Chapter 19

The chapterhouse’s shadow ran too long.

Not by much, Izel thought, and with the way the Grand Orrery worked it was hard to tell. No shadow ever lay still in Port Allazei: they ducked and danced, driven by stars and moons of burning aether. But the longer the tinker looked, the more he grew convinced the Akelarre Guild’s walls cast too long a shadow for its height and the angle of the light. It was as if the Gloam dwelling between the walls added a finger to the scales, stacked a stripe of dark atop the dark.

“Izel?”

He shook his head and turned to find Angharad looking at him with a cocked eyebrow. As always, his friend wore her fighting fit with the ease of a ballgown – like she had been born to it.

“Sorry,” he said. “I was distracted. Did you ask me something?”

“Not me,” she replied, inclining her head at the company.

In other words, the Thirty-First Brigade. Captain Ferranda Villazur looked vaguely irritated at his distraction, while Zenzele Duma had on that Laurel face – mild, studiously inoffensive pleasantness – and as always Shalini Goel appeared to have coincidentally come an inch closer to Angharad since he last glanced her way. Rong Ma, though, was looking directly at him. That was something of a hint. He smiled at them, inclining his head in a small do-go-on.

“The gear in the sheath,” Rong said. “Is it what you’ve been spending all these workshop hours on?”

“It is,” Izel agreed. “I only intend to bring the middle part of the device in the field today – it is essentially an aether thermoscope.”

It all fit in the same leather sheath a portable telescope would, and was about as heavy. Rong Ma narrowed their eyes at him. They were delicately built, Rong, with that wisp of a face and long fingers – but their eyes were sharp, as if always searching.

“You are measuring aether density,” Rong guessed. “Just like the Oriol did.”

Indeed, Izel had seen the pair from the Sixth Brigade attempting exactly that when he had visited Misery Square. The two Lierganen were not actually related, their surname not all that uncommon in the Chelae, but they had treated each other like long-lost siblings and become inseparable. One was a Savant and the other a tinker from Izel’s own track, which made them a formidable partnership. That was without even considering how the Sixth was stacked to the brim with scholars, more research society than brigade.

“They used a pneumatic thermoscope meant for precision work,” Izel corrected. “I am only looking for a density threshold.”

The Oriol had used a true measuring instrument, while his was glorified mechanical switch. The pair had brought out modern, expensive equipment while Izel had essentially jury-rigged a blind machine to register the top level of aether density it encountered and stay there. The difference came from what they were after: those two had been trying to learn as much as possible to form a theory, while Izel only needed to know how hard the Lord of Teeth’s shell in the aether was so he would know how hard to hammer it with the aether spike.

“So it isn’t a tracking device,” Ferranda Villazur cut in.

“Assuming the closer we get to the Lord of Teeth the higher the aether density rises, it could serve as a makeshift one,” Izel said. “But it wasn’t built for that purpose, no.”

“So what does it do?” Captain Villazur bluntly asked.

There were those who respected bluntness, marked it the sign of an honest mind. Izel was not of that opinion and Ferranda Villazur’s habitual bluntness was not endearing her to him. It smacked of the belief she was owed answers. The Thirty-First Brigade was not one he had paid much mind to before joining the ranks of the Thirteenth: he’d seen their diplomat around the Ossuary a few times and Rong Ma was a clockwork tinker so they were acquaintances.

Tozi had held their captain in contempt, however, so they had never met socially. Something about Ferranda Villazur spending too much time offering a hand to other brigades and not enough being worth taking up on it. Kiran had also been somewhat dismissive of Shalini Goel, claiming she brought little but gunslinging to the table. Song seemed ambivalent about the brigade but Tristan held them in some esteem, so Izel would reserve judgment.

So far he was not impressed. For a brigade with a diplomacy track Arthashastra as second-in-command, they were surprisingly grating.

He glanced at Angharad in question, silently asking if Villazur was someone whose questions he needed to answer. His friend cleared her throat, the pleasant look on her face ending well short of the eyes.

“Are we now to inspect each other’s packs, Captain Villazur?” Angharad asked with deceptive lightness. “It may delay us to go through all of them.”

Izel winced. It might have been a mistake to involve Angharad. He had seen her in the presence of those she misliked in the past, and even in the midst of whatever that dance with Lindiwe Sarru was, but the silky antipathy she treated Ferrand Villazur with was new. It also showed no sign of abating after half an hour of waiting for the expedition to depart.

“I am asking to make sure the device won’t be a danger to my brigade,” Ferranda flatly replied.

“Then perhaps that is the question you should have asked,” Angharad calmly observed. “Like this, see: Izel, is your gear dangerous to the Thirty-First Brigade?”

“Short of it being swung at them as a club, I don’t see how it could be,” Izel replied.

“Then we are all pleased,” Zenzele Duma cut in, smiling forcefully.

Izel eyed him with some discontent. Considering that Tristan had brutally mutilated someone last time he was amongst this crowd it felt demented to consider he might be a restraining influence, but Izel could not help but think he would be. For one, he had been the one to broker this alliance and he seemed to actually like most of them.

Someone to handle speaking with Ferranda while Angharad was cordoned off to the side to be distracted by Shalini Goel would make this go much more smoothly, but Tristan was not here to fill that role Izel was not the man to do it in his place.

“I believe the vanguard is preparing to set out,” Izel added. “We should check our gear and ready ourselves.”

There was movement ahead, though with the size of the crowd it was hard to tell what they were up to.

This was not the largest war party Izel had ever seen, but it was by far the best armed. The hunting expedition counted around one hundred and twenty souls, a third of which were garrison soldiers, and those soldiers were armed in the Watch loadout for expected trouble. Fighting uniform, the standard issue Biswa-pattern musket, pistol and blade of choice with a bandoleer of powder charges. Every sixth man carried a poleaxe and there was even a squad of five sappers with tools and powder barrels accompanying the supply carts.

It was not for nothing that the Watch was called the single most expensive army in the world. Not even the powder-heavy armies of the Republics fielded flintlocks in the numbers the rooks did.

“Ah, finally,” Shalini said. “I was wondering what took so long.”

Most likely something about the carts, Izel thought. Father had once told him that wheels were the bane of any army on the move, too useful to stop using but somehow more fragile than a butterfly’s wings.

The hunting expedition had been made to wait in a fat, broad column that had grown blurry as time passed without a departure but when horns were sounded ‘fall in’ the lines sharpened. Izel hiked his bag over his shoulder, coming to stand besides Angharad, and waited for the horn call to sound for departure. The horn signals and the flags were considered important enough by the Watch that they were taught in both Mandate and Warfare, so when three long pulls echoed across the plaza there was no confusion: the column set out briskly.

They ended up near the middle of the war party, well past the brigades sticking to the garrison soldiers in front – the Second and the remains of Yaotl’s Nineteenth – but well shy of the rearguard where the Twentieth was lingering. The Third and Ninth were just ahead, pretending the other was invisible no matter how much close the streets ended up squeezing them in practice. Izel suspected they had ended up close by happenstance and each refused to be the one to leave.

It was not a long march towards the Ashgarden, but it took the expedition through narrow streets that thinned out the column. Something of a cork formed around the first corner, the advance slowing as students waited to cram themselves into the street, and it made them all shuffle around. Izel fell back behind Angharad, leaving her to chat with a beaming Shalini, and was not particularly surprised when Zenzele Duma appeared at his side.

The Laurel was shorter than him but not by much and his brimmed, pinned hat gave the illusion that they were near of a height. Izel would call him good-looking, but not in an eye-catching sort of way. It was mostly his metal eye that stood out, painted to look pale. Like the eye he once took from Tupoc Xical, Tristan had once told him. There was old enmity there.

“This will go more smoothly if you speak for the Thirteenth,” Zenzele said, pitching his voice low.

“I won’t,” Izel calmly replied. “It is neither my place nor my inclination.”

The tall Malani glanced at him with his remaining good eye.

“I thought Jaguar Society warriors were meant to steers the ship,” he said. “Isn’t that the proverb? Crocodile for glory, Eagle under the gods and Jaguar to lead.”

Izel’s brow rose.

“You might have noticed that I did not join the Jaguar Society, Duma,” he said.

And not all members of the Jaguar Society were meant to become leaders of the kingdom, despite the tales. Some did, but most ended up serving as detachments of shock troops for the Calendar Court or for the banner of some great house. A few from wealthy households ended up joining the vagabond lodges, errant blades and lances that pledged their skill to the worthiest causes. Figures of song, Yaotl’s long-cherished dream.

The Malani sighed.

“I asked around about you,” Zenzele said.

Izel had not done the same. Oh, he’d asked his friend Jingyi in the Cathedral track what he knew about Rong Ma but gotten mostly gossip. Apparently Rong was really into spring mechanisms and had been in some sort of love triangle with a pair of Savants last year. Now the Savants were seeing each other instead, but they’d already had loud public arguments so bets were being laid down about which would go for Rong again first. Great gossip, not all that helpful in getting a read on Rong Ma or what they could do.

“Did you?” he shrugged.

Izel had little to hide, and what he did the Thirteenth already knew. He had left no lever that could be used to move him against his will.

“The only one I could find who spoke ill of you was Cusi Awasqa, and mostly she claimed that you hog the best smithing suite in the morning and the teachers let you get away with it because they like you.”

“She’d certainly know,” Izel muttered.

It wasn’t his fault Cusi couldn’t do precision work without a press forge. If she was going to keep making her own gearwork she should learn to use a batch mold instead of doing every bit by hand.

“This is why many claim Umuthi gossip is the most boring in the College,” Zenzele told him.

“Should I be sorry they don’t catch some of us fucking in the Ossuary stacks every two days?” Izel drily replied. “The Workshop is no great place for trysts. I’m not taking off my pants anywhere near an aether engraver if I can help it.”

Hopefully they hadn’t heard about how Lakshmi Parmar had tried to tattoo her buttocks with one. The instructors had been too curious about what it’d do to punish her harshly, but everyone had been told to keep quiet about it to preserve the dignity of the Umuthi Society.

Mostly a painful rash, it turned out.

“You weren’t nearly this staid at the end of the year celebration,” Zenzele drawled.

Izel coughed. He had been very drunk, the elephant had poured liquor only. He only vaguely remembered Helena Vargas dipping him in front of a cheering crowd and that he was rather sure it wasn’t Helena who’d bit the side of his neck until it left a red mark.

“Well, it was a party,” he weakly said. “These things happen.”

“They do,” Zenzele serenely said. “Sometimes we make decisions in the moment that do not hold up in the harsh light of the Glare.”

Izel eyed him skeptically.

“Are you trying to sell me your captain annulling the night out with Shalini is comparable to decisions I made after the third drink Colonel Trumpet poured me?”

“It is not annulled,” Zenzele evenly said, “only delayed.”

Izel shrugged, indifferent to the distinction.

“It made her look like a fair-weather friend,” he replied, “when Angharad already had to be sold on this arrangement. I’m not sure what Villazur was expecting, exactly.”

It had lowered his own esteem of her as well. Not for distancing herself, but for doing so while seeking to remain allies. If Villazur had decisively cut ties it would have been one thing, if she had taken the hit and strengthened ties another. She had done neither, however, and was now reaping a full harvest of neither gains nor costs. It was unimpressively half-hearted.

“A public alignment after what Tristan did would have been effectively endorsing what he did to that girl,” Zenzele sharply said. “Surely you can understand our reluctance there.”

An eye was narrowed at him.

“Unless you agree with his methods?”

He almost sighed. What was it with Laurels and thinking petty conversation tricks were somehow a private secret of their society? Izel had been trained for the Calendar Court, false dilemmas were not going to drip him up.

“Fuck you, Duma,” Izel politely replied. “I’ve seen your tricks plied by more skillful hands than yours. Whatever I have to say to Tristan Abrascal I will say to him myself, not to some Laurel gravedigger.”

He leaned in and smiled without any friendliness in it. The trick was to dislike the other man.

“Get to your point, or we are finished here.”

A hint of frustration flicked across the other man’s face.

“Do you not care about making this work?”

Ah, so that was what the man wanted. To press-gang him as a footpad under the banner of getting along.

“No particularly,” Izel frankly told him. “It was Tristan’s bargain, look to him for enthusiasm. I certainly do not care enough about it to serve as some sort of intermediary for your captain.”

He scoffed.

“If she wants to mend bridges with Angharad, then let her do that,” Izel said. “I’ll not whisper in my friend’s ear that she should bury her dislike on behalf of Ferranda Villazur.”

They always thought he was the weak point, didn’t they? The one that could be turned with just a few vague words about getting along and making things better. Like for some reason refusing to be a bastard meant he was a credulous fool.

“She’s too proud to apologize,” Zenzele bit out. “And she isn’t telling me what-”

He breathed out sharply.

“Never mind that,” the Laurel said. “Can you at least inform Tristan of how this turning out when you see him?”

After this talk Izel was disinclined to do the man any favors, but he supposed it was a reasonable enough request. He would likely have done as much himself anyhow, so he made himself nod. By then the cork in the street had eased and they were marching again, so Izel put his eyes back on the road and Zenzele Duma was soon gone. They were close now, one could tell by the scent in the air – that faint smell of burnt, of smoke, that should have long faded away.

Izel had only been at the Ashgarden once before, early last year. He’d been in sight of it much more often than that, you couldn’t take a street west of Crescent Street and head north without catching at least some glimpses of it, but only once had he actually walked around the ash-strewn field remaining of what had once been an entire Allazei neighborhood. He glanced at Rong Ma, who must have visited for the same reasons, and found them grimacing just as he felt like doing.

“You seem in a grim mood,” Angharad said, back at his side. “Is it not simply a field of ash we must cross?”

“The Watch first took this island from the Lightbringer’s army in the Century of Accord,” Izel reminded her. “No mere ash would have lasted for over two hundred years.”

“From the weather alone, if nothing else,” Angharad acknowledged in a mutter. “I had not considered it. Why has it remained?”

“An Antediluvian weapon was used here,” Rong Ma said. “Lucifer’s devils are said to have aimed it at the Watch when the battle turned on them, though it destroyed them just as it did the blackcloaks.”

Turning the corner, they walked down the last of the city block until they were at the Ashgarden’s edge: for the better part of a mile to the north and south the city was a carpet of gray ash, thick and crunching under the boot. But the Ashgarden had been named thus for a reason. Past the outer edge of it small mushrooms began to sprout, looking like they might be covered with ash but were in truth entirely made out of it.

Then came small leafy plants, delicate flowers, bushes bearing ashen fruit. Across low, rolling hills of ash grew gray trees with a skeletal look about them. Ashen ivy strangled ferns of the same, ashen moss grew on fallen branches. The growths were never dense enough to truly obscure sight or turn into even a thicket, so garden was the most appropriate name for this place of ash, but Izel had found it a troubling place.

“Sleeping God,” Angharad murmured. “I had no idea it became like that deeper in. Are those plants… true?”

“They grow and die,” Izel confirmed. “But the fruits do not fill you and the ash is poisonous.”

“A powerful weapon, to leave such an aftermath,” Ferrand Villazur said.

“Professor Achari does not believe it was a weapon at all,” Izel replied. “And I tend to agree.”

“What was it, then?” Angharad asked, cocking her head to the side.

“A transmutation machine,” he said. “One that was made to turn everything into ash and broke down doing so. It is why the ash here has these… odd properties.”

The professor had also mourned how devils had likely destroyed an irreplaceable Antediluvian wonder by using it for something it was not meant to do, but Izel suspected his companions would not be as inclined to mourn the loss. While the Ashgarden spread far to the north and south, to simply cross it as their expedition intended was much faster. It was nowhere as broad as it was long, and in a mere quarter hour they were in sight of the streets on the other side.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

They were all careful not to touch the plants, though inevitably some leaves and ash flecks brushed against their cloaks. The ash was heavy, so less prone to being scattered by the breeze – few wore scarves to cover their mouth and nose, though Izel certainly would not look down on anyone for the caution. Having reached the top of the hill overlooking the return of the city, Izel spared a glance for the ashen tree whose leaves shivered in the wind above their heads.

What a strange place the First Empire must have been, that its rulers could shape the world like clay. Izel had seen what tyranny kings and lords of this day were capable of, but had one of the great among the Antediluvians proclaimed themselves a god to their people who could have truly gainsaid them?

But a few minutes later they were on the avenue that delineated the other end of the Ashgarden, the column moving west. Towards Clinkercourt, the old smithing district of Allazei, though they would never get anywhere near it. They were just heading down a street or two westwards so they could turn north afterwards in a straight line to Lamb Hill. The avenue at the edge of the ash was more dead grass than road, but once they went west they were on paved ground again and picked up the pace.

Northwards, soon reaching a crossroads. The column kept going straight, but the pace slowed from the blackcloaks keeping an eye out on the streets to the right and left. With reason, it soon turned out. By the time the middle of the expedition had reached the crossroads, there was movement on the westward street. The Thirty-First were the first to notice, standing at the left edge of the column, but with a heartbeat of Shalini Goel noticing Izel had noticed her doing so.

The four creatures were moving quickly, but not particularly gracefully – theirs was an awkward, shuffling gait. Tall and unnaturally slender, the lemures hurried across the pavement stones and Izel stilled in surprise. Going by their long and sharp nails these were shades, but shades were scavengers by nature. It was baffling for them to be charging a large and well-armed column.

“Guns at the ready,” Captain Ferranda ordered.

The Thirty-First moved swiftly, Rong Ma and Shalini Goel kneeling on the ground with their muskets pointed at the enemy while Zenzele Duma and the captain moved behind them to stand doing the same. Of the students around them quite a few had drawn pistols and made room for Ferranda Villazur’s brigade, but the sight of four shades did not exactly inspire great dread. Every brigade had taken patrol bounties of the Warfare training grounds at some point, which meant almost all of them had shot a shade before. Scholomance drew them like flies.

The front of the column kept moving at a pace, while the back had yet to catch up.

“Something is off,” Angharad softly said, hand on her saber.

She stilled for a heartbeat, eyelids fluttering, and then breathed out. Contract, Izel thought. It had taken barely a breath, but how far ahead had she seen?

“They are not charging us, they are fleeing,” the Pereduri said.

Izel turned a wary look on her.

“Fleeing what?”

“Fire,” Captain Ferranda barked out.

The Thirty-First were well drilled, their shot placement more than respectable for having fired on moving targets at least two hundred feet away. Three of the shades dropped, felled by having the middle of their torso and the glands there blown out. The fourth only stumbled back, a spout of black ichor flying as the edge of its shoulder was clipped and it let out a loud, eerily human moan.

A heartbeat later a shot rang out from the column and the last shade standing fell, Captain Nenetl Chapul lowering her rifle to the sound of some sparse cheers.

“Fleeing that,” Angharad finally replied, drawing her blade and pointing it at the end of the street.

Through the fading powder smoke Izel caught sight of another silhouette, as broad as the shades had been slender and even taller. The creature had a man’s shape and moved on two legs, but it was broader than any man and when it stepped into a slice of Orrery light it revealed itself to have no head. Beady eyes shone on its torso, like specks of horrid freckles, and a crack went down its torso to reveal a mouth full of sharp teeth and wriggling black tongues.

Izel knew what that thing was, and dread crept up his spine.

“Blem,” he shouted. “We have a blem.”

That lit a fire in the column, around them and even reaching back to the rearguard. Half a dozen captains began shouting and just as many cabalists rushed forward to form a firing line. Despite clenched hands and narrowed eyes, they held their fire – the blem was still over two hundred feet out, its skin was thick enough it was better to let it get closer before firing. Those beasts were not the most impressive of lemures, but there was a reason men avoided them like the plague: they could take punishment that would kill greater monsters and not think about it twice.

“Muskets won’t do much here,” Angharad calmly said. “And blades can cripple it, but we will find killing difficult. Did you bring grenades?”

Izel stiffly nodded. For a moment he regretted having left his arrow thrower behind, but then it wasn’t likely to have done better than muskets.

“Two, one to blast and one for smoke,” he said. “The former won’t do much unless it blows up inside the blem.”

“Then that is what we will do,” Angharad said, like it was the easiest thing in the world. “I only need to-”

The end of her sentence was drowned out by a storm of blackpowder, almost thirty muskets fired all at once as smoke billowed out in plumes and lead balls cut through the air. The smoke obscured sight of the creature, until it thinned a bit, and Izel’s heart clenched when they saw it again. The blem marched on them unimpeded, its body covered in what looked like black welts – where bullets had broken its hide – but otherwise as affected as if it had been walking through summer rain.

His eyes narrowed, though, for its right shoulder was pulped and no ordnance fired here could have done it. Had it already been wounded? It did not look like something shades could inflict. Maybe a crumbling house, it still happened sometimes.

“- to find the right help,” Angharad finished.

She cleared her throat, then raised her voice.

“Jeronimo, Musa,” she called out. “Could I interest you two in a dance?”

A loud, bursting laugh from the Malani swordmaster.

“It would not do to leave a lady in need,” Musa Shange called back. “Aznarez?”

“Anything you can do,” Jeronimo de Aznarez said, “I can do with half the prancing.”