Chapter 24

Though she was strapped half-naked to a stone slab and being prodded at, that wasn’t even the worst part of Song Ren’s firstday evening. No, that would be maintaining the restraint it took for her to keep what she thought about Captain Yue’s personal study off her face.

Every room in the Akelarre chapterhouse was just a hair’s breadth away from feeling cramped, in deference to the limited space within the bastion walls, but Yue was the senior Navigator on the island and received corresponding treatment: her study was about the size of the cottage’s drawing room, though with a lower ceiling and a great deal more clutter.

There was not a tabletop without piles of books and empty plates, her dip pen and inkwell were on opposite sides of the room and worst of all Yue had been using a freshly cleared chair as her writing desk instead of her actual writing desk, which served as stockroom for a pillow with a hole through it and two bowls of dyes that had dried long enough ago to flake.

Evidently the captain was one of those people who ‘had a system’. So did Song! It was called ‘putting things away in the right place’. Everyone should be made to practice it, on pain of public hanging.

“And when was the last time you purged?” Captain Yue asked.

“This morning, before class,” Song replied.

The captain let out an interested noise, jotting down a few characters in her journal – code and not Cathayan, Song had discreetly checked – then leaning over to remove the braid of straw she had laid down on Song’s bare belly. Silver eyes picked out what Yue was looking for, and by where her fingers were lingering that appeared to be discoloration and brittleness in the straw.

“Interesting,” Yue said. “Either Maryam was uncharacteristically incompetent, or you have a tiered connection to the curse.”

“Pardon?” Song tried.

“You’re already touched by Gloam, girl,” Captain Yue informed her. “But at this rate of acquisition your skin would start to slough off after a little over two weeks, so the curse’s progress must slow past a certain threshold.”

She swallowed. That had been a vivid image, if not a pleasant one. She was glad she’d asked Maryam to stay outside for today.

“And that is significant?” Song tried.

“It’s not a natural phenomenon,” Yue replied. “It’s too precise for that. Meaning it’s being imposed on you from the other end.”

“The nascent god,” Song said.

Her stomach clenched at the thought of it being able to reach her here, all the way across the sea.

“Likely, if not certain,” Captain Yue said. “In a way, Ren, your tie to that entity is not unlike being its priest.”

“You can’t be serious,” she said.

A priestess to her own doom, to the death of her sisters? She would rather drown.

“Well, you’re an unusual case,” Yue conceded. “Priesthood is just the religious name the credulous slap onto aetheric synchronization, that is to say pattern-mirroring between a lucent’s emanations and the specific aetheric taint of an entity.”

Song frowned, trying to parse out the technical terms. This was a step beyond the basics they had learned in Theology.

“A priest’s faith embraces the nature of their god, and thus allows them to pull on its power to the degree of that embrace,” she tried.

“For a Stripe, you’re not all that slow on the uptake,” Captain Yue ‘praised’.

It was for the best, Song considered, that Professor Formosa was the one handling the exploration crews.

“Essentially, yes,” she continued. “It’s why most priests are just fools muttering prayers while a smaller portion will manage tricks, the parts of the divine pattern they were able to ingest. It goes both ways, of course. By absorbing the pattern of their patron, they became an extension of it to some degree. It’s why gods start cults: it allows them toeholds in the Material and perspective touchstones that they can’t really develop as pure aether intellects.”

“What makes a high priest different from the rank and file, then?” she casually asked.

Casually enough that it seemed Yue did not notice her interest, thank the gods. The last thing Tristan needed at the moment was someone interested in pointing a scalpel at him.

“Compatibility,” Captain Yue said. “Some minds are a natural fit for a god’s nature, or in the case of minor deities they end up adjusting to their primary touchstone. The depth of the affinity usually ends up creating a boon simply by accumulation of tainted aether, and they get to draw much more deeply from their god.”

Song frowned. Tristan, despite being celebrant to the Lady of Long Odds, generally disapproved of gambling and recklessness. But he’s said she has no other contractor and that she’s been with him for years. It must have been Fortuna who adjusted to him, not the other way around – even then, on Asphodel, to draw deeper on his contract he’d needed to bet it all on long odds. In other words, match her pattern. Yue glanced at her face and misread the reason for the frown.

“You’re wondering why anyone would want to be a contractor when priesthood seems so much more flexible in what it grants.”

“The thought had occurred,” Song half-lied.

“For the same reason we don’t snort blackpowder and spit out bullets,” Yue told her. “A contract has set boundaries that can’t be broken from the god’s end. It’s an organ tacked onto your soul. Priesthood, though? You let that thing into the house. Priesthood is direct contact between you and the entity. If the god leaves enough of its taint behind to form a pseudo-boon, you think that’s all it’s leaving in there?”

“It’s also changing the soul,” Song guessed.

“Pattern-mirroring isn’t a name picked out of a hat,” Captain Yue said. “If you channel a god without the protection of a contract, then you progressively become a mirror of its pattern. When they describe celebrants as being unearthly, it’s not just a figure of speech – the minds of high priests are no longer entirely human.”

Song’s fingers clenched.

“And you say I am a priest to the curse god?”

“Like a priest,” Yue corrected. “I believe that the reason you top up so quickly to a minimum threshold of Gloam is that the entire Ren bloodline serves as a toehold for that nascent entity. It needs you to have at least that much Gloam in you to be able to sense you. Unlike a priest you don’t draw on the god, and shouldn’t try to – given its nature that would kill you instantly.”

It was not atypical of her life, Song thought, that she should get all the dangers of priesthood with none of the benefits. Still, there was a useful kernel in there.

“But it is adjusted to us,” Song slowly said. “Because hatred of the Ren is central to its concept, to simply be a Ren is to mirror part of its pattern.”

Yue cocked her head to the side.

“That’s more or less accurate,” she said.

“Can it see through me?” Song bluntly asked.

Captain Yue shook her head.

“It’s reaching out to you but you’re not reaching out to it,” she said. “In practice, think of yourself as connected to it by a tube. It uses that tube to feed you the curse, but that’s all it can do. At the moment, anyway.”

Song’s eyes narrowed, but she let that particular sleeping dog lie. She had always known it would be victory or death.

“But I can use the tube as well,” she said. “Last year, after Asphodel, I did not have to purge for months afterwards.”

“So Maryam told me,” Yue smiled. “And that, girl, is worth investigating. Did the admiration of the people of Tratheke simply put a stopper on the tube, or was there more to it? Did you harm the god by winning esteem? These, as much as a chance to study a nascent curse entity, are why you are worth spending one evening on a week.”

She rubbed her hands together gleefully.

“After all, how often does one get to toss pebbles at a god?”

Captain Yue reached behind her, producing a silvery borer with too many handles.

“Try not to move,” the madwoman advised. “It’ll hurt more if you do.”

—

Izel had run the numbers eight times now: in theory, this worked. In practice the best result he had achieved so far was ‘no explosions’.

“This one will be different,” he announced.

“So I have heard,” Helena Vargas said from across the observation window, then paused. “Three times now.”

He could not quite muster a glare at her for it, since that was factually true. It was not an obligation for an Umuthi student using the device vetting chambers – better known as the debacle vaults – to have a witness along, but their teachers strongly recommended it. Bring a second even if you are convinced your device is harmless, Professor Achari had said. Especially if you think it’s harmless. That you were fool enough to believe that is already evidence your judgment is terrible.

The professor had then launched into a fascinating story about how he’d once known a Deuteronomicon tinker who had built a compass that could be used by an entire ship crew simultaneously and the first use of the device had killed seventy-eight people by replacing the part of their mind that knew how to breathe with the absolute knowledge of where the north was.

Not that such a disaster was possible here, as the very purpose of the debacle vaults was to prevent such a spread.

It was why the room Izel stood in was all bare yellow bricks covering up an enclosure basalt. The bricks were imported from Tianxia, mud mixed with salt and magnolia ash, while the basalt walls were Izcalli stele stones. No aetheric reaction could cascade through those. The observation window where Helena stood, behind him by the vault door, could have a metal shutter made of tomic alloy pulled shut but it was usually kept open. Pipes with running water ran above and beneath it while the window frame was studded with Idean lead, which was as a lodestone to aether.

Every single one of the ten disaster vaults cost as much as a castle in the famously lush lands of Artecale, and they were allegedly one of the reasons the Watch had maintained a presence in the city after Scholomance closed – not continuing to use them would have been such a colossal waste of money that the order’s treasurers would have torn out enough hair to cause an epidemic of baldness.

“I improved the tolerances,” Izel grunted. “It will work.”

“Of course it will,” Helena smiled pleasantly at him, then immediately closed the shutters.

A beat passed.

“Unwarranted,” Izel complained.

Still, nothing to it but to test the device now.

Izel carried his box to the back of the room, kneeling there and unlatching the sides. It popped open, revealing the fifth iteration of his lenslight. The device itself was not particularly complicated. It consisted of a brass lantern chamber containing a fist-sized chunk of palestone emitting Glare light, connected by a squat tube to a second chamber that ended in a series of lenses through which the light passed. That second chamber contained several panes of aether-forged magnifying glass and a gas burner, which were meant to amplify the emitted Glare. It was a little less than a foot broad and two long, weighing exactly ten Lierganen pounds.

Izel carefully pulled out the lenslight and set it down on the floor, then pulled down his iron mask and pulled on the thick iron-plated gauntlets that came with it. Along with the iron plate-reinforced leather apron he already wore, it should protect him from shrapnel so long as he didn’t do anything foolish. The tinker breathed out, steadied his hand and pulled the switch atop the second chamber of the lenslight.

The brass shivered, the machinery of the second chamber slowly coming alive now that he’d released the clockwork switch. That was the first step. His hand moved to the side of the brass chamber, turning the knob there until he caught a faint hissing sound. A second later the gas he’d released caught fire and he stepped back, keeping his body close together to maximize protection.

Five seconds passed, then behind him he heard the shutter open.

“I always knew you could do it,” Helena called out.

He rolled his eyes under the mask. With the most common point of failure passed, he could now find out if the lenslight was actually functioning as intended. He unscrewed the brass cover over the lenses to the front of the device, careful not to let his fingers pass the rim even if the gauntlets would protect them. No point in being careless. A focused beam of Glare poured out of the lenses, painting the wall before it in a perfect circle. Simple emission meant nothing, though. Izel needed measurements.

From the apron pocket he clumsily produced a set of six metal plates on a ring, each lacquered with different concentrations of lunar salts. Izel dipped the first plate into the beam, withdrawing it after three seconds. The edge was darkened, a success. So it was with the second. His additions then, had not reduced the Glare beneath its initial measured emission. The third plate darkened as well, which had him straightening.

The gas he’d added to the lenslight had improved the strength of emitted Glare at least equally to the heat being released by the burning gas. Now time to find out if… The fourth plate, after three seconds, came out untouched. Izel’s lips thinned under the mask. He angled the plate differently and tried again, but to the same result. Damn it. The fifth plate came out untouched, and naturally the sixth – huh.

The sixth plate, which had the least lunar salt in the lacquer as was thus least sensitive to Glare, did darken. Which should not be mathematically possible, unless… Izel tested the plates from the fourth onwards, but the results were the same. So no, the power of the emission had not increased after the initial test. That was not the explanation for the results. Frowning, Izel turned the knob shut and pulled the switch on the clockwork before screwing the lid back on.

Only after did he take off his mask and gauntlet, frowning even as he put away the lenslight in its carry box. The door opened, Helena Vargas entering just to lean back against the wall with a cocked eyebrow. The other tinker was taller than he was, one of the tallest women he had ever met, and heavyset despite her narrow shoulders. She was not one of those beauties that turned heads on the street, but between the luxurious blonde locks and the impish smile Izel had found himself taken more than once.

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“You don’t have the look of someone who got the right results,” Helena said.

“I failed to break past the third plate,” Izel reported.

“So your amplification machine only amplifies the Glare by how much the fuel you added produces,” Helena summed up. “Most tinkers would still consider that a success, Izel, considering the materials you used when making your lenslight.”

He had, on purpose, kept the overwhelming majority of the materials to make and fuel the device mundane ones. Even aether-tempered glass was not rare so much as expensive.

“It cannot be called a success when the device does not do what I require it to,” he sighed. “I need quadratic results, not linear.”

Izcalli already had linear methods to improve the power of Glare emissions. The only way a linear method could ever cause the reactions he needed was if the fuel involved was effectively free and infinite, so he might as well make a fucking wish to the Moon-Eater for it. Grunting, he rose to his feet.

“But, if I can reproduce one of the results, I might yet have proof that my concept is sound,” he said.

Her brow rose.

“How’s that?”

Wordlessly, he produced the plates and showed her the edge of the sixth – which was marred with two dark marks.

“That’s the sixth plate,” Helana slowly said.

“So it is.”

“That barely has any lunar salts in the finish,” Helena said. “How could the strength of a Glare emission cause a reaction on that but not the previous two plates?”

“I have no idea,” Izel admitted. “But if I can reproduce the result, at the very least it will be proof that my lenslight is capable of affecting Glare emissions beyond just boosting them with fuel.”

Helena let out a low whistle.

“And that’d be one thing if you tinkered like most of you deuces, but you haven’t used a leviathan’s left ball and the bottled sweat of Lucifer to make your machine work,” she mused. “The most expensive part is the treated glass, right?”

He nodded, deciding to ignore the slightly unflattering term for Deuteronomicon tinkers.

“Which would be a fixed cost when building the device, beyond replacement when worn out,” Izel confirmed.

“That means your machine might see real use, if you can make it work,” she said. “It’s not just another Deuteronomicon miracle.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her, but she was unmoved by the sight. While it was true that some of the most powerful Deuteronomicon machines ever created were ruinously expensive to make and fuel or fragile enough that repeated use was sure to shatter them – hence the derisive term ‘miracle’ – it was hardly to the extent that the Clockwork Cathedral liked to imply.

Besides, the Cathedral would bankrupt the Watch with a thousand marginally different musket patterns if allowed. Each of them naturally deserving their own dedicated workshop, because those grew on trees.

“I smell unkind thoughts about my chosen track, Coyac,” Helena informed him with a raised eyebrow.

“Never,” Izel said, with a certain distance from truth. “Please, tell me about how floating docks are going to make shipyards irrelevant and not at all end up sold at auction in Ramaya because they’re floating leviathan bait.”

That particular debacle, about a decade back, had apparently been so ruinously expensive even after recouping some of the costs through auction several of its backers had been forced to step down from the Wednesday Council. A rarity, as one elected onto it usually served for life.

“There was no way to tell that in advance, the first ones did fine near Sacromonte,” she muttered. “And your lot on the Wednesday Council signed off on their construction too!”

“A shame no one asked the leviathans what they thought,” he drily replied.

She laughed.

“And here I was, trying to compliment you,” Helena dramatically sighed. “How is a girl supposed to tell you she admires your mastery of the practicals through such a rain of insults?”

“Rhetorical questions might work,” Izel suggested.

She grinned.

“It’s good to see you in a better mood,” she said. “You’ve been so grim since the start of the year.”

“It’s been a difficult few weeks,” he admitted.

“That’s the word getting around, yes,” Helena said, then cocked an eyebrow. “So, you used to be betrothed?”

“I left that behind along with Izcalli,” he said.

Firmly enough to make it clear he had no intention of discussing the matter further.

“But it was following along, evidently,” she mused.

She eyed him from the corner of her eye.

“That why you never looked me up after the party last year?” she all too casually asked. “I thought it might be because you took a liking to that Qiao lovebite, but I haven’t heard of anything picking up there.”

Wait, the lovebite was from one of the Qiao siblings? Which? No, that could wait. Izel cleared his throat.

“Given the general revelry of the night, I did not want to presume intentions,” he told her.

He’d not avoided her after, either, but she had never brought up that interlude so neither had he.

“Presume away,” Helena frankly replied.

Oh. He coughed again. That was quite flattering.

“I’m not sure that would be wise at the moment,” he delicately said.

“Because of the princess?” Helena snorted. “Please. Nosostros y el resto. I am no handmaid and she’s not even a queen, so even with inflation I am more than a match.”

Izel spent a whole heartbeat impressed at the audacity of Helena using Emperor Viterico’s famous pretext for his invasion of the Emerald Coast as a way of equating herself to an actual princess of the House of Acatl, then had to try very hard not to be charmed. Or too visibly amused.