Chapter 11

There were places across Vesper where dawn was a soft thing, gentle and graceful. The inching return of light as brought back by the wonders of the First Empire or the painstaking work of lamplighters. A tide of warmth lapping at your feet.

Tolomontera was not one of those places.

Time had whisked away the second of the Orrery’s great moons, gold bleeding out of the pale-and-gold light to leave behind a dim glow, dulled. But in the distance, to the east, the verdant star announcing morning crawled ever closer and with its approach the dimness faded. The light was turning harsh, like a knife to the eye. It was in that forbidding cast that Song Ren sat with her eyes closed on the front steps of the hospital, laying down her face on her hands as the sixth hour past midnight crawled ever closer.

To her left, across the broad open space of the boulevard, corpses were still being laid down in rows. They had been coming in all night, by pairs and packs, on carts and stretchers. The broken bodies of students and soldiers, made into meat that the blackcloaks lined up across the paving stones. Shrouds were laid over them, but not before a sober-faced lieutenant went around marking down names. Song had tried not to stare, but her eyes kept being drawn back like iron to a lodestone. Counting the dead, row after expanding row.

The guttering lantern in that lieutenant’s hand drew her eye, gaze catching beyond it on the dead girl being veiled. Young, Tianxi. Her face twisted in a rictus of pain. Song’s throat clenched. Was that what Aihan would look like, if Song failed to obtain the book? Mother should know better, she had miscarried twice after Yixiao’s birth and almost died the second time. Aihan was seventeen. Even if the betrothal ran long-

Song forced herself to look to her right, away from the shroud it was her responsibility to keep off her little sister’s face. Hands folded over her chest, sleeping like the dead even though her body was sprawled uncomfortably across the stairs, Angharad Tredegar slumbered on without so much as a twitch. Song had told her to go to the Rainsparrow, twice – all hostels opened their rooms for free this night, by the garrison’s order – but her friend had insisted on staying here with her. Exhaustion had knocked her out eventually, as well it should.

Song was still awestruck and a little appalled that Angharad had run with Tristan on her shoulders for the better part of a quarter-hour while the dantesvara rampaged after her. She had sat in on Angharad giving that report to Colonel Cao in stunned silence, and would have thought anyone else speaking those words a liar. As the last student to have seen the Lord of Teeth before the garrison caught up to it in the shrine district, Angharad had spent the better part of an hour getting squeezed out of every detail by the colonel before finally being cut loose.

That must have been almost as exhausting as the running, Song figured. Chunhua Cao had been in fine form tonight, every question leading into another and even Pereduri precision challenged by all the details she demanded.

When the bag was dumped on her head, Song barely even twitched. Exhaustion had dulled her as it had dulled the lights above, so instead of giving Wen Duan the reaction he sought she pawed half-heartedly at her back until she had in hand the small bag he had dropped. It was, she found with a frown, full of hazelnuts. Not salted or crusted, only the nuts. Unusual of him. She looked up at Captain Wen, or tried to: the large, bespectacled man was already lowering himself down onto the stairs to her left. Groaning as his bulk cut off her sight of the dead.

“What is this?” Song asked.

“Hazelnuts,” Wen Duan said, rolling his eyes behind golden-framed spectacles. “Try to keep up.”

A beat.

“And eat,” he said. “The tea swill they offered inside won’t keep you going. This might.”

Dutifully, Song opened the bag and crunched a few walnuts with her teeth. Swallowed. It felt mechanical, like loading a pistol. Tiredness had made of her body a machine.

“Maryam will be fine,” Wen said. “Captain Yue inspected her personally and claimed it’s nothing bed rest in a Meadow won’t fix.”

“I know,” Song quietly replied. “I was there.”

Though she had eventually been sent out by the gray-robed physicians. The hospital was packed tight with the wounded from the debacle at Misery Square, the attendants wanted no idlers even if they had a right to be there. She had not been the only captain cast out onto the steps, though the others had left for elsewhere. The Chimerical for those with means, the Dregs for those without. She had declined the invitation from Sebastian Camaron, then again offered through Vivek Lahiri’s mouth.

Song did not have it in her to feign civility at the moment.

Captain Wen stole back a handful of his hazelnuts, crunching loudly and looking down at her like he was giving elementary instructions to a slow child. Song ate another few, half-heartedly. The night had not been as much of a disaster as it could have been, for the Thirteenth at least. Maryam, fresh from drawing too deep, had immediately drawn too deep again – but sharing the burden with Hooks had kept it from causing more than a vicious fever and what promised to be months of nightmares. She would still miss the first few days of classes.

Tristan, though… She had never seen that look in his eyes before. Lost, like he had no idea what to do. Like his bag of tricks had finally run empty. The physicians said there was nothing physically wrong with him and he needed to sleep, but instead he had turned a pleading gaze on her. As if begging her to give good news. Song had none to give. The bright gold of his contract with Fortuna had gone flat, and though it still existed it looked… fragile. As if pulling on it too much would crumple it.

Song had fled his bedside after that, not even waiting for the sedatives to put him under. She could not face that despair when she had nothing to offer it. Every breath in his presence when he looked like that felt like a sort of failure, but what could she do? If the Lord of Teeth had devoured the shrine and the Lady of Long Odds with it, there might be no mending that wound. Song was well read but no Savant, she did not know. Gods but it felt like she knew nothing at all, sitting here in bleak light as the rows of death to her left swelled ever larger.

“First time seeing so many dead?” Captain Wen Duan lightly asked.

Song did not answer immediately.

She could still see the details every time she closed her eyes. Song had not known Shan Gao well. The captain of the Seventh had been an acquaintance, someone she shared a few cups of tea with while talking business. But she had known him, and now all she could recall of the man was the look of almost innocent startlement on his face before the Lord of Teeth’s foot came down. The spurt of red, gods. Then Captain Anaya from the Twenty-Third, the entire upper half of her gone in a lazy snap of the jaw. The way her legs had kept… standing for a moment after.

There had been lucky ones, too, for a meaning of the word. Nenetl got off with only having her leg pulped up to the knee before her dark-skinned Tinker stole her away. Tupoc had not gone Saint from losing his arm, so he would grow it back given a few days. And Ferranda… It hadn’t even been the beast, for her. A panicked shot from a garrison man went wild and took half her face off. Song could still remember how flesh had dangled, ham on a string.

Song swallowed the bile pooling in her throat, forced herself not to acknowledge the taste in her mouth. If she did she would throw up again.

“More men died when the Newborn came calling,” she finally said. “From the melee and the shooting. But never before so many I knew.”

That should not make a difference, but it did. Gods, it did. Wen Duan helped himself to another handful of his own gift, chewing all too loudly. She made herself follow suit, some seed coat slipping through her fingers as she fed herself. There was a pause, both of them chewing. They swallowed.

“On my first rotation after the Rookery,” Wen told her suddenly, “I was assigned to an expedition to Bujia. A ruined town east of the Riven Coast, long abandoned, but some storm had dredged up a temple and the Conclave wanted it looked into.”

Song blinked at him in surprise. Wen never spoke of himself when he could help it. You could get him to insult a king three hundred years dead for an hour with barely a question, but ask where he’d been born and he would not even pretend to humor you.

“It was easy as assignments get, for covenanters,” Wen said, picking out one more hazelnut from the bag.

It crunched under his tooth, shattered with a sound like a small gunshot.

“Hollows avoided the city, there were barely any lemures worth mentioning and we’d be coming in with two galleasses and a full stack company of two hundred Garrison soldiers. It was just a way to get some fresh Arthashastra kids their feet wet before they were sent off somewhere to do real work.”

Wen smiled thinly.

“I’ll spare you the details of how it went to shit,” he said. “Long story short, the storm had also beached some whales and the smell of rotting flesh drew an onjancanu down from the hills. Real old fucker, larger than the bestiaries say they grow. He had a bit of nibble at the carcasses, but then he smelled us poking around the ruins.”

Lierganen called those lemures Old Tyrants, Song recalled, for they were as clever as they were large and it was said that in the time of the Old Night some had ruled petty fiefdoms of hollows. The clever ones were always the worst, for the touch of the Gloam put that cleverness to the service of cruelty.

“How many died?” she asked.

“About sixty of the garrison men,” Wen said. “It caught us at night and in town, completely by surprise. But it’s not the soldiers I remember. There were ten of us from the same Rookery class, and we were getting drunk in the temple when it attacked.”

He breathed out.

“Only four of us made it out.”

The large captain looked up past the Orrery light at the approaching verdant star and quietly laughed.

“I hardly remember the face of a single one of those Garrison soldiers who died ugly fucking deaths trying to get a bunch of idiot kids out of that town,” he said. “Heroes one and all. But the other Laurels, the scholars I’d been taught with? Them I remember every detail. The mind’s not a fair thing, Song. It cares when it cares, it fears what it wants.”

His voice turned almost gentle.

“You don’t get to choose what shakes you.”

Song breathed in, breathed out. Kept herself flowing like a river, that she might not snag on herself.

“What happened to the others?” she asked instead, for to stop would be to drown. “Those who survived.”

“You’ve met two already,” Wen replied.

She hummed, going through the man’s surprisingly long list of associates.

“Professor Sasan,” she immediately said, and got a nod.

But she frowned when digging for the second name.

“… and the former Forty-Ninth’s patron,” Song guessed. “Dionora Cazal, I believe her name was.”

A mimed tip of the hat.

“It’s not always those you like who make it through,” Wen said, then pushed himself up with a groan. “So treasure it when that does happen, Ren. Good luck shouldn’t go unthanked.”

He stole back his gift of hazelnuts without a hint of shame.

“The Thirteenth made it out without any casualties,” he said. “It’s better than what most captains managed tonight, so stop looking fate’s gift horse in the mouth.”

“It got away, Wen,” Song told him. “It will kill again.”

He shrugged.

“Sometimes they get away, Song,” Wen Duan told her. “Sometimes we lose. If we’re lucky, we get to avenge that loss. If we’re not, well, you learn to live with it.”

He pushed up his glasses.

“Or you burn out,” he added.

“I will not burn out,” Song Ren sharply replied, getting to her feet.

Wen slapped his hands together.

“Good new,” he happily said. “Because Colonel Cao sent me to fetch you about ten minutes ago, meaning you are already running late. Best get moving!”

That utter prick, she thought. But the words were not as acid as they might have been a few minutes earlier, and that was something. Song got up, and even as she heard Wen nudging Angharad awake she headed inside.

Morning was not yet there, and neither was the right to rest.

—

It had been hours since the massacre at Misery Square but the inside of the hospital was still filled with moans and weeping. Song had sat on the steps since before the last rotation of the guards, so they did not even ask for her plaque as she passed the doors and the harried attendant in front waved her in after merely asking her name.

“Last door to the right before the shrine,” he said. “The one with all the freight.”

The hospital was an old temple and had kept the shape of one: a two-story rectangular hall with anterooms on either side, ending in a squat tower bearing Lady Knit’s hidden altar. There must have been a hundred beds in that main hall, and there was hardly an empty one to be seen. The second level, which normally served as stockage and dormitories for the physicians, had been filled with wounded as well. That was where Tristan was, upstairs and hopefully still sleeping.

Song knew she should check, told herself she would. But the thought that he might have woken up, of facing those gray eyes again without answers? She swallowed, her mouth dry as dust, and forced herself to keep moving.

Even now that the lights were dimmed and shadows had crept up on the lime-white walls, the ground floor was a hive of movement. Gray-robed men flocked to and fro, halfway between physicians and priests, moving from one bed to another as they saw to garrison soldiers and students alike. The blackcloaks were bedridden with everything from a broken foot to the all-too-common scorched eyes, others writhing with the shakes or clawing at nightmares in their poppy-induced sleep.

The oil lamps flickered, burning with a dull drone, and the only sight worse than those who stared at the wall with a broken stare were those few who saw nothing at all. Eyes burned by the breaking of the mirror-device, moaning in their sleep for some god to fix them. Gods, so many wounded.

Three hundred and twenty-one students had survived to their graduation ceremony. On the back of that success, four hundred and fifty-seven new souls had volunteered for the belly of the beast as the fresh batch. Not all of these had been in Misery Square, be they first or second years. Fewer than seven hundred had stood there when the dantesvara first rose, either from lateness or disinterest or even having not yet arrived in Port Allazei. But it had been close to seven hundred.

After tonight, the student count would be on the lower end of the six hundreds.

Most of them had died in the first five breaths of the Lord of Teeth’s entrance, when it shattered the mirror-device. The burst of Glare-charged power that struck Misery Square had killed thirty-eight students outright, either from the initial impact or the violent convulsions that ensued. All of them had been first years save for one, outlining the difference that the graduation ceremony made: the only second year who died from that burst had not died because of the burst but because she fell badly and broke her neck.

Most of the deaths after came from the Lord of Teeth’s slaughter, but only most. When the crowd panicked and fled, several students were trampled to death and the jostling had resulted in even more deaths when the living tide of blackcloaks had to squeeze through the jagged and broken streets leading south towards the Triangle.

Still, the deaths were nothing compared to the number of wounded. It was they who filled the hospital now. Partaking of Scholomance might have hardened the graduates, but it had not made their eyes proof to scorching. Those completely blinded were relatively few, but many had fled because they could barely see more than moving shapes and keeping their seared eyelids open was an exercise in agony.

And while the panic might have killed fewer than the Lord of Teeth it had wounded ten times as many. Pulled muscles, sprained limbs, cuts and ripped patches of skin. Nasty bruises and torn hair. These were the lesser harvest, the ones that would not warrant the attention of the likes of the goddess who lurked in this place. The worst of the wounded had been tucked away in the anterooms, away from prying eyes, and Lady Knit had been entering them one after another to offer salvation at a price.

Not, Song saw as she walked down the length of the hall, that the goddess was the only one peddling miracles tonight.

At the bedside of those Pereduri twins that Angharad always eyed up a little too long sat Captain Nkosinathi Morcant of the Forty-Ninth Brigade. Had he known when he picked the number, or simply claimed one of the few remaining and still-prestigious plaques beneath a hundred? It did not matter. He knew now and his silence on the matter was an embrace of the meaning. Now all they needed was for the fucking princess to claim captainship of the Nineteenth and they could have another round of pointless infighting.

This time on behalf of Izel, who hadn’t even come to – Song breathed in, out. That was unfair. He could not possibly have known, and she had privately endorsed his absence when they spoke of it yesterday. He would still have no idea, since the garrison had forbidden students from heading up Arsay Avenue for the night given the risks of lemures being stirred up by all the deaths. Izel was not the enemy. Song already had quite enough of those, such as the slaver sitting by the Akelarre twins.

The author’s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Nathi Morcant wore muted clothes, compared to his richly dressed first impression: mere tailored Watch formal blacks with a vest striped with cheetah fur underneath. He had adjusted, caught on to grandstanding about wealth winning him no admirers among the second years. Morcant was smiling as he faced the Emain twins, whose bloody hands were wrapped tightly in bandages. The first knuckle of their every finger was gone, the price of having constrained the Lord of Teeth longer than anyone else managed. They had saved ten life a finger easily, though Song suspected that knowledge would be cold comfort.

Her eyes lingered above Morcant’s head, dispensing with subtlety for once. She tore through the lines, uncaring for the terms and hunting for a price. She did not get there, first stumbling onto something else that stopped her. A single sentence, which required an entire pedantic paragraph after. This ubunjalo he dealt in, he could not simply take it from anyone. He had to take it from those beneath him, a meaning the contract then elaborated on. Beneath in rank, in status. By law. The Tender-of-Reeds laid out strict definitions, which Song finally tore her haze away from as she reached the height of the three Pereduri.

And now she knew why he had brought slaves. Silently she marked the twins as another pair that would owe Nathi Morcant, but before she could put away the thought their situation took a turn.

“That will be all, Malani.”

“Excuse me?” Nathi Morcant replied.

“I am tired,” one of the twins noted.

“And yet this conversation proves even more tiring,” the other added. “Begone, before we call the physicians to have you removed.”

The man stiffly rose, turning even stiffer when one of the twins cleared her throat and called out.

“Captain Ren, a word?”

Song weighed the choice. Colonel Cao had sent for her, but she was already late and Wen Duan stood a designated receptacle for the blame. On the other hand, did she want to needlessly antagonize Nathi Morcant when he had just spent the entire evening gathering favors? A glance picked out his clean clothes, barely scuffed. Hardly a bruise on him. He must have been one of the first students out.

That should not have settled it, but it did.

Song passed by the leaving Morcant, sparing him no smile, and folded her arms behind her back when she came to stand by the bed of the twins. They were, she noted, the only patients in the entire hall to share a bed. The twins waited until Nathi was gone before turning their eyes on her. She said nothing, merely raising a questioning eyebrow. One of them scoffed at the sight. Branwen, she thought. The elder of the two. There were differences to the curve of her lips.

“As if,” Branwen Emain dismissed, answering her unspoken question.

“He put on a Malani name as a peer of Peredur,” her sister sneered. “Not even on the rolls, it is his given name!”

Ah. Angharad had mentioned they were Pereduri traditionalists, proud of the ancient roots of their house.

“The Morcant should have stuck to fishing,” Branwen said. “There is honor to be had in fishing. None in trading men.”

That last part, at least, Song could approve of. She inclined her head in agreement.

“But the Malani is not why we called out for you,” Branwen continued.

The sisters traded a look.

“Maryam Khaimov saved all our lives,” the younger twin said. “And underwent what appears to be severe backlash as a result.”

A half-thought flitted of allowing the misunderstanding to stand, but Song was too exhausted for wiles and it was a dead-end road anyhow.

“Captain Yue claims bed rest in a Meadow will see her through it,” Song shared. “Not so severe as you might think.”

To her surprise, they answered that with humorless snorts.

“Jumping off a cliff can also be healed by bedrest, if you happen to narrowly miss the rocks,” the older Emain dismissed. “Narrowly avoiding impalement does not turn a cliff into a bathtub, Ren.”

“We will remember what Khaimov did,” the younger twin seriously said. “So will others.”

A contemptuous look was shot past Song’s back, and she could guess at whom.

“Some ran, when doom came,” Branwen Emain said. “Some stood.”

“So much for our replacements,” the other twin sneered.

It was not entirely fair, Song thought. Without Scholomance’s boon, many more of the first years had lost part of their sight than the second. It was not bravery to fight the likes of the Lord of Teeth half-blind, it was foolishness. And most of those who had run had not been from fighting covenants – she did not blame Laurels, Savants and Tinkers for running when the teeth came out. And those same covenants in the second year had fielded a few brave souls to fight the Lord of Teeth, but not many. Yet Song did not defend the first years, for the truth was the truth.

When doom came, most of them had run.

The scorn of the Pereduri twins was not the first undertone of contempt she had heard so directed tonight. It was a rare thing when the captains of the First and Ninth agreed on any matter, but being less than impressed by the underclassmen had been one such occasion. It would get worse, Song thought, as the list of dead and wounded and the costs extracted by Lady Knit finished tallying up and being spread around town. Before the week was out there would be a chasm between the first and second years, one that would only widen as time went on.

“I will pass on your good will,” Song finally said.