Chapter 20 (Patreon)

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

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

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

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

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

Her head whipped his way in surprise.

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

Maryam eyed him uneasily.

“You washed after, right?”

He blinked.

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

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

“I almost bought that,” Maryam admitted.

The gray-eyed man cackled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How was your class?” she asked.

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

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

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

Song nodded.

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

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

--

This whole thing stank, Tristan thought.

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

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

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

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

“Familiar?” he murmured.

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

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

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

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

Song cleared her throat.

“May I ask what-”

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

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

She merely had poor manners.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The man pushed up his spectacles.

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

Tristan’s brow rose.

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

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

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

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

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

Tristan winced. About what he’d feared.

“So what changed since?”

The man laughed.

“The blood dried,” Sasan said.

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

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

--

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

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

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

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

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

The other woman frowned.

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

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

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

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

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

The Tianxi signifier glanced at him with a hard smile.

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

The man rolled his eyes behind his spectacles.

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

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

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

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

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

An arch of stone, simple gray blocks perfectly interlocked.

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

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

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

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

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

“What lies beyond, professor?” she asked.

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

The noblewoman licked her lips.

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

The professor’s brow rose above his spectacles.

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

Angharad went stiff as a board at the insult.

“Pardon me?” she forced out.

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

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

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

The man pushed up his glasses.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Professor Sasan cleared his throat.

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

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

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

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

He shrugged.

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

No one was quite sure what to answer to that.

--

Song went first.

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

She felt it then: she was tethered.

“You have bound my soul,” Song said.

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

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

“What will two minutes achieve?” she asked.

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

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

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

“I am ready,” she said.

“Then cross the threshold,” she said.

One, two, three steps and Song was-

--

Song Ren was no longer young.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The laugh that earned her was unkind.

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

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

“Aihan?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Aihan-”

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

The worn woman that was her sister scoffed.

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

Song licked her lips.

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

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

Song swallowed and did not answer.

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

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

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

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

Song stared down at the overgrown grass, shamed.

“No,” she forced out.

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

Song trembled.

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

A pause, a cruel twist of the lips.

“He went in his sleep.”

“I didn’t know,” Song whispered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--

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

“Gods,” Song wept. “Oh Gods.”

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

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

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

--

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

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

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

A woman’s scoff.

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

“You still have three living,” Cozme shrugged.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cozme Aflor caught him by the neck.

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

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

Contracted? No, he had not met-

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

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

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

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

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

She had left him behind.

--

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

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

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

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

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

--

How long had she been doing this?

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

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

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

So she bent the rules, ever so slightly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The finger pulled the trigger and Angharad Tredegar knew noth-

--

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

Maryam swallowed, meeting Yue’s eyes.

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

--

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

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

Tristan looked away.

“Too much trouble,” he simply said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Dun?” it asked.

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

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

--

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

“It is over?” she asked.

“Probably,” the older Navigator said.

Maryam frowned.

“What do you mean, probably?”

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

The Tianxi grinned.

“Scholomance spat you out.”