Chapter 20

Tredegar was out in the garden, swinging her saber at the air. Presumably she was winning.

Maryam watched her through the window, having dragged a chair from the kitchen table to sit there while eating her meal and waiting for Song to return. Tristan, leaning against the windowsill, was eyeing the exercise with polite disinterest as he went through the last of the bread.

“It was mostly mathematics and memorizing star charts,” Maryam said. “We haven’t so much as glanced at a ship yet. You?”

The Sacromontan tore a piece from the loaf and popped it into his mouth, scarfing it down like a starving man. The meals of Scholomance were filling in his cheeks, smoothing away some of the lean in him. Maryam had thought him handsomer before, but this was certainly better for him.

“Professor Xiomara started us out dissecting green plague corpses,” he said.

Her head whipped his way in surprise.

“Weeding out the faint-hearted, I think,” Tristan mused. “We were thirty-two when class started but getting elbow deep in guts and pus probably ran out a third of that number.”

Maryam eyed him uneasily.

“You washed after, right?”

He blinked.

“I wiped my hands,” he said, like that was good enough.

A moment passed as she searched the thief’s face, which was just a tad too bemused. The tension left her shoulders.

“I almost bought that,” Maryam admitted.

The gray-eyed man cackled.

“We all wore gloves and overclothes during and we still scrubbed before leaving,” Tristan told her. “Mind you, the professor says the green plague isn’t contagious when the corpse is older than a day.”

Between the monsters that Tredegar was fighting underground and the plague corpses, Maryam was developing a degree of pity for the captains in charge of supplying Port Allazei.

“The worst Professor Sibiya sprung on us was language requirements,” she offered. “Fluent Antigua and enough Umoya to get by.”

Maryam had been ready to dislike the Malani professor for it but his reasons were unfortunately sensible. The Kingdom of Malan’s explorers had named most of the moons and constellations in the deep Aeolian Ocean and they had the only reliable charts leading through it to the western lands. Some degree of capacity with the language was needed if one was to ever sail beyond the Five Seas.

“You know Umoya?” Tristan asked, sounding surprised.

Maryam mutely nodded. Her father had insisted and Mother thought it a sound notion as well – if for different reasons. She was hardly fluent and had been told her accent was thick, but she understood the language well enough.

“Some Centzon as well,” she said. “My mentor is Izcalli.”

“Even Tredegar is fluent in two languages,” he muttered. “I might need to expand my horizons.”

Neither of them bothered to mention Song, whose arsenal of languages was simply not worth comparing to. And speaking of that particular devil, before Tristan could finish devouring the loaf the Tianxi swept in through the front door – putting away her clothes and weapons so habitually she did not even need to look at what she was doing while doing it. Tristan moved to stand by the Izvorica as silver eyes glanced their way. Their captain sighed.

“Why are you still pickpocketing Maryam?” Song asked. “It hardly serves as training.”

Maryam turned to glare at the thief, who smiled innocently. He offered back the bronze-rimmed coin he’d taken, and also two silvers. He cocked an inquisitive eyebrow.

“I thought more coins would make it harder to steal,” Maryam said. “On account of them tinkling together, I mean.”

“You would need more,” he informed her. “And I’d still be able to skim from the top with little noise.”

The smug bastard. She might have put a mouse trap in that pocket to wipe the look off his face, if not for the real chance she might forget it was in there and snap her own fingers instead. Pointedly turning away from the gray-eyed man, she smiled at Song.

“How was your class?” she asked.

“Interesting,” Song replied. “The first two months are to be spent studying the composition and doctrine of the armies of the great powers before we move on to the strategic aspects of the class.”

That sounded horribly dull, but Song’s aim was to rise up the ranks of the Watch so that sort of thing seemed right up her alley.

“I am glad you are enjoying it,” she diplomatically said. “Tristan and I already ate, but I am not so sure about Tredegar.”

Song nodded.

“I will call her in, then, and we can sit together before we go.”

It was a short enough meal that Maryam did not have time to be irritated by the company, so it was in a decent mood they all departed for Scholomance.

—

This whole thing stank, Tristan thought.

The Trial of Contest had smacked of bad news since the start, but the moment they were greeted at the plaza outside Scholomance not by some bored sergeant but Professor Tenoch Sasan the thief knew this was going to be more trouble than it was worth. Sure, there were three more soldiers present but that their Saga teacher had decided to use the second half of his sixthday to accompany them was a warning sign. It was, unfortunately, too late to retreat.

“We are still waiting on another,” Professor Sasan informed them. “It should not be long.”

His eyes were on the bridge behind them, which Tristan found interesting. That meant coming through the ruins, with all the dangers implied – the lemures were learning not to attack near the main avenue, but everywhere else was still hunting ground – yet the way the Izcalli had phrased it there would be only one more added to their party. The four of them stood there with the blackcloaks, shuffling awkwardly while armed to the teeth in their fighting fit, until the promised silhouette appeared.

A Tianxi, Tristan saw, and wearing those loose black robes that Navigators seemed to be able to use as a uniform. Long black hair kept in a braid and burn scars on the side of her face, which were not so half as interesting as the way Maryam stiffened at the sight of her. He leaned in.

“Familiar?” he murmured.

She nodded, then raised the pitch of her voice so all would hear.

“That is Captain Yue,” Maryam said. “She is the senior Akelarre on Tolomontera and head of the local chapterhouse.”

As well as the officer who’d taken his blue-eyed friend under her wing after her teacher washed his hands of her. Only Maryam had seemed more worried than happy about that, which was telling. Looking up the woman was on his list, though his inquiries to Hage had only yielded that the Navigators were a viciously private lot and he should tread lightly. Captain Yue seemed in a fine mood and greeted them happily, trading a few quips with Professor Sasan – they appeared acquainted – before straightening her collar.

“Shall we get a move on?” Captain Yue asked. “The Lugar Vacio is not easy for the school to move, but it has done it before.”

Song cleared her throat.

“May I ask what-”

“Where your trial will take place,” the other Tianxi interrupted. “Get your feet moving, Thirteenth. You are the first takers of the year so you have my curiosity, but I do have other plans this afternoon.”

Song had that look on her face that she always put there when she felt like she had been slapped but didn’t want to show it. Tristan instead kept his eye on Captain Yue, and found she was not acting like a Kang – she was not paying Song enough attention to be out to get her.

She merely had poor manners.

There was no arguing with that order, however, so het moving they did. Tristan had a scheme to obtain more information, naturally, which relied on the way that he had never met a single scholar of history that did not enjoy expounding about it at great length when asked. As they passed through the open doors of Scholomance, walking grounds covered with stained glass light, the thief slid into place by Professor Sasan’s side. The brown-eyed man shot him an amused look.

“So here comes the Mask, hungry to get the inside track,” the professor said. “You could set a clock by the skulking.”

Ah. The man was an old friend of Wen’s, so perhaps Tristan should have been more careful in his approach. He’d been caught out in his intentions but retreat would help none, so he was left with audacity instead.

“It’s the stubble, sir,” he said, smiling brightly. “It makes you look gullible.”

Professor Sasan choked, letting out a burst of laughter that startled the rest of the group. He could feel Song’s stare on his back, weighing whether or not it wanted to be a glare.

“Thank you for the advice, soldier,” the professor said, lips still twitching. “Ask your questions before my good mood wanes.”

Tristan eyed him for a moment. He did not give it good odds that the Izcalli would outright tell him what the trial was, so an indirect angle would yield more.

“What is it about the Trial of Contest that warrants the personal attention of a professor and the senior signifier on the island?”

The man pushed up his spectacles.

“Clever,” he praised. “I cannot speak for Captain Yue, but my interest lies in the fact that this will be the second use of the Lugar Vacio since Scholomance was closed. The first was the better part of a year before I arrived here, so this is my first opportunity to behold it with my own eyes.”

Tristan’s brow rose.

“So this Trial of Contest is not some fresh invention?” he pressed.

“It has been in practice almost as long as the Watch has used Scholomance as a school,” Professor Sasan replied.

That was less than reassuring, considering that Scholomance was rumored to have closed because too many students died even by the harsh standard of the blackcloaks. Which reminded him, while he had a historian at hand…

“Why did Scholomance close, anyway?” Tristan asked. “The Watch cannot own so many aether wells it would leave one unoccupied without good reason.”

“There was no single reason, but admittedly one did tip the balance the way of closure,” Professor Sasan mused. “We are a stubborn folk, our order – but even we balked at continuing to send children in after the third year in a row that the entire roster died.”

Tristan winced. About what he’d feared.

“So what changed since?”

The man laughed.

“The blood dried,” Sasan said.

Tristan extricated himself as swiftly as possible after that, returning to his cabal. For such a cheerful man, Tenoch Sasan had one of the bleakest senses of humor he’d ever seen.

The friendship with Wen made more sense now, he’d admit.

—

Scholomance could be beautiful, Angharad thought, as the deadliest of things tended to be.

It was an eerie sort of beauty but no less moving for it. Their company strode through broken halls painted with the light of some pale moon, a passage of faded mosaics whose colors must have once been bewitching and a strange garden whose every flower and stalk of grass was marble. Captain Yue stood in the lead and traced symbols in the air with Gloam every few minutes, sometimes changing their direction strangely afterwards – going through cramped stairs downwards to end up on the second story, or taking a closet door to end up in a great hall. Her curiosity must have been visible, for it received answer.

“It’s a Sign,” Maryam quietly explained. “Didactic.”

“I am not familiar with the meaning – as related to your arts, that is,” Angharad said.

“Didactic Signs are both external and internal, relating to abstract concepts,” the Izvorica recited. “On the Bluebell, when the captain enclosed the Saint inside invisible walls, it was a Didactic Sign as he used.”

The other woman frowned.

“This one appears to be about connection,” Maryam said. “Two things being one. It must be some kind of pathfinding trick, like a Gloam compass.”

Angharad inclined her head in thanks at the explanation, receiving a grunt as answer. These were not impressive manners, but the noblewoman let it pass. She could not take issue with it when she had yet to find a way to make restitution for her own lacking courtesies. After one last turn through a forlorn dance hall whose checkered tiles were strewn with broken glass from fallen chandeliers, they emerged into a small antechamber of bare stone with a small door half-ajar.

Captain Yue traced her Sign again, then glanced through the door and gave a satisfied nod before shooting a glance at the ceiling.

“Tried to waylay us with the Basilisk Garden, did you?” she said, clicking her tongue. “Come now, I know my filters. You’ll have to do better than that.”

“I find that when arguing with immortals one rarely gets the last word,” Professor Sasan noted.

The Tianxi signifier glanced at him with a hard smile.

“There’s no such thing as immortality, Tenoch,” Captain Yue replied. “Even the Gloam will end.”

The man rolled his eyes behind his spectacles.

“If you insist on being part of a cult, Yue, you could at least pick one with good festivals,” he said. “There’s a temple out in Totochtin that-”

One of the blackcloaks behind them cleared his throat, loudly. The professor appeared somewhat chastised, but not so the signifier.

“We can go in,” Captain Yue said. “It’s the right room.”

The pair preceded the rest of them in, Angharad was first in their wake. She had not been sure what to expect, but somehow it had not been this: the room was surprisingly mundane.

It could have passed as some lord’s solar back home, with that pretty wooden paneling on the walls and floor. Geometric tapestries hung on the sides, a little heavy on the red for her tastes but more than acceptable, and the lanterns were delicate ironwork. Only there was no furniture and the floor paneling had been scraped, as if heavy objects were dragged out of the room – and in the very center, bursting out of the floor like a jutting nail, stood a doorway.

An arch of stone, simple gray blocks perfectly interlocked.

An empty doorway leading to nowhere, she thought, but then she thought she glimpsed something through and it was not the back of the room. It was… Angharad frowned, taking a step closer, and pricked her ear. She could almost hear a song, faint as it was. A voice was singing, slow and light, but there was also something more. An undertone, deeper. It was not coming from the other side.

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The Pereduri swallowed drily when she realized that the other sound was the Fisher humming along.

A hand came to rest on her shoulder, shaking her out of her trance.

“Easy now,” Professor Sasan said. “Crossing that doorway without first taking the proper precautions would be unwise.”

Angharad swallowed again when she saw that she was three steps closer to the doorway than she recalled.

“What lies beyond, professor?” she asked.

“A complicated question,” the Izcalli said. “By itself? Not much. Something that failed to become a layer and was subsumed by Scholomance.”

The noblewoman licked her lips.

“I could make out a song,” she admitted.

The professor’s brow rose above his spectacles.

“That makes you one in a hundred,” he said. “I can’t hear so much as a whistle myself. There must be great deal of fear in you.”

Angharad went stiff as a board at the insult.

“Pardon me?” she forced out.

“That is what lies on the other side of the doorway, Tredegar,” Professor Sasan said. “Fear. To be precise, a great moment of terror that was too short-lived to form into a layer but still left a mark in the aether.”

Before Angharad could bite out that she was no coward, and what would an Izcalli know of courage anyway, Song cleared her throat and stepped between them.

“You mentioned that it was consumed by Scholomance,” the Tianxi said. “What has it become now?”

The man pushed up his glasses.

“There is Izcalli a plant called the butterwort,” he said, “whose viscous leaves trap insects that land on them, slowly dissolving and digesting them.”

Professor Tenoch Sasan spoke calmly, almost mildly, as if they were discussing nothing more than the weather.

“The Lugar Vacio, the place beyond the doorway, is much the same. It will bring out your deepest fears, make you lose yourself within and then feed on you until either your mind or body shatters.”

Angharad swallowed again. There was a long moment of silence.

“Usually I’d say something about this not being the worst way I spent a sixthday,” Tristan noted. “But this honestly might just be it.”

Angharad turned a half-fond look on the shrugging man, Maryam choking out a laugh. The look on Song’s face, however, did not change: guilt. She was regretting roping them into this. Angharad understood why, but did not share the doubt. If the Watch did not believe the trial worth taking, it would not have been put up on that wall for Song to take.

“I would not expect the Watch would indulge in petty torments,” Angharad said. “Surely there is some purpose to this trial?”

It was not the professor that answered, to her surprise.

“It’s soul-tempering,” Maryam said. “My people’s signifiers have a tradition not unlike this, though a little god rides your soul instead.”

“Experiencing emotional extremes strengthens one’s soul,” Captain Yue agreed. “Especially when it happens within an aether well – you’ve had Theology already, so you should have an inkling as to why.”

Professor Sasan cleared his throat.

“It is also preparation for field conditions,” he added. “There are gods and lemures that can inflict terror, and to have lived through such a thing in controlled conditions significantly increases your chances of survival.”

Sensible, Angharad thought. Scarred skin was tougher when given time to heal. Tristan cleared his throat.

“If any emotion will do, I don’t suppose there’s a joy doorway lying around we could take instead?”

“Oh, they banned that one back when Scholomance was last open,” Professor Sasan idly said.

He shrugged.

“The suicide rate in the aftermath was simply too high.”

No one was quite sure what to answer to that.

—

Song went first.

It would have been beneath her not to, after what they had heard. A general led from the back, but a captain led from the front and Song yet claimed to be captain of the Thirteenth Brigade. She stood before the doorway in silence, Captain Yue slowly circling around her as she traced Signs in quick sequence – shimmering, oily darkness hung in the air for the barest heartbeats before fading. All that Song felt from the sorcery was a shiver of cold, until the other Tianxi traced one last Sign and closer her fist around a piece of darkness that almost looked like a Cathayan character.

She felt it then: she was tethered.

“You have bound my soul,” Song said.

“More accurately, I tied a rope around it so that I will be able to pull you out,” Captain Yue replied. “You will only remain two minutes inside – any longer and Scholomance will have nibbled away at the rope.”

She had a southern accent, Song noted. Maybe Sanxing, though she could not know for sure without hearing Yue speak Cathayan.

“What will two minutes achieve?” she asked.

“Enough,” Captain Yue snorted. “It won’t feel like a short time to you, Ren. Nor will you remember crossing the threshold.”

No, she thought, but I will see through the illusion. That might just give her an edge. She glanced back and found that Professor Sasan had cracked open a small leather journal, scribbling notes in it as he kept an eye on her – and was that a sketch of her standing in front of the doorway? It would have been improper to glare at a teacher but the urge was there. The soldiers were near the door and looking on with nothing more than mild interest, but her cabal at least was displaying some concern.

Abrascal’s face was a blank mask and Angharad looked as if she was pressing down her worries – no doubt to avoid giving insult by implying Song would not rise to the occasion – while Maryam was biting her lip. Song gave them a nod, then breathed out and turned to Captain Yue.

“I am ready,” she said.

“Then cross the threshold,” she said.

One, two, three steps and Song was-

—