, as it smacked of illusions, Song suspected that relying too much on her eyes to carry the Thirteenth through a trial would be a mistake. She carefully pulled out the nail keeping a sheet of the Trial of Contest in place and put it back afterwards, sparing a look of disdain for the girl next to her who simply ripped her bounty off.

With her bounty claimed, Song decided had some time to spare and pushed through the squabbling crow to head to the part of the wall that wasn’tboards.

It was all maps and lists, one of the latter having earlier attracted her eye: a detailed disposition of the number of Scholomance students, overall and by covenant. There were, Song read, four hundred and three students. Some sort of deal must have been struck between the Academy and the Akelarre Guild, which had sixty recommended each, while the Skiritai took the crown of all cabals at an impressive seventy-five. The three societies of the College each had fifty-five students, doubtlessly arrange symmetry, and the Krypteia-

Smudged ink and ‘don’t worry about it’ written in insultingly sloppy Cathayan characters. It was an entirely pointless gesture, Song mused, considering that simple subtraction yielded that the Mask students numbered forty-three.

“Would you be surprised to hear one of the Academy bounties is about finding out who keeps doing that?”

Song turned towards the source of the voice, finding it a somewhat familiar face: the Malani beauty that had been speaking with Sebastian Camaron at the Old Playhouse. Now that Song could hear the voice, she noted her Antigua was accented in a different way than Angharad’s was. Not a Pereduri, then.

“It seems more a statement of power on the part of the Masks than genuine sabotage,” Song replied.

“As if the Krypteia was not already feared enough,” the other woman chuckled, then shook her head. “But I forget myself – Captain Imani Langa, Eleventh Brigade.”

Captain Imani’s smile as she offered her hand to shake was perfectly disarming, Song thought. And so practiced it made her own teeth hurt.

“Captain Song Ren, Thirteenth Brigade,” she replied as she shook it.

“I must confess I was already aware of that,” Captain Imani said. “I became curious after meeting one of your cabalists.”

After failing to poach Angharad, she meant.

“And is your curiosity now sated?” Song idly asked.

“Not at all,” Captain Imani replied. “You seem an interesting woman, Miss Ren. It would please me for us to have dinner sometime – perhaps try this dining hall beneath our feet? My treat.”

It certainly wasn’t going to be Song’s: she was painfully aware of the state of her brigade’s finances. Before she could even consider an answer, the snap of a watch closing cut through the chatter and Colonel Cao called for them to return to their seats. Imani Langa smiled and inclined her head, which Song returned.

That courtesy did not extent to refraining from looking at the other captain’s contract while she walked away.

The Tianxi did not have long, so she scanned for the sentences that stood out most. It was, she found by the time she wrenched her gaze away and returned to her seat, a rather subtle contract. Imani Langa’s boon was to know when she was being beheld or listened to, and from what direction. It seemed a contract better fit for a spy or a diplomat than an officer, she thought, but then spies and diplomats would need commanders as well. Mere moments after Song sat in her previous seat – she was among the last to – the colonel swept the room with her gaze.

“Well, it appears no one here is such a colossal failure they were unable to choose a bounty in the given time,” she said. “Splendid.”

A pause, then a flick of the thumb snapped open her watch again.

“When in the service is the Watch it is uncommon for the assignment you receive to be as simple as it looks. Congratulations, you now have five minutes to trade bounties with someone else.”

Chaos erupted again, but Song simply cocked her head to the side. Ferranda, seated on the nearby couch, leaned in and cleared her throat as if to ask permission. The Tianxi inclined her bounty the infanzona’s way, giving her a look at the contents, and the infanzona did the same. Ferranda had taken her suggestion and claimed a Skiritai bounty – and grimaced at the sight of Song’s own claim. She did not seem enthused at the notion of taking a trial.

“Trade me anyway,” Song said.

The infanzona’s brow rose.

“Why?”

“The colonel never said we could not trade them back,” Song replied.

There a was a noise of surprise from the woman sitting next to Ferranda , who must have been eavesdropping on their conversation. The captain of the Thirty-First hummed, then nodded decisively. They traded bounties, waited a heartbeat then traded them back.

The other two girls on the couch where now whispering excitedly and shooting Song impressed looks – she straightened her back in pride. One was leaning over to another seat and talking in low voices, word already spreading. Song was distracted enough she almost missed the colonel’s approach. Almost. Song folded her hands onto her laps, meeting the older woman’s gaze, and got a snort.

“It took cleverness to catch that,” Colonel Cao said.

It was an effort not to smile.

“But a wise girl would have kept it quiet.”

Song stiffened. Suddenly the impressed whispers from the couch seemed like a condemnation, even as they spread to neighbors. Oh, she realized. It had been another test, and she had given away the answer.

“I expect at least half a dozen of you figured that  out,” the colonel mildly said. “Only one was fool enough to spread it around, however.”

The older Tianxi looked around the room, finding Song’s blunder spreading like a spill of ink on white paper, and sighed.

“The broth is spoiled,” she said, shaking her head, then raised her voice. “Alonso, bring up the board!”

The man in livery behind the counter took a few steps to the left, then hiked up a large slate. It was propped up against the wall behind the counter, high enough anyone could see it.

“Trade on your own time,” Colonel Cao told the students. “We move on.”

Song almost flinched. Hand on the chisel. The colonel withdrew to the counter, but only to sit: the drink was long empty.

“The first two afternoons of the week will be spent on a class here in the Galleries, where I will attempt to hammer into your heads the basic knowledge necessary for operating out in Vesper in our name – logistics, administration and organization. Unlike what some of you might expect, I have no intention of delving into the backbiting ways so unfortunately prevalent within our order.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“I came here to teach field officers, not second-rate schemers.”

Colonel Cao leaned back to wiggle her glass at the servant – Alonso, it seemed – and the man dutifully filled it up from the same bottle.

“Unless one of you proves to be remarkably terrible in all regards, those classes cannot affect your placement at Scholomance,” she continued. “They are not, by my reckoning, the crux of what a Stripe should study.”

The colonel took a sip from her drink.

“You’ve seen the bounties and the rewards on them,” she said. “There are two currencies on offer: coin and score.”

Murmurs did not spread – she did not have the kind of presence that invited such a thing – but quite a few ears pricked. It felt like the whole crowd was leaning in.

“The former needs no explanation, but the latter is what will determine if you stay on for a second year,” Colonel Cao said.

The silence that followed was particularly still.

“Each Academy recommendation will be evaluated on a scale that goes up to one hundred,” the colonel said. “Every time your cabal completes a bounty with a score reward, your score on that scale rises accordingly. Each your cabal fails to accomplish such a bounty, your total will fall by the same.”

She raised a finger.

“And somewhere on that scale of one hundred is the line in the sand you must cross to be allowed to continue at Scholomance for a second year,” Colonel Cao said. “Is it fifty? Is it seventy? Only I know. The only assurance you have is that the line is the same for everyone.”

She shrugged.

“I will also grant and dock points to individuals as I see fit, depending on whether you can impress or appall me. Speaking of.”

The colonel set down her glass and cleared her throat.

“We have our first scorer of the year, Alonso,” Colonel Cao said.

Song’s stomach dropped.

“Song Ren, negative one,” the colonel instructed. “For having failed to properly make use of an opportunity – she neither fully outed her trick to the crowd nor hid it for her advantage, finding the worst of both worlds.”

She did not let herself sink into the armchair or even stare down at the floor. It would be a weakness, and weakness would not be forgiven at Scholomance. But Song could not quite force down the flush of humiliation, even as she felt unkind smirks bloom around her. Alonso wrote her name in chalk and added that shameful number past it.

“Well, the games have officially begun,” Colonel Cao said. “So let ask you what will be perhaps the most important question of your career.”

Song’s finger clenched. Perhaps if she answered correctly…

“Why purpose does the Academy serve?” Chunhua Cao asked.

—

“Here,” Tristan said, passing the note and the copper with it. “You remember the description?”

“You made me repeat it twice,” Arabella replied, rolling her eyes.

It should work, he thought. He’d implied he might want to use her services again so the girl was not too likely to simply take the copper and run. It would be throwing away future chances at coppers.

“Until next time, then,” the thief said, giving her a nod.

The little girl snorted, but she was smiling. It had been a lucrative day for her. Tristan walked away, pulling at the collar of his coat as Fortuna strolled alongside him. Now came the tricky part – he must get the timing just right for it to fall into the place the way he wanted it to. Tristan left Templeward Street for smaller alleys to its east running parallel, where there would be fewer eyes, and briskly made his way to the street behind Captain Wen’s house.

It was a dead-end alley, cramped and leading up to house’s high wall, but it had both things he needed: the goods he’d stashed and an easy climb into the house to the right of his patron’s. The back wall was old and poorly maintained, full of holes and loose masonry. Tucking the jug away, Tristan climbed up and shimmied in through the shutterless window. The inside of the house smelled like mildew and the roof was rotting, but as he’d earlier made sure most of the wooden floor was dry.

So when he emptied half a jug of oil on it and struck a match before tossing it, the whole thing went up in flames.

He corked the jug and hurried back out by the window, hid the oil behind a broken barrel and the matches with it. After that, while the fire began spreading and smoke poured out the windows, he looped around the backstreet and set himself in a side-alley to wait and watch as Sergeant Mandisa came out of front door in a hurry, half-dressed but fully armed, and went inside the burning house.

There was his opportunity.

The thief walked right through the open door and headed straight for the room he had clocked as Captain Wen’s, walking smoothly enough even in someone saw him they would not think twice of it.

Wen’s door had no lock on it, it was not nice enough a house to warrant such luxury, so he simply slipped inside and closed the door behind him before quietly asking Fortuna to stand guard on the other side. She shrugged, but her eyes were eager: it gave her an excuse to stare at the fire. She had always liked those.

Captain Wen’s room was fairly large but still felt cramped for the clutter – every shelf was filled to the brim, the bed unmade and there were piles of books on the floor. The writing desk in the corner seemed his best chance, but the papers piled on it weren’t what Tristan was looking for. There was a drawer, though. Locked.

It would have taken too long to look for the key, assuming it was even here, so the thief knelt and pulled out his tools. It was a pressure lock, cheap but simple, and in a matter of moments he had it popping open. Outside he could hear Sergeant Mandisa shouting, trying to organize a water chain for the fire, which meant time was running short. He put away the tools and opened the drawer. Papers, so many of them the drawer almost didn’t open.

Many were letters, Wen’s private correspondence, but at the bottom were a series of old contracts – most of them with Aztlan-sounding names – and four neat sheaths of paper. There were the dossiers, not only his own but that of the rest of the cabal. Five pages each. He pulled up his own. The first page was filling, his name and that of his parents, his physical appearance and what little the Watch knew of his origins.

That they even knew this much meant Abuela had passed them information, though he noted they marked his father as a cellist instead of a violinist.

The second sheet was an assessment of his skills, which seemed to have been penned in part by his teacher and then amended with comments regarding his performance on the Dominion. He was amused to see that overall his sneaking skills and ability to read others were highly praised but that he was noted to ‘talk too much’ – Wen’s opinion, at a guess – and he was noted to be physically lacking in direct confrontation.

Fair enough.

The third sheet was about his contract, which he was relieved to see was largely speculation. Though it appeared that the Watch had correctly pegged that that the telekinesis he sometimes used as his cover was not his true ability, the most prominent guess was that he a contracted with a minor god of the Murk to be able to become extremely precise in short bursts – the examples used were his reported miraculous throw of the piece of rhadamantine quartz and how he had survive passing through the deadly mechanical room in the Old Fort.

Fortuna avoiding Abuela like the plague had allowed him to keep that particular secret under wraps, an unexpected boon.

The fourth sheet was, to his surprise, empty. The heading mentioned that the recommendation that got him in Scholomance was meant to be part of the page, but there was only a line slashed across and nothing else. Odd. But there was no time to waste, so he briskly moved on to the fifth. It was, promisingly, titled ‘Items of Interest’. And it was an inventory of sorts, though not of what one might have expected.

Grudge against House Cerdan as a result of his father’s involvement in the forbidden research workshop known as ‘Theogony’, aimed primarily at contract stacking and the creation of a stable Saint.

His fingers clenched. A stable Saint – was that what that thing held up in golden chains was meant to be? His mind still trembled to remember that silhouette, but what was that success or failure?

Suspected to have slain a Cerdan retainer on the Dominion of Lost Things, Cozme Aflor. Body was found with poison burns corresponding to inventive use of a dosage box. Suspected involvement in the death of a minor Cerdan cousin, Remund Cerdan.

So they’d found Cozme’s body after all. He had not gotten away as clean as he’d thought.

Two sniffers have confirmed the contact to feel unusually strong, but a second-order entity for patron has been definitively ruled out. Confirmation is needed about whether he was a Theogony subject.

His brow rose. He had no notion of what a second-order entity might be, so he could not answer to that, but he had only once come anywhere close the horrors of Theogony and no hand was laid on him then. The oddness about his closeness with Fortuna had already been remarked on, however, and seemingly it was leading the Watch to wrong conclusions. He skimmed through a few more items before his gaze landed on the last. The most recent addition.

An informal bounty has been placed on his head. Officer Nerei has lodged an official complaint against the Ivory Library, accusing them of attempted abduction of a member of the Watch for experimental purposes. No actionable proof has been given and the Library denies the charges.

And a slight note beneath.

By order of Lord Asher, there is to be no interference in this matter.

Tristan hummed. Asher. He’d heard that name before, mentioned in passing by Hage. A high-ranking member of the Krypteia, it seemed. At least now he had a name for his enemy: the Ivory Library. The name bore investigation. The thief put his dossier back, then hesitated.

“Fortuna,” he whispered.

She popped in her head through the door.

“How is it looking?”

“They’ve realized the fire won’t spread but they’re still fighting to put it out,” she said. “They say the garrison is on their way. I’d give it a minute or two.”

That wasn’t long, but enough for some digging through other people’s secrets. Who? Maryam would tell him what she wanted in her own time so her dossier was set aside, but he elected to take a quick peek at the fifth sheet of the other two. And oh, what interesting reading that made for.

Tredegar first, she was closest at hand.

Gwydion Tredegar – her father, he learned by flipping back to the first sheet – was twice reported to the Watch for deliberately malicious bargaining and twice cleared through investigation. Testimony by Osian Tredegar marked him as the potential high priest to a Green Book god.

Worth knowing about: ‘deliberately malicious bargaining’ was crime of striking a bargain with a god for the purpose of causing harm to men, which was illegal under the Iscariot Accords. It was entirely possible that Angharad Tredegar’s father had left a god to watch over her. Was that how she had survived Brun and Yaretzi on the Dominion? It would explain much.

The snippet he caught of Song’s sheet was even more interesting, though.

Gestalt resentment from the Republics is in the process of giving birth to a curse-god aimed at the Ren bloodline. Requires regular Gloam purges and there are reports of increasing miscarriages and sicknesses in the family. Watch health closely to ascertain development.

So Song was cursed and growing more so. But before he could spare a second thought to the matter, Fortuna popped back in.

“The garrison’s here,” she said. “And it sounds like Wen is too.”

Time to end this, then. He put away the files but there was a sudden snap and he flinched, realizing a heartbeat later it had been part of the burning house next door collapsing. He’d still dropped part of Maryam’s dossier, and his eye caught a fragment of a sentence –ing daughter of Izolda Cernik– before wrenching his gaze away. The thief put away the papers, closed the drawer and rose to his feet.

He didn’t sneak out of the house but walk right out the front door where everyone could see. Why should he hide, when the only voice that mattered was going to cover for him?

It took a moment for him to be noticed, because there was a loud argument happening. Captain Wen, surprisingly bereft of a snack, was mocking a tall and skinny woman while a dozen garrison men and Mandisa looked on. The stranger was Lierganen in looks, dark-haired and with a prominent nose. Unless Tristan had gravely misjudged the situation, this was Dionora Cazal – patron to the Forty-Ninth Cabal and an old enemy of Wen Duan’s. A blackcloak stood next to her, separate from the rest, and kept wincing every few moments while the patrolmen directed unfriendly looks his way. Oh, she brought a witness. That’s even better.

Dionora was the first one to notice him.

“There,” she triumphantly said. “I told you the little shit was around. He must be the one responsible for-”

“Tristan Abrascal is here,” Wen cut through, “because I sent for him as his patron. He had worrying rumors to share with me, which I asked him to investigate.”

The thief did not look at Sergeant Mandisa, it would have given away the game, but after a heartbeat passed and she said nothing his shoulders loosened. Good, betting on her following Wen had been the correct solution. Between that and Sergeant Hotl being unlikely to admit he’d been bribed, much less twice, the trail was swept clean. Wen grinned, the unholy glee behind his spectacles a rival for any devil’s.

“Report, soldier,” he ordered.

Tristan approached, face utterly serious, and saluted.

“Sir,” he said. “I kept watch from a neighboring house and saw it happen: Dionora Cazal and a man in a black cloak went into the back alley, bearing a jug of oil. A few minutes later they left and hid.”

“Liar,” the woman hissed.

Her accomplice was hiding his face in his hands. Wen’s grin widened, showing ever more teeth.

“As I was explaining, lieutenant, I received a warning that Dionora might be trying to set my home on fire as retaliation for old slights and my cabal so blatantly outperforming hers,” the fat Tianxi said. “It appears we have caught her red-handed.”

So Wen had sent them to check the alley where Tristan had predicted they would be waiting to catch him, then. Another piece falling into place just right. The officer Wen was addressing, a frowning Someshwari man with eyes almost as pale as Tupoc’s, clicked his tongue in disapproval.

“Testimony from the boy is not enough, Captain Wen,” he replied. “He is himself being accused of trying to rob you.”

“Tristan Abrascal is an honest and reliable young man, Lieutenant Pazal,” Wen lied without batting an eye. “He would never do such a thing.”

The thief cleared his throat, getting a glance from the lieutenant. He painted an earnest look on his face.

“I didn’t see them leave with the oil jug, sir,” he said. “They might have left it behind.”

“That could be considered a form of proof,” Lieutenant Pazal conceded. “You two, search the backstreet. Everyone else is to stay here.”

The Aztlan seemed disinclined to small talk, not that it would have mattered with Wen coming over to the thief, making as if to comfort him by swinging an arm around his shoulder and taking a few steps away. Tristan would have disliked the touch even if it were gentle, which it was not.

“So?” Captain Wen asked.

“I planted the jug in the alley,” the thief murmured.

The Tianxi released him, sparing a glance for the rival glaring hatefully their way.

“Good.”

There was a pause.

“How did you know?” Wen asked. “That she would have someone in the detainment house, I mean.”

Because you speak her name like you’ve shouted it, Tristan thought, and that kind of hate isn’t a vine that grows solely on one side of the fence. Dionora Cazal would have wanted to know the moment anyone from the Thirteenth got in trouble again and the sergeant was the obvious one to buy.

“No one as bad at cards as Sergeant Hotl is going to turn away a bribe,” he said instead, which got a snort out of the Tianxi.

“I don’t suppose,” Wen said, “that you’d tell me why it is you’ve schemed up all this?”

Tristan cocked an eyebrow.

“For the same reason you chose to take us to the Chimerical on your first day, of all places,” he said.

Wen smiled, saying nothing. It had been a boon on the older man’s part, that introduction, even though it had not appeared so at the time and was subtle still. They watched as the watchmen that Lieutenant Pazal had sent into the alley came out bearing a half-empty oil jug. Dionora began shouting angrily about this being a frame-up, which admittedly it was. Not that it would help her.

“You know, when we were but a few years older than you she learned that the smell of vanilla makes me nauseous,” Captain Wen distantly said, eyes on her. “She baked fresh vanilla buns every day for a month after that, and sat upwind of me every class.”

That was, Tristan would admit, impressively petty.

“Today,” the large Tianxi decided as his rival was put under arrest, “is a good day.”

It was, Tristan agreed. Because even if Wen ended up figuring out that the thief had gotten into his papers, that the entire sequence – baiting Dionora Cazal with a message that implied she might be able to catch him stealing from his own patron red-handed, then paying Arabella to wait along the street Wen would take so he could stop halfway through and instead claim that he’d known an arson plot was afoot and Tristan was watching for it – had been cover, it wouldn’t matter.

From that unabated grin on Wen Duan’s face, his patron would call the breach a fair bargain anyway.

It was another ten minutes before Tristan was allowed to leave, but when he began walking back to the Chimerical it was with a spring to his step.

The Chimerical was open, not that Tristan had ever seen it close. Did devils even sleep?

“Oh, this place again,” Fortuna enthused. “I just love that hanging crocodile, you should see if it’s for sale.”

He would not, in fact, be doing this. Tristan snuck a look sideways at the goddess, who was traipsing around in her red dress and by all appearances in a fine mood.

“You do not mind the inside, then?” he asked.

Maryam had looked like someone freshly socked in the stomach when recounting how she’d tried to use Gloam sorcery inside. He would have thought Fortuna just as vulnerable to the eldritch trap Hage had lain within. The Lady of Long Odds laid a finger on her chin.

“The drapes could do with some dusting,” she mused.

Not what he had meant, which she knew very well.

“So it isn’t like the Witching Hour,” he said. “It cannot make you disappear.”

Fortuna rolled his eyes at him.

“I wander off for a walk and suddenly you begin clutching at my skirts,” she said. “Tristan, darling, this is growing into somewhat of an embarrassment.”

His jaw clenched. Lying. She was lying about it again. No matter how much he pressed Fortuna refused to acknowledge that when he had wandered the layer she had been gone. Her insistence that she had merely been wandering around was a lazy, transparent lie that she forced into holding by simply ignoring him when he called it out. It was incredibly frustrating, and not at all in the way that Fortuna usually frustrated him.

Forcing himself to calm, Tristan walked the last dozen feet to the front of the coffeehouse. The thief did not wipe his boots on the welcome mat, which was more filth than straw, and struggled to force open the old oaken door. He was fairly sure part of the top rail was either swelled by humidity or too large for the door frame, because it needed fighting on both the way in and the way out. After a minute of effort, he gave up the job and left the door only nine tenths closed.

The acrid smell of coffee remained unpleasant and, even worse, the kind of odor that stuck to your clothes afterwards. Hard to sneak on someone when they smelled an approaching coffeehouse the moment you stood upwind. That audaciously fat black cat – Mephistofeline, he must admit the devil had fine naming sense – waddled close, rubbing his side against Tristan’s boots and then looking up expectantly.

“Your Majesty,” he greeted, scratching under the ears. “How fares your claim on Pandemonium?”

Mephistofeline purred, then sat on his boot and let out an expectant meow. Tristan had always liked cats, their unfortunate tendency to eat rats notwithstanding. They could take care of themselves, which he’d always respected. Though not enough to get one as a pet, as only a fool grew attached to a creature wandering the Murk.

There were never a lot of strays on the streets of the Murk, but especially few the week after rents were due.

“I do not have food,” the thief informed the cat.

Mephistofeline rolled around on his boot, batting his feet up, then meowed again as if that display might have magically added fish to Tristan’s pockets.

“Still no,” he said.

Either miffed at the lack of reward or satisfied he had charmed a new subject into vassalage, the black cat wobbled away with a swinging tail. There was no way Hage had not heard him play with the cat, so he should be out from wherever he usually hid. Tristan’s gaze swept through the booths and the counter, the cluttered display of knickknacks and-

The front door slammed shut and he nearly jumped out of his skin, biting his lip until it almost bled.

Hage had somehow gotten past him without his notice and now stood behind him, faintly smiling. The devil’s shell had not changed a whit – all tall limbs and owlish eyebrows squeezed in a fashionable jerkin and doublet and a rust-red cap – but now that he knew what to look for Tristan thought the brown eyes a little off. Too flat, and when they moved it almost felt like something was looking through them.

“I have always enjoyed cats,” Hage mused. “It is the shameless disloyalty, I think. There is not a single example of the breed that would not turn on you for a large enough salmon.”

“Proper royalty, then,” Tristan said.

“Finer than most,” Hage smiled, revealing the teeth behind the teeth. “He would require salmon first, at least.”

Despite himself, Tristan tensed when the devil stepped past him on his way back to the counter – nearly brushing his shoulder but not quite. He could not forget that evening in Cantica, how damnably quickeven those young devils had been. How their strength had splintered wood and pulped flesh, like the world around them was made of parchment. Hage would not kill him, he knew.

But if he wanted to, it would be as easy as reaching out and squeezing.

“If you’ve come to order water again, boy, you will find each cup is a full arbol,” Hage informed him.

The thief swallowed his discomfort, spread it out until its weave thinned into nothing, and put on a smile. Fortuna, he noted, had ignored all this and pursued the retreating Mephistofeline whose princely hide had committed the great sin of ignoring an invisible, intangible being. He slid into one of the high seats by the counter, calmed by the sight idly noting several of the copper pots were full of water with lit flames beneath. None at a boil, but close.

“What would you advise,” he said, “for someone who has never had coffee before?”

“Another shop,” Hage drily replied.

But the devil withdrew a step, bending to reach for a cloth bag beneath the counter.

“Espuma azul,” he said. “The way they take it on the Riven Coast, short with a layer of berry syrup.”

That sounded absolutely atrocious but Tristan pretended otherwise with a pleased smile. He had no intention of drinking coffee beyond what circumstance forced on him, regardless, so he thought of the cost more as the price paid for a conversation. He slid the seven coppers – Manes, that was almost two meals – Hage asked him for across the counter, which the devil snapped up dexterously before getting about the business of making the promised abomination.

Mephistofeline leaped up onto the counter, drawn by the noise, and drew Fortuna back with him. The black cat stretched and settled for a map like a plump furry cushion, purring happily when Hage scratched his head. Still visibly miffed at having been ignored, Fortuna began peering at all the copper devices behind the counter while the devil poured beans into a mortar and began crushing them. The goddess spared him a glance.

“Now that’s an old one,” she noted. “And not too empty inside either.”

Tristan kept his face smooth. Empty inside? Putting a meaning to that would be more work than he could afford at the moment, so best to keep to the shallow truths. Hage was old even by Fortuna’s reckoning, which meant the devil was almost certain to be annealed. Immortal in the sense that no matter how many times he was killed he would come back.

“I had not thought to see you again,” Hage idly said as he pressed the pestle against the coffee beans. “You did not seem keen on trying my brews.”

“Well,” Tristan said, “I had a thought.”

“It was bound to happen eventually,” the devil said. “Worry not, boy, the headache will pass.”

He rolled his eyes even as Fortuna chortled at his expense.

“It seems to me like the Krypteia would balk at putting all its recommendations in the same room, where anyone could see them and commit the faces to memory,” Tristan said. “Besides, though I confess I know little of the Masks their remit as told me is large.”

Abuela had told him the Krypteia were charged with killing traitors within the Watch, but the Cryptics were also supposed to be spies sniffing out cultists and those breaking the Accords as well as interrogators and assassins. Compared to the duty of the Skiritai Guild, which as far as he could tell began and ended with the sentence ‘kill things’, it was a generous helping of responsibilities. Too many, perhaps, for a single set of skills to apply across the entire Krypteia.

“Enough that many teachers might serve better than one,” he continued.

The devil, done with crushing the beans, carefully poured the powder into now-boiling water.

“A reasoning not without cleverness,” Hage said. “Though if you think to buy names from me, it will not be cheap.”

The thief had considered that, as it happened, but it wasn’t why he was here.

“It seems to me,” Tristan continued, “that if the Masks planted teachers there must be some way to find them out. To confirm they truly are one.”

“It would make for a pointless chase otherwise,” Hage agreed.

“The simplest way,” he said, “would be to order them not to lie when asked.”

Tristan leaned in.

“Are you a teacher for the Krypteia, Hage?”

The devil chuckled.

“So I am,” he said. “What led you to suspect?”

“You got the drop on all of us when we first visited,” Tristan said.

As far as he could tell, Song could see through anything aetheric – including the existence of contracts – and she had still missed him. Tredegar had been caught unaware, and unless she was busy brooding that girl was damnably difficult to slip by.

“That and Wen implied the Chimerical has existed elsewhere,” he added. “Put that together, and your being a devil on a Watch island? There are only so many explanations.”

Even if Hage had not turned out to be a professor, he was almost certain to be some sort of lead.

“Wen has always been too chatty for his own good,” Hage said. “His time on the Dominion has done nothing to mend the flaws that saw him sent there.”

A tempting morsel to nibble at, Tristan thought, but he knew bait when he heard it.

“What do you teach?” he asked. “How many of them are you?”

Hage sighed, stirring the copper pot. He clicked his teeth disapprovingly, the sound too long and drawn out for it to have been men’s teeth.

“Creepy,” Fortuna appreciated.

She leaned forward to look into the devil’s mouth as he spoke, like a buyer inspecting a horse’s teeth, and Tristan almost twitched.

“There are five of us on Tolomontera,” Hage said. “To be allowed to remain at Scholomance, you must find two of us and learn a trade to our satisfaction before the end of the year.”

Tristan frowned.

“And your trade is?”

The devil turned and glanced back.

“What do you think?” he asked.

The thief narrowed his eyes.

“I think that coffee would cover the smell of strange brews and your devices to make it the sound of more exotic distillations,” Tristan said.

“I teach poisons,” Hage agreed.

Too easily.

“But not just that,” the gray-eyed man added, frowning. “Spycraft? Things can be overheard in a coffeehouse and you have the only one on the island. Officers will chat here, loosen their tongues.”

Not as much as they would when drunk, but you drink wine in your own home. Coffee was much harder to obtain, and a popular vice among the wealthy.

“The Chimerical has been many sorts of establishments over the years,” Hage said. “Coffee is only the latest of my fascinations.”

The devil, deeming the boiling finished, stole away the copper pot and busied himself out of sight. The process involved filtering, vapor released from a valve and what looked like a leathery pastry bag. Tristan was served a cup of coffee taller than wide, no larger than his thumb, the liquid’s surface was layered with a purple-blue syrup slowly turning into foam.

“Pretty,” Fortuna opined.

“Wait twenty seconds, then sip,” Hage instructed, then cocked one of the great eyebrows. “You may learn from me, Tristan Abrascal, either the art of poisons or the liar’s game – what we call the ‘lesser tradecraft’, these days.”

“Spying,” he said.

“We are all spies, boy,” Hage chuckled. “The liar’s game is the one played on your feet: picking locks, doubling papers, twisting arms and hunting down rumors.”

Tristan cocked his head to the side.

“Would that not be the greater tradecraft?” he asked.

Hage gave a twofold smile, which had grown no less disturbing for the repetition.

“Liars are a spent like coppers,” he said. “The greatest of our craft move the board, not on it.”

Unsure what one might reply to that, Tristan tried a sip of the drink to buy himself time.

It was, to his surprise, quite good.

He had expected something sugary and warm, like a pie made into liquid, but instead the drink was quite bitter. Yet it was also refreshing, the aftertaste of the berry syrup smoothing out the tang of the beans. Not something he would partake of for pleasure, but hardly the chore he had expected to be putting himself through.

“It is to be drunk quickly,” Hage said, “before the syrup is entirely thinned by the heat.”

Tristan took another sip, considering his option. The devil had implied he would only offer tutelage in one trade, and in truth that was for the best – he still needed to find another of the teachers hidden in Port Allazei, which would take time. One trade was best, keeping that in mind. Which left the question of which he should take.

Neither felt like it quite fit, in truth. Abuela had made him learn Alvareno’s Dosages and its uses, so he was passable in the use of poisons already. No expert, certainly, but Tristan had picked the elective class of Medicine and he expected that there would be some bridges in that knowledge. On the other hand, he knew precious little of the sort of exotic substances that would be required to kill the likes of devils and gods. And he was unlikely to ever be killing the likes of those with a blade, wasn’t he?

Lesser tradecraft sounded a great deal like what Abuela had been training him in since she took him under her wing, and it felt almost insulting that he should be trained in something he had been doing all his life. Pride aside, it was in such matters he felt most confident. Yet it was one thing to practice these skills and another to practice them the ways the Krypteia wanted him to. It would, besides, be arrogance to expect that his few years of tutelage were all there was to know.

Tristan took another sip and considered what it was he would most be called on to do on behalf of the Thirteenth. That was his answer, in the end.

“I have been known to dabble in lying,” he told Hage. “It is a fitting game for me to learn, I think.”

The devil seemed amused.

“Ah, the hardest of my tests,” he said. “As expected of the Name-Eater’s latest.”

“A test,” Tristan warily repeated.

“Did you think we would teach anyone who asked?” Hage said, clicking something that was not a tongue and did not sound like it. “No, first you must prove worth my while.”

“And how,” the thief said, “would I do that?”

“Simple enough,” the devil replied. “The Watch keeps a dossier on all students who attend Scholomance. There are four transcripts of yours in Port Allazei: before midnight, read one and return to answer my questions on its contents.”

Tristan mulled on that, for a moment, then cleared his throat.

“Might I read your transcript?” he politely asked.

“No,” Hage replied.

The hard way it was, then.

—

“Welcome to the Abbey.”

Professor Baltasar Formosa’s hair had not grown any less wild since Maryam last saw him, or his beard any less neatly cropped, but the tall middle-aged man looked as haggard as they all felt. Standing on the edge of the depthless pit of darkness, framed only by shaky candlelight of the chamberstick he was holding up, the professor looked more scarecrow than man. The silver signet ring on his hand, the mark of a Master of the Guild, glittered coldly as he gestured at the pit below.

The sixty of them had followed him deep below the Akelarre chapterhouse, handed worn iron chambersticks and sent down narrow stairs where only one fit at a time. The great room waiting beneath the ground was an intricate pattern of arching pillars and transverses, the gray and red tile patterns on the ceiling dizzying to the eye even in the trembling glow of their candles.

But all their eyes had inevitably strayed to the heart of the room, where the pit breathed like a gargantuan beast.

Professor Baltasar had led them to the edge, where a well of darkness plunged into the depths of the earth, but tucked away were further secrets. Spiraling down and facing the dark were small stone cells, large enough to fit one soul and little more. Maryam tried not to look down, where the dark became Gloam and the depths of nothingness would swallow whole the unwary.

“We did not build this place,” Professor Baltasar said. “Unlike much of this island it does not bear the mark of the Antediluvians, so our best guess is that it was dug during the Old Night.”

Maryam believed him. She had walked the shrine path below the Broken Gates as a girl, to prove she was worthy of being taught by her mother, and the oldest of the shrines – built after the Antediluvians unmade themselves by shattering the walls encircling Nav – had the same… feeling to them than this place. Not winter-cold but grave-cold, the kind that left the skin cool but settled deep in your bones.

“Many a cult and court have held the Abbey over the centuries,” the professor continued, “and always for the same reason: it is one of the single finest places in all the known world to educate signifiers.”

Whispers spread between shivering candles, eager and wary both. The Craft was not something that ever gave without taking.

“The Gloam here is malleable, settled,” Baltasar Formosa said. “You will find it easier to form Signs and should you stumble you will find it easier to cut the Sign before it lashes back.”

So that was how the Guild would get around the strictures of teaching the Craft.

To form a Sign was to paint with fire: the smallest of mistakes would see your fingers scorched. All it took for backlash to happen was to fail to fit the Gloam into the Sign strongly enough. Tendrils of power would surge out, like with waterskin being gripped, and mangle everything around them. If you lacked discipline, losing a finger would make you release the incomplete Sign out of pain and then you were likely to lose an entire hand – if not an arm.

Most signifiers only learned Signs under the eye of an elder of the Craft for that very reason: the older Akelarre could snuff out the backlash before it hurt you, then show you where you had gone wrong. It had been greatly unlikely for the Akelarre Guild to send sixty Masters to teach the students at Scholomance, however, given how much their services were worth. Even a more reasonable split of five students per Master would have represented a ruinous expense. But if the Abbey made mistakes more forgiving, learning easier? A handful of teachers would be enough. More guides than mentors, which seemed the way of things at Scholomance.

“I teach you nothing you do not know when I say that the Art is not something that can be made standard,” Professor Baltasar said. “The process of obscuration is personal, and talent with certain Signs can make difficult the mastery of others.”

Standing fearless by the edge of the drop, the professor had turned his back to the dark to address them. It leant him a ghostly air, standing surrounded by a circle of flickering candlelight with the abyss lurking below.

“I will not pretend otherwise by teaching you as a crowd: you will learn as you please, according to your understanding of your strengths.,” Professor Baltasar said. “The chapterhouse library will be made open to you, but no book within will be forced.”

It could not only that, Maryam thought, for to be left to their own devices when learning Signs would be… hazardous, regardless of the Abbey’s boons.”

“I and other Masters on the island will teach you Sign-patterns if asked, and smooth the wrinkles in your understanding by conversation, but that will be at your own initiative,” the professor told them. “No time in the Abbey is mandated of you, and it is your right to never return here if you so wish.”

You showed us the long length of the leash, Maryam thought. Now how are you going to tug it to remind us it is still very much there?

“But at the end of the year,” Professor Baltasar calmly said, “any of you who have not mastered the fundamental Signs of at least two of the five branches of the Art to my satisfaction will be sent away.”

His gaze turned disdainful.

“If you are incapable of accomplishing this with the advantages we will offer you, to keep you here is a waste of our time.”

Maryam flinched, glad that her hood hid it. This was not glad news.

“Now,” Professor Baltasar mildly, “I would begin showing you the benefits of studying at Scholomance. Can anyone here name the Two Measures?”

Hands rose, though not Maryam’s. She was still chewing over mounting despair.

“Grasp and Command, professor.”

Maryam had been taught using the words Grip and Control, but the meanings were the same. The Two Measures were the way by which the ‘strength’ of a signifier could be quantified, more or less. Grasp was the amount of Gloam that one’s nav was capable of gathering, the power that was there to be shape. Command was the amount of Gloam that a signifier was capable of shaping at once, usually by forming it into a Sign.

The ceiling of a signifier’s capacity lay at the intersection of these measures: the peak of what you could Grasp and Command was your peak. Having superb Command but weak Grasp meant you would be forever condemned to petty tricks, while having great Grasp but weak Command meant using any complex Sign risked melting your brain. It was very rare for someone to be perfectly matched in both, most signifiers naturally leaning one way or the other and learning to compensate.

Maryam was not one of the souls blessed with perfect metaphysical symmetry, to her great bitterness.

The Two Measures were not perfect, of course. She had been taught that some Akelarre scholars argued for other measures to be added – Extent for the time you could manipulate, for example, or Density for the concentration of Gloam that you could achieve – but there were even more arguing that such additions were ultimately derivative and should not be held up as fundamentals.

“Correct,” Professor Baltasar said. “It is rare for a precise assessment of where one stands relative to the two measures to be feasible, but the condition of the Gloam here in the Abbey allows for the use of these.”

Fishing inside his robes, the scarecrow man produced a wide, slender circle of stone no larger than two fists put together. It was engraved with intricate channels on its surface, whose patterns were dizzying to contemplate. Maryam resisted the urge to send out her nav to feel them out, knowing she was being presented with conceptual symmetry – the flesh was ill suited to contemplate such things, but the Abbey was a dangerous place to get curious with her soul-effigy.

“Some of you will recognize what I hold,” he said. “But for the rest of you: this artifact is called a Kuru Maze. It restricts the gathering and guidance of the Gloam in very specific ways, allowing for a precise measure of your Grasp and Command.”

He cleared his throat.

“Time has made such creations fragile and a significant loss of control will shatter the stone,” Professor Baltasar said. “In the Abbey, however, the risk is significantly diminished. Consequently you will be allowed to test yourself using the maze and learn where you stand regarding Grasp and Command.”

He paused.

“The value you will be given is cross-referenced in many of the books in the chapterhouse library, which should markedly ease the process of learning new Signs,” the professor continued. “As in all things, you will not be forced – it is, however, my strong recommendation that you take this test.”

There was some eager chatter. The notion was a popular one, and why not? The manipulation of Gloam was deemed the Craft by Izvorica and the Art by the Akelarre Guild because much of it was imprecise, hard to measure. The few certainties they could get their hands on were priceless things.

“Now, let us get you in your cells,” Professor Baltasar said. “I will be moving down in order to handle the maze and any questions you might have.”

Maryam’s lips thinned. She already knew she would decline use of the Kuru Maze so she should decide on a believable reason as soon as possible.

Because if Professor Baltasar saw her measures, he might well just tell her to stop coming to class.

—

They had assembled at the Old Playhouse because of a hidden path.

None of them had seen Colonel Cao arrive earlier, though given where she’d appeared Song had guessed she came from the back of the stage. This proved to be correct, though not in the way she had expected. The colonel walked past a half-collapsed corridor that must lead back to the city and instead went into the basement of the playhouse, through what must once have been some ancient storage. There waited great wooden doors, which were of much more recent make than anything else Song had seen here.

Pulled open, they revealed a narrow lantern-lit hall that continued beyond what the Tianxi could easily make out.

“The last in are to the close the doors,” Colonel Cao instructed, then proceeded in.

The hall was only wide enough for two at a time, which left Song and Ferranda side by side. The fair-haired infanzona was keeping quiet, eyes moving across the lit hall as if there might lie hidden secrets in the walls of stone. They walked behind a pair of Izcalli, the same Song recalled having seen speaking with Tupoc earlier. The two spoke in Centzon the entire way, seeming to believe using their native tongue would keep the talk private.

Unfortunately for them Song had been fluent in Centzon since she was ten years old.

Alas, the pair were not sharing great secrets. Mostly they talked about how a girl called Serinda was ‘scorching as summer heat’ and ribbed each other about how they were going to be the one to seduce her into bed. The only mildly interesting thing to come out of their mouth was a passing mention of Tupoc, whom they called ‘the leopard-man’ and did not seem to take all that seriously.

Song knew little that was not secondhand about the Leopard Society, but she recalled it was not considered prestigious the way that most Izcalli warrior societies were. That was sensible enough given that they were a pack of raiding, slave-taking bandits but she had not considered that it might lead other Izcalli to look down on Tupoc. That might be of use.

The path to their destination was simple: they went in a straight line until there was a crossroads, then took a left. Word came from the front, and thus Colonel Cao, that the right turn would lead into an alley close to the junction of Regnant Avenue and Templeward Street. Continuing north would, instead, eventually lead to Misery Square. Song memorized the former path, which promised to be the most convenient for her in the future.

At the end of the turn waited a wrought iron door, kept alight not with lanterns but by replaced stones around the doorway whose masonry had soaked in Glare and gave off that pale burn still.

“Expensive,” Ferranda murmured, and the Tianxi nodded in agreement.

The two of them were about halfway down the line and there were several people taller than them in the way, so neither could make out what Colonel Cao did before the door – but all heard her rap her knuckles harshly thrice, then a shutter slide open. Something was said, the shutter closed and after a few moments the door opened wide. The students began entering, the surprised gasps Song heard when she was close enough to stoke her curiosity.

Soon they were past the threshold and the guards by it, the Tianxi breathing in sharply despite having prepared herself: she was standing within what she could only describe as the child of a cathedral and an officer’s club.

There were ten stories to a structure whose shape was that of a rectangle ending in a rounded wall, but much of it was empty: wooden galleries went around the walls and left a hollow space going up to the distant wooden ceiling in the middle. From the fourth story onward, what would be well above ground level for the island, the rounded walls became great stained-glass windows whose colored light painted everything it touched.

Stairs went from one level to the next, and as they followed Colonel Cao up them Song saw the galleries were filled with dormitories, meeting halls and private offices. There was even a library! It was brisk exercise to climb, but she was too excited to tire.

On the eighth story there was a dining room and kitchen, a handful of officers eating at the tables there, and the two levels afterwards were entirely filled with small, tastefully decorated salons. Yet there was more, as what she’d believed the ceiling was in truth a floor and unlike the others the room at the summit filled that entire level.

And what a sight it was! Nearly half the walls had been removed and replaced with windowpanes, their glass clear and clean. Along one wall was a long counter behind which wine and liquors were stocked, while the opposite wall was entirely covered with a board full of pinned papers. In between the walls was an intricate layout of couches and armchairs set by low tables, looking sinfully comfortable.

Song’s belly clenched with something that was neither quite greed nor admiration: this was everything she wanted about the Academy distilled into a single edifice.

The simple implicit power in having this place refurbished out here on this nowhere island, in maintaining it. The exclusivity, the comfort, the grace. It was the heights she needed to reach if she was to ever make the name Ren into anything but a curse.

“Claim seats as you wish,” Colonel Cao said, waving them off.

The older herself went to the counter, where a sharply dressed man poured her a glass from one of the bottles on the top shelf without even needing to be asked. Only after taking a sip of amber liquor and letting out a sigh of satisfaction did the colonel pull back a seat and sat on it facing them. Song claimed the closest armchair and turned it to face her, sitting ramrod straight, while Ferranda was forced to share a couch with a pair of Lierganen girls and crane her neck instead.

Once Colonel Cao was satisfied with the arrangements, she set down her cup and cleared her throat.

“This,” she said, gesturing at their surroundings, “is the Galleries.”

In the burning pale of the lamplights she seemed younger, as if invigorated by the elegance of their surroundings. Song could sympathize. The prospect of returning to her filthy cottage later already felt like a punishment.

“The dormitories, rooms and library are for you to do with as you please,” Colonel Cao said. “This was once the privilege of Academians alone, but the circumstances of Scholomance’s reopening have seen this courtesy extended to you.”

Murmurs of approbation. Even the little kings and the duchess trailing them seemed impressed by their surroundings, which were no doubt the finest on the island.

“It goes without saying that none of you may bring outsiders and that such an attempt would be harshly punished.”

A shame, Song thought. Angharad might have enjoyed spending the occasional evening here and the Pereduri would have been a great help in navigating the social occasions. Her duel with Musa Shange had, while painting a target on her, also made her the equivalent of a conversation piece. Between the novelty of the story and her Angharad’s good looks, people wanted to talk to her.

“The dining hall is manned at the expense of the Academy, so you will find its fare requires coin – and is far superior to anything else this island has to offer,” she continued. “The same is true of the salons below, if  you require refreshments to be served there.”

She sipped at her drink again.

“I expect, however, that you will be spending the most time on this level,” Colonel Cao said. “The reason is behind you.”

Song turned to better study the great boards filled with pinned papers. Several she recognized as maps with a glance, others as interesting information – there appeared to be a list with the number of students for the year, of cabals and even the number of students by covenant – but the vast majority was something simpler. They were, she saw, bounties.

“The bounty boards are filled with not only the Academy’s chosen tasks but also that of professors, other covenants and even select students,” Colonel Cao said. “Though I will be explaining to you the nature of your training and time in Scholomance, I first invited you to rise and read the existing bounties.”

The watchwoman reached within her coat, pulling out a silvery pocket watch on a matching chain. She popped it open, then glanced at the time.

“You have five minutes to claim one by taking the paper,” Colonel Cao calmly said. “And if your cabal has not accomplished it by the end of the week, you will pack your bags and head to the harbor.”

Chaos erupted.

—

The Fisher liked it here.

The old spirit slithered through her veins like icy water and the feel of him was almost hungry. Angharad kept her eyes straight ahead as they descended into the chasm, trying to force him out, but it was like fighting the tide itself. He would leave when he cared to and not a breath before.

The stairway beneath her feet was carved out of snarling beasts, wolves and lions snapping at her heels as she followed Shalini and Salvador down into the dark. The way below was cut with stripes of light and darkness, the burning paleness of the oil lamps never quite reaching another’s cast as the students followed Marshal de la Tavarin into the depths. He seemed an almost ghostly figure, from a distance, an incongruous splash of color in this stairway filled with the silence of twisting shadows.

At the end of the path lay a grand balcony, an arc of cracked painted tiles filled with seats of stone. At least a hundred of them, Angharad saw, and none entirely alike: some were carved into the likeness of vines and flowers, others of beasts clawing at each other or warring soldiers or raging waves. Years and rain had worn away details, but they were still each a small wonder. Yet all paled compared to the great throne at the center of the arc, twice as tall and wide as any other and carved as a single great skeleton embracing whoever sat on it.

The Marshal walked past it, to the elegant stone railing at the end of the arcing balcony. Angharad could scarce see what was below save for four great lanterns hanging from a ceiling above, all wrought black iron and large as a carriage. They burned brimstone-red, belching out smoke endlessly as they painted the deeps in the likeness of a furnace.

“There was a time,” the Marshal said, “after the world broke and from the corpse of Liergan rose many a king dreaming of empire.”

He had not raised his voice, but Angharad heard him perfectly. No student had dared approach the edge of the balcony, kept back by dim instinct, and not a single whisper broke the silence. Above the earth, bathed in the light of the Orrery, the old man had seemed almost a figure of fun. The descent into the bowels of the earth had since snuffed out that impression.

“Sologuer was one such kingdom,” Marshal de la Tavarin continued, “and for a time the iron-toothed kings of this land ruled over isles and coast as far as their ships could reach.”

The old man laid a hand on the elegant stone railing, looking down at a sight none of them could see.

“They took tribute in gold, as kings do, but their hunger was not so easily sated,” the Marshal said. “Black-bellied ships returned to this island with every turn of the Fool’s Moon, bringing young warriors come to die in a bloody temple.”

She could feel the Fisher smile, savor the old butchery soaked into the stones.

“The Acallar, they called this place.”

He flashed them a grin, revealing glinting silver teeth.

“The kings of Sologuer, you see, believed the slaughter would make them into gods. Beings able to command the orbits of the Grand Orrery and so master the very elements. Even the children of their house sat the thrones, drinking in the slaughter.”

The grin turned mocking.

“The Morningstar, ever sharp of humor, sat in that very seat as they slew each other below for the entertainment of his court.”

She felt Shalini stiffen at her side, as was only sensible when being told that Lucifer had once held court where you stood.

“Come closer,” Marshal de la Tavarin ordered. “Today’s lesson will take place below.”

Hesitantly they approached the edge, the infernal light of the lanterns revealing the grounds where warriors had once fought and died for madmen.

Their balcony, she first saw, was the not the only seats. Facing on the other side, noticeably lower, was a much broader and longer arc of stone benches where a crowd would have been able to gather. That was not, however, where they would be headed.

Perhaps a hundred feet below stood the grounds, a broad circle of stone ringed by large iron cages surrounded by the abyss on all sides. There was hardly a foot of bare floor on it, the arena almost as a broken town: there were low walls and pillars, a few roofed houses, furrows in the ground and even sculpted fountains. There were lower grounds and higher, shallow stairs and subtle drops, while in the shadows lay pitfalls for the unwary.

Dusty bones and weapons long rotted away lay strewn like offerings, one structure standing taller than all the rest: a rough mimicry of the Grand Orrery’s silhouette in rusted iron, a skeleton nailed to it as some sort of grim display.

A broad stone bridge was the only break in the abyss surrounding the grounds, connected to the sole break in the ring of iron cages and leading to a doorway in the wall that was closed by a portcullis. Angharad saw through the steel grid that there burned lantern light past it. Glancing around the grand balcony, she found that tucked away in the shadows was a stairway delving deeper into the earth – there must be tunnels in the walls, some of them leading to the heart of Acallar.

Her gaze withdrew when Shalini gasped as her side, following the Someshwari’s eyes but finding nothing save for the fighting grounds below.

“One of those cages just moved,” Shalini quietly said. “There’s something inside.”

Angharad breathed in sharply. Her friend was not the only one to have noticed, and disquieted murmurs spread across their company. Marshal de la Tavarin seemed indifferent to the turn in the mood.

“Come,” he said. “Let us continue on our way.”

Their professor made for the stairs Angharad had earlier noticed, followed by wary students, but she hung back. She stayed at the railing, silently counting cages as the other two stared at her in confusion.

“Around fifty, I think,” she said. “Fewer than there are students.”

“So either not everyone’s fighting in that pit or we will be forming squads,” Shalini said, catching on.

Salvador nodded in agreement.

“Squad,” he predicted. “Like when hunting lemures.”

“I wonder how large they will be?” Angharad murmured.

If there were three then the arrangement was good as made, but more than that would require some thought. Less as well, in a different away.

“I’m more curious about how they got the beasts down there in the first place,” Shalini noted. “Either way, the garrison must be involved – I doubt His Grace did it all by himself.”

That last guess from Shalini was proved true when the three of them followed the current down the stairs, passing through a well-lit guardhouse where a handful of watchmen were seated and playing cards. The soldiers spared them only glances, otherwise ignoring them as they passed. There was another pair by the portcullis, which was now raised by the work of a wheel by its side. It is meant to keep people in, Angharad thought, and not out.

The bridge over the abyss was wide but utterly without railing and the faint breeze down here had her body prickling with unease.

They found the Marshal perched atop a low brick wall by a great crack splitting it, the great feather on his hat fluttering in the breeze. The old man waited for all the students to gather below him, stroking his impressive mustache as he watched them. He cleared his throat when all were arrived, flicking his great sleeves in an eye-drawing gesture.

“The first of the Skiritai,” he said, “were not god-killers.”

That snuffed out every other whisper of conversation, many of which had bloomed. Angharad herself knew precious little of the history of the guild she was to join, its past as shrouded as the rest of the Watch’s.

“They were mercenaries, driven to the blade-trade by their home island turning barren beneath their feet,” Marshal de la Tavarin told them. “Desperate for coin to feed their families worth, they took the worst of the contracts: the most brutal, the most dangerous, the most hopeless.”

A harsh fate, Angharad thought, but such work was respectable in its own way.

“Years turned into decades,” the Marshal said, “and enough lived that the Skiritai became known as the finest warriors on the Trebian Sea – sought-after by a hundred warring kings.”

The old man coughed into his fist, then dabbed at his lips with a mustard-yellow handkerchief he produced from his sleeve.

“To the Skiritai a child was not grown until they had cut down a man, so their soldier-youths they called by the same name as the blade they were to wield: kopis.”

It sounded like a word from a hollow cant, Angharad thought, but she was no scholar in such regards. Perhaps she ought to ask Song.

“Long after the island these first of the Skiritai were born to faded from memory,” Marshal de la Tavarin continued, “our guild continued the practice in honor of these humble beginnings. An initiate of the Skiritai is known as a skopis, a sword for the Watch to wield.”

The Marshal flashed them that grin again, a handful of silver teeth glinting in the light.

“You are not even that, of course. To be an initiate of the Skiritai Guild is something earned and you have earned less than dust.”

Unhappy mutters. Even Angharad found herself frowning. He spoke no lie, but his truth was spoken with contempt. They were nor arrant children claiming something to which they had no tie, they had been chosen by the very guild he spoke for. Laying his cane on his knees, the old man clapped his hands.

“So be glad, children, for today you are given the opportunity to begin redeeming that miscarriage,” the Marshal said.

He chuckled.

“In blood and ichor, as is our way.”

The old man leaped down from his perch, landing with surprising lightness on his feet. He pointed his cane forward, the crowd moving out of the way, and their gazes landed on a cage. Which shook, the sound of claws on metal echoing loudly into the silence.

“There are sixty cages,” the Marshal said. “Each contains something worth killing.”

“Like what?”

The question came from the back of the crowd, not a face Angharad could see. The professor did not seem offended by the interruption.

“Now that would be telling,” the old man laughed. “Lemures one and all, I will say, but hardly any two are the same – behind that door could be a pair of lupines or a raging griffin, depending on your luck.”

He tucked his arm behind his back, sleeve trailing.

“I tell you true, children, I am a merciful man,” Marshal de la Tavarin solemnly said. “I have spared more men death by my hand than you have seen sparrows fly.”

Angharad’s lips thinned. Unless the professor had once commanded over a great surrender, that was most unlikely. Which meant a man she was meant to offer respect to might very well be a liar.

“True to my nature, I offer you the chance to make bands of four or less before choosing which cage you are to open. Are you not grateful?”

The noblewoman’s lips thinned even further. Lupines were easy enough to handle Angharad believed she could kill a pair by herself, but a griffin? There were no such beasts in Malan but their reputation was fearsome far beyond their Trebian hunting grounds. She was not sure that even a squad of four could kill such a creature – not without deaths or grave wounds, anyway. Unless to name a griffin as an example had been an exaggeration, another lie.

Disgraceful either way.

“Why,” the Marshal mused, “some of you seem quite displeased. Speak up, if you’ve doubts.”

Lord Musa swiftly stepped to the fore, face pleasant but eyes contemptuous.

“Sir,” he began-

“Your Grace,” the old man mildly said, “or Marshal.”

“Marshal,” the Malani swordmaster corrected. “Given our lack of preparations and these unfavorable grounds, the likes of a griffin would be difficult for some among us to slay.”

The Marshal snorted.

“So you’re saying my little surprise is ill thought out,” he said.

“I would not say such a thing,” Lord Musa replied.

Which was nothing but polite agreement in the Malani way. The old man sighed, shaking his head.

“There are some who would agree with you, boy,” the Marshal said. “Who have, in the past.”

He clicked his tongue.

“Few of them lasted out a year as Skiritai.”

Musa Shange’s face tightened at the implied insult.

“Your mindset is one of defeat,” the Marshal lectured, leaning on his cane. “You look for a path, tracing with your fingers something you hope might lead to the death of your opponent. That is a mistake.”

He scoffed.

“You are a Militant,” he said. “The path begins with the death of your opponent, traced back to where you stand. Uncertainty is surrender.”

The old man stepped forward.

“But perhaps proof is required,” he said. “So proof I will grant. Pick one, boy.”

“Pardon?” Lord Musa frowned.

“Pick a cage,” the Marshal said, “and I will kill whatever is inside with nothing more than what I bear. I am an old man, and barely armed. If I can succeed, what would be objections from you save whining?”

The Malani laughed incredulously, then gazed back at the crowd. Angharad shifted, feeling as uncertain as he did. What if the old man died? Only the Marshal’s face remained utterly serious. After a moment Musa Shange cleared his throat, then pointed at a cage some ways away – by a flat stretch of ground fenced in by furrows in the ground. The cage did not shake, whatever awaited inside disinclined to rattle its prison.

“Mhm,” the Marshal said. “I don’t remember what’s in that. I do enjoy a surprise.”

The old man sent them back across the bridge and to the guardhouse, telling them to take from there a right – there were hidden stairs there, which they followed up to the large balcony with the benches. It was much closer to the grounds below than the heights above had been, enough that Angharad thought she might be able to leap down there without breaking her legs.

It would hurt a great deal, she figured, but it could be done.

As the quiet students spread out across the benches, staying in the same small circles they had from the start but now eyeing each other with the prospect of a fight looming ahead, Angharad saw the watchmen on the other side of the portcullis lowered it. Though Shalini and Salvador stayed seated, the noblewoman instead went to lean against the railing as she watched the Marshal moving below. The old man began undoing the latches on the large iron cage one after another, then wrenched the door open and stepped back.

Nothing came out, at first.

Then a ten-fingered hand larger than a head reached out, the monster within peeking out a large red-maned head and began dragging itself out. Whatever the lemure was it was large, Angharad thought.

“Onjancanu,” Salvador hoarsely whispered behind her. “Old Tyrant.”

She could hear the wariness in the voice of a man she doubted was easily cowed.

The creature rose, knees creaking like old hinges as its long red beard swept against the ground, and it unfolded to its full height. Twenty feet, broad-shouldered and built like a tower as the red string of its beard mixed with the long red mane of its back to cover its front. The limbs were naked and hairy, ten fingers and toes ending in nails of sharp bone. Its skin was thick and sickly-yellow, its nose overlarge and sniffing at the air as its single wet and lidless eye flicked about this way and that. The sclera was burnt orange, the pupil black and slowly the onjancanu opened a great maw filled with rows of teeth.

It began to laugh, the sound of it guttural and shivering all the way down to her toes.

The Marshal stood alone before it, both hands resting atop his lionhead cane as he looked up at the monster’s monstrous face. He had yet to reach for a weapon.

“Disappointing,” the old man said, words carrying up to them on the wind. “They starved you too much, hardly any mind left in you.”

Without even turning his way, the monster snatched a loose stone the size of a table and tossed it at him so casually it took Angharad a heartbeat to realize what had just happened – only instead of Marshal de la Tavarin’s splattered remains, what she saw was the old man’s coat sleeve fluttering where the deadly weight had narrowly brushed past it. He had barely moved half a foot, the mirror-dancer realized, and not even quickly. Leaning on his cane, the Marshal began closing the distance with slow steps.

Now he had the monster’s attention.

The onjancanu screamed and stomped forward, those tree-trunk legs shaking the ground as it caught up to old man in the blink of an eye and reached to snatch him up with its mouth already open for the gobble – only with a casual, almost gentle press of his cane on the knuckles the Marshal brushed aside the clawed hand enough it passed half an inch wide of him. In the heartbeat before the monster turned aside to scoop him up with the other hand, the old man viciously struck with the butt if his cane on the monster’s foot.

It let out a scream of pain, picking up its own foot as it hopped back, and tried to blindly smack away at the offending fly with the side of its hand. The Marshal stepped past the swing into the monster’s guard, its wrist ruffling the feather on the old man’s hat even as he struck at the knee it was hopping on. Shouting furiously, the beast opened its arms wide and let itself collapse on the Marshal – who kept moving forward even as it dropped forward.

He emerged between its legs, the gust of wind from the onjancanu hitting the ground sending his hat flying. He snatched it out of the hair, casually pressing it back down on his head even as the great ogre threw a tantrum and began wailing at the floor with its hand and feet. A flailing foot almost caught him in the ribs, a blow sure to turn his ribs to powder, but with unhurried precision the old man pressed down on his cane to leap above the blind sweep like a lamb over a fence.

The onjancanu must have felt him, however, for it turned from its belly to its side with a roar to face the irritating bug and, hand rising high – the Marshal nonchalantly reached inside his coat and withdrew an ornate pistol, pulling the trigger. Snap, powder billowed out and wet viscera burst where the monster’s sole eye had been as the roar turned into a hoarse scream. The palm came down, but it caught only dust as the Marshal leaned back the spent pistol on his shoulder and closed on the creature cradling its eye with its other hand.

Angharad felt her stomach clench with something like fear. She had known from the start that despite his appearance and seeming foolishness, the old man must be deadly – how else could he have lived old as one of the Militants, that band ever first into the breach? Yet she had expected a contract or some terrifying weapon, not… this.

At no point in the fight had the Marshal even moved faster than at a walk.

She had stared at him every moment, blinking as little as she could, and he did not begin moving before the creature did – this was not foresight, like her own contract. He had not brushed aside the blows of the lemure with strength leant by a spirit or wounded it with some trick. Any half-trained fighter would be able to strike as strongly as he had with the slightly pointed bottom of his cane. This was, Angharad realized with something like awe, pure skill.

The Marshal, now by the blinded onjancanu’s face, folded past the furious slap of a great hand on the ground and as his coat fluttered he twirled his cane in that same gesture she had thought pointless vanity – and then thrust it tip first into the mutilated gelatinous orb. In the heartbeat that followed Angharad saw the old man’s death writ. He had not been strong enough to push it all the way and kill the beast, the large ogre’s arms were now coming to enfold him and –

Spinning the empty pistol in his hand so the cooled barrel rested against his palm, the Marshal hammered the cane in with the butt of the pistol.

The screaming cut out, the onjancanu’s brains pierced through, and after a mighty twitch the arms about to crush the old man dropped and began flopping uselessly on the ground. Putting away his pistol, the Marshal placed his boot against the monster’s great head and pulled out his cane. It took him three heaves and there was a splatter of blood on his coat, but black on black did not show.

Uncertainty was surrender, he had told them, and suddenly Angharad grasped a sliver of what he’d meant. The Marshal had never once hesitated in that fight, let uncertainty slow his stride or confuse his design. It was as if the entire fight had been a single, continuous movement from beginning to end. And that was not simple skill, Angharad knew. It took more than that. It took experience.

How many onjancanu had the Marshal killed, to toy with this one so casually?

The beast had stopped twitching by the time he turned to face them, flashing a silver grin. The hellish red light cast his shadow behind him, and in that silhouette Angharad thought she glimpsed a mound of corpses so tall it would fill this entire cavern. Men and beasts, gods and devils – everything under firmament. To be an old Skiritai, she thought, was to carry a graveyard in your trail. And that? That was something she could learn.

Something she wanted to learn.

“See?” the Marshal said. “Even an old man can do it.”

And the greater of the two monsters walked away from the other’s corpse, calling for them to make their squads and come down in order as his cane left a trail of black blood on the ground.

Angharad sat on a bench to eat alone with her thoughts, which was no mercy.

Half her cabal was long gone, and the last member… Much as the noblewoman disliked sitting there brooding and biting at the tail of her own thoughts, to share a meal with Song after their previous conversation might have been worse. That her own captain had believed it necessary to inform her she lacked manners was mortifying beyond words. That Song had then considered she might prefer finding another cabal to mending her own behavior was much, much worse.

Had she truly tarred her own reputation so thoroughly without even noticing?

Oh, it was a certain thing that the others came into the matter with blinders. Tristan had been born to the gutter and so kept sharp sympathy for those on the losing side of history while Tianxi hated slavery enough to forgive anything of those inflicted it. And Maryam, she was understandably attached to the land of her birth regardless of its genuine merits. None of this, however, excused that Angharad had been giving offense so regularly that others now expected it of her.

That the dishonor had crept up on her unseen did not unmake it, but that was not even the part she was chewing on. How did one make reparations for such a thing? Offering courtesy going forward was ending a wrong, not making a right. Monetary reparations were an acceptable manner for a lady to extend an apology to one lowborn, but Angharad was now only titled by courtesy. Such reparations might rightly be considered putting on airs. A service, then, or some manner of boon. The Pereduri would have to ponder what ceiling should be appended to such an offer – death, wound, first blood?

It was vexing that Father’s lessons on giving justice to common folk had been as their liege lady, not an associate. Then again, how many peers of Peredur had ever been placed in a position to call lowborn folk their associate?

While frowning at the stone pavement, Angharad had finished most of what she packed away as a snack – salted fish and a few cherry tomatoes – without noticing by the time footsteps had her looking up. What awaited had her wiping away her frown, but her stomach did not unclench: Captain Imani Langa was no soothing sight, accompanied by a stranger or not.

The Malani was just as lovely in the cut of a standard uniform as she had been in her more fashionable one – she filled it just as enticingly – and today her hair was worn in long intricate braids that formed waves. She was still smiling that mysterious smile, which Angharad found to her distress was made no less enticing by the knowledge Imani Langa was an agent of the Lefthand House. She made herself look at the companion instead.

That man, Angharad decided after a heartbeat, what Tristan would be if the Sacromontan mold that made him was filled with deadliness instead of charm. The Lierganen was of the same height as her cabalmate, as messily dark-haired and though he was grim where Tristan was all smiles and the eyes were brown instead of gray they were restless in that same casual, lying way. This one, though, he was leanly muscled and his face was marred by a cross scar on the chin. He had the calluses of bladework on his palms and a worn side-sword at his hip.

Angharad had known enough of the breed to say he moved like a killer, and a seasoned one at that.

“Lady Angharad,” Imani smiled. “What a pleasant turn to find you here.”

The noblewoman set aside the last of her meal and rose, clearing her throat.

“Captain Imani,” she replied. “The pleasure is all mine.”

The lovely spy offered her hand to kiss, and it would have been terribly impolite to refuse so she gently pressed her lips against the knuckles. Once more she raised her eyes to a slightly widened smile, which she took more pleasure in than she should have. Imani withdrew her hand, then turned to half-face the third.

“I thought I might introduce one of my cabalists to you,” she said.

The dark-haired man nodded a curt greeting.

“Salvador,” he said.

His Antigua had the same lilt to it as Tristan’s, Angharad thought. He must be Sacromontan as well.

“Angharad Tredegar,” she replied. “Thirteenth Brigade.”

“Alas, you refused Thando’s invitation to change that,” Captain Imani lightly deplored. “I must confess I introduce Salvador to you with an ulterior motive, my lady – he is a Skiritai as well, you see, and I must leave him behind now to head off to my own class.”

The lovely spy touched her wrist.

“He is quite shy, so I thought to leave him here to wait in good hands.”

Salvador leveled his captain with a glare that was not particularly shy but then he sighed.

“I would appreciate company,” the dark-haired man said.

“That I can provide,” Angharad said, giving him a nod he returned.

However halting the man’s conversation, it would be better than continuing to stew in her own thoughts.

“I am grateful for the kindness,” Captain Imani said, smiling in relief. “Though I fear I must now impose on your manners, for I have pressing business on Hostel Street.”

“I would not detain you, then,” Angharad gallantly replied.

“Oh, but you must,” Imani smirked. “Simply not right now. Do come by when you have the time, Angharad. I still lodge at the Emerald Vaults, you need only ask for me in front.”

The stark reminder of what it meant that Imani Langa was an ufudupoured cold water on anything that smirk and implication might have stirred in her. The other woman was not inviting her for a rendezvous but to incite her to steal from the Watch on the behalf of the Lefthand House – for though the High Queen had asserted what was being sought belonged to her and so it must be true, the Watch might well feel differently and Angharad had sworn oaths to them.

She simply nodded, leaving the conversation to die, and Captain Imani sashayed away as suddenly as she had come. Angharad turned, meeting Salvador’s brown eyes and impassive face, then swallowed.

“Fine weather today,” she tried. “Good for walking.”

The Lierganen cocked an eyebrow ever so slightly, and it occurred to the noblewoman a moment too late that the weather on Tolomontera was, in fact, dictated by Grand Orrery on a set cycle. Alas, none of the cracks between the paving stones were large enough for her to disappear inside and die.

“Angharad, there you are!”

The Pereduri turned to see Shalini Goel striding her way, and silently swore one day she would return this great favor. The curvy Someshwari was armed to the teeth, bearing four pistols and a straight double-edged at her hip – a vaal, Angharad remembered they were called. Nobles and captains of the southern Someshwar dueled using them. They were distinguished from the common aruval billhook blades by being used only to spill blood in battle, never to cut through underbrush.

Angharad thought it strange that Shalini would be trained in such a weapon when she had no noble name to defend, until it occurred to her she might have been trained to use it on Ishaan’s behalf. She felt a pang of pity for the other woman’s loss, which tainted her smile as Shalini nearly bowled the both of them over coming to a halt.

“What were you doing hiding by a statue?” Shalini asked, then shook her head. “No matter, I still found you. Who’s this?”

Angharad cleared her throat.

“Salvador, may I present to you Shalini Goel of the Thirty-First Brigade,” she said. “She is a fellow Skiritai.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” Shalini said.

“Shalini, may I present to you Salvador of the Eleventh Brigade.”

The Lierganen grunted and gave a nod. Angharad sent her friend a look that was just short of pleading.

“Not a great talker, are you?” Shalini amusedly said.

Salvador shook his head.

“Throat,” he said.

Ah. A condition, then, and not simply his natural disposition.

“Sounds unpleasant,” the Someshwari said. “But worry not, I can speak for two.”

“Modest of you,” Angharad noted.

Shalini rolled her eyes.

“Islanders, they always think they’re funny,” she told Salvador. “Mine keeps making these quips about how Tianxi teas must ‘all taste equal under Heaven’ so our cabalmate is this close to just pressing a pillow over his face while he sleeps.”

Salvador snorted, then coughed into his fist.

“Imani says she will raise our allowance if we’re good,” he sympathized.

The treachery of the continental peoples of Vesper, well documented by the pages of history, was ever a burden on the greatness of the Kingdom of Malan. The noblewoman packed away the last of her salted fish with due dignity, amused to hear Shalini wish she had remembered to pack something to snack on as well. Angharad had not, in fact, remembered this.

Song had reminder her that unless she wanted to go back and forth between their cottage and Scholomance alone – a risky proposition – then she would be left to wait by the school gates for some time and should perhaps bring something to eat or read. Angharad had not thought to acquire books yesterday, so she had settled for something to nibble on instead.

The three of them headed out onto the square where they had been instructed to wait, finding the press of students long gone. Now it was only the Skiritai that were left, told as they were to wait before the gates of Scholomance for their covenant-appointed teacher to come and fetch them. The students stood around in small groups, chatting quietly – as if Scholomance’s shadow might take offense otherwise – and Angharad let her eyes stray. She recognized few faces here, though some stood out.

Lord Musa Shange was there, surrounded by others and carefully ignoring her existence as he conversed with a slender Someshwari. Muchen He from the Forty-Ninth was there as well and keeping a watch on that wolf-eyed boy from Tupoc’s cabal. ‘Expendable’, she believed? He was one of the rare students standing alone, his gaze almost never leaving the ground.

“At least sixty of us here,” Shalini said.

“More,” Salvador said, but nodded.

“I thought there might be more of us than that,” Angharad admitted. “It seems to me no cabal should be without a Skiritai.”

“Not everyone’s making a fighting company,” Shalini pointed out. “I know Ferranda in-”

The curvy gunslinger was interrupted, but not by another’s words: the clarion call that cut through was no metaphor but the actual sound of two clarion trumpets being sounded. Poorly. Angharad watched with something like disbelief as a pair of gaudily attired boys, neither older than thirteen and each wearing enough ribbons and frippery for a whole salon, crossed one of the bridges leading to Scholomance before moving to the sides.

The taller of the two, ruddy-cheeked and bright-eyed, cleared his throat as somewhere in the vicinity of sixty heavily armed students stared him down.

“Now announcing His Grace,” the boy called out. “Marshal Hermenegildo Berenguel Adamastor de la Tavarin, Count of Encoberto.”

The other boy whispered at him.

“Retired,” the page hastily tacked on.

Silence followed. The announced man was nowhere in sight.

Angharad was left in the uncomfortable position of hoping this was some manner of prank. Besides, were blackcloaks not sworn to renounce their titles when they put on the black? This Marshal de la Tavarin should no longer be a count.

“Wait, if he’s retired can he still call himself a marshal?” Shalini frowned.

Angharad blinked.

“I… think not?” she slowly said.

Had the Watch somehow been tricked by a charlatan? That was most distressing. The page boys had been shuffling on their feet, discomforted by the weight of the stares, but when they suddenly straightened Angharad glanced past them and finally saw the approaching professor.

The man was Lierganen and old, perhaps the oldest man Angharad had ever seen. He walked leaning on a brass lionhead cane, back slightly curbed, and his face was tanned and creased like old leather. Though there was still some touch of black to his eyebrows, it was his impressive pure white mustache and equally snowy long locks that commanded attention. For a heartbeat, anyway, as the old ‘Marshal’ was most eye searingly dressed.

Though his knee-length coat was Watch black, its sleeves were pinned back and vivid yellow with flashing silver buttons. His trousers and hose were pristine and white, matching his overlarge cravat, and his delicate doeskin shoes were better fit for a ballroom than the street. His hat was wide-brimmed and embroidered in silver, not that one would notice considering the almost absurd size of the yellow feather pinned back on it.

His slow, unhurried advance set the students to murmuring. Salvador let out a small noise of surprise, earning her attention.

“Farfan,” he said.

Angharad hid her bemusement behind a pleasant smile. Thankfully Shalini knew what he meant.

“Farfanes are mercenaries,” she explained. “Their companies fight out in Old Liergan for whoever will pay, even hollows. Fine soldiers, I heard, who see more blood on the regular than anyone save the Izcalli.”

The Pereduri was rather curious as to how a girl from Ramaya – near as far from Old Liergan was it was possible to be and still live within the borders of the Imperial Someshwar – had come to know of such hired swords, but this was no time to ask. With an entirely unnecessary flourish of his cane the old man came to a stop and cleared his throat once. He got the silence he had not quite asked for.

He opened his mouth to speak, but whatever he was saying was drowned out by the sound of the page boys sounding their clarions again. They both stared at him expectantly afterwards, and after a moment the old man sighed and flipped them a golden coin. They put down the clarions and ran off without a second glance, chattering excitedly.

There was a sudden epidemic of coughing fits among the students, which some might have interpreted as poorly suppressed laughter.

“You may call me Marshal,” the old man announced in weathered voice, “or Your Grace. I have been charged by the Skiritai Guild to make something useful out of you.”

Angharad eyed him skeptically. Under the formal etiquette of the Second Empire, which most of the Lierganen states still followed, the proper address for a count was ‘Your Excellency’. Though he was not claiming the courtesy due a higher title, in a way it was even worse: ‘Your Grace’ was not, as far as she knew, even a Lierganen address. She vaguely thought it might have been used in the ancient Kingdom of Cathay, but it had fallen somewhat out of vogue around the same time Cathayan nobles keeping their heads became similarly unpopular.

“Follow,” the Marshal idly ordered, and with another flourish of his cane turned about.

The old man began crossing the bridge anew, and after a heartbeat of hesitation students began to follow. Angharad shared a look with Shalini, who shrugged.

They followed.

—

They had been told to gather at the Old Playhouse by the fifteenth hour but Song knew within moments they were not to stay there.

The great structure was simply too large and empty to serve properly as either a classroom or salon. Oh, the Old Playground could likely be pressed into such service if there was need. But was there? Song doubted it. The Academy was the largest and the wealthiest of the covenants – in absolute numbers, if not comparatively – and if the Navigators had been able to afford a chapterhouse in Port Allazei then the Stripes were sure to have their equivalent.

Something in a better state than this ancient theater, which had weathered the years impressively but was still very much a ruin.

Still, she allowed herself some time to study the grounds where an evening had taken place she had not attended. There were few traces left of the festivities, little more than lines of ripped earth in the grass and swaths of recently cleaned stone contrasting to the natural grime of the rest, but she could imagine the lay of it all. The pavilions, tables and torches, the way the guests would be incited to mingle on the bottom floor but there would be room for private walks in the lodges-turned-garden. It would have been a lovely evening, no doubt, and her eyes would have gained many useful insights.

But the Ren name would not have fit through that door.

Instead of lingering on that unpleasant reality, Ren picked out one of the prettier lodges for herself. A stone railing behind a stretch of grass and fragrant red flowers, perched on the ring nearest the bottom while moderately distant from the stairs leading there. She had arrived at twenty before three but found half a dozen students still preceded her. Captain Philani from that same morning was one, so she detoured to trade polite greetings. The captain Thirty-Eight Brigade was polite and welcoming but there was no warmth to it so she did not linger.

It was Song’s duty to make alliances with other captains so that the many rivals of the Thirteenth would take pause at the enmity aggression would earn them, but the Thirty-Eighth was not high in the list of candidates – she was satisfied with having established Captain Philani was not hostile to her even when Angharad was no longer there to impress.

Song had been of the early birds but by the time she returned to her lodge numbers had begun trickling in. Many headed down to the bottom floor, where the playhouse stage lay, and began chatting there. It would not have been a bad time to begin making connections, as some captains were doing before her very eyes, but the Tianxi had her reasons to hold back. Given the number of enemies the Thirteenth already boasted she should get the lay of the land before wading in, and even beyond that it was her personal preference to favor quality over quantity.

Better even a single skilled, reliable ally than a gaggle of fair-weather friends.

She was approached in her lodge by Captain Anaya of the Twenty-Third – leader of the Malani boy who’d broken the ice during Mandate class by answering first – and found herself delicately probed by the grim-faced Someshwari. It took a moment for Song to be certain what the other woman trying to find out, but when she did she made sure to immediately give it.

“Of course, we all carry our enemies with us. One of my own cabalists nearly dueled Tupoc Xical to the death on the Dominion of Lost Things,” Song idly said.

Captain Anaya frowned, but not in displeasure. She was, as far as Song could tell, simply a natural frowner.

“A singularly unpleasant man,” the Someshwari said.

“That is the only reliable thing about him,” Song agreed. “I would not wish an alliance with him on my worst enemies.”

Captain Anaya made her excuses soon after that, leaving the silver-eyed captain amused. Tupoc had made enemies of the Twenty-Third Brigade, at least enough that its captain would approach Song to ascertain where the Thirteenth would stand if conflict erupted. Playing this like Dominion trials will get you killed, Xical, she thought. Not that she was inclined to help him by saying as much.

By the time the trickle of arrivals tapered off entirely there were precisely sixty students present, including herself, and that simply had to be a quota.

And with the last arrivals came a second visitor. Her study of where the pieces were falling was interrupted by the sound of boots on grass, the Tianxi turning with a pleasant greeting smile – only to find Ferranda Villazur looking back with an amused look.

“Song,” she said, nodding.

A single strand of blonde hair had come loose from her bun, which Song had to force herself not to mention.

“Ferranda,” she replied instead. “You are cutting it close.”

It should be mere minutes now before the appointed time came to pass. The infanzona stepped forward to lean against the stone balustrade by Song’s side.

“I went and had a look at where the Umuthi Society hole up for their classes,” Ferranda said. “The Tinkers have a proper workshop tucked away to the east of the docks, it was quite surprising.”

Song inclined her head, acknowledging the gift, and returned it in kind.

“They are not alone in having such luxuries at hand. The Navigators have a chapterhouse close to Hostel Street.”

A thoughtful hum.

“It must have cost a fortune to rebuild Port Allazei so it would be habitable beyond the garrison barracks,” Ferranda said. “And quite a bit of time as well. I wonder how long the Watch has been planning all this.”

And why, she did not say out loud. That they all wondered, because the answer would shed a great deal of light on what the future held for them all. Why had the Watch opened the ancient, murderous school anew? There must be a reason, a plan or a need. The two of them remained comfortably silent after that, eyes on the unfolding alliances below.

And Ferranda was quite noticeably not leaving.

They both knew that was a statement to anyone who cared to look, which was nearly every captain on Tolomontera.

“Are you certain?” Song simply asked.

“That Musa prick won’t lay off Zenzele just because Angharad trounced him once,” Ferranda pragmatically replied. “My enmity with the Ninth isn’t up to debate, just the precise degree of it. Together we don’t look nearly as soft a target.”

“You could come to an accord with the Third,” Song lightly said.

The fair-haired infanzona rolled her eyes.

“So I can become Captain Nenetl’s stalking horse in getting rid of Sebastian Camaron?” she replied. “I must decline that honor, same as you.”

Song smiled. One clever ally was worth ten.

“They have been so open about their rivalry I have wondered if it is feigned,” she admitted.

“Oh, I can tell you she genuinely hates his guts,” Ferranda said. “I had them together once at a captain’s council and it was quite an experience. There’s just no way that sheer amount of petty spite was faked.”

That was good to know, and once more reinforced the use of attending such a council. Song inquired when the next one might take place and was told the schedule was not yet decided but that she would be informed as soon as it was. The pair, now solidly and openly in the same boat, then set to picking out the currents around them.

Familiar faces abounded. Song had been glared at by Captain Tengfei of the Forty-Ninth earlier while his would-be replacement Ramona waved cheerily instead – she’d nodded back, intending to make peace with the brigade if the opportunity came. Tupoc had blown through and was now displaying an unexpected capacity for conversation not involving insults by entertaining two Izcalli students with a fast-paced story that had them both laughing loudly.

But these were small fish, and there were whales in the water: down below, on the bottom floor, three rival courts had formed.

Captain Sebastian Camaron of the Ninth presided over the largest, over a dozen students mingling around him. Song committed their faces to memory, knowing them for possible tools she might have to face. One of them she thought might match Abrascal’s description of Captain Imani Langa but the silver-eyed Tianxi held out hope she was wrong. If she was not, prying Angharad away from the charms of such a sultry beauty was going to be a long and thankless labor. It was Ruesta all over again, only more dangerous for the new woman’s lack of general uselessness.

To put a name to the leading figure of the second-largest gathering, the strongest rival to Sebastian Camaron’s, she required the help of Ferranda.

“That’s Captain Vivek Lahiri of the First Brigade,” the infanzona said.

The captain had a contract, Song noted, and one of the longest she had ever seen – the equivalent of pages of text in what appeared to be Samratrava. She was itching to have a better look.

“Background?” she asked.

“The way I hear it he’s got relatives in every Someshwari free company worth remembering the name of,” Ferranda said.

“So we have one princeling from the free companies and the other from the closest regional seat of the Garrison,” Song said. “That reeks of blackpowder.”

The most powerful of the free companies would have ordered their children to band together and edge out the Garrison students – the other way around being likely true as well, though accounting for internal enmities in both branches of the Watch. Now that Scholomance was open again everyone had an interest in securing the school. Even setting aside whatever secret design there was for this place, simply dominating an institution that would make covenanters by the literal hundreds was something worth a sea of gold.

“They’re steering clear of each other for now,” the infanzona said. “Though that won’t last. Sooner or later one of will want to show they have the biggest stick and they’re the boy king of Allazei.”

Song hummed.

“And then trailing behind them,” she said, “we have our old friend from the Third.”

Captain Nenetl Chaputl of the Third Brigade, her delicate features atop a rotund silhouette difficult to mistake for another’s, had gathered a court of her own. It was noticeably smaller than either of the other contenders’, however, and of lesser quality as well.

“She’s picking up the leftovers from both the free companies and the Garrison,” Ferranda noted. “It’s halfway clever, but it will only get her so far.”

They had not been the first picks of the greater forces for a reason, and Captain Nenetl would not have as convincing a banner to wave to keep them behind her as the other two did. Still, the position was hardly bad. For now.

“She only needs to last with some degree of prominence until Camaron stumbles, then she can usurp the parts of his faction she can use,” Song said.

It would be a delicate line for her to walk until then, however, juggling such disparate interests. And if Sebastian Camaron did not stumble on his own, she must arrange for him to trip or see her position wither on the vine. Only the most foolish of gamblers kept backed a losing horse. Still, in the end between them the three leading captains had barely half the sixty students gathered below. Many of the captains had come down to pay their respects but were now keeping their distance and would for months still.

A sudden quiet below, the courts turning quiet in a heartbeat, drew her gaze and Ferranda’s. They saw the reason for it in an instant: their professor had arrived.

“Up.”

The order was clear, crisp, and it sent every student who had come to the bottom floor hurrying back up to the first ring.

It had come out of a Tianxi’s mouth, a woman in her late forties cutting a sharp figure in her formal uniform. She was short, Song thought, and her face plain. Yet she had presence, piercing eyes that straightened backs wherever they passed and her look was only strengthened by the austere bun she wore her hair in. The red silk scarf worn in a knot around her collar was the sole departure from the traditional uniform, which was finely made but very functional.

The professor came to a halt at the end of the stage, the sword and pistol at her hip glinting dully under the pale Orrery lights.

“My name is Colonel Chunhua Cao,” she said. “I was sent here by the Academy to bring you up to an acceptable standard before you graduate Scholomance.”

Colonel Cao pitcher her voice to carry.

“My qualifications for teaching you are as follows: I have served under both free companies and Garrison forces.”

Her stare continued sweeping across the crowd.

“I held a frontline command during the general Watch muster called to suppress Loving Kiss and went on to serve as field officer during both the Long Burn and Sordan War. I was a named negotiator at the Peace of Concordia and dictated terms of surrender at the siege of Yueliang Shan.”

The Peace of Concordia, Song knew, was the treaty that had put an end to the Sordan War. As for the siege mentioned it had to be part of the Red Rice Rebellion, when a bandit cult in the Sanxing had risen in revolt at the urging of a conspiracy of mountain gods. Their hidden fortresses were said to have offered brutal resistance long past the cause being lost.

“Of the ten highest decorations granted by the Academy I hold seven,” Colonel Cao stated, “and I have twice refused promotion to lieutenant-general.”

A rank that, while beneath that of marshal, would have given her a fortress to command and a seat on the Conclave to go with it.

“It has been prevailed on me to teach at this school, but I warn you now that I have no patience for lackluster effort or petty arrogance. If you fail to perform to my standards, I will see you thrown out of my class and Scholomance with it.”

A look told Song some were skeptical of that, which Colonel Cao noticed. She offered up a cold smile.

“I have spent thirty years as an officer in the worst fires known to our order,” she said. “I am owed more favors than I know what to do with and I have buried enough bodies to fill a lichyard. By all means, write to your patrons.”

She leaned forward.

“They will tell you the same thing I do now: step out of line and I will have you on the next ship out of Port Allazei.”

This time even the princelings knew better than to show doubt. Silence stretched, until finally Colonel Cao nodded in satisfaction.

“That will do,” she said. “You may now come down. I will show you the way to the Academy’s seat on the island. Do not dawdle and be certain to commit the path to memory – I will not show it to you again.”

A fire burned in Song’s belly, not at the thought of the lodge or even the first class: it was the teacher that had her thrumming with enthusiasm, much as she tried to hide it.

How could she not be excited, when it seemed she was going to be taught by a woman who was everything that she wanted to be?

They looked like ghostly vines, faint curls of smoke that were reaching hungry hands.

Song could see them creeping across the checkered, cracked floor of the entrance hall. The god was everywhere, blind hands tugging and pulling at the insides of Scholomance like a child at play – moving this and that, just itching to smash it all onto something that would scream. Hand on the chisel, she reminded herself. Fear would do her no good in this place. Fear never helped anywhere.

Hammered into the floor were metal spikes, each tied with a colored ribbon, and four paths unfolded deeper into the school. Two through the great hall whose massive span she could only glimpse in the distance, one going up a set of stairs to the right and the promised yellow-ribbon trail headed left. Lanterns hung from the ceiling, intricate pieces of silver and gold – and the matching light within came from flowers of the same tint, gently glowing.

“Don’t touch those lanterns,” Maryam warned. “Those flowers inside are fresfloren, light made into metal.”

“Dangerous?” Song asked.

“Eating a petal will turn your insides into a slurry of blood,” she said. “I am unsure what merely touching would do, but…”

“Best not to risk it,” Abrascal finished. “I hear you.”

“They are quite pretty, for something so deadly,” Angharad mused.

Song could hear another cabal approaching and she had no intention of lingering here so she took the lead and let the others fall in behind her. Save for the spikes and the lanterns, the hallway they took was little different from any other. The stonework was delicate and the pale gray stone of great quality, but aside from that Scholomance did not seem all that different from any other great edifice.

If you could ignore the vines of smoke slowly creeping in their wake, the god’s attention following them. Song forced herself not to look at it, or the red-dressed goddess by Abrascal’s side that feigned skipping along and taking in the sights in some sort of twisted game. She kept talking and pointing, no doubt filling the thief’s ears with dangerous secrets.

That he was not yet a Saint was almost as fearful a thing as if he had become one.

The Thirteenth passed several closed doors, a long window of clear but patterned glass that seemed to reveal an intricate crypt whose tombs were adorned with tortured, bejeweled effigies and two sets of stairs leading up to the story above. It was soon after the latter of these they found what must be the western lecture hall, for the last ribboned spike jutted out a mere few feet before wide open oaken doors. Song was the first to cross, abandoning the golden light behind for the clearer Glare burn inside.

The lecture hall was large and broadly circular, but that was not what drew the eye: it appeared to have no ceiling.

Tall, curving support beams of marble cut into an open view of firmament like slender rabbit’s ribs but Song knew this could not be true. There was a second story above, they had passed the stairs leading there on the way, and there was a roof above that level besides. The Glare-lit sky she beheld must thus be an illusion, which was equally impossible by simple virtue of the fact she beheld it at all.

Song Ren saw the truth of things. This, and only this, could she count on as the foundation of who she was.

Therefore the sky she was looking at, that dark expanse swept by the lights of the Grand Orrery, must be both impossible and true. She peeled open the contradiction like a riddle, concluding this: first, she was truly looking at the sky above Scholomance. Second, it was not possible for this to be the roof of the room she stood in and indeed it was not. Professor Tenoch had several times mentioned that the school shifted, so Song was merely looking at a ceiling of Scholomance, not the one originally belonging to this hall.

The god of this place had decided that yawning emptiness above was to be the ceiling to their first lesson.

Satisfied she had settled the matter within the bounds of her understanding, the Tianxi let her gaze move on from the expanse above. Three fourths of the hall were filled with long desks on descending platforms – each apt to sit four, with chairs to match – while the last fourth bore only the professor’s desk and a large writing slate set on wooden easel. At a glance there were thirty desks, more than were needed for the number of students, and no sign of the professor meant to teach the class.

They had their pick of the room, as their cabal had arrived early enough only three others preceded them. The Thirteenth earned a few curious glances, but no one seemed inclined to chat. Fourteen students, Song counted, five contractors among them. She suggested they claim desk on the right edge, near the middle of the rows, and was largely met with acquiescence – Angharad tried to argue for the front, but the others were lukewarm at the prospect.

Using her cabal’s movement to hide it Song took a longer look at the contracts present, catching glimpses of the golden letters unfolding above their heads. Two in Antigua, two in Umoya and one in Omeyetl – the Aztlan language she was least familiar with. She discarded that last attempt immediately, and her Antigua was better than her Umoya so she discarded those as well. Of the remaining two she was able to read some mention of… water-stepping, or perhaps walking on water? The other was about memory in some manner, but she could not look any longer without risking notice.

She slid into a seat at the left edge of the table, beside Angharad.

“There’s a peephole in the door,” Tristan noted.

Song’s gaze followed where his had gone, finding a thick wooden door opposite the one they had used to enter the hall. There were some decorative bronze castings on the wood, long gone green, and cleverly hidden within she caught the glint of light on glass.

“Odds are good the professor is looking at us through it,” she said. “Best we behave accordingly.”

The chairs were not particularly comfortable, the wood digging into her back, but it was not intolerable discomfort. It would serve to keep awake should she tire, at least. Song unpacked, preparing a stack of papers as well as a reed pen and an inkwell. No such instructions had been given, but it paid to be prepared. By the time she was done there was chatter in the hall, a large wave of students arriving all at once – and among them some faces she would not call familiar but recognized from description.

“Make room to draw,” she told Angharad, then glanced at the others. “Ready yourselves.”

The captain was not looking for them, or anyone in particular, but with so few seated it was only a matter of time until – Captain Tengfei Pan of the Forty-Ninth Brigade, whose foolishness meant the handsome face and neat Sanxing knot were wasted, let out a snarl at the sight of the seated Thirteenth. Or, more specifically, the sight of Tristan Abrascal on the table’s other edge.

“You,” the man snapped.

“Me?” Abrascal asked, sounding bemused.

Song did not need to look to know Abrascal was putting on an angelic smile. It was radiating off the thief like heat in a cold room. Five cabalists, she noted, two contracts among them – both on Tianxi men. The short, chubby one with the covered topknot was revealed to be called Huang Pan by his contract. A relation of the captain, or simply from the same region?

The other one, which Abrascal had pegged as a Skiritai, was named Muchen He. The text of his contract was short, which Song had learned to mean it was either markedly above or below average in effectiveness. Having a contract with loose terms meant you received what your god felt like giving you, which could vary significantly between individuals depending on the relationship.

Captain Tengfei stomped over angrily, followed by his cabal.

Song spared a heartbeat to consider the two she had skimmed over, the Lierganen girl called Ramona – Abrascal had clocked her as wanting to replace the captain, a fellow Stripe – and the nameless Malani girl who seemed remarkably capable of walking for someone who’d been crippled a mere two days ago. That one’s dark eyes kept straying to Abrascal, warring between fear and hatred. Someone had made an impression.

“You filthy sneak,” Captain Tengfei snarled. “You robbedus.”

Song’s contract had turned her eyes silver, but in truth it did not use them to work. While it only worked on what her eyes were ‘seeing’, it was a conceptual limit and not physical one. On the first hints she’d had of this as a child was that human eyes could only take in so many details at once while she had no such limitations. So Song breathed in and blinked once, languidly.

Then she took in the five people before her like a painting made in a heartbeat.

Ramona, fair-haired and scarred across the nose, was leaning in but her eye was on Tengfei and not the Thirteenth. She was waiting for an opportunity to cut in, to correct him. Muchen’s eyes had dipped slightly past Song, at the height Angharad’s sheathed saber should be. There was no wariness in his dark gaze, no flinch. He would not balk at a fight. Huang Pan was already flinching away, like a turtle trying to bury inside its shell, and was leaning back. The Malani? Leaning in, hands near a knife.

She wanted a fight, to bleed Tristan as he had bled her. Setting her off would be trivially easy.

Standing in front of them all Captain Tengfei Pan was not only angry, but angry enough that in his haste to loom over her he had wedged the table between the two of them – the angriest of them, she decided, but not actually prepared for a fight. Operating on feelings, not a plan.

Song breathed out, smiling, and ignored the other captain completely. She caught Ramona’s eye and cocked an eyebrow.

“You allow your man to speak on your behalf, captain?”

Cold, gleeful delight slid into that blue gaze.

“He still fancies himself captain, you see,” Ramona replied.

Another blink. Tengfei half a step back, unprepared for the flanking by an assumed ally. Muchen’s eyes slid away from Angharad, more worried about this than the Pereduri drawing. Which means either his judgment is mud or infighting is a real possibility.

“I am captain of this brigade,” Tengfei harshly said.

Song feigned surprise.

“Even after that botched ambush and allowing you to be stolen from?” she asked. “His leadership must be distinguished indeed.”

She cocked his head to the side.

“Unless he compensated you for causing the loss of funds.”

Ramona laughed cruelly.

“Now wouldn’t that be something. You going to do that, Teng?”

“Now is not the time,” Muchen cut in flatly.

Another blink. The Lierganen was shifting to face the tallest of the three Tianxi, and by far the most muscled. Wary of him, likely to bend if pressed. Should Muchen and Tengfei browbeat Ramona back into line, this would return to the original trajectory. Diversion, then. There was an obvious pressure point to us for it, and it would dovetail into an earlier weakness.

Song smiled at the yet nameless Malani, who’d barely even glanced at her teammates as they bickered.

“How is your leg, anyhow?” she asked. “I hear Lady Knot does good work, but surely a crippling cannot be cheaply bought off.”

The Malani’s face twisted and she drew the short sword at her side.

“Ya smug bitch,” she hissed. “Ya think just ‘cause we’re inside Scholomance I won’t-”

And now…

“Fara,” Captain Tengfei sharply said, “don’t-”

He had come to pick a fight but was not ready for it – and so would react to it being started on another’s terms by reflexively pulling back. ‘Fara’ turned to glare at her captain, and so the cabal was no longer split between Ramona and her opposition but between two factions. Now Tengfei Pan had a choice to make. Either he turned right around and forced a fight, in which case Song had her hand on her pistol and would shoot him in the stomach at the first sign of violence. Or he would decide that it was too risky to attack when his house was in disorder, swallow the humiliation and pull back for now.

Song saw the conflict in his eyes, the hesitation. How it only worsened his reputation in the eyes of his cabal. A bad decision made quickly was better than the finest decision made too late.

“Tengfei,” Huang nervously said. “We’re in a lecture hall, we shouldn’t make trouble.”

And that settled it, Song saw. Captain Tengfei sneered, straightening his back, and took the excuse his perhaps-kin had provided.

“This isn’t over,” Tengfei Pan said, “count the-”

It came from a dead angle. That was why Song did not see the pistol pointed at the side of the captain’s head until the last moment – when a finger pulled the trigger, the shot exploding in a billow of smoke. Utter surprise blanked her mind for a heartbeat, but she had not gone blind.

That was too little smoke.

A heartbeat later Tengfei Pan backed away coughing, the side of the head covered in soot as his cabal drew blades and pistols – even the trembling Huang. The man that’d just fired a blank, underpowdered shot at the captain of the Forty-Ninth idly pointed down the pistol and crossed his arms.

“Shoo,” Tupoc Xical said. “You’re boring me. If you’re going to get everyone’s hopes up, at least stab someone before flouncing off. This is just embarrassing.”

“I don’t know who you are,” Captain Tengfei said, “but if you think you can-”

“I just did,” the Izcalli replied, flashing perfect teeth. “Fight or flee, Forty-Nine. You’ve blown enough smoke for the day.”

Tengfei flicked a glance their way, his body tense as a spring. He knew, just like Song, that almost the entire class was now present and looking at them – some of them with weapons out from the noise, but most looking on like vultures awaiting a meal. If he backed down now, he was done. His reputation buried. If he did not back down, however…

Song calmly placed her pistol atop the table and the other Tianxi’s jaw clenched. Yes, if he fought now he was risking tangling with two cabals at once. The damage would be more than simply reputational. Tupoc was currently using the Forty-Ninth as a stepping stone for his Fourth’s reputation, so the Aztlan was sure to bleed them a little to make his point. And as Tengfei Pan kept hesitating, the death knell of his authority came when Muchen stepped forward.

“We are done here,” the dark-eyed man stated. “This is not the time or place.”

Song suspected that when talks were next had with the Forty-Ninth, she would be sitting across from Captain Ramona.

“Fine,” Captain Tengfei said, putting on a halfhearted sneer. “Come on, the air here has fouled.”

And as he stalked off angrily, his cabal following him in fits and starts as whispers bloomed across the lecture hall, Song was left with a situation that she was not strictly sure was an improvement.

“My friends,” Captain Tupoc Xical grinned. “What a great pleasure it is to see you again!”

His cabal had followed him, though they’d held back from the confrontation and were still holding back now. Song’s gaze swept through them quickly enough to confirm none held a contract, then settled on the Izcalli himself. The bastard had not changed a whit since the Dominion. Eerily symmetrical and pale-eyed, the too-perfect Aztlan sported no sign of ever having had an eye taken from him by Zenzele.

Not unexpected. A single term in Centzon – yekayotl – kept Song from grasping the fullness of Tupoc’s contract, but she knew that it was at its strongest when given time to work. More interesting was the question of what a nobody from no great family had done to attract the attention of the Grave-Given, one of the most famous gods of Izcalli.

“The implication that we are in any way friendly is the most insulting thing I have heard in some time,” Song replied after a short pause.

“I could give a whirl to beating that, if you’d like,” he affably replied.

Behind Song, whispers bloomed anew.

“The hundred-group is the same for all the general classes, right?” Abrascal asked.

“I believe it is,” Maryam grimly replied.

“Sigh,” the thief said, making a point of speaking the word instead of sighing.

Obnoxious as Abrascal was, he was right it was no pleasant turn to learn they would be stuck in the same room as Tupoc Xical five half-days a week. Such a punishment should follow a crime, at the very least. By the time Song’s attention fully returned to the wolf at the gate, Tupoc had ushered his cabal closer and begun introducing them. He’s pretending there are ties between our brigades, Song realized. The eyes of most the room were still on them.

“Alejandra Torrero, my second,” Tupoc said. “The rest, in succession-”

Song’s eyes slid over the small, scowling dark-haired Lierganen girl he had just introduced – a signifier, according to Abrascal – and onto the others.

“Bait.”

A nervous, bespectacled Someshwari. He had a fighter’s frame, she noted, but did not hold himself as one. It was not a kind thought, but Bait looked like a man who had all the willpower of a piece of soggy bread. No wonder Abrascal had cracked him in a matter of minutes.

“Expendable.”

A gloomy Malani boy with startling yellow eyes that would have leant him a fierce and wolflike look, if not for the way he kept staring at the ground. Contractor.

“Last and least, Acceptable Losses.”

A Tianxi girl with a heavily scarred face – the entire left half was burned, that eye a milky white. She let out a giggle at the introduction, baring crooked teeth. Song cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Condolences on your cabal,” she said in Cathayan.

The girl snorted back.

“Pity from a Ren?” she said, then spat on the ground. “This for that.”

Song let the insult wash over her. She had heard worst from countrymen and with less prompting. Unfortunately, she had forgot that not all her cabalists were so restrained.

“Your manners,” Angharad Tredegar coldly said, “are lacking.”

Song only half-glanced back, but it was enough to see the Pereduri had that dueling look in her eyes. We cannot be involved in two fights so quickly, Song thought. It will make us pariahs, too much trouble to associate with. That might well be what Tupoc was after, in truth. For all his swagger the man was rather canny.

“Now now, Lady Angharad,” Tupoc chided, “don’t go glaring at Acceptable Losses. I love her like my own child, until the moment it becomes moderately inconvenient to me for that to be true.”

And now Song needed to cut that off before the noblewoman was drawn into his pace and they were all made to dance on the palm the Izcalli’s hand. Attack, riposte.

“There are better ways to ask for a meeting, Captain Tupoc,” Song said, raising her voice enough the nearest tables would be able to overhear. “Despite your reckless behavior on the Dominion, we would have heard you out for old time’s sake.”

A hard glint entered Tupoc’s eyes as they slid off Angharad and moved to her. It won’t be that easy to burn all our bridges and force us to bargain with you for alliance, Xical, she thought. This was not the Dominion and while Tupoc was no smaller a fish the pond had grown a great deal larger. The other captain opened his mouth, but his reply was cut off by the sound of a door being opened.

The hall went silent in an instant, a reluctant Tupoc shepherding his cabal to the table behind the Thirteenth’s – unfortunate – as the woman likely to be their professor closed the door behind her and strode past her desk.

She was Someshwari, in her early thirties and unusually tall. Close to six feet, by Song’s reckoning. Straight-backed and tanned, the watchwoman was in the coat of a combat uniform and that did not appear to be a mere pretension: there was a hollow in the professor’s right cheek that must be a scar from getting shot, pulling up the side of her lip slightly. Her dark hair was kept in a crown braid and she had a pistol at her hip, elegant gold loop earrings the sole concession to coquettishness.

Calm black eyes swept the room, finding the students within seated and silent, and gave a pleased nod.

“My name is Kavita Iyengar,” she said, the Antigua accentless. “So long as I teach in Scholomance, you may refer to me as Professor Iyengar or ma’am.”

Turning, she took a piece of chalk from atop her desk and moved up to the writing slate on the easel.

“First, allow me to speak plainly: there is no such thing as a ‘Mandate’ field of studies,” Professor Iyengar said, writing the word on the slate. “It is merely a useful way of naming what you are to be taught here, which is not a coherent corpus of learning.”

She turned a steady look on them, the scarred cheek pulling up the corner of her lip into something almost a smirk.

“This class is not merely an introduction to the workings of the Watch but a study of what the Watch is and what purposes it serves in Vesper,” she said. “This will involve history, statecraft, law and commerce as well as rote memorization. On the last of these you will be tested every two months by assignment.”

The professor’s voice was as stern as her demeanor, Song thought. Unless she missed her mark it was trained, and she herself trained in oration. That bearing was too martial for her to be Arthashastra, so the easy guess was Academian.

“Given that many of you will have ties to the Watch, you may question what my qualifications are to teach you in this regard,” Professor Iyengar said.

Song found not a hint of that in the room. The professor was not someone whose mien invited backtalk.

“I was, until three months ago, commodore to the second squadron of the Garrison’s eastern fleet,” Professor Iyengar said, and that got a few gasps.

Someone on the other side of the hall exclaimed ‘Iron Tigers’, which got even more gasps. The professor ignored them. Song did not know that name, but the rank was impressive. A commodore was a flag officer – the lowest of them, true, but Professor Iyengar was still young for such a rank. She must have distinguished herself greatly, and she was almost sure to be an Academy graduate.

Uncle Zhuge had told her that Stripes always promoted each other when they could, an unseen thread of fellowship running across both the Garrison and the free companies.

“My assigned duties were to hunt rampant gods and track pirate flotillas back to their lairs,” Professor Iyengar informed that. “As a result of their exercise, I have fought in two wars and negotiated six treaties on behalf of the Conclave with the nations of the Riven Coast – be they ruled by men or hollows.”

Impressive, Song mused, though the ‘nations’ of the Riven Coast were hardly worth such a grand word. That stripe of coast to the east of Sacromonte was an ever-shifting patchwork of petty kingdoms and pirate havens, the distinction between them often narrow.

“Earlier in my career, I spent two years serving on the staff of our ambassador to Old Saraya and distinguished myself sufficiently to be recommended to the Academy and graduate with commendations.”

Impossibly, the professor straightened further and folded her hands behind her back.

“Should any of you deem these qualifications insufficient, speak now.”

Utter silence answered her. Humorlessly, the professor nodded.

“Then we will begin,” Professor Iyengar said. “I have been instructed that today is not to be a full class, merely an introduction to the subject matter, and though this seems to me unnecessary the decision is not mine to make.”

She stepped back closer to the slate, chalk still in hand.

“I will ask you all, then, a simple question. Any of you wishing to answer it may raise your hand, and when called on will provide their name and brigade before elaborating.”

Song cocked an eyebrow. That smacked of a trap.

“What is the Watch for?” Professor Iyengar asked.

There was some tittering but the Tianxi did not join in it. Simple questions were always the most difficult to answer, because they required you to define the building blocks of the concepts every other mode of understanding was made of. Fortunately, this time Song had the inside track.

She refrained from raising her hand, knowing that immediately giving out the correct answer would both run against the instructor’s purpose and position her as a teacher’s pet besides. Instead, as a dozen hands went up she leaned back into her seat and began discreetly counting contracts. The distraction serve to keep her curiosity under wraps.

The professor called on a dark-skinned boy in front.

“Kasigo Njezi, Twenty-Third Brigade,” he smoothly said, then cleared his throat. “The Watch’s purpose is twofold. To protect Vesper from the Old Night, the threat without, and the unchecked gifts of spirits, the threat within.”

It had the cadence of words recited to it, which their professor soon confirmed.

“That is the exact line the Conclave likes to answer my question with,” Professor Iyengar acknowledged. “It is the answer you will be expected to give out there in the world, certainly, so mark it well.”

She turned a stern gaze on them.

“It is also incorrect.”

The dark-skinned boy bit his lip, displeased. Song spared some attention for the exchange, but mostly she kept up the count. She was nearly halfway done. It would have been faster, but she had paused to make certain she was not mistaken and someone had truly struck a bargain with a god named the Tail-Puller.

“At any time, somewhere in the vicinity of six tenths of the Watch is in the employ of nations great and small,” the professor informed them. “It has been centuries since more watchmen than not dedicated their days to old gods and forbidden contracts.”

She paused.

“Knowing this, can you still maintain the assertion that our true mandate is what you described?”

Kasigo Njezi did not answer, which was answer enough.

“Try again,” Professor Iyengar addressed the room.

Song did not raise her hand, instead finishing the last row and her count with it. There were ninety-eight students in the lecture hall, and of these twenty-seven had contracts. Roughly a fourth, which held to the proportion she had marked out in the streets of Port Allazei. Among students, anyhow. The local garrison held truer to the realities of Vesper beyond this isle, barely any contracted in it.

With three of its four members being contractors the Thirteenth was above average in its proportion of god-gifted to not, but it was notthe most stacked in this regard. Song had picked out a cabal of six whose every member held a contract, a brigade she would ardently strive against ever being at odds with. Even the least of contracts could be dangerous in clever hands.

A second student was called on, a Lierganen with long dark hair on the other side of the teaching hall.

“Cressida Barboza, Nineteenth Brigade,” she said.

Song’s eyes narrowed. Abrascal had reported to her that Bait, Tupoc’s erstwhile spy, had been brought into the party by a ‘Lady Cressida’ of the Nineteen Brigade. The hard, hatchet-faced girl she was looking should be that very one. By the way Abrascal leaned in further down the table, he’d caught on as well.

“No contract,” Song whispered just loudly enough for him to hear.

He let out a sigh of relief, nodding in thanks.

“The Watch,” Cressida Barboza said, “are ratcatchers.”

That set half the class to murmuring until the professor quelled them with a look.

“Continue,” she ordered.

“We are meant to cull the numbers of hollows and lemures before they can become a threat,” Cressida said. “When we do not, kingdoms fall.”

The professor studied the girl for a moment.

“Lusitanian, are you?” she finally asked.

“Yes,” Cressida bitterly replied.

“You are not wrong,” Professor Iyengar told her. “Preventing cults and lemures from growing enough to become a risk is the most important reason the free companies of the Watch exist.”

She then stepped away, hands behind her back once more.

“The free companies, however, are not the whole of our order. If the whole of our mandate is the culling, Cressida, why does the Garrison exist?” Professor Iyengar asked.

Cressida scowled.

“To allow for multiple free companies to take the field together when there are threats too great for a single one,” she said.

The professor shook her head.

“If that were true, the Watch would be a loose alliance of mercenary bands,” Professor Iyengar said. “Yet the Garrison numbers between half and a third of the Watch, depending on the leaning of the decade.”

Professor Iyengar turned to address the hall at large.

“There are practical reasons for our order to exist beyond the need for hands to spill the blood that keeps the cogs of civilization greased.”

The Lierganen looked unconvinced, but she bowed her head in concession. With a gesture, the professor opened the question to the class again. Song raised her hand this time, but it was an Izcalli boy out in the back that was picked. He had to raise his voice to be heard but not by much. The hall’s acoustics were impressive.

“Patli Cuateco, Brigade Thirty-Six,” he announced in accented Antigua. “The purpose of the Watch is to preserve the know-how of deicide, to ensure that a force capable of killing the old god always stands ready to fight.”

“Closer,” Professor Iyengar praised. “You are correct that the Watch exists because of the limitations of nations, which have to allocate their limited resources to purposes other than our work, but what lies under our black cloaks is not so unique. Every great power of Vesper trains and fields soldiers to do the what the Watch does.”

There were some disbelieving murmurs. The professor cocked an eyebrow.

“The Crocodile Society of Izcalli,” she listed. “The Lefthand House of Malan, the Savituri orders of Someshwar and Tianxia’s endless gaggle of chivalrous sects. All are taught how to hunt cults and gods, doing so supported by the treasury of rulers to one degree or another. Make no mistake – the Watch is better at its trade than anyone else in Vesper, but we hold no monopoly.”

Song frowned. It was true that wuxia sects sent their disciples into the countryside to gather experience by slaying evil and protecting the innocent, which often meant facing off against wicked cults and their patron gods. It was equally true that the individual republics had close relations with the larger sects based in their lands, relations that included funding and permissions.

She had never considered those two facts put together, or that the sect traditions might have a purpose beyond the stated one. An outside perspective could help open one’s mind to the truth, she reminded herself. This time when the professor opened the question to the class again, only a few raised their hand. Song was one of them and to her pleasure found herself called on.

“Song Ren, Thirteenth Brigade,” she announced. “The Watch exists to enforce the Iscariot Accords.”

Dozens of gazes stayed on her, expecting addition and elaboration, but Song simply leaned back in her seat. None was needed. To her surprise, Professor Iyengar laughed – the sound more akin to a gunshot than anything mirthful.

“That is factually true,” the professor said.

Song straightened with pride.

“And the closest to accurate I have heard today.”

Her face shuttered. Closest? It was the plain truth, as told to her. Professor Iyengar’s eyes slid off her as she turned to address the hall at large.

“If Kagiso’s answer earlier was the Conclave’s favorite line, then Song just gave me the Academy’s. It is, to the word, what officers are taught there.”

As it should be, coming straight of Uncle Zhuge’s mouth. Was Professor Iyengar not a Stripe as well? The tall woman shrugged.

“You are all, however, students of Scholomance,” Professor Iyengar said. “Your perspective cannot be so narrow and Song’s answer is very much that.”

The Tianxi’s face tightened as the professor turned back to her.

“Tell me true, Song Ren,” she said. “If tomorrow the Grasshopper King refused to let us enforce the Iscariot Accords within his lands, would the Watch have the power to go against his will?”

Song’s face was stiff as she shook her head. The king of Izcalli had a great army – the greatest in Vesper, should the Someshwar not be stirred to unity – and a wealthy land under him. The Watch could not hope to beat him through either steel or gold.

“No,” she forced out.

“No,” Professor Iyengar agreed. “The Lunkulu Crisis, back in the Century of Accord, made our limitations clear. When faced with the real prospect of going to war with the Kingdom of Malan, the Watch was forced to bargain regardless of being in the right.”

Song knew only the bare bones of that incident, which had never come to fighting and so rarely warranted more than passing mention in histories. The High Queen of Malan’s purges of country gods had begun tensions, she remembered, along with her outlawing foresight contracts in her kingdom. To decree such a thing had been solely the Watch’s prerogative under the Iscariot Accords. Song recalled that when threatened with sanctions, the Queen Perpetual had in turned threatened to turn several free companies to her service and found her own rival Watch.

“Make no mistake,” the professor said. “By tradition the Watch is counted as one of the great powers of Vesper, sometimes even a successor state in its own right, but in truth it would be hard-pressed to win a war against any of them. We cannot enforce our will by force on peer powers, and often not even lesser ones.”

The Someshwari swept the class with her gaze.

“So what is the Watch for, then?” she repeated once more.

This time no hands went up. She had exhausted the boldness of those present, Song included.

“The simple answer to a complicated truth,” Professor Iyengar said, “is that we exist to be neutral.”

She stepped away from the tables, returning to her writing slate. There, after erasing the word Mandate, she drew a quick, sharp outline that Song and any other Tianxi in the room had no difficulty in recognizing. It was northern Tianxia, more or less. Two republics, mountains and beyond the passes the wolves of east and west: Someshwar and Izcalli.

“Allow me to use as an example one of the most recent large-scale wars of Vesper,” Professor Iyengar said. “I will speak to you now of the invasion of Caishen by the raja of Kuril, known as the Kuril Dance to some and the Long Burn to others.”

A dance to Someshwari, who in their distant palaces thought it all a game. The Long Burn to Song’s people, who had seen much of Caishen’s precious fields and rice farms turned into an ash-strewn graveyard for a decade and a half. Professor Iyengar traced two lines, one leading from the raj of Kuril into northern Caishen and another from the eastern borderlands of Izcalli into the same republic’s left flank.

Two simple strokes of chalk to represent a bogged down invasion by Kuril followed by a horde of Izcalli sunflower lords charging it to loot, enslave and set aflame.

“Over the span of the war, the main theater of battle proved to be the northern half of the territory of the Republic of Caishen,” the professor said, encircling the region. “Can anyone here tell me why?”

Two dozen hands went up. Song had not turned to see who was picked to answer, so she was surprised by the voice.

“Captain Tupoc Xical, Fourth Brigade.”

She resisted the urge to turn and look at him.

“Izcalli forces attempted to push into the core regions of Caishen but never managed to break the defensive line at Hanshan, forcing the offensive to push contest the northern flatlands instead.”

Xical spoke plainly and without taunt or untruth, but the simple description still had Song clenching her jaw.

Hanshan lilies bloom only red

liars that do not bring but bury

I dream of powder-song dirges

and blood like fresh dew

It was said that to speak Shaoqing Mao’s famous poem in a Caishen tea parlor was sure to bring at least one old man to tears. More soldiers had died storming and holding the slopes of Hanshan fortress than there had been land to bury them, and the tales claimed had been so many corpses in the river the Izcalli had used them like a ford.

“Correct. That led to a situation where three states with broad parity of means and men contested the same region, resulting in the northern flatlands changing hands so often between the belligerents that they effectively became lawless for over a decade,” Professor Iyengar said, tone matte-of-fact.

You are Watch, Song reminded herself. The Watch does not take sides.

“The mountain chains between Caishen and Kuril are riddled with hollow tribes,” the professor continued, “so the chaos inevitably resulted in the empowerment of cults even as the local gods began going rampant.”

Lesser gods were fragile, Song new, not yet fully set in their nature. They could go mad from having their shrines trampled or their followers slain, sometimes even simply from them taking to death a littletoo well. The ensuing madness – rampancy, the Watch called it – saw them turn on the living viciously.

“Now,” Professor Iyengar said, “the cultists raids and escalating rampancies were a gain to no belligerent involved. Yet to suppress these activities would have required either heavy garrisoning, or the halt offensive action until their possessions could be consolidated.”

The professor folded her arms behind her back.

“What would have been the rational answer, in this situation?”

Hands went up again and a familiar face was called on.

“Muchen He, Forty-Ninth Brigade,” the perhaps-Skiritai said. “They should have brokered a truce and purged their held territories of cults and rampant gods.”

His contract was Cathayan, but extremely old-fashioned. Song itched to jot it down to read properly later, but it would be too obvious and Tupoc would be watching from behind her.

“Yes,” Professor Iyengar approvingly said. “That would have been the right decision. What happened, instead, was that whenever an attempt was made to take a defensive posture it was immediately punished by the other belligerents.”

The Someshwari wrinkled her nose in disgust.

“There are even alleged occasions of cults being armed to they would undermine the opposition.”

Song was not surprised to hear it. Tianxia’s neighbors had long ago grown adept at using the tensions between the Republics to their advantage, that they would extend such policies to hollow cults was simply the natural extension of the practice.

“The very notion of truce or even just consolidation became toxic to mention,” Professor Iyengar told them, “which leads us to the incident that tipped over the vase: Kuril troops shelled an old temple, releasing a god of the Old Night bound there by the Second Empire.”

She marked the slate with chalk, though to Song’s eye in the wrong region. She had been given to understand it was closer to the western borders.

“The Mist Serpent was sealed along with a horde of its finest bound servants, rapidly overwhelming the troops present and displaying the very reason Liergan saw fit to seal it: its ability to seize the unworthy dead and press them into service.”

Song could almost feel the hall wincing.

“The situation turned disastrous in a matter of weeks,” Professor Iyengar said. “Yet no belligerent withdrew, as such a defeat would mean facing grave consequences at home.”

Song was unfamiliar with the ruling circles of Caishen, but she suspected a general tacitly ceding half the republic’s holdings to the enemy would be publicly executed after a brisk formality of a trial. Tianxia had not lost significant territory since the end of the Cathayan Wars and to suggest anything to the contrary would be… ill received.

“All three powers wanted an end to the war,” the professor said, “but none of them could afford to call it.”

She set down the chalk on her desk.

“What happened after?”

Hands went up. Song did not pay attention to the boy called on, save that his name sounded Someshwari.

“The Watch stepped in, invoked the Iscariot Accords and forced a truce in Caishen until the Mist Serpent was slain and its servants released to the Circle.”

Professor Iyengar nodded.

“Indeed,” she said. “Which leads me to my point.”

She eyed them all seriously.

“The Watch could have easily forced the Izcalli border lords, the Caishen militia or the raja of Kurin to withdraw from the region if they did not wish to – much less all three forces at once. But they did retreat when called on to, because they already desired to do so.”

And so the Watch had been a mere pretext, the professor was implying.

“The Watch’s position as a neutral, otherwise uninvolved power allowed the belligerents to retreat without losing face, each claiming at home that they would have prevailed if the war continued,” Professor Iyengar continued. “We were, in that sense, an excuse for them to act in a manner they already wanted to.”

The professor smiled, the mocking tilt of her lips pulling further.

“I can almost hear the doubt,” she said. “How you tell yourselves we must be more than an excuse, surely, that all those ships and guns and fortresses must amount to something greater. So I invite you to consider some facts.”

The smiled went away.

“The Kuril Dance was the bloodiest war of the last fifty years involving great powers,” Professor Iyengar said. “It lasted for two decades and filled over a hundred thousand graves.”

And too few of those belonging to soldiers, Song thought.

“Now consider this: more soldiers died in the first two weeks of the Succession Wars than over the entire span of the entire Kuril Dance.”

The answering silence was resounding.

“The territory lost to the Gloam in the fall of Second Empire represents a number of souls broadly equal to the current population of Izcalli and the Imperial Someshwar added together,” the professor continued. “Children, the Watch exists because, when the great powers emerged from the red haze of war, they saw that the world around them had grown smaller.”

Such a harmless word for such a stark meaning. Smaller. Reduced. The Succession Wars had made the world less, permanently so.

“They saw the world needed ratcatchers,” Professor Iyengar said. “That it needed armed hands rooting out cults and hunting lemures that would not be stopped by borders. They saw that Vesper needed god-killers who would not be sent to die in petty battles, scholars who must be allowed to unearth truths uncomfortable to kings.”

The tall woman let that sink in for a moment, then broke the silence.

“The recognition of that need is called the Iscariot Accords.”

She was warming to her subject, Song thought, and she was not alone in that. She heard someone shift behind her, and was startled to see Tupoc leaning in with a fervent burning gaze.

“It is fitting that we are called blackcloaks,” Professor Iyengar said, “for the cloak matters most of all we wield. Not Signs or swords, not the ships or guns or burning secrets – few of these are unique to us, and in time none will be. The Watch exists because the great powers recognized that they cannot be trusted to enforce the Accords, either by themselves or on each other, and yet the Accords need to be enforced.”

The professor stood ramrod straight, but her dark eyes burned bright.

“We alone bear a black cloak, of all men and women, because it sets us apart. Because that is what the Watch is for: to stand apart, to be neutral.”

The professor gestured at them all.

“Over your years of wearing the black,” she said, “you will take sides. That is natural and inevitable – putting on the cloak does unmake the ties of roots and blood. But if you learn anything at all from your time in this hall, let it be this.”

Her gaze was all iron as she faced them.

“There is a line,” Kavita Iyengar said. “A watchman can take sides, but never the Watch. It is the sole poison our order cannot survive.”

Her lips pulled up in another mirthless smile.

“Do not ever forget that,” the professor warned them, “else the last thing you will ever hear is a Mask pulling the trigger.”

So ended the first lecture Song Ren was given at Scholomance.

—

After that striking end, a hush fell over the class.

Professor Iyengar ordered them to return next week with ink and paper enough to take notes, for the organization of the Watch would be covered in detail and those details would be tested on at a later date. Song kept an eye on the Forty-Ninth, but no threat came from there: they were out the door in moments, almost fleeing.

She had expected to be dealing with the Fourth, at least, but the lecture had left Tupoc with a strange a manic energy he seemed disinclined to turn on others for once. He exhorted his cabal to set out and prepare for their afternoon classes, handing Song an unpleasant reminder that the Izcalli was another Stripe recommendation and so she would be seeing him further.

Lovely.

With many students heading out the doors were clogged, leading the Thirteenth to elect staying behind. To discuss the lecture was only natural, and Song found she was not alone in disagreeing with some parts of what they had been told.

“It is the perspective of a high-ranking officer,” Song argued. “Someone who sees the situation from above – and only there.”

Abrascal nodded approvingly.

“Looking down puts on just as many blinders as looking up,” he agreed. “Mind you, that ominous little bit about the Masks seems true. It was implied to me the Krypteia is expected to deal with treachery within the ranks.”

Angharad stiffened. Upset, Song fondly thought, at the thought of any betrayal of the oaths they had all taken. The noblewoman was thoroughly reliable in such regards.

“I find it easy to believe that the Watch’s position as a broker between states is of paramount importance,” the dark-skinned woman said, forcefully changing the subject. “It explains why I have never heard of blackcloaks out in the colonies, despite the many savage spirits of those lands.”

It was said absent-mindedly, almost carelessly, and Song knew that no insult was meant. That did not mean none had been given – the look on Maryam’s face cold enough it would have made winter wince.

“As it happens I was recruited by an officer of the Watch out in the colonies, Tredegar,” Maryam snapped back. “As for savagery, the only kind I saw at work was that of the Malani.”

To her honor, the noblewoman’s contrition came quick and heartfelt.

“I meant no offense,” Angharad said.

That, however, had been a blunder.

“Then cease giving it, you fucking ass,” the Izvorica harshly retorted. “My patience has limits.”

Angharad visibly swallowed an answer, likely one involving how her own was stretched thin by Maryam’s constant barbs. Which was for the best, because while the blue-eyed signifier had rarely missed an opportunity for venom that venom was being kept at a boil by her the noblewoman’s constant small slights. Would their relationship have been cordial, should Angharad have more deftly navigated those waters? Outwardly, at least, Song believed it would have.

Maryam was polite to Zenzele Duma, who was just as lordly as Angharad and measurably more Malani. Part of that no doubt came from not having to continuously be in his presence, but Zenzele’s avoidance of any topics remotely related to colonies and slavery could not be hurting.

“There is no need for insults,” Angharad said through gritted teeth.

“That’s what I keep saying,” Maryam said. “Yet here we are, aren’t we?”

She grabbed her back and pushed forward, Angharad getting out of her way. Thank the gods for that, Song thought. Given their respective sizes and strength, had Maryam pushed into the Pereduri she would have been much more likely to bounce off than brush her aside. Angharad turned her gaze on them, almost pleading.

“Ill-done,” Abrascal simply said, grabbing his bag.

The thief traded a nod with her and followed after Maryam. Good, none of them should ever wander Scholomance alone. Song turned to Angharad with a sigh, which had the noblewoman’s jaw twitch with a suppressed wince. This one was on her head, the Tianxi decided, for not having taken the time to address the matter with Angharad yet. Given how full their time had been and the thaw she had thought she was witnessing Song had thought… no, an excuse. She had not made the time because she believed the situation under control.

That should be owned.

“Walk with me,” Song ordered.

Most of the lecture hall was gone by now, hurried out the door, so it was with little company that they returned to the pale gray halls and the path of stakes. Song still refrained from beginning the conversation until they were well out of Scholomance, back onto the great stony grounds. It was not difficult to find a bench tucked away near a faded bronze, Song inviting the noblewoman to sit while she remained standing.

“Abrascal was not wrong,” the captain said. “That was ill done of you.”

Angharad’s lips thinned.

“As I said, I meant no offense.”

“That is a foolish assertion, considering what you said,” she replied.

The noblewoman opened her mouth to speak, but was cut off by her captain’s raised hand.

“By your words, you implied that the land of her birth had no states in it,” Song said. “You then implied them to be savages.”

“Their spirits,” Angharad insisted. “I said their spirits are savage, not them. And it is true, Song. The tales I hear are chilling. Spirits that strangle all who come near their shore, serpents of flame whose whispers drive men to take their own lives and-”

Song leaned in.

“Are you certain, Angharad Tredegar, that you want to discuss dealings with savage gods?” she gently asked. “Holding the contract that you do?”

The other woman’s rising confidence crumpled. It had been an empty thing from the start.

“You have never been in Triglau – Izvorica – lands,” Song reminded her. “Your truths are all borrowed, and from men and women who have made a fortune out of clapping Maryam’s kin in irons.”

She hesitated, a heartbeat for it was a delicate subject.

“I do not know if House Tredegar ever traded in slaves-”

“No,” Angharad firmly said, then bit her lip. “But we shipped iron shackles and salted fish to Port Cadwyn that was meant for slave hulks.”

The Pereduri scowled.

“I know slavery is indecent, Song,” she said. “But the Izvorica do it to each other. I hear most slaves sold in the northern colonies are sold by the tribes themselves. Yet to hear her you would think Malani the sum of all evils for partaking in a trade that near every nation of Vesper practices.”

No one does it the way Malani do, Angharad, Song thought. She could have argued the point, laid it all out. How Malan’s practice of slavery was unprecedented: emptying towns, clapping entire tribes in iron and sending them in the western lands so they could toil until they died and their children toil after them. How even Izcalli granted rights to their serfs but the Malani shielded their slaves with no law, for why would any be needed when honor of their owner was the finest possible guarantee?

But that would have been losing themselves in the weeds, in the details of the argument. So instead she spoke another truth.

“I am a daughter of Tianxia, Angharad Tredegar,” Song Ren said. “Do you think to find sympathy in me for such evil? You forget who I am: all are free under Heaven.”

She met the noblewoman’s dark eyes, unflinching, as she spoke the words of the Feichu Tian

“If gods deny this, bury them beneath the river. If kings deny this, chop them in four quarters.”

Silver faced brown, unblinking.

“If slavers deny this, hang them with iron chains.”

Silence stretched between them. Angharad looked away first and Song released the breath she had been holding.

“You spoke carelessly to Maryam and have done so before,” she said. “She is not alone in finding this reprehensible – it does you no favors with either me or Abrascal.”

“Am I to lie, then?” Angharad bitterly said. “Praise her people with empty words, pretend they are not quarrelsome tribes hiding in hills at the end of the world?”

“If you cannot muster care for your own words,” Song flatly replied, “then silence will suffice. It is nothing less than what you ask of her.”

The other woman flinched. Twice struck in as many sentences. Song knew she had much used the stick today, and so she must adjust the approach lest this be remembered as nothing more than a browbeating.

“I expect there are brigades out there that will not require this of you,” the Tianxi said. “Should you wish to speak such words and opinions unchallenged, I can approach another captain for a trade on your behalf.”

She paused, shrugged.

“You are skilled and of good repute, it will not be difficult to find a taker.”

Angharad’s hackles rose like an angry cat’s. It would not have been the noblewoman’s natural inclination to leave, Song thought, but now that it had been framed as a failure to do so the prospect should be well and buried.

“I am capable of minding my own manners,” Angharad stiffly replied.

Vinegar first, now honey.

“That is a relief,” Song made herself admit. “Much of Abrascal rubs me the wrong way, so the tensions between you and Maryam have been a concern to me. I would not see our cabal break from within.”

The Pereduri was only too eager to change the subject to a weakness of Song’s, after the earlier exchange. Besides, now keeping the peace with Maryam was no longer just the noblewoman swallowing her words – it was a favor being done to Song, which Angharad would find much more palatable. She was willing to tolerate much more for the sake of others than she was for her own.

“I had noticed,” Angharad said. “Though I cannot bring myself to fully trust him, I must admit I have found him an agreeable fellow. Where lies the trouble?”

He’s a grenade with a lit fuse, Song could not say. One whose final explosion I cannot seem to predict the timing of.

“He is a competent but reckless man,” she said instead, choosing another truth, “whose actions I have only the barest influence over but whom I am and will remain responsible for. Worse, he has no intention of amending that behavior.”

‘Rat’ was an apt description, Song had often thought, for he took the authority much as the animal did. Behaving when there was light and attention on him, but returning to his tricks and plans without batting an eye the moment Song was no longer there to look at him. The Tianxi had no illusions of control over the thief: the moment she asked of him something he did not want to do, he would refuse. The authority of her captain’s rank simply did not weigh on the scales for Abrascal.

“Tristan has only known bad lords.”

Song blinked, returning her attention to Angharad.

“He does not respect authority because he has never known authority worth respecting,” the noblewoman said. “You act as if the part objected to is you, but it is not – it is the authority itself. That it is held by you is, I think, largely irrelevant to him.”

That was… it sounded reasonable, Song silently acknowledged. And though he should have been taught better as the pupil of a high-ranking watchwoman, his teacher was a Mask. Uncle Zhuge had opinions on their covenant, the kindest of which was ‘sometimes their existence is a necessary evil’. What was the solution, then? To show she was worthy of wielding authority? She was not sure how that would be done to a man of his background. It might well cross lines she was not willing to cross.

“I will think on that,” Song said. “My thanks.”

Angharad sighed, looking away.

“And I will think on what you have said,” she replied. “I would not allow myself to become the instrument of discord.”

It was start, Song thought, but talk would only get them so far. Angharad watching her tongue and Maryam holding back barbs would be the work of weeks, months. She needed mortar to bind the Thirteenth Brigade together, and that would require more practical reasons to come together.

A common enemy should serve fine, and it just happened that the world had seen fit to provide some for Song Ren to pick from.

Angharad woke to the smell of breakfast.

Tossing aside her sheets – where Tristan and Maryam had found such a profoundly ugly shade of brown, she had no idea – she pushed herself up. Though she had slept in a bedroll laid on the ground, it had been a decent enough night’s sleep. The Pereduri still looked forward to securing a proper bed and mattress for the bedroom she’d claimed, possibly paired with sheets that did not make her feel like wincing.

Getting up, she washed herself with a cloth and a pot of tepid well water before putting on her new combat uniform. There was no looking glass in the room, or indeed much of anything except dust and the bags she had set down yesterday, but there was one downstairs she would use to verify nothing was askew. Coming down the steps – they creaked under her feet – she found that Song and Maryam were already seated at the drawing room table, chatting quietly over plates and cups of tea.

Song nodded her way, Maryam instead shoveling in a mouthful of eggs and rashers and loudly chewing. The Izvorica had been unreadable since Angharad faltered before her yesterday, which left her unsure of her footing around the other woman.

“Tristan still sleeps?” Angharad asked, nodding back to Song.

Their captain shook her head.

“He woke first,” she said. “He’s out digging in the garden.”

Very industrious of him, Angharad thought approvingly. Yesterday there had been talk of planting herbs and vegetables in the yard so they might have a supply even should the goods in Port Allazei grow too expensive. A most prudent notion. While it had not happened in Angharad’s lifetime, she’d heard that Frangoch Heights – the lands to the east of Llanw Hall – had closed its roads to merchants in her grandmother’s day and the sharp rise in the price of lumber and iron had almost ruined House Tredegar.

Being at the mercy of one’s neighbors for necessities was a dangerous thing.

The noblewoman helped herself to a plate in the kitchen, learning the meal was Song’s work when she asked, and sat with the others to eat. Conversation was halting but amicable and though Angharad polished off her plate rather quickly there was no snide comment from Maryam following. Though her cheeks yet burned at the memory of how she had shamed herself blubbering out her grief to a stranger, she dared hoped that the continued silence might mean they had reached a truce of sorts.

It was encouraging that last night Maryam had specified to the others that she was not merely Triglau but Izvorica, implying they had not known before. It had thus been a true gesture for the pale-skinned woman to tell her that, not mere window-dressing.

When Angharad brought back her empty plate to the kitchen, she found Tristan was in the antechamber wiping his boots. The Sacromontan was faintly sweaty, his hands and knees caked in dirt, but at least he had only gone out in his shirt and trousers instead of dirtying a uniform.

“Morning,” he greeted her. “Is everyone done eating?”

“Good morning,” Angharad replied. “Song will soon be finished with her tea, I believe.”

The gray-eyed man grunted in acknowledgement.

“Then I best get changed,” he said.

Well, if he was headed that way already… Angharad cleared her throat.

“I bought a comb yesterday,” she said. “In case you were looking for one.”

Tristan’s lips twitched.

“If my hair is known to be messy, then when it is combed it can serve as a disguise,” he told her.

She did appreciate that he attempted not to lie, though given her familiarity with exact wording his efforts were very much transparent.

“My father once told me the trick to getting away with that is using a truth that sounds like a lie,” Angharad advised him. “That way the adversary chases an untruth that does not exist.”

He cocked his head to the side.

“Your father sounds like a wise man,” Tristan conceded.

It should not have made a difference, to hear the word in someone else’s mouth when she had just spoken it, but it did. Angharad was suddenly aching at his absence, and struggled to master herself.

“He was,” she finally replied, and left it at that.

And dead, sure to be, but the knowledge that there had been survivor from Llanw Hall threaded that grief with new uncertainty. Imandi Langa had told her a prisoner was taken by the men who had slain her family, but not who. A cousin, her uncle? A servant, more likely, but Angharad could not imagine those unknown soldiers thinking a servant of House Tredegar being worth much as a hostage.

Who would pay for their release with mother dead and Angharad herself disgraced? Unless they had known secrets of the house, and that was why they were kept alive. There had to be a reason House Tredegar had been struck at, for that slaughter had been carefully planned. But Angharad knew nothing, and the only answers at hand were in another woman’s grip – to be paid for, and dearly. And yet the urge to know was like an itch she could not scratch.

Within ten minutes they were all ready to leave, a merciful distraction from her thoughts. They were all armed, bearing the pistols Song had insisted they all acquire at the hip and their preferred arms besides. Angharad’s saber and their captain’s straight sword were no surprise, but the handaxe belted at Maryam’s side was. The Izvorica did not have the callouses of someone trained in wielding such a weapon, but there must have been a reason for her to pick it over more common blades.

Tristan bore a knife, but Angharad knew better than to think it his only one.

They crossed the garden and took the stairs down, first going down a series of convoluted passages and circling stairs – empty doors windows stared at them like unblinking eyes, every scrap of metal turned into rust-red strokes like blood spatter – before reaching the opening that Tristan had yesterday seen from the outside. It looked as if a courtyard had been carved a single saber’s blow, broken stacked rectangle-houses hanging open on both sides. Rusted metal wires, each large a fist, hung across the gap for some mysterious purpose and copper pipes peeked out like ribs.

It was not stairs they stepped onto down to the street but rubble, the stones large enough they served the purpose with little danger.

“If we are to remain here for several years it might be best to clear this out and put in proper stairs,” Angharad said.

She did not look forward to carrying mattress stuffing up this, or solid furniture for that matter. The Thirteenth was in a most dire need of chairs.

“We should first settle the cottage properly,” Song replied. “It needs a thorough cleaning and further furnishing.”

“Tredegar’s right,” Maryam said, shaking her head. “If it rains this all turns into a slippery death trap. We should look into putting up a rope rail, at least.”

Surprised, Angharad nodded her thanks for the support. The Izvorica curtly nodded back to. A pleasant turn, and perhaps a hopeful one.

Once they were out in Port Allazei they took to the streets eastwards so they might find Arsay Avenue, the road that led straight to Scholomance and was said to be regularly patrolled by the blackcloaks.

The Grand Orrery’s false stars cut a green swath this morning and it made it stand out all the more that the neighborhood around their new home were overgrown with trees and vines, like flowers grown on bones of stone. Twice Angharad caught sight of what looked like silhouettes watching them rooftops, but no one ever emerged. It took them only ten minutes to make it to Arsay Avenue, which they found quite busy.

Given the hour – it was now nearly six forty-five, according to Tristan’s watch – that was no surprise. According to the instructions Captain Wen had passed along, every student in Scholomance was meant to be in class by seven thirty.

A patrol of twelve armed watchmen was briskly marching down the avenue, but the others were all students. The Thirteenth drew eyes at having come out of ruins, but little more than that. They would not be the only ones indulging in shortcuts and detours. As they came onto the road they crossed paths with another cabal whose captain, a handsome Malani with carefully tended beard, came over to introduce himself with three companions.

“Captain Philani, Thirty-Eighth Brigade,” he said, offering up his hand.

“Captain Song, Thirteenth,” Song replied, taking it.

The man’s brow rose, perhaps in recognition, but the demeanor remained friendly. After a brief round of introductions, they agreed to move forward together.

“I am told the garrison made a deep sweep along the avenue last night to clear out the lemure nests, but beasts always creep back in,” Captain Phalani said. “There is safety in numbers.”

Certainly others believed the same, as Angharad glimpsed other groups trudging along the road that were too large to consist of a single cabal. As they set out she and Song ended up at the front with the captain, Tristan and Maryam instead keeping pace with the others.

“I have yet to see a lemure on the island,” Angharad admitted. “Though we are admittedly recent arrivals.”

“Shades are the most common,” he said. “But like the Malani breed, they flee groups and strike only at the weak or wounded. The real threats are the lycosi packs. The Ninth Brigade also spread word there is a briarid wandering along the western edge of Allazei, but it sounds easy enough to avoid.”

Angharad knew of the latter lemure, mostly by virtue of it looking striking on bestiary pages. Briarids were also called ‘hundred-handers’, both large and extremely territorial. The other name, however, she was unfamiliar with.

“Lycosi?” she asked.

“Wolf-like creatures capable of some shapeshifting if they have recently partaken of meat,” Song contributed.

The other captain nodded.

“One is hardly a threat to a trained soldier,” Captain Phalani expounded, “but they move in packs and are known to use cunning stratagems.”

Conversation continued pleasantly as they walked down Arsay Avenue, though after ten minutes or so they were forced to halt. There was some sort of road blockage from a fallen house, a crowd of students milling around the rubble. Both the Thirteenth and the Thirty-Eighth approached in curiosity, finding the reason for such interest – there was a wounded. A tanned girl had a mangled leg, perhaps broken by falling rubble, and a handful of students were seeing to her wound.

Around her were a pair of bloodied corpses, but they belonged to lemures and not men: harpies, feathered monsters with fearsome talons and some measure of intelligence. Some sort of ambush must have taken place here, Angharad thought. A disconcerting prospect, given that they would need to pass through here five mornings out of seven.

Students were beginning to circle around the collapse, though some enterprising soul instead made their way through the rubble-strewn avenue. That was half the reason for the crowd, as the easiest way across was somewhat narrow and an informal line had formed. They parted ways with Captain Phalani there, as he intended to cross the rubble while Song decided they would be going around instead. They backtracked for a bit then cut west, through a cracked stone courtyard.

There, however, surprise struck.

“Take a tracing, then,” Ferranda Villazur exasperatedly said. “It isn’t going anywhere.”

On the other side of the courtyard, beneath a pair of broken columns, the Thirty-First Brigade was inspecting some kind of mechanism. Zenzele was leaning against one of the columns, hat pulled down and looking half-asleep, while Ferranda was addressing a kneeling Tianxi that Angharad could only see the back of. Their designated lookout, however, did not miss the Thirteenth’s arrival.

“Well, well, well,” Shalini Goel grinned, pushing off the wall. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

“I see we are too late,” Song solemnly replied. “The Someshwar’s already invaded.”

“We’ve come for your hats and women,” Shalini agreed.

She turned to Angharad, wiggling her eyebrows, and the Pereduri could not help but snort.

“It is good to see you as well, Shalini,” she said, offering her arm to clasp.

The short, curvy gunslinger took it. To Angharad’s surprise she was even drawn in for a quick embrace, just as quickly released as the Someshwari went off to greet the others. Meanwhile Zenzele had come to join the reuinion, and just as he traded greeting with Angharad they were joined by the last two of his brigade. Ferranda she was familiar with, naturally, but the fourth was a new face.

“Angharad, if I might introduce you to our fellow cabalist Rong Ma,” Lady Ferranda said.

The Tianxi was barely taller than Shalini, dark of eye and with short black hair combed to the side. With those slender eyebrows and delicate features, Angharad was honestly unsure if she was looking at a man or woman – or other, for that matter.

“Angharad Tredegar,” she said, offering her hand.

“Please, call me Rong,” the Tianxi replied shaking it.

The voice was soft and ambiguous, which did nothing to settle the matter. Angharad was going to have to ask.

“Rong is an Umuthi Society recommendation,” Ferranda said. “They’re headed for the Clockwork Cathedral track.”

Ah, there it was. Angharad nodded her thanks at Ferranda for saving her the awkwardness of asking a stranger their gender, getting a smile back.

“I must confess I do not know of this Cathedral,” she said.

“It is an internal distinction of the society,” Rong told her. “Tinkers of the Clockwork Cathedral concern themselves with entirely mechanical devices, whole those of the Deuteronomicon study mainly aetheric machinery.”

They cleared their throat.

“I hope you do not find me too forward to asking, but are you truly related to Captain Osian Tredegar?”

Angharad paused, taken aback.

“He is my uncle,” she replied. “How do you know of him?”

“He is a rising name in the Clockwork Cathedral,” Rong told her. “If not for the opportunity to attend Scholomance, I might well have attempted to enter his workshop as journeyman.”

One of these days, she thought, she was going to cease being surprised by the sheer depths of things she did not know about her uncle Osian. Yet today was not that day, evidently.

“He had sent word he will be passing by the island soon,” Angharad said. “I could make introductions, if you would like.”

Rong’s eyes widened.

“That would be very kind of you,” they happily said.

That set a rather friendly tone which extended into a round of introductions between the cabals, faltering only when the Tianxi was introduced to Song. The hand they had been about to offer went down, as if fearing to be burned by the touch, and the face of Angharad’s captain tightened. To their honor, Rong grasped the rudeness of the act.

“Apologies,” they said. “But everyone knows touching a Ren is…”

“Bad luck,” Song evenly said. “So I have heard. It is no matter.”

Angharad’s gaze cooled as she stared at the other Tianxi, who looked somewhat abashed but not in any way inclined to take back the snub. Perhaps her uncle’s schedule would not allow for an introduction, after all. Ferranda pushed through the tenseness with forced cheer, suggesting they walk to Scholomance together, and Song agreed.  The mood had somewhat soured, but thankfully the walk to the outskirts of the school grounds was a mere few minutes long after they cut back east and returned to Arsay Avenue past the rubble.

Scholomance’s silhouette grew taller and taller, like a giant staring down, and around them ruins grew sparser and sparser until they were flanked by little more than fields of grass. Walking in the hulking school’s shadow, they approached the school through a wide paved yard. The span of Scholomance’s grounds was traced by a shallow canal long gone dry, Angharad saw, and there were but two stone bridges across it.

Before each bridge a tall bronze statue, most of them lost to time, and near them students were lining up to wait. Beneath the statues were pairs of blackcloaks with ledgers and equipment, which were handing the students something Angharad could not make out before sending them on their way. The Thirty-First picked one line and the Thirteenth another, bringing their common road to an end.

The parting was polite, but noticeably cooler than the first greetings had been. To Maryam’s honor, she seemed even more miffed by Rong Ma’s lack of etiquette than Angharad herself was. As they made to stand in line the noblewoman saw there were only two cabals ahead of them, but the process seemed slow-going. Angharad found her gaze drifting past the blackcloaks and students onto the school itself, at last getting a closer look.

Scholomance, she found, was beautiful.

She had not expected that. From a distance the school had seemed like a looming specter, dark and dangerous, and it was certainly that – but it was also poignantly beautiful. The heart of it was a cathedral of pale gray stone, but nothing like any she had seen before. At its summit of it stood a great dome made of flashing brass bones set in green tiles, large as small town, and from there the school unfolded like a madman’s bewitching dream.

Flanking the front gates were twin towers carved of stone so fine it looked like lace, but it was the front facade that had hundreds staring: it was made entirely of stained glass. Even the gates themselves, wide open as they were. Behind that splendor lurked ghostly lights moved by some unseen mechanism, their course making it seem as if the colors of the facade were themselves alive.

To the sides lesser halls spread out, their roofs set with the same green tiles with veins of bronze and strangely wide – some led into towers, of which there were many, and which were connected by a veritable maze of arched walkways hundreds of feet above the ground. Far to the east Angharad glimpsed a great sphere of glass touched with wrought iron balconies, the inside filled with what appeared an ocean of library stacks. To the west she made out the silhouette of a tortured spire covered in vines, roofless for the pale stairs spiraling upwards into nothing.

Everywhere Angharad looked there was something to see: a bronze statue tucked away between shadows, a stream of red flowers grown out of cracks in the walls or a path between two rooftops made entirely out of crystal chandeliers hanging from an archway above. The last of these was so strange that Angharad sought it out again, but no matter how much she looked she could not find it. Had she imagined it, her mind moved to confusion by the surfeit of wonders?

“That place,” Maryam Khaimov said, “is a cauldron of Gloam. Trust nothing you see.”

Angharad stiffened.

“These are illusions?”

Was some spirit inside her mind?

“Oh no,” the Izvorica grimly said. “We’re not that lucky. Everything is real – so long as our eyes are on it, as it bears the weight of observation. The moment it’s not, it will move as it wills.”

“Are you saying that school is alive?” Angharad asked.

“Something is,” Maryam hedged.

“It is a god. There is a god in there.”

They both turned towards Song, who even as she spoke had never taken her eyes off Scholomance.

“I cannot see its body, but I see its… tendrils, for lack of better term. It is everywhere in the school, like a vine grown inside a corpse and bursting out of the flesh.”

“Well, at least I no longer feel hungry,” Tristan muttered. “What do we need to watch out for, Song?”

The Tianxi grimaced.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I have never seen anything like it, not even on the Dominion. It’s so deep I’m not sure if it infested Scholomance or if it is Scholomance. I can warn you if we approach danger, but nothing more than that. It moves.”

The noblewoman swallowed. That was… unsettling to hear. Would they truly be taking their classes inside the belly of the beast? Yet the conversation was not to continue, for while they spoke the line had advanced enough that they were moments away from being called on, their pair of watchmen by the broken statue – a head and arm were gone – shouting for them to approach. Song took the lead in doing so, Angharad close behind, and a mustachioed man bade them to stop when he judged them close enough.

“Brigade?” he asked.

“Thirteenth,” Song replied.

“All of you?”

Angharad nodded when his gaze found her, as did the others in turn. The watchman glanced at his partner, who put her hand in an old leather hat and after a heartbeat pulled out a pebble painted yellow.

“That’s four for yellow,” she said. “I’ll mark it down.”

Even as the watchwoman took  up a ledger tucked away behind the statue’s foot and went reaching for an inkwell, the other blackcloak picked up a leather bag and pulled from it a handful of yellow ribbons. He counted four, shoved the rest back into the bag then passed them to Song – who in turn passed them out the rest of the cabal.

“Around your wrist,” the watchman instructed

Angharad cleared her throat while she attached it as bid.

“Might I ask,” she said, “the meaning of the color?”

“Yellow,” the watchman flatly replied. “The fuck do you think it’s supposed to mean, girl?”

Angharad’s lips thinned.

“Four hundred students are too many for a single teacher,” the watchwoman informed them without looking up from the ledger. “You are to be split in four groups of a hundred, which are differentiated by color.”

The man snorted disdainfully.

“Once you cross the bridge there will be officers bearing colored flags,” he said. “Head to the one in your color and they’ll sort you out for class.”

“Thank you,” Song replied, inclining her head.

“Don’t hold up the line,” the watchman grunted back.

Angharad spared him a dark look as they walked past him, which he failed to notice entirely as the pair began the same sequence for the cabal that had been waiting behind the Thirteenth. The four of them crossed the bridge, finding on the other side what they had been told. Spread out across the paved plaza were four officers under colored banners – red, blue, green and yellow.

Their man was the leftmost, an Aztlan in his late twenties, and to Angharad’s distaste he appeared quite disreputable. Not only had he brought a folding chair to sit on, propping up the flag against his shoulder instead of holding it up, but he was also smoking a pipe. It was worse when she approached and got a proper look. Between the stubble, the unkempt long hair in a ponytail – with the sides shaved – and the glasses slightly askew, the man looked more a brigand than a blackcloak. Even his uniform was sloppy, creased while his coat was meant for a man twice his size.

He waved when he noticed them, pulling at his pipe. Brown eyes moved from one to another, then he chuckled and blew out a perfect circle of smoke.

“Silver eyes,” he listed. “A mirror-dancer and the only paleskin on Tolomontera. Despite the absent tricorn, you must be the Thirteenth Brigade.”

Angharad blinked, taken aback. Had their reputation even reached the local garrison?

“We are,” Song confirmed. “A pleasure to meet you…”

“Professor Tenoch Sasan,” the man said. “By the color of your ribbon, it appears I will be teaching you Saga.”

A professor? But he looked so… Perhaps it was some Izcalli fashion, Angharad desperately thought, and it only looked like he couldn’t bother to dress presentably. At her side, Tristan let out a noise.

“Friend of Wen’s, are you sir?” he asked.

Professor Tenoch laughed.

“Sharp boy,” he praised. “What gave it away?”

“I’ve barely worn the tricorn on the island,” Tristan said. “That and Captain Wen is from the historian track of the Arthashastra Society, which fits the subject you teach.”

Angharad had not even known Captain Wen belonged to a covenant, so this came as somewhat of a surprise. Still, a Laurel? There was not a diplomatic bone in that man’s body.

“We came up together,” the professor confirmed. “Though until last night I hadn’t seen him in years, not since the tussle in Tariac that got him put out to pasture.

The Aztlan grinned.

“I do believe he’s gotten worse,” he said. “That’s quite impressive.”

While Angharad struggled in vain with how she was meant to reply to such a thing – agree, question, politely ignore? – the man cleared his throat.

“But you’re not here for old stories,” he said. “Let’s get you on your way to class.”

The professor jutted his thumb to the side, towards the open gates of stained glass.

“For today, you enter through there,” he said. “You’re headed to the western lecture hall, which means taking a left just after getting past the door. Before the great hall, to be clear. Don’t go inside it.”

He puffed at his pipe, afterwards exhaling the smoke through his nostrils. Angharad crinkled her nose at the smell of tobacco. It was a most distasteful vice. Father had greatly despised it, to the extent he had once tried to talk her mother out of even shipping the leaves.

“The path is straightforward,” Professor Tenoch told them. “About every ten feet there will be a metal stake hammered into the floor that has a yellow ribbon tied onto it. Follow that trial and it will lead you directly to the lecture hall that is your destination.”

The Aztlan then leaned in.

“Do not, under any circumstances, stray off that path,” he said. “Scholomance is not your mother’s salon: the school is very much alive and out to kill every soul within its walls.”

Angharad stilled at the blunt admission. She had felt the whole business to be sinister from the start but not expected to hear it so plainly said.

“Until you have learned to navigate the halls, never wander away from the stakes,” Professor Tenoch continued. “They force Scholomance to remain continuous in a radius around them, which stops it changing the layout so it can lead you into its depths to get you killed.”

The professor raised four fingers.

“Here are four rules that should help you live through the year, given out courtesy of my good mood,” he said.

Angharad straightened her back. Despite how he presented himself, she was not inclined to dismiss his words. Surely the Watch would not have taken him on as a professor were he as careless as he looked.

“First: never trust anything you hear or see outside a closed room. Scholomance can and will shift itself the moment you are no longer paying attention, but within the closed boundary of a room it cannot do so.”

A finger went down.

“Two: never go around alone or unarmed. The school willlead lemures and devils towards you if it believes it has a chance of getting you killed. It does this carefully – there are only so many that still wander into clutches and it find it difficult to herd more than one at a time – but it will absolutely take the shot if it believes there is an opening.”

A second finger went down.

“Three – just to be sure, all of you still have your plaques?”

Nods all around. In truth, as Tristan had confiscated one from the Forty-Ninth during their failed ambush their cabal even had a spare.

“Good,” Professor Tenoch said. “Keep them on you at all times, and should you ever find yourself somewhere that does not appear to be Scholomance try to have constant skin contact with it.”

Angharad frowned at the warning, which seemed a sideways manner of referring to the strange place Tristan had stumbled into by accident.

“You’re talking about layers,” Maryam said.

“Ah, right, one of you found the Witching Hour already,” Professor Tenoch mused. “Indeed, be careful of layers. There is at least one that can be entered through the school grounds and Scholomance will try to trick you into that so beasties can possess you. Having a source of high purity Glare light helps prevent this, if you can afford one.”

They could not, even when counting the coin Angharad’s uncle had sent her. Such things were steeply priced, even more so on isolated islands like Tolomontera. The last two fingers came down and the hand with them.

“Fourth and final,” the professor said, “you should prepare for the eventuality of having failed to respect the first three rules.”

Angharad blinked in surprise.

“You will be tricked by Scholomance,” Professor Tenoch said with ironclad certainty. “It is an ancient and vicious entity, one that has swallowed many secrets and treasures to barter with. It will find a way to tempt you into doing something unwise eventually.”

Song’s face was forcefully even, Tristan’s openly skeptical, and Maryam’s hidden – she had pulled up her hood. Angharad was, in truth, inclined to believe the professor. She trusted in her will to resist a spirit when encountering them and their tricks, but to encounter them every day for years on end? That was a different story. Water always found a way through.

“You can deny this, of course,” the professor continued, “and find yourself lost when that day comes.”

He shrugged.

“Or you can plan for the eventuality and perhaps survive. It is up to you.”

The professor reached inside his oversized coat, producing a match and striking it against his sleeve. He lit anew the pipe that had gone out, puffing at it carefully. He then exhaled a stream of grey, humming in satisfaction, and Angharad wrinkled her nose again. The smell truly was foul, and she knew it clung to everything.

“Go on, then,” Professor Tenoch said. “Try to enjoy Mandate class, I hear good things of your teacher.”

Angharad licked her lips, hesitating. But if she did not ask, how was she to know?

“Sir,” she finally said. “Why does the Watch want us to study here, of all places? Why risk our lives?”

The man studied her a moment, as if weighing her with his eyes,

“Have you ever stood on the precipice of doing something wildly foolish, Tredegar?” he asked.

She thought of a lake black as ink, its surface unstirred by the wind yet reflecting the stars above like a mirror. Of a shrine like broken teeth, whispering into the silence. She could have turned back, that night. Taken the boat to the shore, kept moving north. She had not.

Angharad swallowed, then nodded.

“In those moments, it is our nature for doubt to creep in,” the professor said. “Hesitation, that urge to live.”

The man smiled, revealing stained teeth.

“Scholomance,” Professor Tenoch Sasan said, “is how we kill that voice.”

“The pork?”

“Nine coppers a pound,” Abrascal replied as he slid onto the bench.

The tip of Song’s reed pen scratched against the paper, adding the latest price to the list. Poultry seemed marginally less expensive than pork, but the costs were more or less the same across the board. Frowning down at her work, an orderly cluster of names, goods and prices, the Tianxi fit the pieces together.

“We will have to rely on fish,” she finally said. “And rice.”

It had surprised her how cheap bags of rice were on Tolomontera. Though it was hardly an uncommon crop in Old Liergan, it was not a staple the way it was in Tianxia and the Someshwar.

“Maryam’s going to have a fit,” Abrascal snorted. “Did you see the face she made when I ordered ojo de pez this morning?”

Song took a moment to translate the Antigua – ‘fish eye’, more or less – and matched the meaning to the plateful of fish and eggs Angharad and the Sacromontan had taken for morning meal.

“She will have to grow used to it,” Song said. “It is the cheapest meat by far.”

“Well, we’re not living in Farm Allazei,” Abrascal drawled back.

Song did not roll her eyes at the feeble humor, though it was a close thing. The thief’s continued attempts at being charming were, at least, without witnesses: they were alone in the dining hall.

The Rainsparrow Hostel had neither a terrasse nor a garden, being an inferior establishment to the Emerald Vaults in every way. For eating what it offered was a sparsely decorated hall – drapes and tapestries hung from the walls – set with long tables, more a cantina than a true establishment. There were no servants doing the catering here, the guests instead invited to order at a counter in the back and choose their own table to eat.

After leaving word out front for Angharad and Maryam to be sent their way when they arrived, the pair had claimed at table in the corner and begun the work of accounting for their stay on Tolomontera. It mostly involved Abrascal venturing out to find out prices in shops while Song sat and took notes, putting together passable meals as she remained behind to ensure someone would be there should the others arrived.

She was on her second cup of water, but Abrascal was so often on his feet his first was still halfway full. Setting down the reed pen, Song looked up into the dark-haired man’s frowning stare. It seemed that, just like her, he could tell something was off.

“Suspicious, is it not?”

He sharply nodded.

“Those prices are too low,” he said. “There’s no way any of those shops are turning a profit.”

Reaching for his cup, he sipped absent-mindedly and set it down.

“Back in the City, if I stretched my leftovers and planned well I could live off about five coppers a day in food,” Abrascal said. “Now, let’s be conservative and double it-”

“More than that,” Song interrupted. “We will do strenuous physical exercise and keep long hours, both of which require good meals to compensate for. One portion of meat, one of rice and another third.”

He whistled, as if impressed. That bought him a sliver of pity, despite herself. Song’s family had been more influential than wealthy before the Dimming – generations of service even in the higher reaches of the bureaucracy brought respect but not overflowing coffers, unless you were corrupt – but even in the early days of their exile they had been able to provide at least this much in fare to their own.

“So about six coppers a head for every meal,” Abrascal said. “If we lean on fish and soup.”

“That sounds accurate, yes,” Song said.

He grimaced.

“The same meal you’re describing would cost somewhere between nine and twelve radizes, in Sacromonte,” the thief said. “And there is no way that food on this nowhere island should cost less, even if there is some kind of hidden colony tucked away somewhere.”  

And there she must agree again. The prices per pound were close to the bargain a buyer might get for acquiring a large bulk at once, or perhaps buying straight from the farm. Unless the meat and greens were quite literally dirt cheap, the shops could not be making a profit off the sale. Which meant profit was not the point of having those shops there.

A concerning thought.

“On our end, at least, the costs seem reasonable,” Song said. “At twelve radizes a head for every day, over a month the price comes to-”

Thirty-four copper radizes to a silver arbol, three arboles to a golden rama. That would come to – three hundred and thirty-six coppers a week, one thousand three hundred and forty-four a month. A little under thirty-seven silvers and a half, meaning…

“- around twelve ramas and an arbol every month,” she finished. “I would not wager it a coincidence that is half of the twenty-five gold our brigade receives monthly.”

Abrascal blinked at her.

“When did you have time work that out?”

Song’s brow creased.

“You just heard me,” she said.

“Did you-” he began, glancing down at her list for something before shaking his head. “Never mind.”

The thief cleared his throat.

“We haven’t got the prices for supplies yet but I suppose it doesn’t matter if we are not yet sure what we actually need,” he said.

“I think it prudent to assume another seven gold and two silvers,” Song said. “Between ink, paper, clothes and blackpowder the lot might end up rather costly.”

And it brought the costs at an orderly twenty ramas out of twenty-five, a round number satisfying to the mind.

“That’s five gold loose,” Abrascal said. “Toss a rama our way each in private funds, then stash the last away for a rainy day and that is still quite the generous allowance for the Watch to give us.”

“So long as the prices stay the same,” Song warned. “Should they rise…”

It would eat into everything else, and worse.

“That is the part that trips me,” Abrascal admitted. “The current prices are apt to ruin the business but the shops don’t seem Watch-owned. Why would the owners empty their pockets for our sake? It smells like a racket, but I cannot see the point of it.”

“The point could be to provide us food at an affordable price,” Song said.

“Then why involve shopkeepers at all?” he asked. “Why not have some Watch quartermaster run the whole affair instead?”

That was, Song would admit, a reasonable question to ask. It seemed unnecessarily complicated, something the Watch was usually decent at avoiding. Tristan drummed his fingers against the table.

“Last night, the cooks and servants at that fancy evening were not part of the Watch,” he said. “They were tradesmen, here at its sufferance.”

Song nodded.

“It is the same on Regnant Avenue,” she said. “I saw a watchman buy from one of the butchers when first exploring the streets and he paid as anyone would.”

The man grimaced.

“All right, so the obvious play is letting the shops raise prices so everyone gets squeezed,” Abrascal said. “I just don’t see the point.”

“Why not have higher prices from the start, you mean,” Song said.

He nodded.

“Poor planners might find themselves lacking funds,” she suggested.

“Would anyone that foolish make the cut for Scholomance?” he asked.

Again, a fair point. Song had yet to ascertain the skills of her fellow captains but it would be a mistake to assume incompetence.

“Whatever the game,” he continued, “we should stock up on food that’ll keep.”

It was a step in the right direction, but not far enough.

“We need to learn how to fish,” Song said. “Or find a place where we might hunt. That might be the very reason two days a week are potentially left to us.”

The Sacromontan hummed in approval.

“Well, we have a garden,” he said. “Good black earth, not that I know much of gardening. We could buy seeds and plant them so we won’t have to rely on the greenmongers.”

Clever, that. She nodded.

“Herbs and vegetables,” Song mused. “A fruit-bearing tree would take too long to grow to be useful, I fear.”

“Berry bushes can grow quickly,” he disagreed. “But better to stick with vegetables, yes. I believe saw a bag of carrot seeds in one of the shops.”

The Tianxi glanced down at her papers, musing a new list involving seeds, and found there was little room left for one. She should have brought more paper. It was unfortunate that only so much of it that could be carried on you easily in a Watch uniform. Before she could begin debating whether or not to set out to obtain more, movement at the entrance of the eating hall caught her eye. Given that they were late for the morning meal and too early for the evening one, she had a guess as to who it might be.

As expected, it was Maryam and Angharad.

The former wore a hooded cloak Song was going to have to discreetly inquire had been stolen from who, given the distinctive blue and yellow embroidery, while the latter had a new saber belted at her hip. Much richer work than the standard-issue Watch blade she’d been using since the Dominion, but the sword was not what caught her eye: both women were carrying a pair of muskets whose make she did not recognize.

Song saw in fine detail so long as she could see at all, a consequence of her contract’s nature – though her experiments had established that the guiding nature of the ability was conceptual instead of physical, so ‘sight’ was not entirely correct – and the look of those flintlocks was not artisanal. These were workshop-built. Interesting, given that the barrel was overlong for a musket. Were these like her Zhangshou, built for sharpshooters?

Maryam put the two guns she had been carrying on the table and sat by Tristan, stealing his cup of water without even bothering with a greeting first. He let that pass without comment, looking amused, and a heartbeat later Angharad set down the other two muskets on the pile before joining Song’s side of the table.

Now was not the time to ask about these, but most definitely would.

“There were messages in front,” Angharad told her, reaching inside her pocket. “From our covenants, unless I am greatly mistaken. I took the liberty of bringing yours.”

She passed Song a folded paper sealed in wax, the hand-and-bolts of the Academy clearly visible.

“My thanks,” she said, and broke it open.

The contents were short and to the point, almost brusque. A time and a place – three in the afternoon, the OId Playhouse – as well as a dress code. She was to come in her regular uniform and armed. Song turned, cocking an eyebrow at Angharad.

“Maryam and I also received one,” the Pereduri said.

“Akelarre lessons will be in the chapterhouse, unsurprisingly,” Maryam contributed.

“I do not know where the training will take place for the Skiritai,” Angharad said, “but it is at the front gates of Scholomance we are summoned to. Fully armed.”

“The Old Playhouse for us, armed as well,” Song offered, then flicked a glance at Abrascal.

“I haven’t received summons,” he said. “Unless Maryam has mine?”

She shook her hand. The thief snorted.

“I suppose it would have been too easy for the Krypteia to just tell me what it wants,” Abrascal said. “I’ll have to find my own way without summons, I think.”

Song slowly nodded.

“I could ask other captains about it, should you fail to find a trail,” she offered.

He inclined his head in thanks. Good. It had been a concern he might be too proud to accept. Song’s attention returned to the cabal at large.

“We have investigated our funds and a variety of prices,” she said. “Meanwhile, word was sent to Captain Wen as to our choices of electives.”

A pause.

“Now we must agree on what will be bought and how we will divide the work of obtaining everything before we return to the cottage,” she said, eyeing the other three.

Already there had been a casualty: Angharad had preemptively become bored by the matter. She was feigning attention, but not very well. And while Maryam seemed attentive for now, Song suspected most of the interest would be withdrawn when it was established what her private funds consisted of. The Triglau was tight-lipped about her origins, but Song had noticed in her a tendency to expect she would be provided for most common in those born to means.

It was rather irritating that the only other soul at the table with any financial acumen was an avowed thief.  Well, perhaps Song could add a little something to keep the attention of the miscreants.

“After which we will be discussing this afternoon’s robbery,” Song casually said.

And fancy that, now she had their full attention and all it had taken was crime.

—

The hood did its work.

Maryam looked suspicious going around with it pulled down, but it still drew fewer stares than her skin had. Suspicious was not that uncommon, in a place like Tolomontera, and she found it a relief. Her time on the Dominion had let her forget the invisible weight following her everywhere – oh, sometimes there had been stares but were too exhausted or worried to take issue with her paleness. But here on Tolomontera, where blackcloaks patrolled and students wandered around, she could hardly turn a street corner without someone gawking.

Or glaring.

The smithy’s front shop – called Brillante, if the sign hung above the door was to be believed – was run by an older woman of Lierganen looks, gray-haired and heavyset. Tristan haggled with her in Antigua so fast and so peppered with jargon she could hardly follow, though it appeared to involve the price of a pair of iron pans leading to either the Thirteen Brigade living in the streets and dying of the plague or the old woman being divorced by her wife while their grandchildren were sold as slaves to pay gambling debts.

By the time Tristan paid both seemed pleased, and the old woman threw in a tin ladle to encourage them coming back. Maryam remained profoundly unsure whether or not they’d been gouged.

“The old bastard at the Petstik will rob you on anything that has iron in it,” the old woman warned them. “Izcalli can’t work anything but noble metals properly anyway, everyone knows that.”

“I will heed your advice, tia,” Tristan assured her.

She rolled her eyes at him.

“Out, you pest,” she said, shooing him out. “I’ll need to trick at least two fools to make up for your taking advantage of me.”

Maryam trailed after him, openly amused, as he put away the pans in the bag. Song had left them with a list, written in her neat looping handwriting, and by the time Tristan looked up she had found the next items.

“We need knives,” she told him. “At least two. Should we head back in?”

He shook his head.

“Let’s go see the old bastard at the Petstik,” Tristan mused. “Might be he cuts us a price if he hears what the fine ladies of the Brillante have been saying about him.”

“You sound like you enjoy this,” she noted.

“I have never spent so much coin in a single day,” he admitted. “It feels like a fever dream.”

Maryam hummed. Neither had she, but that was because she’d hardly ever had to pay for anything. Her father had fed and clothed her as a girl, sometimes bought her trinkets, and Mother’s warbands had shared everything. There was no spare coin there, or sometimes any coin at all.

“Best not get used to it,” she said. “Between the clothes, supplies and arms we are like as not to be thin on coin by the end of the month.”

The dark-haired man’s face tightened. He cared little for most of his belongings, she knew, but the loss of Yong’s pistol had stung. Like as not he would begin looking for where the Ninth might have stashed their possessions, which she wished him luck on. Maryam had learned to travel light and always keep what she could not afford to lose on her, but she’d liked her clothes. They were comfortable and fitted to her frame. The pair cut out of Regnant Avenue and through an alley, heading north towards where they’d seen the other smithy earlier.

“I won some coin off the Forty-Ninth,” Tristan idly said. “If you need anything that will not get a nod from Song, tell me.”

She squinted at him.

“Are you telling me,” Maryam said, “that we are going to be robbing these poor souls twice?”

She had been pleased to hear of the scheme, even more so for the way it visibly made Tredegar uncomfortable.

“It took only a few silvers,” Tristan easily replied. “We can call it reparations for trying to ambush me, if you like.”

She snorted.

“I will mention it should there be pressing need,” Maryam said. “Still, it is amusing that you and Tredegar would be the ones with coin to spare, out of the four of us.””

He cocked a questioning eyebrow.

“She got a pouch of gold from her uncle, along the saber and the rifles,” she explained.

And there her steps stuttered.

Maryam had not heard it laid out so plainly before. It had not truly sunk in, how the rest of them made do with what they could steal or scrabble for while Angharad Tredegar had been handed treasures and a pile of gold without so much as lifting a finger for it. Simply by virtue of who she was.

And Maryam had hardly even noticed, because the Malani had looked sad.

“Maryam?”

She looked down at her hands, found the fingers clenched into fists. She’d been had. Maryam had known better and still been had. That was how insidious they were. A hand on her arm dragged her out of her anger to find Tristan frowning at her.

“What happened?”

“She grew fragile looking at her new expensive saber, whining of the old one being a gift from her father,” Maryam bit out. “And like a fool, I bought it.”

Tredegar had been literally pocketing gold as it happened and still she’d fallen for it. The shame burned, enough she felt like walking away – only she did not know where they would be headed. The pair was standing by a condemned house, the door walled in with bricks but the front steps still standing, and Maryam had not been paying much attention to their path.

“Her family was murdered mere months ago,” he said. “I do not believe that grief feigned.”

“So we all have to pretend she does no wrong,” she harshly replied, “because she is grieving and polite and she means well?”

“Well-meaning doesn’t come into it,” Tristan said. “The nicest tick still sucks blood, Maryam. Tredegar’s an exceptional swordswoman, but she had the chance to become that only because her family squeezed the blood out of a hundred other families.”

He shrugged.

“There might have been talents greater than hers plowing the fields of Llanw Hall, cleaning her kitchen or washing her sheets. The world will never know, because she was born with the right surname and they were not.”

“But you like her,” Maryam accused.

“I have forgiven worse of people I needed less,” Tristan frankly replied. “I’ll not forget what she is, but what gain is there in pillorying her for it? It won’t take back the name or squeeze her back into her mother’s womb.”

You sound like my father, she thought. It was not a compliment. Mother might have been half-mad with blood and rage, at the end, but she had been right about everything. That they hadn’t listened to her was why Volcesta was now called Ifanje on maps and Malan’s ram-horn banner flew over her childhood home.

“That’s how they get away with it, Tristan,” she harshly said. “They come to you charming and generous, until their foot is on the door and then they begin squeezing you out. Small things, they ask, and you’re always talking with a reasonable man – it’s another Malani who wants to raise tariffs, who raided that town or seized that mine. You just need to meet them halfway, and isn’t the golden peace worth a small trifle?”

She leaned in.

“Then you take a step back, they take a step forward and before you know they’re sitting in your house,” Maryam said. “Eating your food, drinking your wine, until they do away with even that and call it their house.”

Gray eyes considered her, and she already knew how it would end. Mother had told them how it would end, that pack of kings grown fat on trinkets and trade, and they had turned on her for it. Vranasestra, they’d called her. Crow-sister, mouth of ill omens. Tristan was cleverer than they’d been, but-

“All right,” he said. “If you’re sure, we kill her.”

Maryam blinked, looking at his face for any trace of a lie.

“It will have to be poison,” Tristan continued. “Something slow acting, dosed over several days – we can blame the cottage for it, maybe plant something sinister-looking in her room and claim it was a hidden curse.”

She licked her lips.

“You are serious,” Maryam said.

He shrugged.

“You have yet to steer me wrong,” Tristan said. “If it is your honest belief she needs to go, she goes.”

Maryam swallowed. Either he meant every word or he was a much better liar than she had thought. She let herself consider it for a moment – once Tredegar was gone they would have to recruit a fourth, but it should not be impossible. Glassy eyes, stiff limbs. Worst come to worst they could grab someone from a team of spares as a temporary helper until they found a better fit. That full face gone gaunt, feverish. It would be easier to make peace with the Ninth and… Maryam bit her lip and cursed, looking away.

Much as she wanted to think only on the consequences, the outcomes, that was not where her mind kept leading her. It would be murder to kill Tredegar now. Simple murder. There was no getting around that.

Feeling lost, Maryam stumbled back. She caught herself before Tristan’s hand could grab her elbow, gently lowering her to sit on the edge of the stairs. Her limbs were shaking, weakness haunting her. He sat down by her, close without touching, and spoke not a word. Her voice was shaky as her fingers when it came out, feeling like it belonged to another woman.

“They hunted me, you know,” she said. “An entire company. Hounds and men chasing me for half a month through the wetlands.”

Her nails bit into her palm.

“They would have caught me, if I hadn’t run into Captain Totec,” she said. “They were soclose, just hours behind. If the rain hadn’t swept the ford and forced me to go south, if I’d not used the Craft where the blackcloaks could see me, I’d be…”

She swallowed.

“I don’t know,” Maryam said. “Dead or a slave. I’m only here because I got lucky, Tristan.”

She passed a hand through her hair.

“How do you forgive that?” she quietly asked. “Coming so close.”

“You don’t.”

She found him gazing ahead, eyes fixed on the road. The thief hesitated.

“After my mother died,” Tristan said, “I had to flee. Had a coterie after me. Just thugs, really, but they had the run of the neighborhood and the landlord an in with them. But they knew the streets well, all the hidey holes. They found me twice on the first day and I had to run through the night, getting not a wink of sleep.”

He smiled bitterly.

“Then I found this attic in an abandoned house behind a tanner,” Tristan said. “Perfect place – you could only get there by the tanner’s roof and the stink kept everyone away. Only when I crawled in there, I found there was already someone inside.”

Maryam watched, saw how his face tightened.

“A boy, sound asleep,” he said. “Just a year or two older than me but bigger. Stronger. I knew he’d beat me if it came to a fight.”

“It might not have come to that,” she said.

“No,” Tristan softly agreed. “He must have been on the run too, to end up there. Might be we could have helped each other, shared the place. There was enough room.”

He paused.

“Or maybe he would have turned me in to the coterie for a few coppers.”

She bit her lip, put himself in his boots. About to collapse, alone and afraid. She knew how that story ended.

“I couldn’t take the risk, Maryam,” Tristan said. “So I loosened one of the tiles from the roof and I beat him to death with it.”

The gray-eyed man kept staring ahead.

“He didn’t die from the first blow,” Tristan said, “and there was nothing clean about what followed. I slept, Maryam, with his corpse three feet away from me and blood under my fingernails.”

“And you regret it?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I was cornered, so I fought. There can be no sin in that. The boy I was, he made the only choice he could.”

His gaze moved to hers, holding it.

“But I’m not that boy anymore,” Tristan said. “I made sure of that, Maryam, so that one day I would have a better choice than trust or the tile.”

And she felt like lashing out, for what went unspoken behind the tale, only every time she felt like raising her hand or her voice at him she was stopped by a single, simple truth: if she asked him to, Tristan would murder Angharad Tredegar. No hesitation, no questions asked. He would just do it, was likely already considering how to.

Maryam was not sure how to get into a fight with that.

“I don’t trust her,” she said, hesitating. “I can’t. She’s… she doesn’t see anything wrong with what they do, the Malani. Not really. She dislikes the uglier parts, but she doesn’t care about the rest.”

“So don’t trust her,” Tristan shrugged.

She looked away.

“Song asked me to make nice with her.”

“I expect she would settle for fewer barbs,” he noted.

“So I’m to just let everything go,” Maryam bitterly replied.

He hummed, as if considering her words.

“You don’t act like you’re her equal, you know,” Tristan finally said.

Blue eyes turned to glare.

“Careful now.”

“You don’t,” he said. “You’re not fighting her, not really. When she steps on your toes you prick her, but that’s… resigned? It’s not a fight, it’s ceding the ground. If you called her impolite, faced her like an equal, she might bend. But you don’t. The barbs are funny, sure, and probably scratch an itch. But they don’t move the needle.”

“It is not my responsibility to teach Angharad Tredegar her wrongs,” Maryam flatly said.

“I don’t care if you do,” Tristan said. “I care that you act like there’s no winning an argument with her. Like I would – Manes, even Songwould – be on her side just because she’s polite and good at stabbing people. You’re not less than her, Maryam. You’re allowed to tell her to fuck off without needing to hide it.”

“You don’t,” she said.

“I don’t care enough about her opinions to be offended by them,” he honestly replied.

That startled a laugh out of her. They sat there in silence and Maryam closed her eyes, letting the tension bleed out of her. After a moment she leaned to the side, her head on his shoulder. He stiffened, for a moment, then loosened and even slipped an arm around her shoulder.

“I feel like a nap,” she muttered, “and we’ve barely even begun the day.”

“Ah, but I know what will you cheer you up,” Tristan said.

“What’s that?”

“Song made the mistake of leaving us in charge of buying the bedding, so we can buy Tredegar the very ugliest sheets in the shop and then watch her force herself to politely thank us for them later.”

He was right, Maryam mused. That did cheer her up.

—

Earlier that morning it had taken Song twenty minutes of interrogation to be satisfied, and to Abrascal’s honor he had not seemed irritated by the questions.

First came the acquisition of the necessary materials: a sponge, powder and a binding cloth. Nine coppers for the lot, it turned out. Song bound her breasts tightly, allowed Abrascal to fake stubble on her face with the sponge and powder then received Angharad’s help in putting up her hair in a Sanxing topknot: the knot unadorned with loose hair to the side. After that came the details.

Did they have a name?

Yes, that of Captain Tengfei Pan.

Did they have a brigade plague?

Yes, Tristan had seized one from his ambushers last night.

So the required essentials were in hand, leaving only questions. Song might now be able to pass as a man so long as she was careful with her voice, but what of her eyes? Their silver tint was distinctive, apt to unmask her.

“We saw the list they use when you took coin from our vault,” the thief pointed out. “It has names but no descriptions.”

True, but the silver of them remained recognizable and she had been seen there earlier today. Two silver-eyed Tianxi visiting the same day was sure to draw suspicion. How many of them could there be on Tolomontera?

“So we wait until the afternoon,” the thief said. “When the morning shift is gone and no one who saw you is still present.”

Feasible, she admitted. What, then, if the Forty-Ninth Brigade came to withdraw funds while she was present? It was unlikely but not impossible.

“The rest of us lay an ambush in the street,” the thief proposed. “We can fire one of those rifles their way to drive them off.”

What if they returned with allies, reinforcements?

“You should be able to hear a shot from inside,” the thief said. “If you do, hurry or retreat as you see fit.”

And on and on they had gone, until Song exhausted the worst outcomes her mind could muster and was yet satisfied with the Thirteenth Brigade’s ability to extract itself from the situation should the situation turn on them. It had been… oddly satisfying, planning what was in practice very much a crime. Not by the rules of Tolomontera, perhaps, but certainly by the world’s.

It was with a straight back and little uncertainty that ‘Captain Tengfei Pan’ entered the brigade vaults, ushered in by the guards.

Advancing unhurriedly past the antechamber and into the main hall, Song chose among the four desks the one opposite from the one she had last visited. The clerks inside were not the same as before, and neither were the guards in front, so it was likely unnecessary. She still did it.

“Plaque,” the bored young Lierganen at the desk instructed.

He had a half-eaten pastry on the corner of the desk and kept batting a fly off it. She provided the Forty-Ninth’s pilfered silver seal and received it back after a moment.

“How much is left in the vault?” Song asked, deepening her voice.

The clerk stuck out his tongue, paging through his ledger, then let out a little noise as he found the line he was looking for.

“Twelve ramas, two arboles and one radiz,” he replied.

Song kept her face calm, her heartbeat steady.

“I will withdraw everything,” she said.

The clerk did not answer. For a cold moment Song thought she had been caught, her voice or eyes caught on to, but it was not that.

Barely an inch above the pastry on the man’s desk, the fly was trapped as if the air around it had turned into amber. The Tianxi breathed in sharply, the sound of it deafening in the sudden and oppressive silence of the room. She pushed back her chair, rising to her feet, and turned to see a world gone still. One of the guards was adjusting his belt, a clerk had stopped while licking her thumb to turn a page.

“No,” Song cursed. “Already?”

It had only been four months, she’d thought she would have longer before… Her jaw clenched as she looked around. There was no one in the great hall but her and the frozen watchmen. Did she need to leave, pass through the gates and go outside into Tolomontera?

“You always miss what’s under your nose. The cost of turning it up so often.”

The voice was coming from besides the desk. And she could smell it now, the smell of wine and dirty clothes.

“You,” Song hissed, taking a step to the side.

And there he was.

The god was sprawled on the floor, back against the wood, and drinking from a gourd of plum wine as his pilgrim’s staff lay on the frozen clerk’s lap. His faded red robes were messy, tied only loosely at the waist, and he was barefoot. Infuriatingly enough he had sandals, but they hung off a rope tied to the staff and Song had never once seen him wear them. His robes and beard were stained with wine and meat juice, his hair matted and unkempt. Luren flashed a broad grin, then took a long drink from his gourd and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand  afterwards, sighting in satisfaction.

He was her god, the granter of her contract, and Song despised him from the bottom of her heart.

“Do you know this?” Luren asked.

Her fists clenched. Always he asked this and always the words were meaningless.

“I won’t,” Song bit out. “Because you are a profligate liar who invents his stories in the moment.”

“Lies are better than truth,” the god said. “Truth is lazy.”

She grit her teeth. To say this was to insult their very contract, since she had asked to – Song smoothed out the thought, the rising anger. He did it, she knew, to get a rise out of her. But she would not fall for it this time. Song had prepared herself, meditated on the matter. Her hand would remain on the chisel. The Tianxi forced herself into a formal bow.

“I thank you for your visit, teacher.”

There was a clap like thunder and Song flinched, eyes flicking up to see Luren had slapped his palm against the side of the desk.

“King Cathay once summoned me to his palace,” the god said. “He had great treasures but could not decide which was the greatest, so he called on the aid of this monk.”

King Cathay was a nothing-name, what old folk tales called the legendary king that had ruled before Cathay and given the land his name. There had been no such king, the figure as much a lie as the rest of the story.

“What would a monk know of treasures?” Song challenged.

Luren was openly pleased.

“What would you know of monks?” he asked.

She had a retort on the tip of her tongue – Song had read the entire six volumes of the Way of Ways purely to establish beyond argument that Luren was, in fact, a terrible monk – but she swallowed it. She could not let herself be drawn into that. The god delighted in pointless, circular arguments and would drag them both into a pit of futility if she let him. Song bowed again.

“I thank you for your insight, teacher,” she angrily lied.

This time she was ready for him to slap the desk when she took her eyes off him, pushing down the flinch at the thunderous sound.

“King Cathay presented me three treasures,” Luren told her. “The first was the purest, most luminous jade that ever was or will be. It had no match in Heaven or Earth and was capable of upending all the nations of men.”

The god did not sound disapproving of such upheaval.

“The second was a great war spear of death-steel, making one triumphant in all battles and capable of slaying gods like stray dogs,” Luren said. “One wielding it could conquer all the world, as he once had in his youth before he began making trouble for monks instead.”

Song twitched. In the old tales, King Cathay was never claimed to have conquered all of Vesper. It was not even a good lie.

“The third was King Cathay’s own wife, a friend of his childhood who knew his true soul and loved him truly despite his flaws and crown. That affection was true and could not be bought or swayed. He did not deserve her.”

If she could see his true soul, how could she not know the king was undeserving of her? Song’s fingers tightened.

“King Cathay sat across from this monk and smirked, for in his heart of hearts he played a trick. To his mind the greatest treasure was the crown set on his brow, for without it he was no longer king and possessed nothing at all.”

Song allowed herself a sliver of relief. They were soon to be done.

“So you chose the crown,” she said, helping the ending along.

The god laughed.

“Know this,” Luren said. “This monk slapped him across the face and said: there, I now hold the greatest treasure.”

Song twitched.

“Liar,” she said, finally unable to resist. “You would have been killed for that.”

“Yet here I am, so you are wrong,” the god happily said.

He took a swig from his jug, only he began laughing at the face she made halfway through the swallow and sprayed plum wine everywhere, staining his beard and clothes and the floor and…

“Would you stop-” she snarled.

No. Fuck. Again. Song breathed in, walked away with her hands on her head. She fought down the urge to strike at the wall. Every time. Every single time he got to her. It was like every detail about Luren was meant to drive her wild with anger – the sloppiness, the filth, the obvious lies and the nonsense lessons. Every iota of the god grated her sensibilities. She walked back, calmer but no less defeated for it.

“Thank you for your lesson, teacher,” she spoke through gritted teeth, bowing again.

“You learn nothing,” Luren dismissed. “Despite my many attempts.”

“You once told me to cut down trees until enlightenment followed,” she snarled back.

“And I notice you’ve stopped,” the god said, clicking his tongue disapprovingly.

Her finger clenched but no, he would not get her twice.

“What do you want from me?” Song asked.

“I thought it evident,” Luren said, squinting at her. “You should begin slapping kings.”

The drunken god eyed her with feigned worry.

“You were not this slow as a girl, Song.”

No, she had been worse. Fortunately, felling thirty-three trees with a dull handaxe at Luren’s sage instruction had cured her of it.

“You have told me your story,” she said. “Release me from this visitation.”

Dislocation, the common term was, but it was not the one Song had been raised to. Luren had brought her into himself, to torment her once more.

“Release yourself,” the god said.

“I cannot,” Song replied through gritted teeth. “That power is in your hands.”

“Because you leave it there,” Luren smiled.

Her fingers twitched, itching to punch that light out of his eyes, and in that very moment she understood. That was the point of his tale: King Cathay had the crown as his greatest treasure, but Luren had slapped him and so he possessed ‘a hand that can strike a king’. The greater treasure of the two.

So Song slapped the god, who took it with a thundering laugh.

The world around them began to crack, like glass fracturing in spiderwebs.

“See,” Luren said. “In your hands all along.”

“You are a liar,” Song said.

“Oh no,” the god grinned. “I’m much too lazy for that.”

Song’s fist clenched, and before she could reply-

“I will need you to sign for it,” the Lierganen clerk said. “And to see your plaque again.”

She was sitting in the chair again, freed of the visitation, and the watchman was frowning at her lack of answer. Song took in a shuddering breath, mastering herself enough to offer the silver seal again. And seeing the glint of it on light, she thought anew.

The Forty-Ninth would know they had been stolen from soon enough, she thought. They would ask questions of the watchmen, the patron seeing to it they received answers.

And since there was no hiding the silver of Song’s gaze, there would be no hiding the truth. The Forty-Ninth Brigade would only need ask around for a Tianxi with such eyes to know that who it was that had acted against them. Confrontation was inevitable.

And if the inevitable was on its way, why face it meekly?

“Apologies,” Song said. “I have changed my mind, I will not be taking everything.”

She paused.

“I have not thought to ask until now, but might I add something to the vault?”

The blackcloak clerk cocked an eyebrow.

“Only if it is no larger than a hand,” he said.

“It is not,” Song said.

He acceded carefully enough when she asked to borrow ink and paper. Minutes later, Song Ren walked out of the building leaving only two things in the vault of the Forty-Ninth Brigade.

The first was a single copper coin.

The second was a folded piece of paper bearing a short message: you may consider the truce offer withdrawn.