Chapter 15 (Patreon)

The Chimerical was open, not that Tristan had ever seen it close. Did devils even sleep?

“Oh, this place again,” Fortuna enthused. “I just love that hanging crocodile, you should see if it’s for sale.”

He would not, in fact, be doing this. Tristan snuck a look sideways at the goddess, who was traipsing around in her red dress and by all appearances in a fine mood.

“You do not mind the inside, then?” he asked.

Maryam had looked like someone freshly socked in the stomach when recounting how she’d tried to use Gloam sorcery inside. He would have thought Fortuna just as vulnerable to the eldritch trap Hage had lain within. The Lady of Long Odds laid a finger on her chin.

“The drapes could do with some dusting,” she mused.

Not what he had meant, which she knew very well.

“So it isn’t like the Witching Hour,” he said. “It cannot make you disappear.”

Fortuna rolled his eyes at him.

“I wander off for a walk and suddenly you begin clutching at my skirts,” she said. “Tristan, darling, this is growing into somewhat of an embarrassment.”

His jaw clenched. Lying. She was lying about it again. No matter how much he pressed Fortuna refused to acknowledge that when he had wandered the layer she had been gone. Her insistence that she had merely been wandering around was a lazy, transparent lie that she forced into holding by simply ignoring him when he called it out. It was incredibly frustrating, and not at all in the way that Fortuna usually frustrated him.

Forcing himself to calm, Tristan walked the last dozen feet to the front of the coffeehouse. The thief did not wipe his boots on the welcome mat, which was more filth than straw, and struggled to force open the old oaken door. He was fairly sure part of the top rail was either swelled by humidity or too large for the door frame, because it needed fighting on both the way in and the way out. After a minute of effort, he gave up the job and left the door only nine tenths closed.

The acrid smell of coffee remained unpleasant and, even worse, the kind of odor that stuck to your clothes afterwards. Hard to sneak on someone when they smelled an approaching coffeehouse the moment you stood upwind. That audaciously fat black cat – Mephistofeline, he must admit the devil had fine naming sense – waddled close, rubbing his side against Tristan’s boots and then looking up expectantly.

“Your Majesty,” he greeted, scratching under the ears. “How fares your claim on Pandemonium?”

Mephistofeline purred, then sat on his boot and let out an expectant meow. Tristan had always liked cats, their unfortunate tendency to eat rats notwithstanding. They could take care of themselves, which he’d always respected. Though not enough to get one as a pet, as only a fool grew attached to a creature wandering the Murk.

There were never a lot of strays on the streets of the Murk, but especially few the week after rents were due.

“I do not have food,” the thief informed the cat.

Mephistofeline rolled around on his boot, batting his feet up, then meowed again as if that display might have magically added fish to Tristan’s pockets.

“Still no,” he said.

Either miffed at the lack of reward or satisfied he had charmed a new subject into vassalage, the black cat wobbled away with a swinging tail. There was no way Hage had not heard him play with the cat, so he should be out from wherever he usually hid. Tristan’s gaze swept through the booths and the counter, the cluttered display of knickknacks and-

The front door slammed shut and he nearly jumped out of his skin, biting his lip until it almost bled.

Hage had somehow gotten past him without his notice and now stood behind him, faintly smiling. The devil’s shell had not changed a whit – all tall limbs and owlish eyebrows squeezed in a fashionable jerkin and doublet and a rust-red cap – but now that he knew what to look for Tristan thought the brown eyes a little off. Too flat, and when they moved it almost felt like something was looking through them.

“I have always enjoyed cats,” Hage mused. “It is the shameless disloyalty, I think. There is not a single example of the breed that would not turn on you for a large enough salmon.”

“Proper royalty, then,” Tristan said.

“Finer than most,” Hage smiled, revealing the teeth behind the teeth. “He would require salmon first, at least.”

Despite himself, Tristan tensed when the devil stepped past him on his way back to the counter – nearly brushing his shoulder but not quite. He could not forget that evening in Cantica, how damnably quickeven those young devils had been. How their strength had splintered wood and pulped flesh, like the world around them was made of parchment. Hage would not kill him, he knew.

But if he wanted to, it would be as easy as reaching out and squeezing.

“If you’ve come to order water again, boy, you will find each cup is a full arbol,” Hage informed him.

The thief swallowed his discomfort, spread it out until its weave thinned into nothing, and put on a smile. Fortuna, he noted, had ignored all this and pursued the retreating Mephistofeline whose princely hide had committed the great sin of ignoring an invisible, intangible being. He slid into one of the high seats by the counter, calmed by the sight idly noting several of the copper pots were full of water with lit flames beneath. None at a boil, but close.

“What would you advise,” he said, “for someone who has never had coffee before?”

“Another shop,” Hage drily replied.

But the devil withdrew a step, bending to reach for a cloth bag beneath the counter.

“Espuma azul,” he said. “The way they take it on the Riven Coast, short with a layer of berry syrup.”

That sounded absolutely atrocious but Tristan pretended otherwise with a pleased smile. He had no intention of drinking coffee beyond what circumstance forced on him, regardless, so he thought of the cost more as the price paid for a conversation. He slid the seven coppers – Manes, that was almost two meals - Hage asked him for across the counter, which the devil snapped up dexterously before getting about the business of making the promised abomination.

Mephistofeline leaped up onto the counter, drawn by the noise, and drew Fortuna back with him. The black cat stretched and settled for a map like a plump furry cushion, purring happily when Hage scratched his head. Still visibly miffed at having been ignored, Fortuna began peering at all the copper devices behind the counter while the devil poured beans into a mortar and began crushing them. The goddess spared him a glance.

"Now that’s an old one," she noted. “And not too empty inside either.”

Tristan kept his face smooth. Empty inside? Putting a meaning to that would be more work than he could afford at the moment, so best to keep to the shallow truths. Hage was old even by Fortuna’s reckoning, which meant the devil was almost certain to be annealed. Immortal in the sense that no matter how many times he was killed he would come back.

“I had not thought to see you again,” Hage idly said as he pressed the pestle against the coffee beans. “You did not seem keen on trying my brews.”

“Well,” Tristan said, “I had a thought.”

“It was bound to happen eventually,” the devil said. “Worry not, boy, the headache will pass.”

He rolled his eyes even as Fortuna chortled at his expense.

“It seems to me like the Krypteia would balk at putting all its recommendations in the same room, where anyone could see them and commit the faces to memory,” Tristan said. “Besides, though I confess I know little of the Masks their remit as told me is large.”

Abuela had told him the Krypteia were charged with killing traitors within the Watch, but the Cryptics were also supposed to be spies sniffing out cultists and those breaking the Accords as well as interrogators and assassins. Compared to the duty of the Skiritai Guild, which as far as he could tell began and ended with the sentence ‘kill things’, it was a generous helping of responsibilities. Too many, perhaps, for a single set of skills to apply across the entire Krypteia.

“Enough that many teachers might serve better than one,” he continued.

The devil, done with crushing the beans, carefully poured the powder into now-boiling water.

“A reasoning not without cleverness,” Hage said. “Though if you think to buy names from me, it will not be cheap.”

The thief had considered that, as it happened, but it wasn’t why he was here.

“It seems to me,” Tristan continued, “that if the Masks planted teachers there must be some way to find them out. To confirm they truly are one.”

“It would make for a pointless chase otherwise,” Hage agreed.

“The simplest way,” he said, “would be to order them not to lie when asked.”

Tristan leaned in.

“Are you a teacher for the Krypteia, Hage?”

The devil chuckled.

“So I am,” he said. “What led you to suspect?”

“You got the drop on all of us when we first visited,” Tristan said.

As far as he could tell, Song could see through anything aetheric – including the existence of contracts – and she had still missed him. Tredegar had been caught unaware, and unless she was busy brooding that girl was damnably difficult to slip by.

“That and Wen implied the Chimerical has existed elsewhere,” he added. “Put that together, and your being a devil on a Watch island? There are only so many explanations.”

Even if Hage had not turned out to be a professor, he was almost certain to be some sort of lead.

“Wen has always been too chatty for his own good,” Hage said. “His time on the Dominion has done nothing to mend the flaws that saw him sent there.”

A tempting morsel to nibble at, Tristan thought, but he knew bait when he heard it.

“What do you teach?” he asked. “How many of them are you?”

Hage sighed, stirring the copper pot. He clicked his teeth disapprovingly, the sound too long and drawn out for it to have been men’s teeth.

“Creepy,” Fortuna appreciated.

She leaned forward to look into the devil’s mouth as he spoke, like a buyer inspecting a horse’s teeth, and Tristan almost twitched.

“There are five of us on Tolomontera,” Hage said. “To be allowed to remain at Scholomance, you must find two of us and learn a trade to our satisfaction before the end of the year.”

Tristan frowned.

“And your trade is?”

The devil turned and glanced back.

“What do you think?” he asked.

The thief narrowed his eyes.

“I think that coffee would cover the smell of strange brews and your devices to make it the sound of more exotic distillations,” Tristan said.

“I teach poisons,” Hage agreed.

Too easily.

“But not just that,” the gray-eyed man added, frowning. “Spycraft? Things can be overheard in a coffeehouse and you have the only one on the island. Officers will chat here, loosen their tongues.”

Not as much as they would when drunk, but you drink wine in your own home. Coffee was much harder to obtain, and a popular vice among the wealthy.

“The Chimerical has been many sorts of establishments over the years,” Hage said. “Coffee is only the latest of my fascinations.”

The devil, deeming the boiling finished, stole away the copper pot and busied himself out of sight. The process involved filtering, vapor released from a valve and what looked like a leathery pastry bag. Tristan was served a cup of coffee taller than wide, no larger than his thumb, the liquid’s surface was layered with a purple-blue syrup slowly turning into foam.

“Pretty,” Fortuna opined.

“Wait twenty seconds, then sip,” Hage instructed, then cocked one of the great eyebrows. “You may learn from me, Tristan Abrascal, either the art of poisons or the liar’s game – what we call the ‘lesser tradecraft’, these days.”

“Spying,” he said.

“We are all spies, boy,” Hage chuckled. “The liar’s game is the one played on your feet: picking locks, doubling papers, twisting arms and hunting down rumors.”

Tristan cocked his head to the side.

“Would that not be the greater tradecraft?” he asked.

Hage gave a twofold smile, which had grown no less disturbing for the repetition.

“Liars are a spent like coppers,” he said. “The greatest of our craft move the board, not on it.”

Unsure what one might reply to that, Tristan tried a sip of the drink to buy himself time.

It was, to his surprise, quite good.

He had expected something sugary and warm, like a pie made into liquid, but instead the drink was quite bitter. Yet it was also refreshing, the aftertaste of the berry syrup smoothing out the tang of the beans. Not something he would partake of for pleasure, but hardly the chore he had expected to be putting himself through.

“It is to be drunk quickly,” Hage said, “before the syrup is entirely thinned by the heat.”

Tristan took another sip, considering his option. The devil had implied he would only offer tutelage in one trade, and in truth that was for the best – he still needed to find another of the teachers hidden in Port Allazei, which would take time. One trade was best, keeping that in mind. Which left the question of which he should take.

Neither felt like it quite fit, in truth. Abuela had made him learn Alvareno’s Dosages and its uses, so he was passable in the use of poisons already. No expert, certainly, but Tristan had picked the elective class of Medicine and he expected that there would be some bridges in that knowledge. On the other hand, he knew precious little of the sort of exotic substances that would be required to kill the likes of devils and gods. And he was unlikely to ever be killing the likes of those with a blade, wasn’t he?

Lesser tradecraft sounded a great deal like what Abuela had been training him in since she took him under her wing, and it felt almost insulting that he should be trained in something he had been doing all his life. Pride aside, it was in such matters he felt most confident. Yet it was one thing to practice these skills and another to practice them the ways the Krypteia wanted him to. It would, besides, be arrogance to expect that his few years of tutelage were all there was to know.

Tristan took another sip and considered what it was he would most be called on to do on behalf of the Thirteenth. That was his answer, in the end.

“I have been known to dabble in lying,” he told Hage. “It is a fitting game for me to learn, I think.”

The devil seemed amused.

“Ah, the hardest of my tests,” he said. “As expected of the Name-Eater’s latest.”

“A test,” Tristan warily repeated.

“Did you think we would teach anyone who asked?” Hage said, clicking something that was not a tongue and did not sound like it. “No, first you must prove worth my while.”

“And how,” the thief said, “would I do that?”

“Simple enough,” the devil replied. “The Watch keeps a dossier on all students who attend Scholomance. There are four transcripts of yours in Port Allazei: before midnight, read one and return to answer my questions on its contents.”

Tristan mulled on that, for a moment, then cleared his throat.

“Might I read your transcript?” he politely asked.

“No,” Hage replied.

The hard way it was, then.

--

“Welcome to the Abbey.”

Professor Baltasar Formosa’s hair had not grown any less wild since Maryam last saw him, or his beard any less neatly cropped, but the tall middle-aged man looked as haggard as they all felt. Standing on the edge of the depthless pit of darkness, framed only by shaky candlelight of the chamberstick he was holding up, the professor looked more scarecrow than man. The silver signet ring on his hand, the mark of a Master of the Guild, glittered coldly as he gestured at the pit below.

The sixty of them had followed him deep below the Akelarre chapterhouse, handed worn iron chambersticks and sent down narrow stairs where only one fit at a time. The great room waiting beneath the ground was an intricate pattern of arching pillars and transverses, the gray and red tile patterns on the ceiling dizzying to the eye even in the trembling glow of their candles.

But all their eyes had inevitably strayed to the heart of the room, where the pit breathed like a gargantuan beast.

Professor Baltasar had led them to the edge, where a well of darkness plunged into the depths of the earth, but tucked away were further secrets. Spiraling down and facing the dark were small stone cells, large enough to fit one soul and little more. Maryam tried not to look down, where the dark became Gloam and the depths of nothingness would swallow whole the unwary.

“We did not build this place,” Professor Baltasar said. “Unlike much of this island it does not bear the mark of the Antediluvians, so our best guess is that it was dug during the Old Night.”

Maryam believed him. She had walked the shrine path below the Broken Gates as a girl, to prove she was worthy of being taught by her mother, and the oldest of the shrines – built after the Antediluvians unmade themselves by shattering the walls encircling Nav – had the same… feeling to them than this place. Not winter-cold but grave-cold, the kind that left the skin cool but settled deep in your bones.

“Many a cult and court have held the Abbey over the centuries,” the professor continued, “and always for the same reason: it is one of the single finest places in all the known world to educate signifiers.”

Whispers spread between shivering candles, eager and wary both. The Craft was not something that ever gave without taking.

“The Gloam here is malleable, settled,” Baltasar Formosa said. “You will find it easier to form Signs and should you stumble you will find it easier to cut the Sign before it lashes back.”

So that was how the Guild would get around the strictures of teaching the Craft.

To form a Sign was to paint with fire: the smallest of mistakes would see your fingers scorched. All it took for backlash to happen was to fail to fit the Gloam into the Sign strongly enough. Tendrils of power would surge out, like with waterskin being gripped, and mangle everything around them. If you lacked discipline, losing a finger would make you release the incomplete Sign out of pain and then you were likely to lose an entire hand – if not an arm.

Most signifiers only learned Signs under the eye of an elder of the Craft for that very reason: the older Akelarre could snuff out the backlash before it hurt you, then show you where you had gone wrong. It had been greatly unlikely for the Akelarre Guild to send sixty Masters to teach the students at Scholomance, however, given how much their services were worth. Even a more reasonable split of five students per Master would have represented a ruinous expense. But if the Abbey made mistakes more forgiving, learning easier? A handful of teachers would be enough. More guides than mentors, which seemed the way of things at Scholomance.

“I teach you nothing you do not know when I say that the Art is not something that can be made standard,” Professor Baltasar said. “The process of obscuration is personal, and talent with certain Signs can make difficult the mastery of others.”

Standing fearless by the edge of the drop, the professor had turned his back to the dark to address them. It leant him a ghostly air, standing surrounded by a circle of flickering candlelight with the abyss lurking below.

“I will not pretend otherwise by teaching you as a crowd: you will learn as you please, according to your understanding of your strengths.,” Professor Baltasar said. “The chapterhouse library will be made open to you, but no book within will be forced.”

It could not only that, Maryam thought, for to be left to their own devices when learning Signs would be… hazardous, regardless of the Abbey’s boons.”

“I and other Masters on the island will teach you Sign-patterns if asked, and smooth the wrinkles in your understanding by conversation, but that will be at your own initiative,” the professor told them. “No time in the Abbey is mandated of you, and it is your right to never return here if you so wish.”

You showed us the long length of the leash, Maryam thought. Now how are you going to tug it to remind us it is still very much there?

“But at the end of the year,” Professor Baltasar calmly said, “any of you who have not mastered the fundamental Signs of at least two of the five branches of the Art to my satisfaction will be sent away.”

His gaze turned disdainful.

“If you are incapable of accomplishing this with the advantages we will offer you, to keep you here is a waste of our time.”

Maryam flinched, glad that her hood hid it. This was not glad news.

“Now,” Professor Baltasar mildly, “I would begin showing you the benefits of studying at Scholomance. Can anyone here name the Two Measures?”

Hands rose, though not Maryam’s. She was still chewing over mounting despair.

“Grasp and Command, professor.”

Maryam had been taught using the words Grip and Control, but the meanings were the same. The Two Measures were the way by which the ‘strength’ of a signifier could be quantified, more or less. Grasp was the amount of Gloam that one’s nav was capable of gathering, the power that was there to be shape. Command was the amount of Gloam that a signifier was capable of shaping at once, usually by forming it into a Sign.

The ceiling of a signifier’s capacity lay at the intersection of these measures: the peak of what you could Grasp and Command was your peak. Having superb Command but weak Grasp meant you would be forever condemned to petty tricks, while having great Grasp but weak Command meant using any complex Sign risked melting your brain. It was very rare for someone to be perfectly matched in both, most signifiers naturally leaning one way or the other and learning to compensate.

Maryam was not one of the souls blessed with perfect metaphysical symmetry, to her great bitterness.

The Two Measures were not perfect, of course. She had been taught that some Akelarre scholars argued for other measures to be added – Extent for the time you could manipulate, for example, or Density for the concentration of Gloam that you could achieve – but there were even more arguing that such additions were ultimately derivative and should not be held up as fundamentals.

“Correct,” Professor Baltasar said. “It is rare for a precise assessment of where one stands relative to the two measures to be feasible, but the condition of the Gloam here in the Abbey allows for the use of these.”

Fishing inside his robes, the scarecrow man produced a wide, slender circle of stone no larger than two fists put together. It was engraved with intricate channels on its surface, whose patterns were dizzying to contemplate. Maryam resisted the urge to send out her nav to feel them out, knowing she was being presented with conceptual symmetry – the flesh was ill suited to contemplate such things, but the Abbey was a dangerous place to get curious with her soul-effigy.

“Some of you will recognize what I hold,” he said. “But for the rest of you: this artifact is called a Kuru Maze. It restricts the gathering and guidance of the Gloam in very specific ways, allowing for a precise measure of your Grasp and Command.”

He cleared his throat.

“Time has made such creations fragile and a significant loss of control will shatter the stone,” Professor Baltasar said. “In the Abbey, however, the risk is significantly diminished. Consequently you will be allowed to test yourself using the maze and learn where you stand regarding Grasp and Command.”

He paused.

“The value you will be given is cross-referenced in many of the books in the chapterhouse library, which should markedly ease the process of learning new Signs,” the professor continued. “As in all things, you will not be forced – it is, however, my strong recommendation that you take this test.”

There was some eager chatter. The notion was a popular one, and why not? The manipulation of Gloam was deemed the Craft by Izvorica and the Art by the Akelarre Guild because much of it was imprecise, hard to measure. The few certainties they could get their hands on were priceless things.

“Now, let us get you in your cells,” Professor Baltasar said. “I will be moving down in order to handle the maze and any questions you might have.”

Maryam’s lips thinned. She already knew she would decline use of the Kuru Maze so she should decide on a believable reason as soon as possible.

Because if Professor Baltasar saw her measures, he might well just tell her to stop coming to class.

--

They had assembled at the Old Playhouse because of a hidden path.

None of them had seen Colonel Cao arrive earlier, though given where she’d appeared Song had guessed she came from the back of the stage. This proved to be correct, though not in the way she had expected. The colonel walked past a half-collapsed corridor that must lead back to the city and instead went into the basement of the playhouse, through what must once have been some ancient storage. There waited great wooden doors, which were of much more recent make than anything else Song had seen here.

Pulled open, they revealed a narrow lantern-lit hall that continued beyond what the Tianxi could easily make out.

“The last in are to the close the doors,” Colonel Cao instructed, then proceeded in.

The hall was only wide enough for two at a time, which left Song and Ferranda side by side. The fair-haired infanzona was keeping quiet, eyes moving across the lit hall as if there might lie hidden secrets in the walls of stone. They walked behind a pair of Izcalli, the same Song recalled having seen speaking with Tupoc earlier. The two spoke in Centzon the entire way, seeming to believe using their native tongue would keep the talk private.

Unfortunately for them Song had been fluent in Centzon since she was ten years old.

Alas, the pair were not sharing great secrets. Mostly they talked about how a girl called Serinda was ‘scorching as summer heat’ and ribbed each other about how they were going to be the one to seduce her into bed. The only mildly interesting thing to come out of their mouth was a passing mention of Tupoc, whom they called ‘the leopard-man’ and did not seem to take all that seriously.

Song knew little that was not secondhand about the Leopard Society, but she recalled it was not considered prestigious the way that most Izcalli warrior societies were. That was sensible enough given that they were a pack of raiding, slave-taking bandits but she had not considered that it might lead other Izcalli to look down on Tupoc. That might be of use.

The path to their destination was simple: they went in a straight line until there was a crossroads, then took a left. Word came from the front, and thus Colonel Cao, that the right turn would lead into an alley close to the junction of Regnant Avenue and Templeward Street. Continuing north would, instead, eventually lead to Misery Square. Song memorized the former path, which promised to be the most convenient for her in the future.

At the end of the turn waited a wrought iron door, kept alight not with lanterns but by replaced stones around the doorway whose masonry had soaked in Glare and gave off that pale burn still.

“Expensive,” Ferranda murmured, and the Tianxi nodded in agreement.

The two of them were about halfway down the line and there were several people taller than them in the way, so neither could make out what Colonel Cao did before the door - but all heard her rap her knuckles harshly thrice, then a shutter slide open. Something was said, the shutter closed and after a few moments the door opened wide. The students began entering, the surprised gasps Song heard when she was close enough to stoke her curiosity.

Soon they were past the threshold and the guards by it, the Tianxi breathing in sharply despite having prepared herself: she was standing within what she could only describe as the child of a cathedral and an officer’s club.

There were ten stories to a structure whose shape was that of a rectangle ending in a rounded wall, but much of it was empty: wooden galleries went around the walls and left a hollow space going up to the distant wooden ceiling in the middle. From the fourth story onward, what would be well above ground level for the island, the rounded walls became great stained-glass windows whose colored light painted everything it touched.

Stairs went from one level to the next, and as they followed Colonel Cao up them Song saw the galleries were filled with dormitories, meeting halls and private offices. There was even a library! It was brisk exercise to climb, but she was too excited to tire.

On the eighth story there was a dining room and kitchen, a handful of officers eating at the tables there, and the two levels afterwards were entirely filled with small, tastefully decorated salons. Yet there was more, as what she’d believed the ceiling was in truth a floor and unlike the others the room at the summit filled that entire level.

And what a sight it was! Nearly half the walls had been removed and replaced with windowpanes, their glass clear and clean. Along one wall was a long counter behind which wine and liquors were stocked, while the opposite wall was entirely covered with a board full of pinned papers. In between the walls was an intricate layout of couches and armchairs set by low tables, looking sinfully comfortable.

Song’s belly clenched with something that was neither quite greed nor admiration: this was everything she wanted about the Academy distilled into a single edifice.

The simple implicit power in having this place refurbished out here on this nowhere island, in maintaining it. The exclusivity, the comfort, the grace. It was the heights she needed to reach if she was to ever make the name Ren into anything but a curse.

“Claim seats as you wish,” Colonel Cao said, waving them off.

The older herself went to the counter, where a sharply dressed man poured her a glass from one of the bottles on the top shelf without even needing to be asked. Only after taking a sip of amber liquor and letting out a sigh of satisfaction did the colonel pull back a seat and sat on it facing them. Song claimed the closest armchair and turned it to face her, sitting ramrod straight, while Ferranda was forced to share a couch with a pair of Lierganen girls and crane her neck instead.

Once Colonel Cao was satisfied with the arrangements, she set down her cup and cleared her throat.

“This,” she said, gesturing at their surroundings, “is the Galleries.”

In the burning pale of the lamplights she seemed younger, as if invigorated by the elegance of their surroundings. Song could sympathize. The prospect of returning to her filthy cottage later already felt like a punishment.

“The dormitories, rooms and library are for you to do with as you please,” Colonel Cao said. “This was once the privilege of Academians alone, but the circumstances of Scholomance’s reopening have seen this courtesy extended to you.”

Murmurs of approbation. Even the little kings and the duchess trailing them seemed impressed by their surroundings, which were no doubt the finest on the island.

“It goes without saying that none of you may bring outsiders and that such an attempt would be harshly punished.”

A shame, Song thought. Angharad might have enjoyed spending the occasional evening here and the Pereduri would have been a great help in navigating the social occasions. Her duel with Musa Shange had, while painting a target on her, also made her the equivalent of a conversation piece. Between the novelty of the story and her Angharad’s good looks, people wanted to talk to her.

“The dining hall is manned at the expense of the Academy, so you will find its fare requires coin – and is far superior to anything else this island has to offer,” she continued. “The same is true of the salons below, if  you require refreshments to be served there.”

She sipped at her drink again.

“I expect, however, that you will be spending the most time on this level,” Colonel Cao said. “The reason is behind you.”

Song turned to better study the great boards filled with pinned papers. Several she recognized as maps with a glance, others as interesting information – there appeared to be a list with the number of students for the year, of cabals and even the number of students by covenant – but the vast majority was something simpler. They were, she saw, bounties.

“The bounty boards are filled with not only the Academy’s chosen tasks but also that of professors, other covenants and even select students,” Colonel Cao said. “Though I will be explaining to you the nature of your training and time in Scholomance, I first invited you to rise and read the existing bounties.”

The watchwoman reached within her coat, pulling out a silvery pocket watch on a matching chain. She popped it open, then glanced at the time.

“You have five minutes to claim one by taking the paper,” Colonel Cao calmly said. “And if your cabal has not accomplished it by the end of the week, you will pack your bags and head to the harbor.”

Chaos erupted.

--

The Fisher liked it here.

The old spirit slithered through her veins like icy water and the feel of him was almost hungry. Angharad kept her eyes straight ahead as they descended into the chasm, trying to force him out, but it was like fighting the tide itself. He would leave when he cared to and not a breath before.

The stairway beneath her feet was carved out of snarling beasts, wolves and lions snapping at her heels as she followed Shalini and Salvador down into the dark. The way below was cut with stripes of light and darkness, the burning paleness of the oil lamps never quite reaching another’s cast as the students followed Marshal de la Tavarin into the depths. He seemed an almost ghostly figure, from a distance, an incongruous splash of color in this stairway filled with the silence of twisting shadows.

At the end of the path lay a grand balcony, an arc of cracked painted tiles filled with seats of stone. At least a hundred of them, Angharad saw, and none entirely alike: some were carved into the likeness of vines and flowers, others of beasts clawing at each other or warring soldiers or raging waves. Years and rain had worn away details, but they were still each a small wonder. Yet all paled compared to the great throne at the center of the arc, twice as tall and wide as any other and carved as a single great skeleton embracing whoever sat on it.

The Marshal walked past it, to the elegant stone railing at the end of the arcing balcony. Angharad could scarce see what was below save for four great lanterns hanging from a ceiling above, all wrought black iron and large as a carriage. They burned brimstone-red, belching out smoke endlessly as they painted the deeps in the likeness of a furnace.

“There was a time,” the Marshal said, “after the world broke and from the corpse of Liergan rose many a king dreaming of empire.”

He had not raised his voice, but Angharad heard him perfectly. No student had dared approach the edge of the balcony, kept back by dim instinct, and not a single whisper broke the silence. Above the earth, bathed in the light of the Orrery, the old man had seemed almost a figure of fun. The descent into the bowels of the earth had since snuffed out that impression.

“Sologuer was one such kingdom,” Marshal de la Tavarin continued, “and for a time the iron-toothed kings of this land ruled over isles and coast as far as their ships could reach.”

The old man laid a hand on the elegant stone railing, looking down at a sight none of them could see.

“They took tribute in gold, as kings do, but their hunger was not so easily sated,” the Marshal said. “Black-bellied ships returned to this island with every turn of the Fool’s Moon, bringing young warriors come to die in a bloody temple.”

She could feel the Fisher smile, savor the old butchery soaked into the stones.

“The Acallar, they called this place.”

He flashed them a grin, revealing glinting silver teeth.

“The kings of Sologuer, you see, believed the slaughter would make them into gods. Beings able to command the orbits of the Grand Orrery and so master the very elements. Even the children of their house sat the thrones, drinking in the slaughter.”

The grin turned mocking.

“The Morningstar, ever sharp of humor, sat in that very seat as they slew each other below for the entertainment of his court."

She felt Shalini stiffen at her side, as was only sensible when being told that Lucifer had once held court where you stood.

“Come closer,” Marshal de la Tavarin ordered. “Today’s lesson will take place below.”

Hesitantly they approached the edge, the infernal light of the lanterns revealing the grounds where warriors had once fought and died for madmen.

Their balcony, she first saw, was the not the only seats. Facing on the other side, noticeably lower, was a much broader and longer arc of stone benches where a crowd would have been able to gather. That was not, however, where they would be headed.

Perhaps a hundred feet below stood the grounds, a broad circle of stone ringed by large iron cages surrounded by the abyss on all sides. There was hardly a foot of bare floor on it, the arena almost as a broken town: there were low walls and pillars, a few roofed houses, furrows in the ground and even sculpted fountains. There were lower grounds and higher, shallow stairs and subtle drops, while in the shadows lay pitfalls for the unwary.

Dusty bones and weapons long rotted away lay strewn like offerings, one structure standing taller than all the rest: a rough mimicry of the Grand Orrery’s silhouette in rusted iron, a skeleton nailed to it as some sort of grim display.

A broad stone bridge was the only break in the abyss surrounding the grounds, connected to the sole break in the ring of iron cages and leading to a doorway in the wall that was closed by a portcullis. Angharad saw through the steel grid that there burned lantern light past it. Glancing around the grand balcony, she found that tucked away in the shadows was a stairway delving deeper into the earth – there must be tunnels in the walls, some of them leading to the heart of Acallar.

Her gaze withdrew when Shalini gasped as her side, following the Someshwari’s eyes but finding nothing save for the fighting grounds below.

“One of those cages just moved,” Shalini quietly said. “There’s something inside.”

Angharad breathed in sharply. Her friend was not the only one to have noticed, and disquieted murmurs spread across their company. Marshal de la Tavarin seemed indifferent to the turn in the mood.

“Come,” he said. “Let us continue on our way.”

Their professor made for the stairs Angharad had earlier noticed, followed by wary students, but she hung back. She stayed at the railing, silently counting cages as the other two stared at her in confusion.

“Around fifty, I think,” she said. “Fewer than there are students.”

“So either not everyone’s fighting in that pit or we will be forming squads,” Shalini said, catching on.

Salvador nodded in agreement.

“Squad,” he predicted. “Like when hunting lemures.”

“I wonder how large they will be?” Angharad murmured.

If there were three then the arrangement was good as made, but more than that would require some thought. Less as well, in a different away.

“I’m more curious about how they got the beasts down there in the first place,” Shalini noted. “Either way, the garrison must be involved – I doubt His Grace did it all by himself.”

That last guess from Shalini was proved true when the three of them followed the current down the stairs, passing through a well-lit guardhouse where a handful of watchmen were seated and playing cards. The soldiers spared them only glances, otherwise ignoring them as they passed. There was another pair by the portcullis, which was now raised by the work of a wheel by its side. It is meant to keep people in, Angharad thought, and not out.

The bridge over the abyss was wide but utterly without railing and the faint breeze down here had her body prickling with unease.

They found the Marshal perched atop a low brick wall by a great crack splitting it, the great feather on his hat fluttering in the breeze. The old man waited for all the students to gather below him, stroking his impressive mustache as he watched them. He cleared his throat when all were arrived, flicking his great sleeves in an eye-drawing gesture.

“The first of the Skiritai,” he said, “were not god-killers.”

That snuffed out every other whisper of conversation, many of which had bloomed. Angharad herself knew precious little of the history of the guild she was to join, its past as shrouded as the rest of the Watch’s.

“They were mercenaries, driven to the blade-trade by their home island turning barren beneath their feet,” Marshal de la Tavarin told them. “Desperate for coin to feed their families worth, they took the worst of the contracts: the most brutal, the most dangerous, the most hopeless.”

A harsh fate, Angharad thought, but such work was respectable in its own way.

“Years turned into decades,” the Marshal said, “and enough lived that the Skiritai became known as the finest warriors on the Trebian Sea - sought-after by a hundred warring kings.”

The old man coughed into his fist, then dabbed at his lips with a mustard-yellow handkerchief he produced from his sleeve.

“To the Skiritai a child was not grown until they had cut down a man, so their soldier-youths they called by the same name as the blade they were to wield: kopis.”

It sounded like a word from a hollow cant, Angharad thought, but she was no scholar in such regards. Perhaps she ought to ask Song.

“Long after the island these first of the Skiritai were born to faded from memory,” Marshal de la Tavarin continued, “our guild continued the practice in honor of these humble beginnings. An initiate of the Skiritai is known as a skopis, a sword for the Watch to wield.”

The Marshal flashed them that grin again, a handful of silver teeth glinting in the light.

“You are not even that, of course. To be an initiate of the Skiritai Guild is something earned and you have earned less than dust.”

Unhappy mutters. Even Angharad found herself frowning. He spoke no lie, but his truth was spoken with contempt. They were nor arrant children claiming something to which they had no tie, they had been chosen by the very guild he spoke for. Laying his cane on his knees, the old man clapped his hands.

“So be glad, children, for today you are given the opportunity to begin redeeming that miscarriage,” the Marshal said.

He chuckled.

“In blood and ichor, as is our way.”

The old man leaped down from his perch, landing with surprising lightness on his feet. He pointed his cane forward, the crowd moving out of the way, and their gazes landed on a cage. Which shook, the sound of claws on metal echoing loudly into the silence.

“There are sixty cages,” the Marshal said. “Each contains something worth killing.”

“Like what?”

The question came from the back of the crowd, not a face Angharad could see. The professor did not seem offended by the interruption.

“Now that would be telling,” the old man laughed. “Lemures one and all, I will say, but hardly any two are the same – behind that door could be a pair of lupines or a raging griffin, depending on your luck.”

He tucked his arm behind his back, sleeve trailing.

“I tell you true, children, I am a merciful man,” Marshal de la Tavarin solemnly said. “I have spared more men death by my hand than you have seen sparrows fly.”

Angharad’s lips thinned. Unless the professor had once commanded over a great surrender, that was most unlikely. Which meant a man she was meant to offer respect to might very well be a liar.

“True to my nature, I offer you the chance to make bands of four or less before choosing which cage you are to open. Are you not grateful?”

The noblewoman’s lips thinned even further. Lupines were easy enough to handle Angharad believed she could kill a pair by herself, but a griffin? There were no such beasts in Malan but their reputation was fearsome far beyond their Trebian hunting grounds. She was not sure that even a squad of four could kill such a creature – not without deaths or grave wounds, anyway. Unless to name a griffin as an example had been an exaggeration, another lie.

Disgraceful either way.

“Why,” the Marshal mused, “some of you seem quite displeased. Speak up, if you’ve doubts.”

Lord Musa swiftly stepped to the fore, face pleasant but eyes contemptuous.

“Sir,” he began-

“Your Grace,” the old man mildly said, “or Marshal.”

“Marshal,” the Malani swordmaster corrected. “Given our lack of preparations and these unfavorable grounds, the likes of a griffin would be difficult for some among us to slay.”

The Marshal snorted.

“So you’re saying my little surprise is ill thought out,” he said.

“I would not say such a thing,” Lord Musa replied.

Which was nothing but polite agreement in the Malani way. The old man sighed, shaking his head.

“There are some who would agree with you, boy,” the Marshal said. “Who have, in the past.”

He clicked his tongue.

“Few of them lasted out a year as Skiritai.”

Musa Shange’s face tightened at the implied insult.

“Your mindset is one of defeat,” the Marshal lectured, leaning on his cane. “You look for a path, tracing with your fingers something you hope might lead to the death of your opponent. That is a mistake.”

He scoffed.

“You are a Militant,” he said. “The path begins with the death of your opponent, traced back to where you stand. Uncertainty is surrender.”

The old man stepped forward.

“But perhaps proof is required,” he said. “So proof I will grant. Pick one, boy.”

“Pardon?” Lord Musa frowned.

“Pick a cage,” the Marshal said, “and I will kill whatever is inside with nothing more than what I bear. I am an old man, and barely armed. If I can succeed, what would be objections from you save whining?”

The Malani laughed incredulously, then gazed back at the crowd. Angharad shifted, feeling as uncertain as he did. What if the old man died? Only the Marshal’s face remained utterly serious. After a moment Musa Shange cleared his throat, then pointed at a cage some ways away – by a flat stretch of ground fenced in by furrows in the ground. The cage did not shake, whatever awaited inside disinclined to rattle its prison.

“Mhm,” the Marshal said. “I don’t remember what’s in that. I do enjoy a surprise.”

The old man sent them back across the bridge and to the guardhouse, telling them to take from there a right – there were hidden stairs there, which they followed up to the large balcony with the benches. It was much closer to the grounds below than the heights above had been, enough that Angharad thought she might be able to leap down there without breaking her legs.

It would hurt a great deal, she figured, but it could be done.

As the quiet students spread out across the benches, staying in the same small circles they had from the start but now eyeing each other with the prospect of a fight looming ahead, Angharad saw the watchmen on the other side of the portcullis lowered it. Though Shalini and Salvador stayed seated, the noblewoman instead went to lean against the railing as she watched the Marshal moving below. The old man began undoing the latches on the large iron cage one after another, then wrenched the door open and stepped back.

Nothing came out, at first.

Then a ten-fingered hand larger than a head reached out, the monster within peeking out a large red-maned head and began dragging itself out. Whatever the lemure was it was large, Angharad thought.

“Onjancanu,” Salvador hoarsely whispered behind her. “Old Tyrant.”

She could hear the wariness in the voice of a man she doubted was easily cowed.

The creature rose, knees creaking like old hinges as its long red beard swept against the ground, and it unfolded to its full height. Twenty feet, broad-shouldered and built like a tower as the red string of its beard mixed with the long red mane of its back to cover its front. The limbs were naked and hairy, ten fingers and toes ending in nails of sharp bone. Its skin was thick and sickly-yellow, its nose overlarge and sniffing at the air as its single wet and lidless eye flicked about this way and that. The sclera was burnt orange, the pupil black and slowly the onjancanu opened a great maw filled with rows of teeth.

It began to laugh, the sound of it guttural and shivering all the way down to her toes.

The Marshal stood alone before it, both hands resting atop his lionhead cane as he looked up at the monster’s monstrous face. He had yet to reach for a weapon.

“Disappointing,” the old man said, words carrying up to them on the wind. “They starved you too much, hardly any mind left in you.”

Without even turning his way, the monster snatched a loose stone the size of a table and tossed it at him so casually it took Angharad a heartbeat to realize what had just happened – only instead of Marshal de la Tavarin’s splattered remains, what she saw was the old man’s coat sleeve fluttering where the deadly weight had narrowly brushed past it. He had barely moved half a foot, the mirror-dancer realized, and not even quickly. Leaning on his cane, the Marshal began closing the distance with slow steps.

Now he had the monster’s attention.

The onjancanu screamed and stomped forward, those tree-trunk legs shaking the ground as it caught up to old man in the blink of an eye and reached to snatch him up with its mouth already open for the gobble – only with a casual, almost gentle press of his cane on the knuckles the Marshal brushed aside the clawed hand enough it passed half an inch wide of him. In the heartbeat before the monster turned aside to scoop him up with the other hand, the old man viciously struck with the butt if his cane on the monster’s foot.

It let out a scream of pain, picking up its own foot as it hopped back, and tried to blindly smack away at the offending fly with the side of its hand. The Marshal stepped past the swing into the monster’s guard, its wrist ruffling the feather on the old man’s hat even as he struck at the knee it was hopping on. Shouting furiously, the beast opened its arms wide and let itself collapse on the Marshal – who kept moving forward even as it dropped forward.

He emerged between its legs, the gust of wind from the onjancanu hitting the ground sending his hat flying. He snatched it out of the hair, casually pressing it back down on his head even as the great ogre threw a tantrum and began wailing at the floor with its hand and feet. A flailing foot almost caught him in the ribs, a blow sure to turn his ribs to powder, but with unhurried precision the old man pressed down on his cane to leap above the blind sweep like a lamb over a fence.

The onjancanu must have felt him, however, for it turned from its belly to its side with a roar to face the irritating bug and, hand rising high – the Marshal nonchalantly reached inside his coat and withdrew an ornate pistol, pulling the trigger. Snap, powder billowed out and wet viscera burst where the monster’s sole eye had been as the roar turned into a hoarse scream. The palm came down, but it caught only dust as the Marshal leaned back the spent pistol on his shoulder and closed on the creature cradling its eye with its other hand.

Angharad felt her stomach clench with something like fear. She had known from the start that despite his appearance and seeming foolishness, the old man must be deadly – how else could he have lived old as one of the Militants, that band ever first into the breach? Yet she had expected a contract or some terrifying weapon, not… this.

At no point in the fight had the Marshal even moved faster than at a walk.

She had stared at him every moment, blinking as little as she could, and he did not begin moving before the creature did – this was not foresight, like her own contract. He had not brushed aside the blows of the lemure with strength leant by a spirit or wounded it with some trick. Any half-trained fighter would be able to strike as strongly as he had with the slightly pointed bottom of his cane. This was, Angharad realized with something like awe, pure skill.

The Marshal, now by the blinded onjancanu’s face, folded past the furious slap of a great hand on the ground and as his coat fluttered he twirled his cane in that same gesture she had thought pointless vanity – and then thrust it tip first into the mutilated gelatinous orb. In the heartbeat that followed Angharad saw the old man’s death writ. He had not been strong enough to push it all the way and kill the beast, the large ogre’s arms were now coming to enfold him and –

Spinning the empty pistol in his hand so the cooled barrel rested against his palm, the Marshal hammered the cane in with the butt of the pistol.

The screaming cut out, the onjancanu’s brains pierced through, and after a mighty twitch the arms about to crush the old man dropped and began flopping uselessly on the ground. Putting away his pistol, the Marshal placed his boot against the monster’s great head and pulled out his cane. It took him three heaves and there was a splatter of blood on his coat, but black on black did not show.

Uncertainty was surrender, he had told them, and suddenly Angharad grasped a sliver of what he’d meant. The Marshal had never once hesitated in that fight, let uncertainty slow his stride or confuse his design. It was as if the entire fight had been a single, continuous movement from beginning to end. And that was not simple skill, Angharad knew. It took more than that. It took experience.

How many onjancanu had the Marshal killed, to toy with this one so casually?

The beast had stopped twitching by the time he turned to face them, flashing a silver grin. The hellish red light cast his shadow behind him, and in that silhouette Angharad thought she glimpsed a mound of corpses so tall it would fill this entire cavern. Men and beasts, gods and devils – everything under firmament. To be an old Skiritai, she thought, was to carry a graveyard in your trail. And that? That was something she could learn.

Something she wanted to learn.

“See?” the Marshal said. “Even an old man can do it.”

And the greater of the two monsters walked away from the other’s corpse, calling for them to make their squads and come down in order as his cane left a trail of black blood on the ground.