Chapter 24 (Patreon)

She would have fallen asleep if not for the second pot of tea.

Song sat at the kitchen table in the quivering candlelight, not staring at Tristan’s shoddy note - it had a fresh X added at the bottom, conveying he still drew breath. Now and then she remembered to turn the page of the first volume of Universal Histories, which she was meant to be reading for Saga. Only she kept mixing up pre-imperial kings: even the earliest dynasty, the short-lived Pelayo, had managed to squeeze in two Alfonsos who’d fought battles over the same stretch of riverlands with similarly named rival kings.

At least ancient kings of Cathay had taken on reigning names that made them easier to tell apart.

Song felt the words sliding along her mind instead of sinking in and knew that by morning she would remember hardly a thing of what she had read. Yet to close the book would be to surrender this time to waiting alone, keeping company only with Tristan’s note. Sipping at her increasingly lukewarm tea, Song turned a page and was presented with the tortured family tree of the Ormisenda dynasty – the successors of the Pelayo – and winced at the sight of a fresh battalion of Alfonsos, flanked by a cavalry wing of Fruelas.

“This is unkind,” she informed the book.

The frustration distracted her enough that her stomach dropped when she heard the front door open. Maryam trudged in tiredly with a lantern in hand, not hanging her weapons on the hooks but dropping them into a pile on the wooden bench next to the boots instead. The powder, at least, she hung. The hooded cloak that she wore everywhere was tucked under her arm as she walked out of the antechamber, eyes widening in surprise when she saw Song seated at the table.

The Izvorica must have been exhausted not to notice there was a lit candle in the kitchen. For a long moment they matched gazes, Song’s mouth suddenly gone dry, then Maryam sighed.

“Must we do this tonight?” she asked.

Song straightened.

“Will you promise me time tomorrow morning if not?”

Muttering something in Triglau that had the sound of a curse to it, the pale-skinned woman approached and dropped her cloak on a chair before sitting on another, facing Song. Maryam had always been pale and the Tianxi could not remember her without circles around her eyes but there was something… she looked worn. As if what had once been a few layers now went down to the bone.

“The hours you keep are taking a toll,” Song quietly said.

Maryam’s face closed, like shutters pulled tight, and she knew she had made a mistake again.

“I get enough sleep and Captain Yue sends me back with an escort when we run late,” she sharply replied.

“I meant no offense,” Song hastened to reply.

Gods, she felt like biting her tongue until it bled. Maryam breathed in, waited a moment, then nodded. Stiffly.

“Fine,” she said. “None taken.”

“You are working with the captain, then,” Song tried.

Maryam’s face closed shut again and Song almost let out a sob of frustration. She knew the other woman was not thin-skinned – could not be, when the color of it earned her stares and jeers wherever she went – which meant that Song was walking through a field and somehow managing to step solely on the fucking caltrops.

“Worked on, more like,” Maryam tightly replied. “But I’ve had some answers.”

“Progress, then,” Song said, forcing a smile.

“Of a sort,” the blue-eyed woman flatly replied. “Captain Yue is mostly certain that if a quarter of my brain was amputated my signifying would stabilize.”

Captain Yue sounded like the Krypteia should regularly break into her closet to look for skeletons, but it would not have been politic of Song to say as much.

“Have you-” Song began, but Maryam raised a hand to cut her off.

“Song,” she said. “The only reason my eyes are still open is that it burns when I close them. I am in no state or mood for chatter. What do you want?”

Song had earlier spent the better part of an hour preparing a speech. Even written it down, though naturally she had burned the paper after memorizing it. Only looking at those weary blue eyes, she stumbled.

“It has come to my attention,” she said, facing that stare, then swallowed. “I have-”

She could not remember the end of that sentence if someone put a pistol to her head. The chisel kept slipping through her fingers. Song swallowed, almost choking on her own fear and spit.

“I’m sorry,” Song blurted out. “It was… I was unfair to you and to others. I started the fire and fed it. It is my fault.”

Maryam watched her, pale face gaunt in the light, and the Tianxi could tell something in there clenched.

“You take too much on yourself,” she said.

Hope rose that against all odds she had found the right words to-

“I used to admire that, but no longer,” Maryam said. “You take it in and bottle it up until a good shake makes the cork pop and it all comes spilling out. It’s no good for you and it may just be worse for us.”

Song swallowed.

“It is,” she tried, then hesitated. “It is how I am, Maryam.”

“No one is like that,” Maryam gently replied. “You learn to be.”

She looked away. There was something too much like pity in those blue eyes, and she did not have it in her to be angry at the other woman right now.

“Regardless, I apologize,” Song croaked, licking dry lips. “I did not truly believe the accusation I levied at you. It will not happen again and I will make amends however I can.”

How, she was not sure. But until she had how could any of them trust her? She would do what she must to make up for her mistakes.

“There’s no penance to be had here,” Maryam tiredly replied. “You are not my bondswoman for seven years, freed of bonds and guilt on the final morning. If there is work to be done, it is not for me.”

“I don’t understand,” Song admitted. “I owe Tristan apology as well, but that does not erase-”

“Apologies don’t mean a fucking thing, Song,” Maryam said, voice rising. “You cut me, like we all cut each other, but that’s just thorns. It happens, sometimes even when you don’t mean it to. But what’s changed since, Song?”

“I know I did wrong,” she said. “Next time-”

And somehow, it was still the wrong answer.

“You can’t make yourself without flaw by… precedent, somehow” Maryam bit out. “I do not care that you lost control, I care about what I saw when you did. That’s what needs mending, not words thrown in anger.”

The Izvorica passed a hand through her hair, looking like a woman only a stiff breeze away from toppling.

“If the Thirteenth keeps, this is not the last time we will be left scraped raw and with reasons to claw at each other,” Maryam said. “We’ll crack again, in months or years to come.”

“And next time I will be ready,” Song insisted. “I do not repeat my mistakes, Maryam.”

“You’re not listening,” the other woman said. “I don’t want so sit with you smiling until the next pop, Song, never knowing you’re silently swallowing one thorn after another until the moment where your belly bursts and you spit them all out in our faces.”

Maryam shook her head.

“Gods, but in that moment I think you genuinely hated him,” she said. “And part of that is on Tristan, but it’s also on you. Because it got that far without anyone doing about it and you’re the one who’s supposed to want the Thirteenth Brigade to work.”

That more than anything else Maryam had said, rang true. And cut deepest.

“There is only so much I can do,” Song got out. “I am not…”

She swallowed, unsure what the right words would be. ‘Perfect’ would be arrogant even in denial. ‘A miracle worker’ was putting Tristan on a pedestal, if an ill one. He was not some evil spirit without reason. The urge to claim you had failed at a high rung of the ladder, Uncle Zhuge once told her, was a common reaction to having lost your footing much lower. A grand failure was easier to swallow than a petty one.

“I don’t know what I am to do,” Song admitted. “When we first met at the Rookery I thought I knew what lay ahead, but since we came to Tolomontera I have been lost.”

“And if we were still at the Rookery, I’d wave all this away,” Maryam said. “But we aren’t, and I can’t excuse the mistakes woman in front of me for the sake of the one I met there.”

She sighed.

“History won’t weigh on the scales, Song,” Maryam told her. “That’s what this… bloodletting taught me. The one thing I can’t forgive from this whole debacle is that when Tredegar called me useless I had nothingto contradict her with.”

“You are still learning,” Song carefully said.

“That’s an excuse,” the other woman firmly said. “I have had too much truck with those of late. I have been gnawing at grudges instead of looking ahead, it’s no wonder I fell behind.”

Maryam let out a yawn, covering it with her hand.

“I am not keeping to these hours to spite you, Song,” she said. “Yue’s pushing harder because she’s heard rumors the Thirteenth had a blowout, but I’ve been volunteering past what she asks.”

She leaned in.

“I am stepping forward instead of being dragged, and it has made a difference.”

“So you have gotten real answers,” Song said. “Not just…”

Been told lobotomy was a potential solution.

“They only brought more questions,” Maryam said, “but that is the road: fill the unknown piece by piece until you are left with a map. Until the next time I am called useless, I can look that person in the eye and call them a liar.”

“You are not useless,” Song told her.

The Izvorica’s face shuttered again, but Song was too tired to wince. They matched gazes for a long moment, silver to blue, until the signifier looked away.

“I’m not sure,” Maryam quietly said, “whether I hate or love that you really believe that.”

She pushed off her seat, snatching up her cloak.

“Good night, Song,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

A beat,

“Good night, Maryam,” she replied.

Not quickly enough that she was addressing anything but a retreating back.

Song emptied the rest of the cold tea into the garden bushes, trying not to look at the iron teapot she had dented in her rage. How it still served but might be injured for good.

How that felt like the worst sort of omen.

--

They headed to class together in the morning. Maryam had not accompanied her like this in days so it felt like a victory, however trifling one.

Still, with Teratology looming ahead Song was glad of even such a small thing. She did not speak much on the way, instead reciting inside her head the readings she had done. Not that Maryam seemed in all that chatty a mood. Professor Kang, Song suspected, would be eager for an opportunity to dole out humiliation for any perceived failing of hers. To stay a step ahead she had gone to the private library in the Galleries and picked out the three works she judged most likely to be upcoming assigned readings for the class.

Two of them were Teratology manuals, of which there were multiple copies with some in different print - a sign they had been in use for long, classics. She had read up to the fifth chapter in each. The third work was the one she spent the most time on, however. It was a treatise, not a proper book, but its title and author had commanded her full attention: Systematic Collapse, by Yun Kang.

It was a methodical, detailed analysis of what the fifteen years following the Dimming had done to the lands of the Republic of Jigong. Too detailed for him not to have been out there, seeing it with his own eyes. It had made for… harrowing reading, but read it Song had. She was prepared.

The walk through Scholomance to get to class was somehow even more wearying than it had been the first day, perhaps because Song knew what was waiting for her at the end. She kept her wits about her, ignoring the temptations the school dangled their way – shortcuts and hidden libraries, a warm kitchen smelling of freshly baked bread and once a scared child screaming. That one had a few students hesitating before their friends pulled them back.

Scholomance, Song saw, was watching them from the walls. Learning what had worked and what had not. No, she thought. Not learning. Remembering. It had waned, starved of souls to feed on for so long, but corpse after corpse it was gaining back in strength. In mind.

It was a grim thought, and it was in a grim mood she arrived in class. She and Maryam had arrived ahead of most, and they took the same desks near the middle of the room. The air in the crypt always felt slightly damp, and Song’s eyes could not help but stray at the stuffed lemures looking at her from the walls and ceiling. It was as if Kang had a hundred eyes, each of them staring at her unblinking.

Song was careful to avoid looking at the front of the class where the professor stood, not to give him an excuse.

Angharad arrived with the Thirty-First shortly before the beginning of class, and much like the last few students to hurry in they were sweaty and harried. Zenzele even had a cut on his cheek, a sure sign that Scholomance had tried something. Not that Professor Kang cared.

“Another twenty seconds and you would have been late,” he chided. “Laziness is not a habit to boast of.”

Shalini looked furious, but Ferranda laid a hand on her arm to keep her from speaking. The infanzona had good instincts. Denied a reason to continue hectoring them, Professor Kang hummed and passed by his desk to snatch up his wooden baton while Angharad settled at the desk to Song’s left, sparing a nod her way.

“Now that the distractions are over with,” Professor Kang said, “let us begin.”

He began his lecture without so much as a glance her way but Song knew better than to lower her guard.

She would admit, however, that he was a compelling speaker. Unlike Professor Sasan he did not invite discussion, but neither was his lecture the kind that put students to sleep. After spending half an hour outlining the fundamental differences between an ‘animal’ and ‘creature’ – the latter term being a catch-all term including lares and lemures, though he noted that less scholarly literature also referred to them as 'monsters’ – he laid out the basics of the Takata Index for them.

It was the manner by which the teratologist of the Watch ranked the threat of particular creatures on a scale of one to ten. Kang flatly informed them that they should memorize the criteria he had written on the slate, for they would be tested not only on listing them but by applying the Takata Index on example creatures.

Then he pivoted her way and it began.

“Captain Ren,” the professor smoothly said. “Who was it that first laid out a distinction between lares and lemures?”

He wanted her, Song thought, to answer ‘the Second Empire’ so he could tut at her inexactness. Fortunately for her, she had read the second chapter of Categorias Naturales.

“Cornelia Marca, on behalf of Emperor Raul II,” she replied. “Sir.”

The man paused, stroking his beard.

“A basic answer,” he said, and moved on.

A few minutes of learning about the early Lierganen origins of the formal discipline followed, but the swerve inevitably came.

“Captain Ren,” he thinly smiled, “how is it that creatures from regions hundreds of thousands of miles apart can share the same physiology? Let us take lupines for an example.”

Arbor Vitae, fourth chapter. He had changed manuals.

“According to the theory of origin, sir,” Song replied, “it is because these creatures came from the same original animals. In the case of lupines, dogs.”

His face tightened.

“Speculative at best,” Professor Kang said, turning away.

Twice now he had come for her and missed. Unless he was deaf he would be hearing the same whispers spreading across the class she did. It was one thing for a professor to pick on a student, another for that professor to fail. A man worried about his reputation would have stopped.

Yung Kang did not.

The next question he asked her was only tangentially related to what was even being discussed, about the proper name for the mutations aether caused in plant anatomy, and there she had to admit ignorance. The smirk returned.

She could not answer the next two questions either, and after the last he sighed in disappointment.

“It seems you will need all the help you can get, Captain Ren,” the professor said. “You, in front, your name?”

He was addressing a short Izcalli girl sitting in the front row, her head shaved save for a stripe going down the back and two tufts on the sides. Contracted.

“Captain Tozi Poloko,” she replied. “Nineteenth Brigade.”

“Trade seats with her, Captain Tozi,” Professor Kang ordered.

Song wilted under the gazes of the classroom as she was made to pack up her things and move them up front, the other captain sending her an unfriendly look for the trouble. Kang ceased questioning her after that, but he made it a point to always walk back and forth near her with his baton trailing across her desk. It made her tense every time and fall behind in taking notes. The lecture lasted close to three hours in whole, and shortly before dismissing the class the professor leaned in close with those shining black eyes.

“Stay behind after,” Professor Kang ordered her.

Song put away her notes even as the rest of the class began to leave. Maryam glanced back twice, but the professor’s cocked eyebrow dissuaded her from lingering. Soon she was the only one left, the professor shuffling papers on his desk. After waiting there for five minutes, Song dared to clear her throat.

“Sir,” she cautiously asked. “What can I do for you?”

Professor Kang looked up, seemingly surprised.

“Still here, Ren?” he said. “You will be late for your next class.”

She grit her teeth. Was he really that petty?

“As you say, professor,” she stiffly replied, grabbing her bag.

He smirked.

“Although, since you are here,” Professor Kang idly said. “I am curious – are you a jiang wu practitioner, Captain Song?”

She blinked in surprise.

“Sword dances?” she asked. “No, sir. I never learned any.”

She had been taught traditional swordsmanship, certainly, but still one meant to be used - not a largely ceremonial performance. Sword dances took skill but not necessarily the same skills used in genuine combat. Bafflingly, the answer brought a vicious sort of satisfaction to the man’s face.

“No,” Kang smiled. “I thought not. Go on, then. Get going.”

She was glad to, uncomfortable standing alone in the room with a man who meant her ill. Song had tried to think of the professor as a test, something she could make a reputation from, but today made that… difficult. Kang seemed entirely willing to go as far as he needed to make her pass as ignorant – how many in the class would have been able to answer the questions she did correctly? How many who were not Savants? It was with gritted teeth she left.

Reaching the hall outside, Song found she might be the least to leave but there were still some lingerers. A pair of Tianxi was standing at the end pf the hallway, by the stairs, talking in low voices. One was contracted. His name was Hong Hua, and he could move… the location of wounds by touch? Interesting. She tore away her gaze before it could be noticed. It took three more steps for Song to recall one detail – that particular spelling of ‘Hua’ as a surname, it was uncommon.

Almost only used around the southern shore of Hehou River, the border with the Imperial Someshwar. The Republic of Jigong’s border with the Someshwar, to be precise.

Song heard the classroom door close behind her, and it saved her life – she glanced that way, eyes widening when she saw two more students had hidden on either side of the door. One had a pistol aimed at her, and as he pulled the trigger she ducked. The shot sounded, the bullet tearing into her bag and sending chunks of paper flying. That was her notes, some part of her dimly raged. Her own pistol was not loaded, a dire mistake, so instead her sword cleared the scabbard as she dropped her bag. It would only get in her way.

“Help,” she shouted, but there was no one.

Only her, enemies and a closed door. The ambusher without the pistol – contracted, Renshu, something something all-devouring – let out a sharp laugh, unsheathing a curved dao saber as he stepped forward. Movement behind, but if she let them dictate this she was dead. Ignoring the threat at her back she ran towards her ambushers, ignoring the surprise on their faces as she rushed the pistol wielder. The contracted saberman stepped between them as the other man yelped, dropping his pistol and fumbling for the straight sword at his hip.

Two steps, thrust. The saber came to swat down her blade but Song was already moving out of the feint. Pivot, sweep low and cut – ‘Renshu’ hastily backed into the door to avoid getting his throat sliced, impacting it with a thud. The other man got his blade out, just in time for Song to smoothly drop and sweep his leg. Always moving, gathering strength like the wind. He stumbled back, head smacking against the wall as he fell. Dropped his sword.

Saber strike from the left, a quick cut to her sword arm’s shoulder. Not the neck? Not a feint either, Song found as she flicked a strike at his knee to trip the faint but found him leaning into the blow instead. She turned withdrawing that probing blade into a rising pivot strike at Renshu’s face that had him leaning back, momentum against him and… there, she slid her boot’s toe under the dropped sword, tossing it straight up.

She tossed her sword at Renshu’s face, forcing him back with his saber high, snatched the other sword out of the air by the grip and smoothly slid it into the other man’s throat as he got back on his feet – his movement only driving it all the way through. She ripped the sword free as the sole woman screamed Liu, turning to face the others. Step forward, breathe in and out. Never stop moving.

Renshu would soon be at her back, so she swept forward towards the pair charging her.

“You bitch,” Hong Hua snarled, raising his blade.

A large changdao, two-handed saber raised high. A horse-killer, slow but strong. One good strike on the head and she was done. Only he stood as if he were aiming not at her skull but at her shoulder. Between that and Renshu's shoulder blow? They wanted her alive.

She could use that.

The woman had lowered her spear, threatening her ribs, but instead of trying to juggle the both of them Song stepped right into Hong’s blow – the angle put him between Song and the spear, and in the moment he hesitated to bring down the sword Song thrust her blade into his belly. It caught on the coat, away from the slow death of a deep wound and into the sides. Hong still screamed hoarsely as she rammed her shoulder into his chest, toppling him down.

Song moved to rip out the dead man’s sword, but the weight was slightly off and – the edge caught against a brass button, failing to slice through the thread beneath. She was just a heartbeat too slow to avoid getting hit with the spear, raising an arm to protect her from the shaft but still being forced stumbling back.

Without the sword.

She reached for her pistol, even unloaded, but Renshu was on her before it was even half out. He hammered down at her folded elbow with the pommel of his saber, then as she screamed and felt muscle tear he caught her by the throat and threw her down. Song’s back hit stone, stealing breath out of her lungs.

“Get me to Liu,” Hong shouted. “Quick, before-”

She saw the spear come down, rolled to avoid the blow but the wooden length still hit her on the shoulder. Song tensed, a mistake: Renshu kicked her in the back and she convulsed in pain, shouting.

“Go yourself,” the woman snarled. “She’s not down yet.”

Hands trembling, she got her pistol out and pointed it at Renshu, who took half a step back – only for his ally to swat at her hand with the spear, white-hot pain streaking across her phalanges as she dropped the empty pistol. A blow followed on the head, blinding her for a heartbeat. She tried roll away, to crawl, but a kick got her back on her belly and then the saber’s edge was resting on her throat.

“Move and you die,” Renshu panted, red-faced. “No more risks with you, Song Ren.”

Song stilled, though she was nauseous from the last kick and could taste bile in her mouth. Her vision was swimming from that head blow, but she still saw Hong Hua leaving a trail of blood through his hand as he knelt by Liu’s body and laid a hand on his face. She saw strands of blood red connect them both, and something moving down them from Hong onto Liu until the corpse’s face burst into a bloody shower. The wound, she realized. He had moved his wound onto the dead man.

“Fuck,” Hong shakily breathed out. “That was close.”

“I told you we should have killed her outright,” the woman said.

“We were never going to get a better chance than this, Meihui,” Hong bit out. “With the mirror-dancer gone-”

“Liu’s dead,” Renshu harshly said.

“Another corpse for the Ren tally,” the other man replied.

Song opened her mouth to say something, anything, but she was finding it hard to focus and – the spear came down again, hitting her in stomach. She turned over to throw up, Renshu’s blade barely withdrawing in time.

“Not here,” Hong said. “Take her to the room. We can’t trust Kang to keep quiet if we do it here, he’s too much of a weasel.”

“He said-”

Song did not hear what Professor Kang had said, for someone had caught her by the collar and was dragging her away. She felt dulled, like her body was barely her own. She was not sure how long they moved her, but after some time she was propped up against a wall – and then a sharp slap across the face brought her back to the present.

“There,” Meihui said. “That should do it.”

She was so short, Song thought. Barely even five feet. It made that braid going down her back look much longer. The tip of the spear pressed against her belly.

“Figured it out yet?” the other woman asked.

“You’re all from Jigong,” Song hoarsely replied.

Someone laughed. Hong, she saw. He was dragging Liu’s mangled corpse to rest it against the wall. Broad and just short of fat, with a messy topknot and dark eyes.

“The republic, yes,” he agreed. “Not the city. I’m from Baoban myself, higher up the river.”

A week ago Song would never have heard the name, but she had read Systematic Collapse since.

“Where they made Glare-touched oil,” she croaked out.

“Pride of the town,” Hong smiled as he approached. “Supplied half the lanterns in Jigong and even sold across the river. Our elders heard about the Dimming just a day before the riders from the capital came, waving those orders that’d empty our stocks of oil.”

His smile widened, absolutely mirthless.

“Only there were still two years left before the lottery, so there wasn’t all that much set aside yet,” Hong said. “We might run out. So the elders refused, closed the gates, and the riders left angry.”

The man pushed off the wall.

“They came back a week later, Ren, with two thousand men and cannons. Sacked Baoban, put most the elders to the sword and were careless enough looting us that half the oil they came to steal went up in flames anyway.”

Hong’s fingers clenched.

“My elder brothers died in that fire,” he said. “My aunt. Half the parents of the children I grew up with. Those who got to grow up at all – there were more hollows than men in Baoban, by the time the Watch recruited me.”

“I had yet to be born,” Song croaked out.

“And that’s an excuse?” Hong scoffed.

“You think we don’t know your family cut a deal?” Meihui said. “That the Old Devil stayed but the rest of you got to run off to some relatives down south? We didn’t all get to be raised in some cushy estate, Ren.”

The spear tip pressed stronger against her, scuffing the coat.

“My family headed to Luban as soon as I was old enough to walk,” Meihui said. “Like half those fleeing Jigong. It was misery getting there, people turning on each other like animals when bread ran out and the lights went low, but we made it to the border. We did.”

Her face clenched like a fist.

“Only they stopped us at the border, at Hongying Pass,” Meihui snarled. “The soldiers said the Republic of Luban was closed to refugees. And they watched as we starved to death, until all the virtuous were dead and the rest of us ate their corpses.”

The edge of the spear rose until it was but an inch away from Song’s eye. She did not blink, or shy away from the other woman’s gaze. How could she, when she was looking at her family’s legacy?

“The things my mother did to keep us alive, the things my sisters were forced to… oh, for that you get to die slow,” Meihui softly said.

And Song couldn’t help it. She laughed. What else was there to do?

“You-” Meihui began.

“Come on then, Renshu,” Song said, looking at the man still keeping an eye on the door. “Shall I hear your tale of woe as well? You’ll only get to kill me once. Make it count.”

The man matched his blade, narrow of face and build but sharp of cheek and eye. His head was all but shaved and his eyebrow notched with a small scar that did not go all the way through. He felt, she thought, like the most dangerous of the three. This one watched and waited where the others blustered.

“You get no tale from me,” Renshu replied. “Only this: after dooming thousands upon thousands, Chaoxiang Ren lived for two years in a comfortable tower cell as Jigong withered around him.”

“He did not  bargain for that,” Song sharply replied. “He was detained for the Ministry until he could be made to stand trial before magistrates of every republic.”

Just before they announced that Jigong was forever estranged from the lottery. The sentence, she’d been told, was still famous. Two lashes from every magistrate save for Jigong’s, who went last and got only one, then the sequence was to begin anew. Again and again until death ensued. ‘Eighty-nine lashes, still no light’ had since become a proverb for times where a punishment felt too weak for the crime.

“They should have killed you all then and there,” Renshu mildly said. “Nine degrees of extermination, like the old kings swore by. This is nothing more than the rectification of that mistake.”

The ugly, bubbling mirth had never been far and it tore out of her throat again. She laughed in his face, all their faces.

“No, it is not. This is children taking out their hate on the only Ren they could find,” Song said. “Dress it up however you like, we all know the truth: you disregard zunyan and seek private satisfaction. You wander the land without knowledge of righteous and the unrighteous.”

She got blank looks at that, Meihui shooting Renshu a confused look.

“It’s from the Fangzi Yongtu,” the sharp-faced man said. “She’s saying we have no principles.”

“Ah,” Meihui smiled. “My mother never got to teach me the Purpose of the House, Ren. You see, she-”

“I don’t care.”

Someone said the words in her voice. With her lips. From the corner of her eye, Song saw Luren sitting in the corner all askew with a wide-brimmed straw hat pulled down to hide his face. All she saw of it was the barest edge of a smile.

“I don’t care,” Song repeated, breathing out.

What a relief it was to say that, after all these years. Like she was breathing fresh air for the first time in her life.

“You stand there lecturing me about horrors while claiming it a crime for me to be born? Pathetic,” she told them. “You don’t get to pretend this is revenge. This is, this is a tantrum. So spare me the tears, the stories and get it fucking over with.”

She had spent her whole life suffering for her name. She would not spend her death doing the same.

“They won’t,” Luren said from his corner, tearing the cork from his wine gourd with a resounding pop. “They want you to scream, child. They hope that’s what they’ll hear when they sleep, instead of the other ones.”

“You don’t get to decide that,” Meihui coldly said.

“It won’t change anything,” Song told her god, ignoring her. “Nothing does.”

“Wrong,” Luren happily said. “Fool. Something is not nothing, only nothing can be something.”

The torture, Song hoped, would be less tedious than this. The false monk drank deeply of his gourd, wiping his mouth with a pleased sight afterwards.

“And you have put out something,” the god said. “Sosomething is there.”

He paused.

“The woman has the compass,” Luren added, and then he was gone.

Sharp pain across her cheek drew back Song’s gaze, Meihui standing over her with a fuming look.

“If slaps are not enough,” she said, “perhaps losing a few fingers will help you keep focus.”

Song licked cracked lips, tasting the vomit on her tongue, and was attempting to form a pithy reply – the way her vision kept wobbling was no help – when there was a shout of surprise. Hong, she thought, and she squinted past Meihui.

Someone was… Maryam?

It could not be, she thought. The door had not opened, Renshu keeping an eye on it all the while. Only Maryam was there, idly strolling past the sharp-faced man as the others all raised their weapons. She no longer wore her hooded cloak, instead in a loose black coat left open and with her long dark hair flowing freely down her back. No, Song realized. This was not Maryam. The skin was just as pale but she was taller, her eyes a cloudy blue instead of limpid. And there were some details about her face… A sharper nose, thicker brows.

And Song Ren saw the truth, as she had once begged of any god who might be listening: she was not looking at flesh but aether.

“Who the fuck-” Hong began.

“Their signifier,” Renshu interrupted. “How did you get in here?”

Not-Maryam kept walking, her stride airy, and headed straight for Song. Meihui backed away warily, spear raised. The aether-thing’s footsteps trailed dark wisps, Song saw. She was weaving Gloam without moving her hands or speaking a word. The almost familiar face frowned down at her, then sighed.

“If she was that worried about it,” Not-Maryam muttered, “she could have gone herself.”

The sound of a pistol being cocked. Hong pointed it their way.

“He asked you a question, hollow,” the man said.

The apparition spared them a glance, lip curling with distaste.

“I am not without mercy,” Not-Maryam informed them. “Should each of you cut off your right hand and beg earnestly for your life, I will allow you to depart afterwards.”

Incredulous laughter.

“And who are you, exactly?” Meihui asked.

“The last princess Volcesta,” Not-Maryam said. “I rode with the wintersworn, stood on the shore when we gave the river seven lords of Malan. I am the Keeper of Hooks, first and last of the Ninefold Nine.”

Her chin rose ever so slightly.

“You may kneel,” Not-Maryam generously allowed.

“Yiwu trash,” Hong mocked, and took aim.

The apparition snapped her fingers. Song felt the barest of ripples, but nothing happened.

Not until Hong Hua’s eyes widened and he pivoted to unload his pistol at Renshu.

“Ambush,” he shouted.

Renshu screamed, but the bullet had only hit his side. Song watched, baffled as Meihui protectively went to stand between them and the other two with her spear raised.

“Stay behind,” she instructed. “You’re in no state to-”

She frowned, struggling to finish her sentence.

“Thank you,” Not-Maryam drily said, and laid a finger against the back of her skull.

There was a pulse in the air, then a smoking hole an inch wide was in Meihui’s head. All the way through, Song saw. She stared in horror as the other Tianxi toppled to the ground. Not-Maryam glanced her way, then rolled her eyes.

“Don’t look so troubled, it’s only a perception twist,” she said. “If they had not come intent on violence there would have been nothing to switch around.”

“What are you?” Song croaked. “Gods, what are you?”

“Leftovers and leavings,” Not-Maryam easily replied, then cocked an eyebrow. “Now would be a good time for effusive thanks, you useless ingrate.”

“You’re not Maryam,” Song accused.

“I’ll let that one pass on account of your seeming concussion,” Not-Maryam mused, “but I must admit this is not the most stimulating conversation I’ve ever had.”

“What did you do?”

The scream drew her gaze back the other way, where Renshu stood over Hong’s headless corpse. One hand was on his wound, but the other held a saber woven out of golden fire – his contract, Song thought. The weapon seemed to eat away at the very air, at everything it touched. Even at Renshu himself, slowly but surely. It ate the Sign she put in him, she realized. He’s free of it.

“I thought Tianxi prided themselves on their manners,” Not-Maryam chided him. “It is not so large a room, there is no need to shout.”

“You are no signifier,” Renshu howled. “You are a monster, a-”

“Shhh,” Not-Maryam replied putting a finger to her lips, then pointing it upwards. “You’ll make him angry.”

The man did not look up, sneering at the obvious distraction, but Song did. That was how she saw the Gloam wafting in the room had coalesced into a roiling shape up there. A horse-sized lizard with a long tail, clinging to the ceiling with its six legs as it watched Renshu with a wide-open maw at the end of a long neck. Two bulbous protrusions tore out of its back, like rounded spikes trying to unfold into something. Every part of it was stirred around in turbid strings, as if the sketch of a shape.

“Vatra,” the apparition ordered.

The thing screeched, Renshu’s eyes swiveling up only for the creature to spit out a stream of black Gloam-fire. The man slashed at the Gloam with his golden blade, erasing entire strands, but the breath was too wide. The edges still caught onto him and burned through cloth and flesh like acid. Renshu dropped, screaming, and the apparition waved permission at her creation before turning away as if she had lost interest.

The monster dropped from the ceiling without a sound, sinuously lunging forward and tearing into Renshu like a ravenous hound.

“I’m still waiting on those thanks,” Not-Maryam reminded her.

“How?” Song got out.

“Mornaric are too easily impressed,” Not-Maryam scorned. “This is nothing but a smok.”

Renshu’s screams abruptly cut out.

“Mother could form a leshy that was large as a ship. She used to pluck the legs off swordmasters with it,” the apparition continued.

Song was not sure what troubled her more: the implication that this entity might learn to do the same, or how she mentioned legs being plucked off as if it were some fond memory. Or perhaps what claimed the crown was what she began to glimpse through the layers and layers of aether, now that her eyes had grown used to the entity. All that aether had gathered ontosomething, like layers of paint.

And she’d never seen one like this before, but Song suspected that gnarled thing within might just be a soul.

Not-Maryam suddenly frowned, and she thought her gaze might have been noticed. Only the regal, pale-skinned thing sighed.

“Already?” she said. “At least-”

And like candle snuffed out, she was gone.

Silence.

Song Ren, still propped up against that same wall, looked at the blood and flesh-strewn room around her. Four corpses slowly cooled, not a thing alive in here save her. A thought occurred and she let out a bleak laugh.

She now had a higher body count than Tristan.

And to think she had cursed him out for bringing trouble. Her own had loomed just the same, only patiently waiting for an opening instead of skulking about. She had been so determined to turn things around, this morning, and yet now she only felt the sting of the truth in Captain Wen’s words: she knew less than nothing about the rest of the Thirteenth.

She’d thought she knew Maryam best of them, but this? The entity was connected to the Izvorica, that much was plain, and the things it had said… A princess? Wintersworn, Ninefold Nine? Maryam had never mentioned so much as a single one of these things to her. How much had Song failed to glean from Tristan, from Angharad?

A sharp irony, for her of all people to feel so blind. It all felt so futile, all of a sudden. Here she was, bruised and beaten, surrounded by corpses, and what had she learned? Only the depths of her ignorance. All this blood and pain and all she had gained was the right to fight again tomorrow.

No matter how we struggle, we’ll always end up behind, her brother had whispered. She thought of that look in Nianzu’s eyes, wondering if someone would find the same in hers right now. All for nothing.

And perhaps it was the exhaustion, the emptiness in her, but the words had her recalling Luren’s. The cryptic bullshit he had left her with again. What had it been? ‘Something is not nothing, only nothing can be something’. Nonsense. It – Song licked her lips, swallowed drily. A nothing that was something. She knew nothing of the rest of the Thirteenth, and that gap was…

Something to fill. Work. She had asked Wen for a miracle, a way to make everything better, but what she had truly wanted was for things to go back to when they still worked. Only they never had, had they? That’d been what Maryam was angry with her about last night, how she failed to understand this. Song did not need to force them all back into chairs at that kitchen table, to do it all again but right somehow. Song needed to know the people she would be sitting across.

She had spent her time trying to make the Thirteenth fight her battle when she should have spent it fighting theirs.

And that was work, that was blood and shame, but that’d been all of Song Ren’s life. What was a little more? She breathed out slowly, put a bloodstained palm against the wall and slowly pushed herself up. It seemed Luren had, distastefully enough, made himself useful not once but twice today. He’d told her one more thing she needed to know.

Which corpse to rob for the compass that’d let her crawl her way out of Scholomance’s belly.