Chapter 16

The legwork took around an hour and a half.

Some of it was hitting pavement and casing the place without looking suspicious, but the real sweat came when Tristan had to consider how it would all go wrong. Half the time spent rustling up a scheme, Abuela had taught him, should be considering how to get out when it turned on you. Unfortunately, he was no longer fooling around with halfwit coterie thugs: unlike the rare Guardia patrols out in the Murk the local garrison wasn’t likely to keep walking if they stumbled onto a crime looking like too much trouble to handle.

Not that a plan needed enemy action to go sour: ambition was as much your enemy as the other side. The trick, he had come to believe, was to keep it as simple as you could. Keep a straight line of intent, then account for everything you knew about and leave a little loose rope for what you didn’t. Too many moving parts made for a wreck, not a clock, and fortune was just as fickle as Fortuna. It was better to home in on a single weakness and slide that knife in as deep as you could, then exploit the advantage for all it was worth.

In this case, the weakness was that Tristan knew where Captain Wen Duan lived.

It had been necessary for the man to tell Song so she might pass on the Thirteenth’s choices of electives, and caution had seen the thief learn it himself. Tristan had since made sure it was a house and not some office, then taken the lay of the land. The single-story house was just past Templeward Street, near its end, and in a street that was mostly empty buildings. Nobody lived on either side of Wen. The figured that their patron had come late to Tolomontera to get one of the nice houses in what he’d heard garrison men called the ‘Triangle’: the nice part of Port Allazei delineated by Regnant, Templeward and Hostel.

First complication? Wen appeared to live with Sergeant Mandisa. Not only did the tall sergeant reek of danger, she was hard to get a grip on. Tristan knew some of what made Wen Duan angry and happy, could pull those strings if he put in the work, but Sergeant Mandisa? He’d not been able to get a read on her, on what made her step or hold. He could make guesswork, but guesswork made for a mighty fragile lifeline. Better to make her irrelevant to how it all fell out if he could.

Then cut the time by half and be twice as careful. Just in case.

After that came supplies. Buying would have left a trail, in the seller’s memory if not in their ledgers, so Tristan stole instead. It was as simple as waiting for another watchman to be headed into the right shop on Regnant Street, then cut ahead to buy an apple from the greenmonger and snatch a jar on the way out. Casually, almost slowly. The kind of movement that would not make the monger look away from their other client until he was long gone.

He picked the alley, the house and the place to stash the goods. Penned the note on the paper, blew it dry. Someone looking for him would try the back, he figured, because they would expect him to be sneaky about it. It was not a sure thing, never was, but he liked his odds. They’d want him, want what his head on a pike meant. Yeah, they’d be headed out back.

After that, most of what was left was bribes.

To open he found an urchin. Port Allazei was remarkably short on those for a port town, but there were always a few if you knew where to look. A slip of a girl, Lierganen and fair-haired, was skulking around the part of Templeward where there were teahouses – and so occasionally freshly baked goods insufficiently watched. The moment he approached she scowled.

“I’m not going to school,” she firmly told him. “I don’t care what Mom says, they’re teaching us triangle stuff.”

Her voice strongly conveyed this was a fate worse than death.

“I agree with her,” Fortuna mused, leaning against his shoulder. “They feel more arrogant than squares and they don’t even have as many sides.”

Tristan forced himself not to engage, instead looking down at the kid.

“What’s your name?”

“What’s it to you?” she challenged.

“I’ll call you nina,” he threatened.

A pause.

“Arabella,” the girl grudgingly conceded.

“Arabella,” he said. “I’ll give you a copper if you wait for me at the bottom of Templeward for…”

He fished out his watch, estimated the back and forth.

“Twenty minutes,” he said. “Then I’ll be back and I’ll give you another copper for either passing someone a paper or forgetting all about this.”

Arabella considered him, low cunning alight in her brown eyes.

“I’ll do it for your watch,” she said.

“Two coppers now,” Tristan said, “a third if you have to pass the paper.”

“Deal,” she hastily said.

The thief rubbed the bridge of his nose. No, that just wouldn’t do.

“That’s not how you do it,” Tristain said, finding his voice had taken the Sacromonte cant. “You tried too high then settled right away. What you do is go just a little higher – five or six coppers instead of two – and let yourself be bargained down to four. If you only shuttle between copper and gold, you’ll never make silver.”

Arabella squinted at him.

“Six coppers,” she tried.

“I like her spirit,” Fortuna noted. “You should pay her.”

He snorted, at both attempts.

“I’ve already paid you with a valuable lesson,” Tristan said. “Our terms stand.”

“For another copper I’ll throw horse shit at someone’s door,” Arabella earnestly offered.

He scratched his chin.

“I might trade for that later,” the thief admitted. “But not today. Deal?”

“Deal.”

They spat on their palms and the little girl solemnly shook his hand. Their parting of ways was pleasantly brisk, leaving him to arrange a bribe that would not be half as well deserved as strode towards the docks. It was not far, and he knew the way. The detainment house was not a prison, despite Maryam’s insistence to the contrary. Tristan had seen prisons, and the chairs weren’t anywhere as nice.

There also tended to be significantly more torture.

Getting in was as simple as knocking and presenting his brigade plaque. Fortunately, it was early enough in the day that the man he was looking for was still there. Sergeant Itzcuin Hotl had spent the latter half of his detainment with him when he was sent here after his little jaunt through the Witching House and seemed happy to see him again – as he should, given how much Tristan had made sure to lose at cards. The thief was quickly ushered into an empty room.

Of course, the thief suspected those card games were not the only reason for the enthusiasm. It might even be said he had bet on it.

“I need a favor,” Tristan said with a winning smile.

Sergeant Hotl raised an eyebrow, so the thief replied in a straightforward manner by reaching into his coat and putting down twelve copper radizes on the table, spreading them smoothly in a line. The eyebrow rose even higher.

“You have my attention,” the sergeant said.

“In an unfortunate misunderstanding, my visit here will be misconstrued as my being under arrest and a message sent to Captain Wen that he should come fetch me,” Tristan said.

The Izcalli sergeant chewed on that for a moment.

“Full silver,” he finally replied. “If he complains, it could leave a mark on my record.”

The thief was likely being sold a line, but he was in no position to argue. And, in truth, did not even have much time to bargain. The coppers were swept back into his hand and tucked away in a pouch, replaced by a single silver arbol that the sergeant immediately snatched.

“Pleasure doing business with you, Abrascal,” Sergeant Hotl grinned. “I’ll send a runner as soon as you’re out.”

Tristan bowed his thanks and took his leave. Instead of rushing back, however, he ducked into an alley across the street and kept to the shadows. Eyes on the only door in or out of the detainment house, he waited. A blackcloak walked out, quick on his feet.

He did not head in the direction of Captain Wen’s house. The second blackcloak, who left a minute after, did.

“Why are you smiling?” Fortuna asked, leaning in.

“Because I had him pegged right,” Tristan said. “And Arabella is going to be making that last copper after all.”

—

Down the circling stairs they went, holding a candle in their hand.

Each of the Abbey cells had a number painted on the door, matching the cabal of the student it was to belong to. Maryam forced herself, even through her rising fear, to keep an eye on those ahead of her. Most of the first twelve brigades of Scholomance had a signifier among them. She kept an eye on the numbers she remembered from elsewhere: the Third had one, a Someshwari boy looking half-asleep, and that scowling girl from Tupoc’s cabal slammed the door of her own cell. The Ninth, those fuckers, also had one – though the hood kept Maryam from learning anything about them save that they were tall.

Soon Maryam was pulling open her own door, setting down the chamberstick in a small alcove carved into the wall before closing it behind her.

Cell, she thought, was a good word for a room like this. The door might lock only from the inside but the barren walls seemed like a prisoner’s punishment. Bare stone all around, save for a mat of woven straw painted in fading green that presumably she was meant to sit on. There was nothing around her, and once her gaze stopped shying away Maryam beheld the Nothing that was before her. There was no fourth wall to the cell, only an absence revealing the pit of depthless dark.

Carefully she sent out her nav, the soul-effigy feeling out the cell, and she found that the aether here was almost forcefully placid. There were no currents at all, nothing swimming in the waters even though she was mere feet away from a hole in the world. There was nothing natural about this – someone, something was keeping the aether calm. She withdrew her nav, unwilling to risk sending it out too long in such a place.

The Izvorica sat on the mat, which was only mildly uncomfortable, and crossed her legs. How long before the professor came? Not long enough, she thought. He would start from the first cell and work his way down, so there were all too few before the knock came at her door.

Maryam should have spent the time feeling out the boons of the Abbey, how they might aid in her learning, but instead she bit her lip and sat there dreading the coming knock. It was almost a relief when it finally came, a gentle rap of the knuckles on the wrought iron door. She mumbled for the professor to enter, and after the tall scarecrow of a man shut the door she cleared her throat.

“I see no need to use the Kuru Maze,” Maryam said. “I have sufficient understanding of where I stand regarding the Measures.”

Professor Baltasar cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Unfortunately,” he said, “for you it isn’t a choice.”

She grit her teeth. She had been ready to be questioned, but not outright refused.

“You have attracted Captain Yue’s interest,” the older man said. “This is but the first of a several measurements she will want you to undertake.”

Maryam’s jaw clenched.

“I did not enroll in Scholomance to become a test subject,” she bit out. “Who is Captain Yue, that I must indulge her curiosity?”

“She cannot force you, should you refuse,” Professor Baltasar acknowledged. “But as the senior Akelarre on the island, she canmake your life very unpleasant should she be so inclined.”

He paused.

“Unless you have a pressing reason not to, Maryam, I would use the Maze and take this one on the nose. Making a few early concessions will make her look tyrannical should she punish you when you elect to refuse her later on – she will want to avoid the perception.”

Maryam almost cursed. Should she refuse anyway? No, that was pride talking. The fear of shame. Surely Professor Baltazar would not simply throw her out of the class when he saw her results. If anything, she grudgingly admitted to herself, she could use the help.

“Fine,” she forced out, anger still tight in her throat.

Professor Baltasar passed her the stone disk, which she inspected closely as he began to explain how it was to be used. The maze was little more than furrows in stone, but there was something about the pattern… it felt solid in her thoughts, even more so than the stone it was carved on.

“Put your thumbs on the side of the disk,” the professor instructed. “You must then grasp as much as the Gloam as you feel you can and pour it into the stone – it will spread out from the notch in the center, then begin spreading in all directions.

Maryam breathed out, began to sharpen her mind as she placed her hands as indicated.

“Instead of allowing it to spread you must contain the center then command a tendril to follow along the maze, always turning left. The further you get in the maze, the more difficult commanding the Gloam will become.”

In and out, letting distractions fall away.

“The measurable results of the Kuru Maze are limited to a Grasp of ten and a Command of fifteen,” Professor Baltasar continued. “It cannot easily withstand greater strength, making it of only marginal value for older signifiers.”

Maryam narrowed in her being, tempered it, then felt for the Gloam. The dark she carried in her.

“Begin.”

It was like breathing in with endless lungs.

Maryam drew on the Gloam, let it pass through her, only she need not wield her nav as a hand and trace a Sign to be filled. Instead she poured the cold nothingness into the stone disk, widening the channels within her until the torrent filled her very being – and almost scraped at the sides, pinching and aching. I am the riverbed, she recited. I dwell through passage, act through stillness. Roiling Gloam bubbled out of the notch at the heart of the maze, settled instead of volatile.

And it poured, poured, poured.

Maryam took hold of her nav, tried to guide it to the left, but it was like taking a bucket out of the tide and calling it a river. Like a sea of ink the Gloam spread heedlessly through every turn of the Kuru Maze, breaking through the symmetry meant to slow it. Only as it approached the edge did it slow, stopping but a finger’s breadth away from the end of the stone. She could not move it further.

“Release your grasp,” Professor Baltasar said, voice unreadable.

She did, inch by inch, and the Gloam receded. Maryam handed the professor the disc, unable to look him in the eye.

“Nine Grasp, one Command,” he said after a moment. “Perhaps two. It is difficult to assess.”

Professor Baltasar started speaking, then paused. A moment passed, then he cleared his throat.

“This is absurd,” he finally said. “That gap is too large, you should be long dead.”

“I am aware,” Maryam stiffly said.

Too large a gap between the Two Measures nearly always resulted in the signifier’s death. For her own affliction – strong Grasp and weak Command – the reason why was easy enough to understand. A Gloam-witch delving too deep into powers beyond her control was the cornerstone of many stories for a reason. In principle, however, a strong Command and weak Grasp should not be lethal. How could a surfeit of control be a danger to you?

In practice, however, the result was spurts of uncontrolled obscuration as the signifier tried to draw on power that did not exist. Captain Totec had told her that, according to the Akelarre Guild’s records, borderline cases leaning the way of Command died more than those leaning the way of Grasp because they tended to believe themselves in control even when they were not. That was only for borderline cases, however, the equivalent of perhaps a seven to a three.

Maryam’s nine to one was an effective death sentence.

Professor Baltasar continued staring at her, as if further and further scowling would brand answers onto her forehead for him to read. He sighed after a moment, stroking his beard.

“You struggle with everything but Autarchic Signs,” he said.

The statement had a lilt to it, the unspoken question of is-this-a-lie, but Maryam nodded. It was the truth, and the look of bafflement on his face was entirely warranted. Of all Signs, the Autarchic were the most fragile. They required great precision and a delicate touch.

“You should not be able to even breathe in one’s direction without shattering it,” Professor Baltasar said. “Even a simple memory Sign at your level of Command should cook the inside of your head like a boiled egg.”

It was a vivid enough image she winced.

“My teacher,” she said, “believes it derives from the way I obscured my brain before puberty.”

“That’s another death sentence,” Professor Baltasar noted. “Usually, anyway. I understand you undertook your first obscuration before you were taken in by the Guild?”

Maryam nodded. He looked sympathetic.

“Traditional practices can sometimes cripple one’s potential as a signifier,” he said. “There are reasons for our ways.”

My mother could have snapped Captain Totec like a twig, Maryam thought, and she went through the same ritual I did. No, if there was a flaw then it was in her.

“Are you going to send me away?” she asked, looking down at the floor.

A long silence, then a sigh.

“I would,” Professor Baltasar frankly said, “but I do not have that authority.”

She looked up at the thin man, daring to hope for help, but the earlier sympathy was gone.

“I am here, Maryam, to help guide what is meant to be the elite of Akelarre youth,” Baltasar said. “Barring great changes in circumstances, you are unlikely to ever be one of them.”

She swallowed. No lie had been spoken that she might grapple with. It burned twice as much for it.

“You’re not going to help me,” she said.

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“You will have of me what is owed as your teacher,” Professor Baltasar said, “but nothing more. I only have so many hours to spend, and to be blunt they are better spent elsewhere.”

Maryam fought the flinch, but it ripped through. The professor tucked away the Kuru Maze into his robes.

“So what am I to do?” she quietly asked. “What am I supposed to do?”

Hand on the handle, the professor hesitated for a moment. He turned to meet her eyes.

“I gave you a piece of advice, on the day we met, about not interesting Captain Yue too much,” Professor Baltasar said.

He grimaced.

“It might be best for you to ignore it, after all.”

He closed the door behind him, the sound of iron on stone like a tolling bell. Maryam sat there, numb and alone in the waning candlelight. And for a long time she stayed there, as light dimmed and flickered and her thoughts circled like vultures. Mother had once told her that decisions were made hard only by the muck of the mind, all the attachments of the world tainting the pure truth within you. They could be made simple again by flipping a coin and asking yourself this: what outcome can you not live with? The other side, however bitter, was always the path to undertake.

So within her mind Maryam flipped the coin, watched it spin, and asked herself the question.

It was not a pleasant path she saw laid ahead of her. It would be… difficult in more sense than one. Maryam was not unaware she had a temper. But she still rose to her feet and brushed off her gifted cloak. What few comforts she had stolen back from the world she would not surrender, so the answer was clear.

Maryam would seek out Captain Yue and strike a bargain.

—

Half the class were on their feet in the heartbeat that followed, rushing towards the boards like the bounties were on fire.

Song, instead, calmly rose and faced as much as the wall as she could. She blinked, once, and breathed out. The sheer number of details was… Hand on the chisel, the Tianxi reminded herself. All the bounties were in Antigua and they were divided into five smaller boards. The smallest and emptiest, which she discarded immediately, was bounties set by students. One board was dedicated to covenant bounties, another to those set by the professors, and the largest by far was ‘general’ bounties. The last bounty board, which seemed to have the same five sheets repeated by the dozen, displayed ‘trials’.

“Song?” Ferranda asked, standing by her.

A reliable ally, she decided, should be granted the occasional favor.

“Second board from the left, near the bottom,” Song told her. “There are Skiritai bounties with a decent payout that requires only three lemure corpses.”

And with Shalini in her cabal, Ferranda Villazur would find attracting lemures into trapped grounds trivially easy.

The Tianxi’s silver gaze never moved from the boards, having marked an interesting detail: the covenant bounties, trials and around half the general bounties appeared to have a promised reward in ‘score’ as well as coin. Never a number larger than six – that highest score belonging the ‘Trial of Night’ – but she was finding it difficult to put together a common thread tying together those rewards. She would have used the gaze-trick again but now there were so many students in the way there was hardly a point.

Song, instead, went to the rightmost board. The trials were only described in the broadest strokes, but given how many times the sheets had been hung cabals would likely be forced to take them at some point in the year. Why not get ahead of the curve? If the Thirteenth did well, it would be information worth trading.

The Tianxi set aside all consideration of the bottom three, which rewarded most richly but also appeared dangerous enough the Thirteenth was not ready for them. The first two, however, had potential. The Trial of Mirrors was described as a ‘test of intuition and trust’ while the Trial of Contest was a ‘test in overcoming personal weakness’. To fill the latter bounty the entire cabal must undertake the trial, and the reward was two silver a head and a score of four.

“Half the time left,” Colonel Cao informed them from the bar.

Tempted as she was to pick the Trial of Mirrors, as it smacked of illusions, Song suspected that relying too much on her eyes to carry the Thirteenth through a trial would be a mistake. She carefully pulled out the nail keeping a sheet of the Trial of Contest in place and put it back afterwards, sparing a look of disdain for the girl next to her who simply ripped her bounty off.

With her bounty claimed, Song decided had some time to spare and pushed through the squabbling crow to head to the part of the wall that wasn’tboards.

It was all maps and lists, one of the latter having earlier attracted her eye: a detailed disposition of the number of Scholomance students, overall and by covenant. There were, Song read, four hundred and three students. Some sort of deal must have been struck between the Academy and the Akelarre Guild, which had sixty recommended each, while the Skiritai took the crown of all cabals at an impressive seventy-five. The three societies of the College each had fifty-five students, doubtlessly arrange symmetry, and the Krypteia-