Chapter 15

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fortuna rolled his eyes at him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Still no,” he said.

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

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

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

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

“Proper royalty, then,” Tristan said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Another shop,” Hage drily replied.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tristan leaned in.

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

The devil chuckled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Creepy,” Fortuna appreciated.

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

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

Tristan frowned.

“And your trade is?”

The devil turned and glanced back.

“What do you think?” he asked.

The thief narrowed his eyes.

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

“I teach poisons,” Hage agreed.

Too easily.

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

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

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

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

“Pretty,” Fortuna opined.

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

“Spying,” he said.

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

Tristan cocked his head to the side.

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

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

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

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

It was, to his surprise, quite good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The devil seemed amused.

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

“A test,” Tristan warily repeated.

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

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

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

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

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

“No,” Hage replied.

The hard way it was, then.

—

“Welcome to the Abbey.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His gaze turned disdainful.

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

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

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

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

“Grasp and Command, professor.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He cleared his throat.

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

He paused.

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

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

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

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

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

—

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

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