Maryam had faced no trouble getting nautical charts for the waters west of Port Allazei, the map she’d used when sailing to Rhodon Bay, so it hadn’t occurred to her that getting the same for the waters to the east might be difficult.
Yet when she requested those charts at the gatehouse, she had to go through several rounds of signed papers then swear an oath before witnesses not to circulate or copy the provided papers. Even then, she suspected that if the Thirteenth wasn’t being used as an outrider by Colonel Azocar obtaining those charts would have been the work of days and not a single long afternoon. She was somewhat puzzled as to the reason why until she mentioned it to Tristan over dinner.
“The west flank of the city is a death trap,” he told her, spearing boiled carrots with his fork. “Foreign spies have to either disembark close to the Nests or near the edge of the Fogweald. The only other option is beneath Floret Hill, which is basically feeding your people to hippogriffs. The east, though? There’s plenty of places there for a quiet drop off.”
“The Orrery makes it impossible to hide an approaching ship,” Maryam said. “It’s not the same out at sea as in a city, Tristan. There’s no cover.”
“The ship doesn’t need to come close to the island,” he said. “Just close enough that it can drop off a rowboat full of spies and expect they’ll make it to shore.”
Ah, Maryam thought. That made a twisted sort of sense. And if you were approaching on a rowboat, you definitely needed to have a look at the nautical charts. Otherwise you risked running into sharp reefs or strong currents, the quick death and the slow.
With the charts in hand she set to plotting a course around the eastern near-peninsula. The currents were stronger than those out west, harsher. It was why the seawall on much of the eastern coast of Allazei had collapsed while the same on the other side still stood. The sea had eaten away at the eastern shore of the city and left behind well-worn ruin. It was even worse on seventhdays, as the runoff water from the rain sometimes caused small whirlpools.
It’d be safest to give the coast a wide berth until they reached the height of the Kingsyard, the grand seaside estate where the rulers of the Kingdom of Sologuer had moved and held court after they outgrew the smaller palace on what was now Misery Square. Then Maryam could tack west, towards the New Canals and the fortress that sat aside their mouth.
The Sheba Bastion, it was called, and the newly opened water gate that would lead to the lake beneath Scholomance was supposedly on its east-facing side. It wouldn’t be difficult to find, at least. Entering it might be another story, especially if the water gate’s opening had created nasty currents in the narrow waters by the bastion.
Maryam trusted in her ship and crew to handle the challenge, but she would take no unnecessary risks. A first trip out there to have a closer look was only prudent, though first she made certain to sit down with the Orels and discuss it. They were relieved to hear there were no sightings of large sea beasts out in the water, less so to hear that the Thirteenth had caught sight of something in the underground lake.
“Is it true the ship will soon be armed?” Bolic asked.
“Song obtained a cannon from Colonel Azocar in exchange for taking Watch officers on our first,” Maryam said. “It is near-scrapped, however, and Izel is currently working on a more pressing issue.”
Noises of agreement. Izel was in good odor with the Orels, on account of both his geniality and more or less being a blacksmith – a respectable occupation, the way Izvoric usually saw it.
“Better a good lantern than a cannon none of us know how to shoot,” Koval the Elder agreed.
Something that would have to be remedied eventually, Maryam thought. The Thirteenth would learn to man one as well, but the crew would be the ones manning it most of the time.
“I could lend a hand on the cannon repairs,” Poltava offered.
“I’ll pass the offer along.”
She was, in truth, not entirely certain that Izel would be doing those himself. He did not like working with weapons. Mind you, getting someone else to do those repairs for us might be expensive enough that Song will push him to compromise. It had been one thing to pawn off Angharad on a Malani swordsmith for her saber repairs, it would be another to decline brigade work without a good reason for it.
The elder Koval approached her in private to request that his son should not be brought along when the Thirteenth sailed past the gate. Maryam was surprised he’d even asked.
“I had no intention of bringing him,” she assured him.
Koval cleared his throat.
“I have approached Captain Wen to make arrangements for him should I die,” he said. “I tell you now so it won’t come as a surprise should the worst come to pass.”
It was a good choice. Wen Duan was an asshole to the bone, but he also wasn’t the kind of man to spit on a last will for a laugh. He was a fine pick to leave those papers with, and she told Koval as much. He seemed oddly relieved.
They set out on the first trip early fifthday afternoon, leaving port with a light crew. The Orels, naturally, but of the Thirteenth only Song, Angharad and Maryam herself. Izel had disappeared into the Workshop to make his lantern, while Tristan was out there chasing Cao’s tail as if it’d personally slapped him across the face.
He’d requested so much in brigade funds to buy information that Song had been forced to refuse him, and Maryam suspected the only thing that had changed was that the coin had come from his pocket instead. Whatever he was after, he was leaving no stone unturned – and there was an odd tint to the urgency nowadays, as if it’d become personal instead of simply work to cover the back of the Unluckies.
The trip took an hour and a half, Maryam keeping a sedate pace so she wouldn’t miss anything of note. She had to keep close watch on their heading, given the fighting currents, but as always the Orrery made for a fine lighthouse to orient from. No wonder Sologuer had been a powerful maritime kingdom before Lucifer rolled it up: these must be the easiest waters to sail in all the Trebian Sea.
Once past the southeast near-peninsula where the hospital and the College headquarters stood, the city turned desolate. Worn, empty streets of collapsed buildings huddled past the polished rubble of the coast. Past them loomed the silhouettes of the Nettlewood’s towering trees, against which stood nestled the lights of Scraptown. Her eye was soon drawn to the Kingsyard, though, which even laid low was a sight to behold.
The estate’s sea wall was crumbled in parts, allowing saltwater pools that came and went with the tide, but much of grounds had been reclaimed by the once-tame gardens of the Kings of Sologuer. Towers stood consumed by pale blue flowers, trees tall as a dozen men burst through walls to reach for the sky and the eerie lights on the rooftops came as much from ghost wisps as they did ancient tiles reflecting the Orrery’s cast.
Hooks was upstairs in the nest, talking with Koval the Younger, but Maryam was not without company taking in the sights.
“Rumor is among the Skiritai that there is some manner of dragon lairing in there,” Angharad told her, leaning against the doorsill of the cabin as she pointed at the Kingsyard. “Old talk from the last time Scholomance was open.”
“If there ever was one, it must be long dead,” Maryam said. “We would have noticed a beast that size flying over the city.”
“Perhaps it is sleeping,” Angharad mused. “Should it wake, we might have the glory of slaying it!”
Maryam rolled her eyes. What was it with warriors and wanting to slay dragons? Half the boys in the Wintersworn had boasted to her they would one day be dragonslayers, and such beasts weren’t nearly as common back home. The only dragon-like creatures on the coastlands were the zmaj, water-dwelling lemures that came from a smok managing to feed enough to pupate into a properly draconic form, and they were very rare. Mostly because of warriors.
In olden days junak had often made their names by slaying such beasts - and their fortune by claiming the treasures the zmaj hoarded at the bottom of rivers and lakes.
“Or maybe there’s nothing there,” she drily replied. “Most dragon hunters I’ve met were merchants trying to pawn off carved whale bones.”
There was a snicker from past the open door, where Old Horvat had been scraping the railing. He must have stood close enough to overhear them.
“What is so amusing?” Maryam asked.
“You never saw the worst of it, princess,” Old Horvat said. “There was a time when whalers made better coin off whale bone than the oil. Half a decade before you were born, a true zmaj was slain near the Floodlands and after the tale spread it became a craze in courts across the land to obtain bones of the beast to display.”
He snorted.
“Going by the amount sold, that beast must have been made entirely of them.”
Maryam coughed into her hand. She would have liked to claim that Ghoran Khaimov was too cunning to fall for such a ploy, but she distinctly remembered her father owning an ornate cup whose rim was set with alleged zmaj teeth pointing down. He’d been quite proud of it.
Approaching the northern end of the Kingsyard spared her having to share that detail, Maryam slowly tacking west as her eye moved between water and chart. A large pool on the Kingsyard’s shore was dotted with shapes, a colony of honking seals with some sort of bladder bag on their head, but it was the shapes swimming in the skimmer’s wake that concerned her.
They were slender enough to be dolphins, but this corner of the Trebian Sea had a breed of lemure called merswine. Those pretended to be dolphins, only to snatch and drown sailors who’d leaned overboard to greet them.
She shouted through the door a reminder not to get too close and pushed the lever out of Maintain into Rise, the aether engine purring beneath her feet. Picking up speed saw the creatures left behind after a few minutes – the skimmer was faster than them, and did not tire. The last of them fell off just in time for Maryam to turn her gaze on the Sheba Bastion as the fortress began to loom over them.
It was no pretty sight: the ancient granite walls raised atop a rocky islet promontory were all hard angles, and the square towers behind them were no gentler to the eye.
“It’s a cleverly made fortress,” Orel Bolic said.
Angharad had gone to check on the drogues, at her request, and the former pirate had come to replace her. To her raised eyebrow: Bolic had been wary of her since she publicly cast aside thought of deserting. He had not exactly avoided her, but he had maintained a distance. Hooks thought it was because he was afraid that they’d turn him in to the Watch, but Maryam thought him cleverer than that.
He’d been watching to see where the dice were landing, and now that he believed he knew the numbers he was moving again.
“Is it?” Maryam skeptically asked. “It looks like a rough rectangle with towers slapped on.”
She’d not expected the rounded walls of a fortress built in the age of cannonry – records had the Bastion built in late Steel, back when the only firearms around had been Tianxi firelances – but even by older standards it seemed oddly built to her. It was quite long, which was not usually preferred with forts as that meant it took more men to defend the walls.
“See where the canals are filled?” Bolic said, pointing there. “It is where bridges collapsed. And the pile of rubble is too large to have been from a single one, it must be at least two.”
“That’s even worse,” Maryam said. “The canal is their moat. Putting stone bridges on it is just asking for the gatehouse to get stormed.”
“For a land fort, that is true,” he said. “But this bastion was largely meant to prevent enemy ships sailing into the canals. Its second purpose was not martial: the fortress sat aside the bridges connecting the East Gates to the rest of the city: it was tollbooth.”
She cocked her head to the side, following his pointed finger, and tried to picture it in her mind’s eye. It sounded... feasible. The bastion had clearly been built at the same time as the New Canals, which had cut through the length of the city to connect the eastern waters out here to Rhodon Bay out west. The better roads by the East Gates implied most land traffic had come through there, though, so it made sense to double up the protection the New Canal needed with a lucrative tollbooth. Her father’s wealth had been built on the tolls for the high road, a kingdom could be held up by such incomes if it stood in the right place.
“Let’s hope they don’t charge us for passage, then,” Maryam said.
Bolic eyed her, as if gauging her mood, then smiled and withdrew. Not too far, though, as was only sensible. If she had to go on deck to trace Signs, it was he who was charged to take the wheel.
They didn’t sail too close to the bastion, but close enough that even without a longview they were able to look at the open gate and the waters around it. The waters of the two canals known as the New Canals, one north of the bastion and the other to the south, still ran until about halfway down the length of the fortress. The bridges there had collapsed, as Bolic pointed out to her, and debris accumulated in the year since. It closed off the canals and explained why when those same New Canals ran in front of the entrance of Scholomance they were bone dry.
Maryam wouldn’t want to dock against that shore of rubble, it would be a mess of sharp rocks and shallows, but the waters in front of the Sheba Bastion seemed largely untroubled. The Old Canals had some very clever knife gate work in them, able to raise or lower the level of different sections, but this one was a plain water-gate: it went up and allowed entry into some sort of cavern dug into the promontory on which the Sheba Bastion had been built.
There was almost no current, which had Maryam frowning. A waterway headed down should have visible pull, but did not. There’ll be an obstacle inside. She had Bolic send for Song.
“We’ll need more guns,” she told Song. “My guess is we’ll need to open a second water gate inside before we can move towards Scholomance, and there’s no telling what will be waiting for us in the cave.”
Song frowned.
“You believe Scholomance will have something waiting for us?”
“Simpler than that: a wet cave shielded from the Orrery lights will have something living it,” Maryam replied. “Somehow I doubt it’s going to be friendly.”
Song’s lips thinned.
“After the Trench, few are eager to venture out with us,” she admitted.
Maryam passed a tired hand through her hair. Yeah, that was something of a problem. Neither the Fourth nor the Eleventh seemed to be blaming the Thirteenth for their casualties in the delve, but Imani Langa at least had made it very clear that they wouldn’t heading out together again. Which Maryam wouldn’t throw stones over: Langa might be a backstabbing witch, but she was also a captain who’d lost two cabalists in the span of a few months. She needed to slow down or the Eleventh was done.
Tupoc, well, Tupoc actually seemed like he was game to press on but Maryam’s read on the Fourth was that if he did they would balk. A warband captain like Tupoc only stayed in charge so long as he was scarier than what he led his warriors into, and that was a delicate balance to maintain.
“Our reputation is in an odd place,” she muttered.
The Unluckies had hammered open the deadlock in the delve after having been key to the same in the hunt, which had put their names on everyone’s lips again. But this time talk was also lingering on how everyone who worked with them seemed to end up with casualties while they ended up fine.
There was even a story going around that this was Tristan’s work, that his goddess stole the luck of others to protect the Thirteenth. That one had been just a little too pointed, tipping off that someone was taking a swing at their reputation.
“While I’ve not been able to find out who began to tar us,” Song began.
“Lahiri,” Maryam flatly interrupted. “It’ll be Lahiri, we pissed him off and he needs to explain why he didn’t beat us.”
“A fine theory that we have absolutely no evidence to support,” Song said. “But, as I was saying, regardless of who began the talk it is clear that Colonel Cao is actively fanning the flame. It is an attempt to squeeze us out of the delve with brutal logistics.”
In other words, since the Unluckies had the skimmer to lead in the next part of the delve and enough backing from Azocar that they couldn’t be outright shut down the colonel was trying to knock them out of the race by making it so they simply wouldn’t have the guns to keep pushing. The way Cao saw it, either the Thirteenth would have to hold back and get passed by ‘proper’ delvers or they’d get reckless and take losses. Either one was a win for her.
“We’re not doing the delve game anymore,” Maryam reminded her captain. “We can call on people outside of those ranks if we want to.”
“The roster of the willing is not nearly as large as you might think,” Song sighed. “But I will see what I can do.”
--
Maryam woke early, but she could hardly complain when everyone else did too.
It was necessary not only to install Izel’s lantern on the skimmer, but to supervise that Glare light’s transportation from the Workshop to the docks. They’d explored bringing the ship closer to the tinker workshops instead, but Maryam had found the coast there either too rough, too much a cliff or simply blocked by the seawall. Song had made inquiries and they couldn’t blow up a chunk of wall to make room.
Commander Bouare had ‘expressed some unease’ at them asking the question in the first place.
No, instead they rose early to carry the device to port by cart – all of them save for Song, who had other business. It didn’t look like much, a bit like a curved and segmented light pole made of iron and bronze. From the end of the curve hung a conical lantern that had a strange wrought iron canister screwed on its bottom. Izel was carrying two more of these, and was all too happy to explain what they did when asked even a lukewarm question about it.
“The bottom of the lantern contains a trapped piece of Glare, but it would not burn bright enough on its own,” he said. “The coke gas empowers it, and the rate of the release can be adjusted depending on our needs. It should buy us about two hours per canister.”
“I’m impressed you managed to build something this large on the budget Song gave you,” Maryam admitted.
“Most of this is scrap metal,” Izel said. “It’s why I had to make the pole segmented, I could not get reliable pieces of a sufficient size. I spent almost as much time sifting through the latest Scrapyard carts as I did in the workshop.”
“I’m no tinker, but it looks good,” Maryam shrugged. “I look forward to seeing it burn.”
She’d expected it would take a while to install, but that had been underestimating Izel. He’d spent more time maintaining the ship than she had, and Maryam watched with an openly impressed look on her face as he fitted the base of the pole to the empty turret in less than ten minutes with only a half-awake Tristan for help.
The tinker even invited Angharad to kick the pole as hard she could to test the stability, which after some hesitation she did. The lantern swung back and forth on its hook but held strong, the pole bending like a reed instead of breaking. Maryam gave the machine decent odds of staying in place even if she rammed the skimmer into a wall.
They finished just in time for the help Song to arrive, and not alone.
“Morning, Thirteenth!” Shalini Goel called out, waving cheerfully.
Zenzele, standing by her, waved more mutedly. Rong Ma did not, and a calm-faced Ferranda Villazur speaking quietly with Song only spared them a nod. A glance at Angharad revealed open surprise, so this wasn’t her doing. Song made a deal with Ferranda. Part of it would be the captain bribing Shalini and Zenzele after her missteps there, but there would be more to it. Villazur wouldn’t have involved the Thirty-First without an angle.
Maryam stepped forward to welcome their new comrades onto the ship, catching Song’s arm to hold her back. She lowered her voice.
“What did it cost us?”
“Less than I feared,” Song said, lips thin. “More than I would like. Soon it will be our turn to stick our neck out for them.”
“Ominous,” Hooks commented, popping her head out of Maryam’s shoulder just to comment.
Song flicked her nose, which was met with a squawk of outrage even though it went through her,
“Maryam,” her sister protested. “Do something!”
“You’re right, I should,” Maryam agreed, and also flicked her nose.
She shared a look of understanding with Song. It was not bullying if you did it to a younger sister.
And though Song’s answer had been ominous, it wasn’t a problem for today. The pair approaching was: the two officers from the garrison had been waiting nearby and came to board when it was clear everyone was there. A round of introductions ensued with herself and the captains, Maryam learning that though both were navigators she only needed to care about one of them – Lieutenant Gulab, a stringy Someshwari would was also a pilot and would be shadowing her. Gulab was polite, but clearly wary of this little jaunt of theirs.
“I would stay in the captain’s cabin with you, if there is no issue,” Lieutenant Gulab said.
“There isn’t,” Maryam said, “so long as you stay out of our way.”
The word our got an uncomprehending look, at least until Hooks popped her head out of the top of Maryam’s skull and gave a ghoulish grin. The lieutenant flinched, muttering something that sounded like a prayer, and nodded almost angrily as to compensate for the flinching. Maryam left her to it: she had a ship to sail.
They made it back east in a little under half the time it had taken yesterday, as this time she felt confident enough in those waters to raise their speed by the better part of ten knots. There were fewer creatures out this early, though the colony of seals woke at the sight of them and began a cacophony of honked challenges. It was not until the water gate that things took a turn.
There were eddies in the water, a forming whirlpool just to the left of the gate. She clicked her tongue at the sight. Normally this would be no issue, but given that she had no idea what waited inside the Sheba Bastion past that water gate she’d have to slow the skimmer or risk running into something. Which was a problem because it meant that almost-whirlpool might have the strength to pull them off course. She closed her eyes a moment, reciting the tables that Professor Sibiya had taught them.
“I need you to check our speed,” she told her sister. “We’ll have to thread the needle.”
“I’ll tell the Orels to prepare the drogues just in case,” Hooks said, nodding before she disappeared.
They went back and forth, refining the momentum of the skimmer until they’d reached the very edge of what Maryam thought would get them through. She adjusted their course, breathed out and guided them into the mouth of the gate. Maryam’s hand gripped the wheel hard enough to make her knuckles creak. The ship swayed like a drunken man, Izel’s freshly lit lantern gently swinging back and forth, but once they’d passed the edge of the whirlpool the skimmer smoothly cut through the water.
They slid through the open water gate, the yawning dark, and Maryam kept the engine moving at a crawl on Maintain. Only the faintest flicker of power kept them going as the lantern-glow licked at their surroundings, revealing a broad waterway with a wharf on the right. It kept going, deep into the belly of the bastion.
The skimmer cut forward in near-silence and Maryam split her attention between the dark ahead and the wharf to the side. It was roughly hewn stone, and empty: dust, filth and puddles of wet were scattered across its length. The mooring stones were damaged, as if gnawed away at, not that Maryam was near fool enough to tie up her ship in a place like this. There was a shuffle on the deck.
“Shit,” Shalini hissed, low voice. “Monsters on the ceiling.”
There was a tremor of activity – and as agreed the Orels immediately ducked belowdecks save for Bolic – but there was a reason that the gunslinger had kept her voice low. Hanging off the ceiling like fruits from a tree were a dozen creatures wrapped in their own leathery wings. They looked like bats, if such things grew to be the size of horses, but the head was all too large and almost canine.
Izel hastily lowered the gas intake on his lantern, pulling back the glow until it only showed the faintest edge of the creatures’ heads, and they all waited in tense silence as the skimmer passed below the creatures.
Either sleeping or dead, the monsters did not stir.
That was the deck crew’s problem, though, while Maryam’s was different: with the lantern light lessened, she could barely see ahead so she had to send out her sister to feel out the space. And a good thing she did, for within a minute she received panic and a half-clear sense of wall ahead. She immediately killed the engine, slamming down the lever.
“Throw the drogues over the stern,” she called out. “Now.”
Thank the gods the Thirteenth had been taught what those words meant, because without the Orels up here they were short on sailors. Tristana and Angharad got to it after a beat, tossing the tied-up stones off the back of the skimmer one after another. It slowed the ship to a crawl just twenty feet shy of the end of the canal, the lantern revealing that ahead of them stood another water gate – and this one was closed.
That wasn’t even the real problem, a word best reserved for the half-sunk barge that had crashed against the gate. A mess of rotten wood and algae, it looked like it’d been nailed into the damn thing. An order to Angharad and Tristan had the drogues roped back up, though this time with help from other hands. A good thing, they were a lot easier to throw than pull out.
“Get the gangway out,” Song called out. “We’re not going anywhere until that gate is open.”
And maybe not even then, Maryam thought. That ship was trouble. To their right, on the wharf, there was a broad tunnel with sparse stairs heading up to the bastion proper. More importantly, by the entrance of that tunnel was a gear room that oversaw the gate. It was, hopefully, where the lever to raise and lower it would be.
Maryam did not volunteer to join the party that set out, though she did step out of the cabin to be joined by Hooks. Together they sifted through the local aether, looking for dangers.
“This place is dead,” Hooks opined. “Even those bat creatures back there hardly put out anything in the aether. If we hadn’t seen them, I’m not sure we would have picked up on their presence.”
“They might be wintering,” Maryam said. “Or, what’s the teratology term again...”
“Episone,” Zenzele provided, joining them on the deck. “Undergoing episone, to be precise.”
Right, from the Trebian cant roots of ‘surviving peril’ and ‘sleep’. It was the word for when creatures, starved of prey to feed on and unable to move elsewhere, put themselves into a sort of coma where they sustained themselves partly on Gloam. The bet was that their environment would have filled up by the time they emerged from episone. Surviving years like this was not uncommon, and some breeds could manage it for over a decade.
“Thanks,” Maryam replied. “Anyhow, this waterway is unusually bare. I’m guessing whatever lies on the other side of that gate chased off everything else.”
“A sobering thought,” Zenzele said. “Though I find it odd that Scholomance would open the outer gate of this bastion but not the inner. How did it pass the intermediate step?”
That... was a good question, actually. Izel was out with the shore crew, but there was another tinker at hand. Maryam whisper-shouted for Rong Ma, who looked up from where they’d been kneeling to study Izel’s lantern.
“I need your eyes,” Maryam told them. “Come.”
Together they moved to the prow of the ship, the closest look they could get to the gate– and to the barge crashed into it. Zenzele provided a lantern on a pole as they looked closer.
“So?”
“That ship has been a wreck for decades,” Rong Ma slowly said, “but it only recently crashed into the gate. Some of those breaks are very recent, days at most.”
She cursed.
“Maryam?” Zenzele asked, sounding concerned.
“You were right,” she told him. “Scholomance shouldn’t have been able to open only the first water gate, we won full entry by beating the Trench. And it did open the gate here, enough that the current drew in this wreck.”
She grimaced.
“Which means something else closed the gate afterwards.”
A beat.
“Someone needs to tell the shore crew,” Zenzele said.
“That would be wise,” she tightly agreed. “Ma, I need you to-”
“Maryam.”
Her head whipped to where her sister was pointing. Which was, unsettlingly, at the prow of the ship. A woman stood there, a dark-haired beauty in a ragged dress. Her eyes were red, as if she had just been weeping. She was the most beautiful thing Maryam had ever seen, and she must be protected. She was being harmed, and- and there was a spike of cold through the signifier’s mind as her sister slammed her palm against the veil. Focus, Hooks shouted.
“Help,” the woman said. “Help me, please-”
Maryam winced, because that last word had rippled out like a thunderclap. For a moment she thought she glimpsed a pale rope around the woman’s feet, descending into the water, but then the stranger was ripped into the water. There was a faint splash and she was left to blink in astonishment.
Then the first shriek came from behind them as the bats began to wake.
“Fuck me,” she snarled. “GUNS OUT, RAISE THE LIGHTS! And someone get that gate open or we’re all dead!”
The glass of her cabin was a pleasant luxury, most of the time, but at the moment it felt all too breakable. Instead of retiring there she stayed on deck and pulled her pistol. The creatures didn’t rush at them, which was the only reason they still had a chance to get out of this alive. Izel’s now-flared light revealed they were groggy, and seemed to struggle getting their bearings: the shrieks seemed to be as much about that as expressing hunger and dismay.
The first one swooped down within a minute, a blur of claws and teeth and too-large eyes. Tristan fired but his shot went wide, lost in the dark, only for Zenzele to nail it in the chest. Not that it cared, beyond shrieking in pain. It still aborted its swoop, landing on the deck like a giant bird, and Maryam traced a Gust even as Hooks fed her carded Gloam. Between the two of them, they were faster on the draw with Thalassics than even Alejandra.
A current of black, oily darkness shot out like a waterspout and knocked the bat off the deck, pushing it into the water – where it fell with a loud splash and a scream. The beat of wings grew louder, only drowned out for a moment when Rong Ma tossed some sort of rounded sphere and it blew with bright light. We can’t hold them, she thought. Maybe not even if the shore party comes back. And even if they did, it wouldn’t be without casualties.
Her gaze was drawn back by loud clinking sounds, a chain ripping free of the water and rising as the water gate began to slowly open. Fucking finally. Maryam blindly fired her pistol at the beat of wings before ducking into the cabin, sparing only a moment to shout.
“THE SHIP STARTS. RUN!”
Elbowing aside Lieutenant Gulab – who, to her honor, had gone pale but was not cowering - she seized the wheel and adjusted the course to angle away from the wharf. The opening gate half-swallowed the shipwreck, drawing it further in, but while large chunks fell off and disappeared into the dark the rest was sucked in squarely under the open gate, where it got stuck. Shrieks above. A glance to the side told her that the shore party was running back to the ship.
This had been as long as she could spare.
Maryam slammed the lever up, feeling the engine thrum below. It stuttered once from the abrupt work demanded of it, but after that skipped beat smoothly rose to the task. Shots cracked out from the deck, a shriek of pain tearing through the air, and the skimmer began to edge forward. She flicked a glance at the wall at the end of the canal, then at the gangway still extending out to the wharf. The last of the shore crew were running along the shore, climbing onto it one after another.
And while the dark had swallowed half the shipwreck, the other half was still very much in the middle of the open gate.
“BRACE FOR IMPACT,” Maryam shouted, and despite herself felt a shiver of thrill.
Only two left on the wharf, but they were running out of room. Izel almost fell off the gangway but he was dragged up by Ferranda while Angharad kept running along the side of the wharf even as the wall approached and... Maryam needed to look ahead, at the rapidly approaching collision, but her eye remained on Angharad’s nimble form leaping onto the gangway a heartbeat before its end hit the wall, crumpling with a horrid crunching sound, and throwing herself at the side of the ship to barely grab on.
Izel was there to hoist her up, Maryam looking ahead just in time for the prow of her skimmer to glint as it tore into shipwreck.
There was a burst of noise, a deafening crack and splinters flew everywhere as wet reeds splashed onto the front of the cabin. Maryam steered her ship into the dark, feeling the waters give, and cut through the old barge like a knife through butter. She heard a wild, gleeful laugh and only realized it was hers when her face began to ache from the grin. Behind them the bats shrieked, flapping away and swooping, but even as her ship sped down the dark canal they drew back.
Whatever was down here, they were more afraid of it than they were hungry.
--
The waters broadened again after short minute’s span.
The skimmer almost sang as it cut into the surface, but the sensation of moving slowly disappeared. The place where they ended up must have been the underground lake, or somewhere leading to it, but it was impossible to tell. All that they could see was endless dark in every direction, while their small bubble of burning light dragged itself across water so still and deep it looked like a black mirror.
Maryam eased off the engine, down to a slower burn and then on Maintain, but it felt as if they were no longer moving. They were, though. It was just that the enormity of where they were made it seem as if even a mile was half a step. She checked her compass, eyebrows raising at what she found.
“Bolic,” she called out. “You have the wheel.”
She slapped his back on the way out and joined Song at the front of the skimmer, standing by the prow. Her captain’s jaw was locked tight.
“You can’t see ahead, can you?” Maryam quietly asked.
“The Gloam grows too thick,” Song said. “It’s like looking at smoke.”
Maryam pulled her cloak tighter. The air was cool, down here, but... stale, in a way. It had none of the salt from above and tasted strangely empty against the roof of her mouth.
“We’re on the lake now,” she said. “What Tristan called the god’s cradle.”
“Will you be able to bring us back up through the same waterway?” Song asked.
Maryam glanced back. The sole break in the darkness that’d swallowed them was a single star in the distance: the trickle of light from above that was the mouth of the water gate they’d come through.
“The skimmer will be fine,” she said. “Galleasses will be able to do it too, with some sweat. I would not take a full sailing ship down here, though.”
The cave upstairs wouldn’t have accommodated a carrack anyway, much less a galleon. The ceiling was too low. Whoever had carved this had relied on galleys and barges, not sails.
“Then the path is usable and our charge is to find an anchorage,” Song said. “Preferably the shore at the end of the Trench.”
“That might be trickier than anticipated,” Maryam warned.
She pulled out the compass she’d brought with her. Song leaned it to find the same thing she had: the lodestone needle was moving around wildly, as if it could not tell which way was north. Song lowered her voice.
“What are the odds we will get lost down here?”
“Very low, so long as the water gate doesn’t close,” Maryam said. “If we’re to advise Azocar to do anything, it should be seizing that cave dock and keeping a tight lid on the gate levers.”
Her captain nodded.
“Is there a point to taking another heading?” Song asked. “So long as we cannot be sure what way we are actually going...”
“It’s wasted effort,” Maryam agreed. “Better to try and find out the limits of this place, at least for a first trip. Izel’s lantern still has around four hours of burn, so I’d suggest an hour and a half of sailing forward before we turn back.”
Song flicked a glance behind them, and Maryam did not need to check to know at whom. Prudent as that suggested course was, Tristan was getting less patient by the day. Song’s face hardened.
“Then that is what we will do,” the silver-eyed captain said. “We know too little of this place to take risks.”
Song left her to the prow after that, moving to see to the crew, and Maryam breathed in deep of the hollow air. Her sister stepped out of dark, hand on the railing as they looked out into the nothing together. Breath in, breath out. She could almost feel the tide pulsing in unison with the blood in her veins, as if melding with her heart.
“There’s something about this place, isn’t it?” Hooks whispered.
She nodded.
“The Gloam here,” Maryam said. “It’s not like the Abbey, it’s not placid exactly but...”
“It’s not wild either,” Hooks finished. “It feels not thick but heavy, maybe?”
Heavy was the right word for it, Maryam thought. Like they could still move it but they would have to exert themselves. They ran their nav down it like a finger trailing the water, barely finding purchase unless they pushed.
“Tristan was right, this is no simple lake,” Maryam said. “It’s a place of power.”
“A god dreamt of their name here,” Hooks said. “There’s still traces of it.”
Her sister hesitated.
“I think I could use them.”
“Use them?” Maryam frowned.
“To make a name of my own,” she said. “Another than the one you gave me.”
One that did not put her in danger just by being spoken. There were entities out there that could twist a creature through knowledge of their name, and Navigators were the least of them.
“Are you sure?” Maryam asked. “Choosing a name to go by for strangers is one thing. What you’re talking about would...”
She bit at her lip. There were Craft tales about entities with a name to call by and a true name to bind them, but they were ancient spirits and gods. She wasn’t sure what this might do to Hooks, who would be much more fragile, or for that matter to her – who was bound to her sister, soul to soul.
“I’m tired of being just a Khaimov, or your sister,” Hooks murmured. “And going by a name that isn’t really mine, I think it would... erode me, slowly but surely. Make it harder to grow into myself.”
So she wanted to put on a new name like a mask, one that people could call her by without knowing the kernel at the heart of her.
“We’d need to find where the god woke,” Maryam finally said.
Hooks’s shoulders untensed at the lack of refusal, of dismissal.
“I don’t think we have a choice in heading there,” Hooks said. “There’s something at the heart of this darkness and it’s waiting for us.”
So there was, Maryam thought. She could sense it just like her sister did, the... attention. Something was waiting, watching.
The same thing that had drawn the bats to them upstairs to make them flee into these very waters.
They stayed out here a little longer, Izel’s lantern shining at the back, until Maryam stretched out with a groan. She had best take the wheel back. She pushed off the railing only for her step to stutter as her sister slipped into her and woke her dead eye. Dimly, they could make out a shape in the distance. An island, Maryam thought at first, but it was no natural thing.
It was an inclined half sphere with rivets along the rim, and it must be large as a palace for the silhouette to be visible from so far. And there was something half-submerged by the base, the top of another half-sphere with the hollow facing the opposite way. But unlike the other, which stood out of the water, this one had mostly disappeared into the deep. A mold, Maryam thought. This is a mold.
And halfway between it and the skimmer was a pale silhouette, a woman in a ragged dress. She was above the water as if standing on it. This time, though, Maryam was ready for her. She felt the ripple in the aether, pushed back against it. Kept the sudden love and need to protect this lure out of her head.
“Monster,” she shouted. “It aims at your minds, do not let it!”
Shouting, but there was worse: her nav felt a burst of movement through the aether, almost like someone had just slapped the surface of the Sea of Shapes. An unseen wave rippled out, then another as the creature savagely attacked the aether again. Which Maryam would not have cared about – only Navigators would be affected – if there’d not been a very physical consequences to those waves: currents of Gloam, broad but strong, were beginning to splash about.
More with every blow, until even the naked eye could see the waves of darkness around them that split on the pale light cast by Izel’s lantern. For now, anyway. The light would give before the dark did.
The monster below was whipping up a Gloam storm, she realized in horror. Not a true one, those too large and powerful to be the work of any creature, but a tempest in a bottle to drown them with. The currents in the dark grew ever more riotous even as the ship began pitching from side to side. The waves grew taller and harsher even as the Gloam whipped out in streaks.
“Bolic, get us back to the gate,” she shouted.
Maryam would rather have had her hand on the wheel, but she was a Navigator and there was Navigator’s work about.
She stepped out onto the deck, her sister riding her still, and they breathed out. The heavy currents in the air were curving, but Maryam had trained for greater storms than this. They went to the very end of the prow, standing straight, and raised a hand.
It pulled down a strand of Gloam, like they’d been taught, and they began the Stilling.
A master of their craft could form a sphere of absence in the storm with nothing more than will and control, but that took decades to master. To grow into. Stilling, though? Stilling could be learned young, it was purely a matter of skill.
They did not tuck away the strand from the rest, that wouldn’t do anything. You couldn’t stop waves by emptying the sea one bucket at a time. No, instead what they did was spin up the strand, send it in a circle around the ship. And they kept pulling, kept spinning, shaping the storm slowly but surely. Taking the monster’s work and weaving it into a whirling ring of Gloam around the ship, letting the weight of the spinning Gloam draw ever more of it into the spin.
Soon enough they were not weavers but a shuttle feeding ever more string into the ring, letting the current itself curve the Gloam for them.
She could feel the monster hammering at the current, trying to disrupt it, but it didn’t control Gloam. Not like they did. All it could do was stir it up, like someone shaking the insides of a cauldron. It couldn’t shape it, just make it move through brute force, and that wouldn’t be enough. The current of Gloam fed itself, fed from itself, until the Khaimovs had woven around the skimmer a whirling ring that shrugged off the attempts from the monster to hammer into it.
And when it was at its peak, when it was quick and strong and surprisingly malleable, all Maryam had to do was ease a strand off that ring and send it up. She let the spin feed more and more of the Gloam into that escapement, that swelling pillar she sent up in the sky, until there was not a drop left and the spike of darkness tearing towards firmament reached its apex and began to fade.
It left behind only the silent calm of nothingness as the Stilling ended.
Maryam gasped out, skin feverish, and fell to her knees. That had been... brutal. Tristan helped her up, having approached without her ever noticing.
“It won’t be able to manage that again,” Maryam rasped out. “We should-”
“Gods,” Tristan whispered.
Her head whipped the way he was looking, and the sinking feeling in her stomach was an echo to his word. A head was cresting the water behind the ship, one almost as large as the skimmer itself: it was almost boar-like in shape, but elongated. The skin was hairless like a whale’s and the snout revealed a few fangs along with a serpent’s forked tongue. The monster rose, kept rising, and kept rising until its massive body was revealed. It had hair-like tentacles going down its back, hundreds of them, with a handful bearing human silhouettes at the end like deranged puppets.
“Ketos,” Maryam got out. “That’s a ketos.”
“This isn’t even saltwater!” Tristan complained. “They’re sea creatures!”
They fled. Bolic didn’t need to be told to have the engine burning as the skimmer made for the distant gate, but the ketos chased them. Gods, it was not quick but it was so large that it might as well be. With every pull forward it sent out waves that had the skimmer swaying back and forth, slowing it down, and Maryam realized with horror that it was gaining on them.
Half the crew went to the stern of the ship, firing every musket and rifle at hand, but even with the closed distance the ketos failed to acknowledged the hits. It was like it hadn’t even noticed them. Song got a shot in his eye with her rifle, and besides blinking that lidless eye the creature gave no sign of pain. Izel threw a grenade, but it bounced off the snout and fell into the deep – it blew just before hitting the water, but the searing heat and light failed to give it pause.
“Nothing short of a cannon is going to do more than scratch it,” Tristan clinically noted.
“A cannon, or me,” Maryam said.
He turned a worried look on her.
“You already drew deep today.”
“I’m not at risk of burning out yet,” she said. “And even if I was, I’d rather that than be devoured.”
Or added to the collection of puppets on its back, if her suspicion about their origins were true. They didn’t bother with anything fancy when they got to the back of the ship. The two of them formed as large a spinning arrow as they could and slammed it at the creature’s nose. The Gloam bit into the hide, finally getting to the flesh beneath, and the ketos let out a breath that was louder than a scream – mist and wet sprayed out like a geyser, covering them all.
By the time it’d dispersed the monster was sinking into the water, but Maryam was not fooled. It’s just given up on chasing from the surface.
“Sister?”
“On it,” Hooks said, and dove into the floor.
Maryam hurried to the cabin, elbowing Bolic aside just as her sister traced thoughts and fear against the veil. She immediately banked hard to the right, swerving the ship just as the mouth snapped out of the water – the ketos lunged out from the left, screams erupting from the back as it passed behind the ship and landed in a splash of massive waves. But the skimmer, thanks the fucking gods, was faster than the waves.
They outran them even as Maryam course-corrected towards their guiding star, the gate light in the distance. The ketos stayed on the surface, voicing its displeasure through the screams of a dozen different tormented puppets. Gods, the wailing. And still Maryam let out a breath of relief, because it wouldn’t bother to voice its spite if it still intended to chase.
Now all they needed to do was get past the bats again, to inform their superiors there might be a slight wrinkle in the plan to get to the Repository.