Chapter 64

A.N.: a little late last week, so have it a little early this one.

(THE BASTION)

Something had come loose when he pushed out Scolomancia. His moods came and went like quicksilver, moved by the smallest of things, and all Tristan could do was put a smile over the storm. So he did. Something was better than nothing.

“Ladies, gentlemen, accomplices,” he announced. “Thank you for coming, we hope the brutal melee and assorted hospitality have been to your liking. We will now be taking questions.”

Drenched – despite his fine hat’s valiant attempts – and unsure he would ever dry again, Tristan gestured down at the tracing on the ground through the pouring rain. A few craned their necks to look again, but most had already had their fill and simply stood there huddling in their cloaks and keeping their powder dry. The better part of sixty blackcloaks had made it to the top of the cliff and lived, but barely a third of that was standing in a circle here.

Only the leaders among this motley crew of volunteer brigades, short-straw drawing professors and the particular kind of unhinged that considered a death march through Scholomance’s belly to be a good time was gathered around the demonstration of the greatest sorcery wielded by Song Ren: being pretty good at drawing maps with charcoal sticks.

And that map was sorely needed, Tristan mused, because the geography of it all was a little tricky.

It went something like this: first, in the middle of it all there was the canyon. It ran in a straight line northwards, until it hit the triangle shape of the bastion. At that point it split into two corridors along the sides of the bastion, northeast and northwest, both of which ran for some time before reaching the bottom of the mechanical lifts that went up to the Glass Repository.

Now, the tricky part began with this delightful crew having climbed up the west cliff of the canyon. The east could thus be forgotten about, it didn’t matter as far as this battle was concerned.

So, from the top of the west side of the canyon they’d been able to learn two things: one, continuing straight west the cliff turned into another slope descending westward. That slope was a pack of old terrace farms, wildly overgrown, and at the bottom of the slope they merged into the messy forest spread out there. The northwest corridor hugging the side of the bastion turned into a road that touched the edge of said forest, and from the heights courtesy of Song Ren’s eyes – and assorted longviews – they had been able to tell what was on that road.

About halfway down the bastion’s length was a ramp that led up into it, carved through the wall. Past the end of the bastion was the bottom of the western lift leading up to the Repository, as they’d expected.

So! If their lovely little company wanted to get into the bastion, they needed to make their way down to the bottom through the terrace farms, cut through the forest to the northwest road and then make their way up that ramp. There were just, uh, a slight few troubles with that.

“If we charge up that ramp and there’s a gunline waiting at the top, we’ll be slaughtered like pigs,” Captain Guadalupe de Tovar flatly said. “There’s not a speck of cover.”

So spoke one of the foremost representatives of the ‘ambitious brigades’ corner of this crew, though she stood in fine company. Assorted standouts were Nenetl Chapul from the Third and good ol’ Ferranda from the Thirty-First. Captain Beremundo from the Eightieth was also there, presumably because almost his entire brigade was from Garrison families and down below garrison men were still dying like flies. He was not the only captain here for that reason, even a first-year brigade showing up to honor that legacy of service.

Well, it took all sorts.

“That implies we made it to the ramp in the first place, captain,” Muchen He said. “Which is already dubious.”

It had been made dubious in part by virtue of Tristan having the mildest of disagreements with Scolomancia, who was currently expressing her displeasure by mustering an army of slavering lemures to mount his head on a pike. Some gods just took things too personally. Anyhow, that army of kobaloi led by a very large and very angry onjancanu had been hiding in the forest below and was now stomping around looking for something Tristan-shaped to murder.

But the big one was missing its eye so already things were looking up. And not for the onjancanu, because it was blind.

“The tactical situation is not optimal,” Song conceded.

From Song, the kind of woman who would inform sailors heading into a hurricane that it wasn’t even the second largest on record this century, that sentence was in fact a significant concession.

“Aha,” Tristan said. “Worry not, my friends-”

“We’re not your friends,” Guadalupe de Tovar informed him.

“I’m his friend,” Shalini countered.

So stood Shalini Goel, pleased to be here despite her broken shoulder because she was a member of a second corner of this crew: the Skiritai lunatics here to have a good time, also known as killing their deserter and the enormous forged neitspawn.

Shalini was the chattiest of that bunch, despite the occasional worried looks shot the way Angharad had been seen climbing down a wooden post into the terraces to help Maryam finish Cai Wei, but she was not the leader of that number. That honor went to the genuinely horribly dressed old man with the triple-feathered hat, Marshal de la Tavarin. That Tristan had not noticed him coming up the cliff on a rope despite being largely dressed in orange, green and bright maroon was somewhat concerning.

“And I would not mourn if he fell off ten cliffs in a row, so we can call it even,” Lindiwe Sarru said.

His popularity among the Skiritai contingent was somewhat varied, one might say. Tristan batted his eyes prettily at Muchen He in the hopes of a  tie breaker in his favor, but while the man smiled back it was only to better draw his finger across his throat. Eh, fair enough. Tristan had shot him the once.

“Friends and the honorable Guadalupe de Tovar, assorted et cetera,” he gallantly amended, making sure to slight Angharad’s rival in brigade solidarity. “As I said, these complications are no cause for worry. They are our very opportunity!”

He pointed down at the forest.

“Our shrieking acquaintances below are currently most interested in collecting my scalp,” he shared. “I had a bit of a tiff with the god in the walls.”

Someone in the back made a solid crack about how even Scolomancia had thought the snail poison was going a little too far, so he winked at them. You had to roll with the punches, especially those in the gut.

“It seems to me that if we can get the kobaloi to chase me up that ramp,” Tristan said, “then we have acquired a wave of meat shields that would make a charge to top of the bastion significantly less suicidal.”

“Well, I’ll not vote against a plan that has you charging into a slaughteryard alone with a horde of monsters on your heels,” de Tovar said, “but you’re being a tad too cheerful for that to be the actual plan.”

“Well spotted, captain,” Tristan praised, which to his pleasure pissed her off a little. “If I may invite Professor Formosa to address the crowd?”

Baltasar Formosa, leading representative of the third part of his crew – Scholomance professors and patrons who had drawn the short straw when their covenants decided they must send someone to the fight for the sake of appearances - cleared his throat before stepping up to the edge of Song’s map.

“The horde is being aimed by Scholomance, but in practice it is led by the onjancanu,” Professor Formosa said. “If we can get close enough to hit it with the right Signs, we can make it believe that Scholomance is ordering an assault up the ramp – it will then terrorize the kobaloi into charging.”

Guadalupe de Tovar chewed at her lip.

“If we make it into the bastion and we are not immediately swept back, the revenants will have to pull back from their gunline on the heights and that will free up the regulars to charge and join us,” she said. “That part could work. It would still leave one very large problem, however.”

Tristan’s eyes flicked to the massive creature called the neitspawn, that distorted spider-thing hanging from the side of the cliff. He was not the only one.

“Skiritai will do the Skiritai’s work, girl,” Marshal de la Tavarin idly said. “Worry not of that.”

“I worry of the lives in my charge, sir,” Guadalupe replied without hesitation. “That is my charge, as their captain.”

“And also to spend them,” the Marshal smiled ghoulishly. “But it is not so pretty to boast of that, is it?”

Tristan cleared his throat. Bit of a piss-in-his-own-hat moment to have to intervene in an argument between two people who quite disliked him, but such was life.

“Fascinating stuff, but concerning that matter I would direct you to the Thirteenth Brigade’s contingency planning department.”

He theatrically revealed a skeptical-looking Izel Coyac, who had been trying to hide behind him the whole time. Good luck with that, he was at most six tenths of an Izel.

“He calls me that because I carry grenades,” Izel sighed.

Although he only had the two today, instead carrying an overlarge and bulky blunderbuss that wasn’t really one at all. The tinker then tapped the large wooden box strapped to his back.

“But I do have a device on me that might help in bringing down the neitspawn.”

When tartly questioned as to what that device did, Izel simply pointed up and shook his head. A reminder that Scolomancia was always listening, and it was best not to loop her into all of their plans. Even as far as Unluckies schemes went this one was a tad risky, but by virtue of there being nothing better on the table it passed unanimously.

It then ran off the road within five minutes, as was the way of things.

They found Angharad on the second terrace down, through the mystical ritual of following the trail of dead kobalos. Tristan had not spared so much a second of worry for her until he saw her mud-touched faced, at which point he was so overwhelmingly filled with relief that tears pricked at his eyes. Fuck. It had swung again. He made a fool joke about dinner plans he hardly even thought through, which had the others rolling her eyes and not paying attention to how his nails were digging into his palms until they left red marks.

Angharad was pleased to see them, less so to report that there were kobaloi warbands loose even in the highest rungs of the terraces and the revenants were still lurking. On the bright side, she had caught the trail of the Khaimovs: several shattered trees, one of them looking like it had been eaten away by acid. The earlier relief turned in a second to utter terror at the thought of losing Maryam, his eyes dilating and his breath coming short until he put fresh marks on his palm.

Manes, when would the turn go back to that sort of golden nonchalance from earlier? It was easier to ride.

He was put out of his memory when they found Maryam and Ester three rungs down and to the side. The first surprise was that the Khaimovs weren’t fighting the pack of kobaloi off alone. The second was that their helper was Cai Wei.

A sharp signifier and a spirit Skiritai in a shell of hardened aether would have been more than a match for the gibbering creatures on their own, so adding sixty odd muskets on the winning side of the skirmish put a swift end to it. There was some trouble in how several Skiritai moved to execute Cai Wei, but Maryam stepped in and declared her in the custody of the Akelarre Guild – which Professor Formosa backed after a quiet conversation with her.

On the subject of Cai Wei’s fate Tristan was inclined to summary execution, but since she was around they might as well make use of her so with a smile he led her to the side for an interrogation, supervised by Song. Things were going well, he could feel it, and the weathervane turned again. Aaah, back on hubris. Finally. Anyhow, Wei should have great insight into the defenses she built. And as to the speculation she could command the revenants...

“I can, but the moment I encounter a revenant the Machinist will know I turned on him and cut off that capacity,” Cai Wei stiffly said. “They will go back to being in the neitspawn’s control.”

“Which one assumes will be less tactically sound,” Tristan said. “You know, on account on her being animal regardless of the authenticity involved.”

“Once he builds the beasts, he can’t control them anymore,” Cai Wei confirmed. “They obey the instincts they were imbued with. It will be smarter than the dantesvara was, but not by much.”

She grimaced.

“The real problem is that it’s going to run.”

Song frowned.

“Why would it?”

“Because the Watch is wrong,” Cai Wei said. “The Machinist isn’t in some layer you can reach through the Repository. His workshop is inside the neitspawn.”

“So the moment it looks like we might kill the neitspawn, an instinct the Machinist burned into its brain will force it to run,” Tristan said.

Gods, was that been what the strange aether sphere was when the false dantesvara was slain? To think he had been this close – and just the thought had his thoughts darkening, the good mood turning to gloom matching the rain. Cai Wei nodded at his guess, so he caught Song’s eyes. There was only one way to cut that retreat off and they both knew it.

“It would be absurdly dangerous,” she said.

He made himself shrug instead of lament.

“More than fighting it on foot?”

She actually seemed to weigh those odds, before reaching the same conclusion he had: it was madman’s work all around.

“Fuck,” Song Ren cursed, which was another word for yes.

They got moving.

--

(1/11)

Izel waited until evening, after the others had gone to bed. Song did not need to be told that they must talk, making time and tea without prompting. He returned the courtesy by refraining from wasting time or measuring his words when telling her about the situation. Izel laid it all out.

How the patent for the lenslight would soon be contested by a workshop on Khalkea, the face of it a sergeant by the name of Garci Calvo. That Professor Achari had been told it was a front and a Lieutenant Ulyses Vargas was behind it. How the latter man was the father of Helena Vargas, the tinker he believed to have sent lenslight plans, but also the head of the Lucierna weapons workshop. How Izel now believed that Musa Shange had been ordered to join the battle against the ketos to ascertain for Marshal Camaron whether the lenslight was worth the bureaucratic fight to secure.

When he’d finished, Song sipped calmly at her tea and set it down with tightly controlled evenness

“I must confess I am not conversant in the process of disputes over Watch patents,” Song said, sounding like a woman already planning to remedy that. “What will the process look like?”

Izel had not been all that familiar himself. It was not encouraged for tinkers to get quarrelsome with each other. Professor Achari had know, though, and freely shared.

“It depends on who the disputing parties are,” Izel said. “In this case, the sergeant on Khalkea that will be disputing the patent is also of the Umuthi Society so it will be a society tribunal.”

He paused, gathering his thoughts.

“Since we’re not part of the same workshop or command, where a higher-ranked tinker could settle the matter, it will be kicked up directly to the Wednesday Council,” he said. “Normally they would appoint someone to handle it for them, but this case is important enough they might elect one of their own instead.”

Or so Achari believed, anyway. He’d been of the opinion that even had the lenslight not sparked interest the involvement of Marshal Camaron behind the scenes would have guaranteed the Wednesday Council would pay close attention to the dispute.

“And this adjudicator will have full authority to decide on the matter?” Song asked.

“Yes and no,” Izel hedged. “First there’ll be a hearing to state the cases, make sure neither is so egregious it can be outright dismissed, then if there can be no cordial resolution they call for a full tribunal. And even after that tribunal gives their verdict, either side can still appeal the decision to the Conclave if they believe there was something unjust or corrupt about the process.”

Song’s brow rose.

“Directly to the Conclave?”

Izel smiled wanly.

“You noticed it fast,” he said. “Yes, it’s to the general assembly so there’s no guarantee that the petition will be added to the next docket. And even if it is, there’s no guarantee it will be tabled for a vote that same session. It could stay pending for months or even years.”

Professor Achari had frankly told him that this was occasionally used as a way to bury cases that would cause unrest within Watch ranks until the worst of tempers had cooled.

“And what happens to the patent while the appeal is pending?” Song asked.

She’d been taught by a colonel based on the Rookery, hadn’t she? Her uncle Zhuge. It showed: she kept honing in on the right details.

“Production is suspended, but making models for research purposes is still allowed,” Izel grimaced. “Which would be bad for me, Song.”

Because should a prototype be built in Khalkea and sent out for field testing then achieve something impressive, pressure would mount for the patent to be awarded to the Khalkean workshop. After all only one of the patent claimants was capable of establishing a production chain to make these on a large scale, or willing.

“You believe that getting a buried petition will be their plan,” Song said.

He nodded.

“Camaron can’t bully the Umuthi Society into doing what he wants,” he said. “So to prevent them bullying him, he’ll bring a flock of high-ranking officer at the hearing to warn off the Wednesday Council. Then he’ll push the matter into becoming a pending Conclave petition and keep it there until field test results and favors have secured him a voting majority.”

“And then he finally has the petition tabled,” Song murmured.

He nodded, then cleared his throat.

“Your uncle on the Rookery, do you think he could help?” he asked. “A peremptory dismissal of the petition would kill the appeal, kicking the matter back to the Umuthi Society.”

Who both her and Professor Achari expected to side with him. Izel had expected a thoughtful look out of Song, or perhaps even some satisfaction at there being a clear path to ending the matter. Instead what he got was Song Ren’s fingers closing around the rim of her cup of tea as if she were trying to leech away some of the warmth. She was silent for a long moment and did not break her silence in the way he had expected.

“Conclave politics can be split into two broad camps,” Song abruptly said. “Philosophically speaking, I mean. There are dozens of factions and voting blocks over particular interests – taxation, expansion and isolation, harder or more accommodating lines of diplomacy – but typically these factions will broadly fall into one camp, save for temporary voting blocs over a single matter that draw members from both camps before collapsing.”

She paused.

“That is not to say those camps cover the entire Conclave ranks, or that they command voting majorities,” she said. “There are swaths of vote best described as unaligned opportunists or limited interests. Still, the dominant political currents in the Watch of our time are the opposing answers to a single question: should authority in the order centralize, or should it devolve?”

That was not an unfamiliar tune to him. The Calendar Court against the Sunflower Lords, the Maharaja against lesser kings and leagues. He was even vaguely familiar with the Watch’s own version of the pull between the heartlands and the regions.

“The Garrison against free companies,” he summed up.

“It is not that simple,” Song said, shaking her head. “You might be surprised to hear that some of the largest free companies are ardently in favor of the Conclave creating offices meant for more direct rule, so long as they are guaranteed seats. Meanwhile, some regional Garrison commanders are just as ardently against consolidation since it would cut into their independence and authority.”

She paused.

“Those against centralization are generally called ‘charterists’, as their most basic legal argument is based on the original charters the Watch was founded on,” Song said. “Those who are in favor of centralization are usually called ‘monocrats’, a word that means the advocacy of rule by one. That is because their leading political project is achieving the election of a Grand Marshal who could push through their desired reforms.”

“Marshal Camaron is the head of a strong regional command,” Izel slowly said. “So he is a charterist?”

She shook her head.

“He is actually one of the leading lights of the monocrats,” Song said. “I know this mostly because my uncle has monocrat sympathies himself – though he does not wear them openly, as that is unwise in a Rookery officer.”

She looked a little sick.

“I tell you this because it means that many of my uncle’s closest allies are monocrats,” Song said. “Marshal Camaron will also be a friend to several, and openly of their party besides. They are likely to side with him instead, and should Uncle Zhuge muster his charterist acquaintances instead the conflict becomes... unpredictable.”

Izel’s lips thinned.

“Because it’ll become charterists against monocrats, and at that point it doesn’t matter what the petition is actually about: they’ll both pour coin and influence into it just to thwart the other faction.”

She nodded.

“So there’s nothing we can do to stop them,” Izel said, swallowing drily. “Because they have allies up high and we do not.”

He paused. There was one friendly officer they’d met.

“Admiral Zokufa,” he said. “Do you think...”

She shook her head.

“He is no ally of Camaron’s, but the admiralty faction in the Conclave is a voting bloc that stays out of most politics,” Song said.

To be able to play both sides, Izel guessed. The monocrats would be in favor of funding the fleets because they were an arm of the Garrison, while the charterists would back the admiralty’s relative independence in the face of the Conclave to ensure no such fleet was ever used against them. But it means they can’t afford to offend either side over small matters.

“Is there no one we can appeal to?” Izel asked, throat tight. “There must be someone who will look at this theft and be willing to do something about it.”

He knew, objectively, that in this matter the Watch was still a cut above the other great powers. In Izcalli, if a great lord wanted something he had built and a greater lord did not protect him then the choice was between acquiescence and the grave. In Malan he would simply be forced by law to sell, the noble making a show of the generous payment offered no matter that he’d not wanted to be paid at all, while in Tianxia great trading cartels would simply blacklist and bankrupt him to force a sale.

That in the Watch this theft would be worked against by those in power, take years of gathered influence to accomplish and would still likely tarnish the reputation of the thieves for life... well, it did not make them good but it made them better than most.

Izel tried to tell himself that, but it was hard to believe it when choking on dark, impotent anger.

“This is on my head.”

His eyes swiveled back to Song. He was given physical pause by the absence of composure on her face. It didn’t last long, but the flash or rage fading into self-loathing struck him like a fist. Izel knew what those looked like; he saw them in the mirror often enough. Song rose to her feet, and to his horror began to bow. One of those waist-low Tianxi formal things. He caught her shoulder.

“Don’t,” he rasped. “That only makes it worse.”

“I am the one who pushed you to reveal the lenslight,” Song said. “Had it never been used, Marshal Camaron might not have deemed it worth the fight.”

“Plans of it had already been sent off,” Izel said. “It would have happened anyway, sooner or later.”

“But not like this,” Song tightly said. “It is on me to mend this, Izel. And I will do all I can.”

He grimaced. Kind words, but what could a student captain on Tolomontera really do against a marshal? She read it on his face.

“I can write to the Obscure Committee, at least,” Song darkly said. “Fenhua He should be no admirer of ours, but their is still the College seat at the table. I hold no great expectations for Lord Asher or Brigadier Laghari, but we might be able to garner the support of-”

She paused.

“Izel,” she said. “I need you to test something with the lenslight.”

He cocked his head to the side.

“Why?”

“So I can write a letter,” Song Ren said.

And there was a gleam in those silver eyes, Izel thought, that reminded him of nothing so much as a sword.

--

(4/11)

Maryam steadied her arm, exhaled to empty her lungs and pulled the trigger. The flint struck and sparked, the powder caught and a heartbeat later the pistol spat out a plume of smoke a shot that...

“Oh, come on,” she complained. “That should have hit the chest.”

The target at the end of the shooting range, a large bale of straw with a person’s silhouette painted on it in red, was sporting a fresh shoulder wound. If it’d been the right shoulder at least Maryam would have understood, she tended to drift rightwards since she’d lost her eye. It was, unfortunately, squarely in the left shoulder.

“I believe the trouble might be with your stance,” Angharad shared. “Song described it as-”

“If I hear Song Ren’s description of the proper shooting stance one more time, I may well go mad,” Maryam warned.

There was a pause.

“Duly noted,” Angharad said, visibly trying not to be too amused.

“Oh, just take your turn,” she groused.

Unforgivably, Angharad actually landed the knee shot that she’d called. It was heinous how quickly she was becoming one of the better shots in the Thirteenth, considering she’d barely ever used guns before enrolling in the Watch. At least Maryam could blame her stalling skills on her dead eye, even though she was keeping it dead on purpose. She felt it safer to practice for the eventuality of Ester being unable to lend an eye, and it wasn’t like practice didn’t help for when she could see properly.

They reloaded together, then fired again. Maryam called and caught a stomach shot, going for the lowest branch in the tree to preserve her pride, while Angharad took the opposite knee.

“You know, it never occurred to me,” Maryam said. “But didn’t your household hunt? I’d expect you to be familiar with  fowling guns.”

The caliber of most muskets used in war was likely to pulverize any bird it hit, so hunting guns were usually smaller bores with longer barrels.

“Some of us did,” Angharad said. “Mother was not fond of hunting, but my father’s falconry was widely admired. There are few game birds near Llanw Hall, however, so ours were usually honor hunts – boars, bears and wolves.”

Honor hunts, she mused, were probably the same as jezik hunts. One of the legal obligations of landowners to their tenants across the coastlands: to ride out and slay any beast that damaged kin, crops or livestock then bring back the tongue as proof. All the animals Angharad had named were dangerous to men, and all too willing to attack them.

“A fowling piece won’t do much more than tickle a boar or a bear, unless you get the eye,” Maryam conceded. “And reading between the lines you didn’t use line muskets either. Don’t tell me you went a-sabering after bears?”

She painted in her mind the image of Angharad Tredegar facing a large brown bear and granting it a duelist’s salute, that fancy little shoulder tap she liked to do. Alas, the thought could not be as comical as Maryam would have wanted when she’d seen the mirror-dancer kill monsters that large using the weapon in question.

It was still a little funny, though.

“Maryam, really,” Angharad sighed. “It was done from atop a horse, using hunting spears. Pereduri do not thirst after prize hunts like the Malani do, but we’ve our own traditions.”

“I’ve never seen you use a hunting spear,” Maryam noted.

“The climbing spears we used on the false dantesvara and the ketos are modelled after the Malani standard,” Angharad told her. “Though I confess I take after my mother in this – I never took much joy from the hunt, and learned only as much as I must.”

She cleared her throat.

“Hunting is not as prestigious as it once was, but any noble of good standing is expected to be able to at least ride with a spear in hand,” she said.

Maryam cocked her head to the side.

“What did your mother have against hunting?”

“She was very fond of birds,” Angharad quietly said. “She even forbade commoners to hunt puffins in our lands, since they are seabirds.”

The commoners had probably been less than charmed by that whim, Maryam thought, but she did not feel up to spoiling was what obviously a fond remembrance. Best to change the subject.

“And seabirds are special why?” she asked.

“It is an old superstition,” Angharad admitted, “but it is said that the spirits of slain sea birds will ride storms to come take their revenge on mariners.”

Finally a proper spirit story out of Peredur! The Isles were usually dull in that regard, since the priests of their Sleeping God tended to come down hard on ‘idolaters’.

“So even you monotheists have your superstitions,” she smirked. “Good to know.”

“It is seen as provincial,” her friend replied. “Mother was made fun of in court because of it. A poem was circulated that made Maraire rhyme with a slang word for credulous.”

Maraire? It took Maryam a moment to place the surname.

“Right, because Pereduri nobles need to have a Malani name as well,” Maryam muttered, then cleared her throat. “What’s with the double names, anyhow?”

“The peerage list is the register of the noble bloodlines of the Duchy of Peredur,” Angharad said. “But it is held and penned by the Pereduri themselves, taking no guidance from the royal court.”

“Sounds wise,” Maryam said.

The royal court should be burned and salt sown where it’d stood, as far as she was concerned, but keeping their distance was probably the best the Pereduri could hope for. The strait between Peredur and Malan was a lot shorter a swim than making it all the way to Juska.

“The last duke of Peredur thought so, when he knelt to Queen Perpetual,” Angharad said. “It was one of the boons that let him convince the lords and ladies of the High Isle that peace should be sought. The issue is that for one to obtain further titles, honors or incomes from the crown they must be recognized as noble on Malan’s own rolls of nobility.”

“So why not use the same name for both?” Maryam asked.

That seemed the obvious solution.

“It is forbidden by the crown,” Angharad said. “Else our peers would be recognized as noble by law twice, and thus set above the nobles of Malan and Uthukile. It is largely a formality for one on the peerage list to be recognized in the rolls, though it does require travelling to Isasha in person.”

Maryam hummed. ‘Largely’ a formality meant sometimes it was not, which sounded like a very useful threat for the crown to wield. Back home the Staresine would have never stood for a king having that sort of power, but then there was a reason the Recgnivor word for the royalty across the water translated to ‘tyrant-king’. Crowns in Aurager tended to have a lot more power than they’d ever been allowed to gather in the coastlands.

“It sounds like being on those rolls from the start is an advantage for the Malani,” she said.

“It is,” Angharad darkly said. “Some of the smaller houses have to start saving up for the journey to Isasha as soon as their lady grows older, else the unplanned expense of a sudden death could push them into debt. And it is costly in a different way to avoid the journey: any house not on the rolls will be subject to the burden tax as if they were common-born, and often the war tax too.”

“So why not end the peerage lists outright?” Maryam asked.

More to prod than because she endorsed the solution.

“It would be a decision without pride,” Angharad stiffly said. “A renunciation of our heritage. It is...”

She paused. Maryam raised an eyebrow.

“Well, it is one of the reasons that Nkonisathi Morcant is frowned upon by other Pereduri,” Angharad said. “His first name is already Malani, as if he were trying for the list from birth, and it is said his mother attempted exactly what you described.”

“Getting the Morcant title moved from the peerage list to the nobility rolls,” she said.

Angharad nodded.

“The great families of the duchy would never lower themselves thus,” she said. “But I hear that Lady Morcant is ambitious. Hers was not always considered a powerful house, and she cannot compete in land or blood. I suppose she sees cleaving closer to the royal court as a way to rise.”

“That and the colonies are run by royal governors,” Maryam evenly said. “I expect the crown buys at least half the slaves out of Juska, so she’s putting her allegiance where her wealth flows from.”

“It is grasping of her,” Angharad scorned. “Most of the great families curry some favor with the crown, but none are quite so shameless about it. I am told she sent her sons to attend the isikole in the capital.”

Maryam blinked.

“Nathi Morcant was raised in Isasha?”

“The isikole lasts only four years,” Angharad corrected, “so I would not say raised, exactly. He was clearly meant for court, though. Thando once told me that his departure for the Watch was the subject of much gossip back home.”

“So sending him to the Watch was not the plan from the start.”

Angharad shrugged.

“I will not claim to know the secret thoughts of Lady Morcant,” she said, “but that seems unlikely. The point of the sending her sons to an Isasha isikole should have been to foster ties with other noble scions in those classrooms, and those ties are of little use on Tolomontera.”

“So why did he get sent here?” Maryam asked.

She chewed at the inside of her cheek a bit.

“Maybe he angered someone from a better family,” she mused. “Or killed someone.”

“His family would not still be supporting him openly had he slain in an unlawful manner,” Angharad said.

“So whatever it is, he left without trashing his reputation first,” Maryam said.

She crossed her arms, pistol resting empty against the crook of her elbow.

“It could have been his contract,” she said. “We’re still not sure what the ubunjalo he takes from people to fuel his fleshcrafting actually is. Maybe he tried it out and harmed someone without meaning to.”

“That would have been seized on by the Morcant’s enemies and become scandal,” Angharad said. “Or, if the matter was buried, he would now be in the service of the great noble who did the silencing.”

“Then maybe the contract itself is borderline,” Maryam tried. “We know that the Watch sometimes presses into service people with dangerous powers or prices. Normally they get assigned somewhere an eye is kept on them, but since he’s from a powerful family...”

“They leveraged that into Scholomance instead,” Angharad thoughtfully said. “I balk at the notion for the same reason you deem it credible: the Morcant are not nobodies, Maryam. The Watch would find it difficult to take a son of theirs for a contract does not actually break the Iscariot Accords.”

Angharad paused.

“And even should Lady Morcant be heartless, an ambitious woman would not easily throw away a contract as useful as Nathi’s.”

It was arguably even more powerful in Malan, where Maryam suspected few would think twice at feeding the bastard a steady flow of slaves to let him work his craft.

“That’s true,” she muttered. “So whatever got him sent here, it made him unfit for court but without disgracing him. That’s a pretty narrow line to walk.”

Some kind of private disaster, a succession conflict that could be nipped in the bud by placing a black cloak on Nathi’s shoulders?

“I hesitate to wish that Song had read his full contract,” Angharad said, “since it is something of a breach of privacy. And yet.”

Maryam snorted.

“It’s inconvenient she never found out his price,” she agreed. “Mind you, it feels swinish to complain of that when no one else would have the part that she read.”

There’d been few opportunities for Song to get a good read on Morcant contract at the start of the year, when he’d still seemed a lesser threat, and by the time he was trouble enough to warrant the effort there had been none. He must have been read in on the suspicions about Song’s contract because he’d very carefully avoided being in her presence for more than small moments. Now he was outright in hiding, of course, which was even worse.

“I don’t think any of us expected him to be this obstinate an enemy,” Maryam said. “The princess seemed like she was going to be much more trouble.”

“He has continued to be an enemy for the same reason he is an enemy at all,” Angharad absent-mindedly said, beginning to clean and reload her pistol.

Maryam followed suit.

“Meaning?”

Angharad seemed surprised she even needed to be asked.

“As I said earlier, he was raised to be a courtier.”

She saw Maryam’s unimpressed face and bit her lip, looking for a way to express it.

“The royal court in Isasha is not like the Calendar Court or Indulkapur,” Angharad said. “If a courtier is proved to be dishonorable, there is no way back. No going into exile and returning, no pilgrimage or flower war to clear one’s name: there can be no blemishes on the honor of the High Queen’s court.”

She exhaled.

“I did not realize it then, as I never attended court myself,” Angharad said. “But Nathi followed the traditional methods of a courtier in dealing with us: he offered a private bargain that would make some restitution while ending any notion that he had been in the wrong.”

“He wanted us to sell him back the Orels for a finger regrown,” Maryam coldly said.

“And it was a foul thing that he thought to trade men,” Angharad said. “One that cannot be excused. But he does not see it that way, I expect. As far as he is concerned, he offered a compromise that preserved both reputations. When he was scorned over it, threatened even, he had to take measures to make us come to terms.”

“The ambush,” Maryam said. “You think the point of having us beaten was to make us negotiate?”

“I think he was angry and scared,” Angharad said. “And that the ambush made him feel as if he had the upper hand, all the while he believed that the thinning patience of the Watch with our brigade’s record of violence left us no room to escalate.”

“He struck at us publicly,” Maryam flatly said.

“And likely expected to be approached for a deal in private afterwards,” Angharad said. “That some arrangement would be made for both sides to retreat with some degree of grace and through this theater his reputation would be rehabilitated.”

“Only we didn’t compromise,” Maryam said. “Because he’s a fucking slaver who had us publicly assaulted.”

“Whoever decided to send him to Scholomance did him no favor,” Angharad quietly said. “His beliefs are despicable, Maryam, but we both know there are parts of the world where they are common enough. When the year began we all looked down on Yaotl Acatl for trying to act the warrior-princess under the cloak of an order who disdains warriors and princesses both. But she adapted, in the end, because how she thought of the world was not so different from the Watch.”

“But not him,” Maryam said, finishing the thought. “Because the keystone of who he was raised to be is slavery, you can’t take it out without the walls caving in.”

The Izvorica smiled harshly.

“And the Watch might not be abolitionist, but neither does it tolerate slavery from its own.”

No matter how cleverly he spoke, Nathi Morcant had put on the color of an order that looked at the mortar of his family’s power, of his upbringing and his ways, and called it an evil. There was no reconciling that, really. Morcant had better learned the ways of the Watch than Yaotl, and more quickly too, but there was a hard limit to how far cleverness could carry him in the face of that fundamental gap.

Morcant had gone after the Thirteenth again and again even before Angharad drew him out, because so long as the Unluckies were pointing the finger at him and reminding everyone of what he was he could not bury it. Could not smooth it over or lessen it. And until he could do that, there would always be that hint of disdain in the eyes of most blackcloaks who looked at him. A man like that would not be able to swallow it.

So the finger had to go down, whatever the price.

“I can’t say I have any sympathy for him,” Maryam frankly said. “It’s a shame that his parents handed him the shovel, but no one forced him to dig a grave with it.”

She raised her arm, steadied it. Exhaled and pulled the trigger. The shot went right between the eyes, this time.

“I find no purpose in hating him either,” Angharad said. “He is a cog in a greater machine, in the end.”

Her friend raised her pistol and shot the head as well.

“I expect that failure to accept that will be what ends him.”

--

(3/11)

Tristan found that they all visited their own particular ways.

Song was regular and punctual: every day the first week then every other day, usually for around an hour. More if she was bringing him notes and coursework. Angharad went by sentiment, either accompanying another or coming by when she’d thought of something. News she thought he might be interested in, a book they’d discussed, food they both enjoyed. It was regular only in the sense that she never let too long pass without a visit.

Maryam and Ester came together, and the way it went was... mixed. Sometimes they stayed so long they spent the night sleeping in a chair, other times they were gone in a quarter hour. Tristan had thought them sensitive to his moods – he was not always of a mind for company – but he’d eventually come to realize they were chewing on a conversation. Not mustering up courage for it, as he’d thought, but instead holding back on having it.

They brought the Orels sometimes. More surprising had been that the Orels sometimes came on their own. Old Horvat thrice, to bring him some pasty vegetable dish he called duvec that was like a chunkier Sacromontan pisto, and Poltava twice to ask questions about from which shops she should try to source the materials for replacement parts she was working in.

Bolic came once, to have a look at him. Up and down, like a man taking the measure of a rival.

“Skinny,” Orel Bolic said.

“Diminishingly useful,” Tristan replied with a pleasant smile.

Bolic did not visit again.

Izel’s visits were in some ways the oddest. Today he’d stumbled in dragging a satchel of small parts and tucked set of tools he’d used to assemble small clockwork mechanisms while talking. We owe a certain amount for the mechanics assignment and I’m helping Jingyi since he hurt his hand, Izel had explained. Last time he’d brought paper prints that needed marking for errors, the time before that a full jar of honey he’d not so much dipped bread in so much as outright immersed.

In a way Izel’s visits were the easiest on him, because the tinker was not really here as a visit. He was just company, and there was something soothing about that.

“-and Ester’s a fairly good dancer,” Izel laughed. “Had to hand her off to the little Orel after a few dances, though, that drink had more kick than I’d thought.”

There was a faint click and the tinker yelped, shaking his hand before he sucked at his finger. No blood, Tristan saw, but the skin was red. The gears had ticked the wrong way and pinched him.

“Dirt-Eater, that stung,” Izel muttered.

Tristan blinked.

“Dirt-Eater?” he repeated, just to be sure.

“Goddess of forgiveness, among other things,” Izel said. “She takes upon herself the sins and sorrows of others.”

Well, that explained why he’d not really heard of her before. Most Izcalli he had encountered were light on asking for forgiveness. Or permission, for that matter. He leaned forward off the cushions, openly amused.

“So you just tried to pass off the pinching onto that poor goddess?” Tristan asked.

“It is her role to redeem all things into herself,” Izel replied, perhaps a tad defensively.

“And to think we call you the most religious of us,” Tristan tutted, sadly shaking his head.

“You are an actual high priest,” Izel indignantly replied, pointing his wrench like a finger. “How is this even a matter of debate?”

“You might have noticed that Fortuna ran a little thin on the ground, theologically speaking,” Tristan said, and her name wasn’t even enough to wipe out his good mood entirely.

Not so long as he didn’t let himself keeping thinking about her.

“I always assumed you held your rites privately,” Izel said. “It is uncommon in Izcalli, but not so elsewhere in Vesper.”

It was difficult to get any less private than painting your patron god’s colors on your face, Tristan conceded.

“I never did much before the shrine,” he said, feeling a pang there. “Though in all fairness I had no idea I was her celebrant for most our time together.”

“And yet you are quite popular with gods,” Izel noted. “Scolomancia took a shine to you as well, insofar as that can be said to be a boon.”

He grimaced.

“It isn’t,” he said, then to his own surprised added more. “She’s trying to elbow out Fortuna.”

Izel breathed in sharply.

“Forgive me, but I was under the impression that after the Lady of Long Odds was imprisoned you lost access to both her and your contract.”

“I did,” Tristan said. “But when she first saved my life, she left something in me.”

He licked his lips.

“And then again, when we fell into the layer together. I don’t know if it was to guide where I fell or more, but it felt... larger, the second time. I sensed it in a way I did not the first. And since then the vultures only got hungrier for it.”

“That is remarkable,” Izel quietly said. “Most gods struggle to achieve anything outside of their immediate domain. I hesitate to call what you describe a boon, either.”

“I don’t think it’s given me anything,” Tristan agreed.

Unless it had not been an accident that Fortuna’s last gift had prevented Scolomancia from simply sinking her claws into him. It was possible, but he doubted it. No one who lost so commandingly often at dice games could have any form of foretelling.

“Then I wonder what it is,” Izel mused. “Because it cannot simply be a blessing of nothing, Tristan. A god is made of a particular aether taint, if they give part of themselves...”

“That taint is still in it,” Tristan muttered. “But I haven’t really gotten anything from it, Izel. No strange thoughts, no instincts, no powers.”

“That is odd,” Izel said. “Although...”

“Although?”

“Perhaps the gift is simply that it is a part of her,” Izel said.

He cocked his head to the side.

“Like she handed me her heart while it still beats?”

“Smaller than a heart, else you would be a Saint by now. But if the part in you is still alive, and she is as well, then that open possibilities. The two parts would still be linked, Tristan.”

His fingers clenched.

“And you think you can do something with that?” he asked.

“Use it for pathfinding, at the very least,” Izel muttered. “Like a compass. And maybe a little more.”

He cleared his throat.

“Have you ever given a blessing before?” the tinker asked. “As a priest, I mean. And I don’t mean mumbling Orthodoxy words either."

"No,” Tristan slowly said.

Izel leaned in.

“Would you like to try?”

Tristan met his eyes.

“You think it will help?”

“I think it cannot hurt,” Izel honestly replied.

His fingers clenched.

“All right,” Tristan whispered. “Let’s try.”

There was a pause.

“I’m going to have to sell so many aether spike dispensers to pay for this,” Izel mourned.

--

(THE BEAST)

Maryam had come to suspect she was going to like this plan until the precise moment that she really didn’t.

On one hand, by some miracle the Unluckies had been spared the need to execute the war plan Song and Tristan had apparently come up with – the well-polished lunacy that was mindscrewing the onjancanu leading Scholomance’s horde of minions with enough Acumenals that it became convinced Tristan was charging into the bastion and they had to charge after him. Guadalupe de Tovar and Professor Baltasar had been saddled with that role.

No, the Thirteenth instead had lagged behind the main war party and waited until the thick of them were setting out before running straight for the lift. If this were about heading straight for the Glass Repository then Maryam would be pleased, but alas it was not. She grit her teeth even as Izel and Song got the lift moving – the ornate brass cage with its crystal walls had levers marked in some ancient language that activated a still-functioning mechanism to hist them up.

Slowly, or at last it felt like it. It might be the height of the cliff they were climbing that gave the impression.

Either way, as they began rising towards the glass spires they were able to look down at the unfolding plan. It did not go without a hitch: the Navigators were able to tag the onjancanu, but quite a few kobaloi scattered rather than obeying it. Trickier still, about halfway up the ramp the beast threw off the veils. It was still too late, as a mass of revenants had been sent to the top of the ramp to empty their muskets into the horde.

“That is too many,” Song muttered. “They don’t have that many guns.”

Cai Wei had told them that the neitspawn was not as clever as a human, and it showed: there were more guns than expected at the ramp because the creature had largely stripped the wall. It had seen a direct threat and thrown almost everything at it, even having some of the cannons wheeled in. It was a slaughter for the lemures, but more of a problem was that it was going to be a slaughter for their comrades as well.

“Wait, no, look at the wall,” Ester said. “See the ropes?”

Her sister was right. While the slaughter took place on the ramp, some of the Skiritai had begun scaling the side of the bastion and were now going over the freshly-stripped wall. They were barely a dozen, but they moved faster than the neitspawn knew how to react to: instead of hitting the gunline they silenced all the cannons before disappearing down the opposite ramp, the one on the northeast the earlier sortie had gone through.

And even as shooting began from the blackcloaks at the bottom of the other ramp and the cramped gunline at the top of it, the Skiritai came back with garrison reinforcements from the canyon and flooded the bastion.

“Huh,” Tristan said. “We actually won that.”

“Guadalupe is going to be very tedious about it,” Song sighed. “She’ll never-”

The neitspawn had evidently come to the same conclusion as they had, because as the battle turned sharply the way of the blackcloaks the massive monster began to flee. It went the only way no one else easily could, of course, which was up. In a mere two heartbeats it had caught up to every inch of progress the Thirteenth’s lift had made, of a height with them, and the creature twitched at the sight of them.

Maryam flinched. She was not unfamiliar with monsters and lifts, and was quite out of fingers to spare. At least Izel was already kneeling on the floor and revealed a familiar device: a silvery auger with a wheel lever and a small furnace attached to a piston. The same device he’d used to punch into the layer back on Asphodel. Considering that the Machinist and the stolen gods were essentially inside one of those that lay within the neitspawn’s body, the use for it was not difficult to guess.

“Doesn’t that thing need contact with the surface?” Maryam asked.

“Yes,” Izel grimaced. “Which is where your...”

He gestured vaguely would come in.

“... comes in,” he finished.

“The chords,” Maryam frowned.

Not Signs but Craft, the secret she and Ester had teased out of the Cauldron at the beginning of the year.

“It gets difficult at range,” Ester said. “It might have to wait until we reach the top of the cliff and-”

“I suspect this might not be an issue,” Angharad mildly said.

“Duck,” Tristan screamed.

Glass exploded everywhere as a hairy leg punched through the lift wall, Maryam cursing whoever had thought this was in any way a clever plan. The appendage wriggled through the cabin, trying to find something to crush, and forcefully kept the lift in place as it struggled to go up. Izel still had his machine in hand so Maryam and Ester ripped out a strand of Gloam and wove it as a ribbon they tied around it. Glass dug into Maryam’s face as they tied another chord around what should be the neitspawn’s body, Angharad cutting into the leg and spraying ichor everywhere.

Ester traced in place against the veil, seeing what Maryam could not, and she shouted.

“How is it triggered?”

“Lever,” he shouted back. “Pull the lever!”

Ester did, there was shrill shriek and-

--

(8/11)

Izel sprawled across the ground, face first.

Shit. He’d miscalculated. He had apportioned the breaching charge under the assumption that this was a layer, but it wasn’t exactly that. The Machinist had made this place so that gods and souls could be dragged into it, the boundary had been thinner. So when the charge had punched through the boundary and found it much weaker, it’d sucked in the closest people to it. In this case, the Unluckies. Dragging himself up, he silenced a groan as he finally got a look at his surroundings. He’d expected a workshop or a smithy, some kind of mechanical wonderland matching the entity called the Machinist.

What he was looking at was a butcher’s shop.

In the penumbra of a great cavern row after row of gods hung from hooks, the chains disappearing into the dark, and their mangled bodies dripped crystal-clear blood into the gutters at their feet. The channels in the ground gathered up at the foot of a simple pale stone table, on top of which waited a set of tools that it burned Izel’s eyes to behold. He would go blind looking, he thought, and turned away.

Just in time to see it happen. Maryam and Ester, hanging in the air inside an amber bubble, disappeared without a sound. Expelled from here. Others were still floating inside theirs: Song, Angharad, Tristan. The contracted. Those that could be made into fodder for the- he saw it then, standing under the three spheres, and swallowed.

It was fair to behold: a silhouette crafted in pure light, whose exact shape blinded the eye. It guttered and flickered, sometimes man and sometimes woman, but in between also shapes inhuman. Snakelike or a broad-maned lion, a thing of many folded wings or a wheel of eyes. The only part that remained the same was that it was crowned in pale gold. Hair or halo he could not tell, nor did he care.

Izel had never before seen something so utterly, terrifying beautiful. The abject horror of the Machinist’s beauty had him wanting to weep, to tear out his own eyes and slam his own forehead against the ground in prostration until submission dripped red across his face.

This was not something being done to him. It was, he knew as an absolute truth, the simple natural reaction of something as miniscule as him standing in front of a greater being.

“Izel. Coyac.”

It was not a voice. It was a harmony of buzzing, like a chorus of a thousand insect wings all slightly different from one another. It did not speak words, only shaped them. Like the meaning was pressed into the air, stamped.

“Machinist,” he got out.

It sounded like he was weeping, because he was. He only then noticed the tears going down his cheeks, the trails of wet. For the barest instant, he thought that the light took the shape of a man holding a smith’s hammer.

“Surrender. Pacify.”

He didn’t get to answer. Without warning, Izel felt every single speck of him – inside and outside, every inch of his brain every corner of his guts – burst into flame. He continued to feel it as he was incinerated, left a statue of ash. Then he breathed not-air and was himself again. Not burned, not touched at all. Still there with the not-blunderbuss on his back.

“Comply.”

“Aren’t you a god?” he gasped, reaching for the straps. “Make me.”

He drowned. He cracked and burst into dust.

Swallowing a scream, Izel took off the strap. Put up the gun. Why hadn’t it expelled him yet, destroyed him?

“Comply.”

He was melted like wax, shattered into red ice. Trembling fingers reached for the trigger he wept, looking for the way out. She had to be there, she had to.

“Comply.”

He was erased like chalk, sliced into a thousand bleeding ribbons, ground into flour and bent into a ball of broken flesh. And between every brutal death, every wound against his soul, he looked for her. Until finally he’d found her. The blastcap blunderbuss was heavy against in his arm as he raised it up.

“Comply.”

You can’t make me, he thought. That’s the trick. You can only act on metaphysical forces, that’s why you were able to trap them all except me. Because you’re still within the bounds of Scholomance, and she’s stopping you from getting out.

“No,” Izel snarled, and pulled the trigger.

There was a ripple in the workshop, then a beat of silence. The Machinist dissolved, reforming as lines of light snapping into place besides him as the gold-crowned deity studied him. The... words came quick, lower, less like a seal stamped and more like letters printed on page. He could make them out, and though intonation was beyond him to infer he could at least feel the structure of the thought, more or less.

“alchemical.reaction.scavenged.hemeran.silviculture.concentrated.aethyr.harmless.contaminated.thesis:ignorance”

A god, Izel dimly realized, had just called him stupid.

“I wasn’t for you,” he got out. “It was for her.”

The goddess on the hook, lifeless and wan. Her once vividly red dress little more than wan rags, her skin paper-thin and her hair white. Or at least it had been, before Izel shot her. Now she twitched, wriggled on the hook. The red was a splash of blood, light burned in her fair curls. Her eyed opened, the color of molten gold.

Fortuna’s sole priest and celebrant had spent hour after hour blessing the contents of the percussion cap, after all. Izel hadn’t shot her with raw aether, he’d shot her a hard infusion of her own power. And there was one last thing still.

“O Fortuna,” he gasped. “You bet on him. What were the odds he’d make it here, do you think?”

Her gaze snapped up to him.

“I would call them long,” Izel Coyac said. “So take your winnings, Lady of Long Odds, and get us out.”

A bet made, a bet paid out.

Fortuna laughed, the sound like clear bells, and Izel grinned as the Machinist screamed and his little pocket burst apart at the seams.

--

(9/11)

They’d not managed to find Nathi’s lair, and not for lack of trying.

The meeting place he sent through letter was deep in the west of the city, past Scraptown and the rusty fields and dunes that spread out to its north. In the depths of the monster-infested rust there was a small ring of shrines at a place where strange ancient metal aqueducts converged, and there Nkosinathi Morcant had decreed that Maryam was to surrender herself if the Thirteenth was to get Ishanvi Kapadia back.

That’d been a mistake. The entire affair, but the place in particular.

“I’ve been before,” Tristan said. “There’s more than one approach.”

Despite Maryam’s insistence otherwise, it had been clear to all of them that it would be foolish for her to truly be the one to meet the demand. Both Izel and Tristan had offered to go in her stead, but Angharad strongly pushed for it to be her. When Song asked why, she hesitated.

“It has best not be about feeling responsible because of your altercation at the party,” Song said.

Angharad shook her head.

“There is something about his desperation that itches away at me,” she admitted. “I want to see it in person.”

Song did not seem all that impressed at her wanting this on the basis of an inkling, but conceded that should this go badly Angharad was the most likely to be able to get out in one piece. It went without saying that the Unluckies had no intention whatsoever of actually striking a bargain with the man: they were sending someone in only as a distraction while the rest of the cabal moved in.

Thus early in the morning of the first of fifth, dragging themselves out of an exhausted slump, they trudged on west. Angharad parted ways with them before Scraptown, in case someone had been left there to watch, and set out through the rusty yards. The dusty causeways and jutting scraps were an interesting sights, less dangerous to wander now that a year of paid scavenging missions had led students to thin the lemure population.

Not that Angharad was here for the sights. Even at a careful pace she found herself reaching the stone steps leading up to the shrines before long, to be greeted by guns. The new Forty-Ninth was no more friendly than the last, and more numerous besides. The surprise was not that Morcant had been able to recruit a full seven – he was a wealthy Stripe with a powerful contract – but that the seven had stayed even when his reputation cratered.

Given his contract, Angharad was not sure that loyalty was the reason for it.

She was escorted into a shrine. At the heart of it was a great bronze altar made to look like a pack of foxes chasing after Orrery stars, flanked on all sides by benches of pale marble. Nathi Morcant sat on the altar, and standing to his right was a familiar face: Bingwen, the Forty-Ninth’s signifier. More important was that on the far bench Ishanvi Kapadia was lying hogtied, asleep. She was also, Angharad saw with something like dread, quite pale.

Not hollow pale, but not far off either.

“You are not who I sent for,” Nathi Morcant said.

Angharad did not bother to humor him.

“What have you done to Ishanvi?” she demanded.

“I took from her,” Morcant said. “And I can give back, should I wish. But only I, Tredegar. Consider it a guarantee of sorts.”

His contract, Angharad thought. He’d drained her with his contract and was holding what he had taken hostage. He could not be killed without it vanishing, went the implication. She wondered how many others in his brigade were still here because of the same thing.

“-will require public apology and restitution, under sworn oath,” Nathi was saying. “I am not an unreasonable man, Tredegar. It is the Thirteenth that again and again-”

Her eyes were still on Ishanvi. Not in anger, though there was that. It was because the sight of the foul thing done to Ishanvi finally let her understand why.

“It’s your spirit,” she said.

“You ought,” Nathi Morcant coldly said, “to be paying closer attention.”

Angharad shook her head in disbelief.

“I wondered at the sympathy I felt for you,” she told him. “It wasn’t over your views, I knew that much. Or even at the fear so obviously moving you. The whole time, I think that part of me was able to tell that your contract is with as vicious an old spirit as mine.”

“Have you been struck on the head?” Nathi scorned. “I am contracted to-”

“An old, old entity,” Angharad said. “A Malani one, that must have taken interest in you back in Isasha. But you didn’t stay in the capital, did you? They sent you here instead, throwing away all your work at the isikole.”

She met his eyes.

“Yours is a powerful contract,” Angharad said. “And it seems like its price might just have ruined your life.”

“You know nothing,” Morcant hissed. “You think because you kissed up to some dying river spirit you can understand-”

“The Tender of Reeds speaks to order, to hierarchy and laws,” Angharad said. “You contract lets you take from those below you, but the price will follow the same logic. What is it that you owe those above you, Nkosinathi Morcant?”

His face clenched.

“A tithe, prizes?”

No so much as a twitch from him. It was the wrong direction. No, the Tender of Reeds would not care much for coin or glory. What a spirit like that would want was an orderly world.

“Obedience,” Angharad quietly said. “You owe obedience to your superiors, mandated by contract.”

The spike of pain on his face told it all. Ancestors, no wonder his lady mother had sent him away. However powerful his contract, all it would take for him to spill all the secrets of the Morcant at court was standing in the presence of an izinduna who ordered him to talk. It’s why you cannot risk turning yourself in to the garrison. If Colonel Azocar asked him questions, he might well be bound to answer them.

It was why he had been so very, very careful never to stand in Song’s presence long enough she could read his full contract.

Angharad laughed.

“Change of plans,” Morcant said. “Bingwen, trigger the trap.”

But Bingwen did not move. He looked at his captain, instead, wondering.

“Bingwen.”

“It is over,” Angharad gently said. “Cai Wei bore witness to your bringing forth the supplies that were used for the raid on the Triangle. The entire Forty-Ninth will be put under arrest and interrogated.”

“I didn’t know,” the Navigator rasped. “Tredegar, I swear I didn’t know.”

“The Akelarre are already acting to save your career,” she said. “Help them, while you still can.”

Bingwen sagged.

“I’ll burn all I took,” Morcant snarled. “I still can, I-”

Angharad looked at him, then. And through him she still saw the machine, the great devouring beast, but she also saw the boy. Scared, sorely used even as he made brutal use of others. The laws he lived in were kind to no one, and the Tender of Reeds had been a spirit of hierarchy long before any crown began to speak of any right but the sword.

Angharad had defeated Nkosinathi Morcant in combat, put him to flight. She was his elder in service under the Watch and his better in deeds.

“I order you to return all that you took,” Angharad Tredegar said, as his superior.

After a heartbeat he moved to obey, and so ended the second of the Forty-Ninth Brigades.

--

(11/11)

The town hall and trade hall of Kofoni were the same edifice. It was the largest building in town by a fair margin, built out of the stone bones of an ancient temple to some god the Second Empire had stamped out. The people of Kofoni had patched the holes with clay bricks and rebuilt the roof in thatch, and the floor was now beaten dirt and widespread straw.

As they approached, Song found that it reeked ever so faintly of shit.

“They must use the place to hold cattle when storms roll in,” Izel muttered.

“Much of the town seems impoverished,” Song said. “Odd, considering that the oldest buildings are stone instead of clay. They were a wealthier people once.”

And it shouldn’t be the skirmish when the slavers and the town guards had tried to abduct the Orels that was responsible for the decline, either, given that little of it seemed recent. Only the damages near the docks could be traced back to that, and it wasn’t even the Watch that’d done it – it had been Kofoni’s own ancient He Fu mortar that blew up and started a fire when it was dragged out of storage and fired.

“The island went to shit after Scholomance folded last time,” Captain Wen idly said. “Almost half their trade was selling food to Port Allazei, so when the port emptied the place went to the dogs.”

Song cocked her head to the side. That did go some way in explaining how despite the Watch’s recent imprisonment of the local mayor there had been more hope than resentment turned on them at the sight of black cloaks. Some of the folk here would have been told that in the days of their grandparents the order had brought prosperity. The three of them reached the open doors of the town hall, stopping by the armed men guarding it. The officer in charge asked for their papers, which Wen dutifully provided. They were waved in without further ado.

Despite its twin functions of town and trade hall, the inside was only lightly furnished. The standout was a large counter of worn wood at the back, where the mayor and reeves would have once settled cases and weighed coinage on the town scales, which was currently occupied by two officers.

One had a golden pin on the collar in the shape of wide-branched trees, the symbol of the Umuthi Society. That and the gold chain around his necks bearing heavy keys marked him as a member of the Wednesday Council, the ruling body of that society. The other blackcloak was a dark-haired woman in regular’s uniform, sitting by several neat piles of papers and an open ledger that was flanked with an inkpot and dipping pen. The judge and the scribe, Song thought. They were flanked on either side by soldiers who bore clubs and iron chains, the constables of the court.

Set before the long counter were two rows of roughly carved wooden benches, most of those on the right occupied. The first bench bore a heavily bearded sergeant, flanked by a Tianxi wearing commander’s gold braid knots on her formal uniform and what appeared to be the captain-general of a free company. The benches behind these three held neatly ordered ranks of officers, every single one of them a colonel. Song counted, her stomach clenching, and found eighteen.

Marshal Camaron must have called in a great meany favors, to be able to muster so many senior officers.

“Now this is a real who’s who,” Captain Wen said. “Our beaded friend up front’s your thief, Izel, Sergeant Who Cares Calvo-”

One might imagine that Wen would lower his voice when calling Sergeant Garci Calvo a lying thief and everyone who supported him thus corrupt patsies, but he had not. Wen Duan being who he was, he had instead raised his voice.

“-and the Cathayan besides him is Commander Yao, Camaron’s favorite charmless hatchetman,” he said. “Captain-General Averico is from the Twenty Companies, they’re so terrible with money they’ve essentially become a bought Conclave seat for Lucierna-”

The faces of both officers in question darkened. So did many of those Wen named as they went down the aisle, naming them ‘Rookery snakes’ or ‘Merchant Fleet sellouts’ before concluding that everyone he’d failed to name was ‘some second-rate monocrat cloak, since this is apparently a sad reunion sitdown of the breed’. This had the effect of angering everyone he’d not yet angered, to the man’s open enjoyment.

“Did we have to bring him?” Izel plaintively asked her.

“I asked,” Song admitted. “Twice.”

And he’d been careful about watching his meals near the date of departure, so Tristan hadn’t been able to arrange ‘food poisoning’ and Sergeant Mandisa sadly being forced to replace him. Izel folded his arms, leaning in.

“There are more than I expected,” he whispered.

“The release of the Cao files made us many enemies,” Song grimly said. “I expect Marshal Camaron would not have been able to muster half so many if we’d not stepped on a significant number of toes.”

Their own row of benches was... lightly filled, to say the least. There were exactly two people seated there, in the second row: a willowy officer in formal robes, who must be Professor He. They were ignoring everyone else. Besides them was Professor Achari, Izel’s main instructor at Scholomance, who spared a wave. The three of them went to join them on the front bench, barely sitting down before the judge leaned to the side to address one of the constables. The man nodded before moving forward and raising his voice.

“Officers and enlisted, rise,” the man ordered.

Dutifully everyone shuffled up onto their feet. The judge, a heavily tattooed man of middle of age with an Aztlan look, swept the room with a gaze.

“Thank you,” he said. “You may be seated.”

He waited untilt he shuffle of sitting back down ended to continue,

“I am Professor Xochintz, elected judge for this patent contest by the authority of the Wednesday Council.”

Xochintz leaned back.

“To be clear from the beginning, this is only an assessment hearing,” he said. “We are not here today to decide on which of the claims is correct, if any, but to have both claimants state their claim on formal Conclave record. That will be the beginning of legal proceedings.”

He paused, eyeing both Izel and Sergeant Calvo with open displeasure.

“Patent contests are a disgrace to the name of the Umuthi Guild, and whatever their outcome lessen the trust invested into our society by all its members,” he sternly said. “Do either of the claimants care to retract their claim before record is entered?”

Sergeant Calvo was called on and declined. So did Izel.

“Then we enter formal record,” Professor Xochintz said. “Scribe, you may proceed. We will begin with a full statement of-”

The judge was interrupted by another rising to their feet: Captain-General Averico, who demanded right to speak.

“You are interrupting proceedings, captain-general,” Xochintz icily said. “You had best have a reason for it, or you will be expelled from this hall.”

“As a sitting member of the Conclave, I exercise my right to present petition the Wednesday Council,” Averico replied. “If I may approach?”

“No,” Xochintz replied. “Pass it to the constable.”

Averico looked miffed but did so. The papers he passed were presented to the judge. Only after a long few minutes did he return his attention to the hall.

“This is a formal demand that a Conclave committee should be created over this matter,” he said.

He paused.

“I would be most interested in hearing why the Wednesday Council should entertain such a brazen attempt to circumvent its authority over its own tinkers,” Xochintz continued.

Averico was unruffled by the professor’s open displeasure.

“Sir, as the petition makes clear the lightlance’s potential not only as a weapon against lemures and darklings but as a way to create areas where they cannot enter makes it more than simple patent: it has strategic implications for the order as a whole. While the Umuthi Society should have the leading voice on the decisions regarding this, it should not have the only voice.”

At her side, Izel breathed in sharply. It was worse than he’d guessed, after all. Marshal Camaron had decided he wasn’t even going to bother with the pending petition ploy and instead try to push the entire matter to a Conclave committee stacked with allies. We thought he would play the long game, but he went for the throat with the opening blow. Still, she really saw no reason that the Umuthi should humor the demand even if there was a shocking number of senior officers on the thieving side of the room.

“This is not only my opinion, but that of all signatories of the petition,” Captain-General Averico continued. "You will find that the rank and numbers threshold for a grand petition have been met.”

Song frowned, turning to look at Captain Wen.

“Grand petition?”

“If they get twenty senior officers in total from at least three different Watch commands to sign a petition, they can brute force getting it onto the next Conclave docket,” Wen said. “It’s not often used, these days. It was abused by charterists to prevent votes during Dominion so now unless there was a genuine need you can get demoted for putting your name on one of these.”

“-would prefer not to file it as such, but we will if necessary,” Captain-General Averico said.

And now the entire plan was out, Song thought. Marshal Camaron had presented the petition to the court here instead of sending it to the Conclave so he could strike a bargain with the Umuthi Society. The carrot was a controlled transfer to adjudication by a committee where the the Umuthi could still maintain some degree control over the proceedings, while the stick was pulling the trigger on the grand petition and putting to the Conclave – with no guarantees that the tinkers would be the dominant force in whatever judgement emerged.

It was, Song thought, skillfully done. If it worked, then the threat used would never enter the record. If it did make it into the record, Camaron could point out that he’d tried to compromise with the Wednesday Council first and they’d refused. Song wouldn’t bet on most men winning an influence battle against a covenant, but this was a particular case. The Unluckies had just made a great many enemies, Izel’s lenslight was potentially worth a great deal of wealth and influence to whoever secured the rights to it and Camaron was a well-entrenched marshal.

One who was currently very difficult to touch because his command was offering a great deal of logistical and material support to Scholomance.

That was the whole point of filling the room with his supporters, beyond the grand petition threat: it was a warning to the Umuthi Society that the assembly of senior officers who’d sailed to this little island town in the middle of nowhere were committed to the fight. That they were willing to put their name and influence behind securing the lenslight.

That, she saw, gave the judge pause. It was not the kind of struggle he could lightly commit the Wednesday Council to. And that’s what Camaron is counting on, she thought. The marshal couldn’t possibly think he could bully his way to a victory today. He was just preventing the formal proceedings from beginning so he’d have the time to approach the Umuthi and cut a private deal while Izel was stuck on Tolomontera, out of the loop.

“If they dismiss proceedings for the day, we lost,” Izel whispered. “Song?”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” she said.

He turned his eyes on her.

“Why?”

“Because Maryam never could resist a dramatic entrance,” Song said. “And she came by it honestly.”

Captain Isoke Falade was the first to walk in.

It took some time for others to notice as she limped in, her eyeless stare unmoving as she navigated her way to the bench behind Izel. Word had begun to spread, officers craning their neck to look, when another three Navigators walked in. Then another. Then another, and another and another.

The room fell completely, utterly silent.

By the time they stopped coming in, there were exactly thirty-one captains of the Akelarre Guild present. From the free companies and from the Garrison, from the Rookery and secret islands, great fortresses and royal courts. Most were old, a rare handful youths. They were men and women and everything else and in between, of very shape and color. They had walked into the room in silence, and in silence every single one of them made sure their right hand was visible.

It was the hand bearing the silver rings marking every single one of them as a Master of the Guild.

They didn’t say anything. Captain Falade, who alone sat the second bench, simply stared down at the other row of benches through white eyes. Someone swallowed drily, and suddenly every single officer sent here by Marshal Camaron was presented with the very real prospect of being on the Akelarre blacklist by the day’s end. Of tangling not only with the tinkers but also the Navigators, that nest of wealth and dark arts.

The oppressive silence continued until Captain Falade cocked her head to the side.

“By all means,” she said. “Continue.”

“How?” Izel whispered.

“I sent a letter,” Song said.

To Captain Falade, who would read it because Song was a Scholomance student so it was her right to appeal to the Obscure Committee. Captain Falade, who had been told in a letter exactly what Izel’s lenslight would do to flesh with Gloam in it – as was the case with all signifiers. Captain Falade, who had been told that Izel Coyac would sit on that patent for five years and Marshal Camaron would have a workshop cranking them out by the end of spring.

So the Navigators had come today to put the weight of their guild on Izel’s side of the scales.

Sergeant Calvos’ face went ashen as he realized this and in the same breath saw his career evaporate. He’d crossed his own covenant for whatever he’d been promised Marshal Camaron, and the last thing the marshal would want now was to be directly involved. No protection would be extended for what was to come. He hastily rose to his feet.

“Apologies, professor, I believe a mistake was made,” he said. “I withdraw my claim to the patent.”

That didn’t end it. Neither would the sergeant being stripped of Umuthi membership by day’s end, the fines and demotions that would scattered across half the officers on the right side of the room by month’s end or even the monetary reparations the sixth Khalkea workshop would soon be forced to offer Warrant Officer Izel Coyac for their egregious claim.

It was only a delay, five years on the clock, and the Thirteenth had gained attention and the enemies while winning it.

But Song couldn’t quite bring herself to care, when looking at the tears in Izel’s eyes as he whispered thank you.