Chapter 24

She would have fallen asleep if not for the second pot of tea.

Song sat at the kitchen table in the quivering candlelight, not staring at Tristan’s shoddy note – it had a fresh X added at the bottom, conveying he still drew breath. Now and then she remembered to turn the page of the first volume of Universal Histories, which she was meant to be reading for Saga. Only she kept mixing up pre-imperial kings: even the earliest dynasty, the short-lived Pelayo, had managed to squeeze in two Alfonsos who’d fought battles over the same stretch of riverlands with similarly named rival kings.

At least ancient kings of Cathay had taken on reigning names that made them easier to tell apart.

Song felt the words sliding along her mind instead of sinking in and knew that by morning she would remember hardly a thing of what she had read. Yet to close the book would be to surrender this time to waiting alone, keeping company only with Tristan’s note. Sipping at her increasingly lukewarm tea, Song turned a page and was presented with the tortured family tree of the Ormisenda dynasty – the successors of the Pelayo – and winced at the sight of a fresh battalion of Alfonsos, flanked by a cavalry wing of Fruelas.

“This is unkind,” she informed the book.

The frustration distracted her enough that her stomach dropped when she heard the front door open. Maryam trudged in tiredly with a lantern in hand, not hanging her weapons on the hooks but dropping them into a pile on the wooden bench next to the boots instead. The powder, at least, she hung. The hooded cloak that she wore everywhere was tucked under her arm as she walked out of the antechamber, eyes widening in surprise when she saw Song seated at the table.

The Izvorica must have been exhausted not to notice there was a lit candle in the kitchen. For a long moment they matched gazes, Song’s mouth suddenly gone dry, then Maryam sighed.

“Must we do this tonight?” she asked.

Song straightened.

“Will you promise me time tomorrow morning if not?”

Muttering something in Triglau that had the sound of a curse to it, the pale-skinned woman approached and dropped her cloak on a chair before sitting on another, facing Song. Maryam had always been pale and the Tianxi could not remember her without circles around her eyes but there was something… she looked worn. As if what had once been a few layers now went down to the bone.

“The hours you keep are taking a toll,” Song quietly said.

Maryam’s face closed, like shutters pulled tight, and she knew she had made a mistake again.

“I get enough sleep and Captain Yue sends me back with an escort when we run late,” she sharply replied.

“I meant no offense,” Song hastened to reply.

Gods, she felt like biting her tongue until it bled. Maryam breathed in, waited a moment, then nodded. Stiffly.

“Fine,” she said. “None taken.”

“You are working with the captain, then,” Song tried.

Maryam’s face closed shut again and Song almost let out a sob of frustration. She knew the other woman was not thin-skinned – could not be, when the color of it earned her stares and jeers wherever she went – which meant that Song was walking through a field and somehow managing to step solely on the fucking caltrops.

“Worked on, more like,” Maryam tightly replied. “But I’ve had some answers.”

“Progress, then,” Song said, forcing a smile.

“Of a sort,” the blue-eyed woman flatly replied. “Captain Yue is mostly certain that if a quarter of my brain was amputated my signifying would stabilize.”

Captain Yue sounded like the Krypteia should regularly break into her closet to look for skeletons, but it would not have been politic of Song to say as much.

“Have you-” Song began, but Maryam raised a hand to cut her off.

“Song,” she said. “The only reason my eyes are still open is that it burns when I close them. I am in no state or mood for chatter. What do you want?”

Song had earlier spent the better part of an hour preparing a speech. Even written it down, though naturally she had burned the paper after memorizing it. Only looking at those weary blue eyes, she stumbled.

“It has come to my attention,” she said, facing that stare, then swallowed. “I have-”

She could not remember the end of that sentence if someone put a pistol to her head. The chisel kept slipping through her fingers. Song swallowed, almost choking on her own fear and spit.

“I’m sorry,” Song blurted out. “It was… I was unfair to you and to others. I started the fire and fed it. It is my fault.”

Maryam watched her, pale face gaunt in the light, and the Tianxi could tell something in there clenched.

“You take too much on yourself,” she said.

Hope rose that against all odds she had found the right words to-

“I used to admire that, but no longer,” Maryam said. “You take it in and bottle it up until a good shake makes the cork pop and it all comes spilling out. It’s no good for you and it may just be worse for us.”

Song swallowed.

“It is,” she tried, then hesitated. “It is how I am, Maryam.”

“No one is like that,” Maryam gently replied. “You learn to be.”

She looked away. There was something too much like pity in those blue eyes, and she did not have it in her to be angry at the other woman right now.

“Regardless, I apologize,” Song croaked, licking dry lips. “I did not truly believe the accusation I levied at you. It will not happen again and I will make amends however I can.”

How, she was not sure. But until she had how could any of them trust her? She would do what she must to make up for her mistakes.

“There’s no penance to be had here,” Maryam tiredly replied. “You are not my bondswoman for seven years, freed of bonds and guilt on the final morning. If there is work to be done, it is not for me.”

“I don’t understand,” Song admitted. “I owe Tristan apology as well, but that does not erase-”

“Apologies don’t mean a fucking thing, Song,” Maryam said, voice rising. “You cut me, like we all cut each other, but that’s just thorns. It happens, sometimes even when you don’t mean it to. But what’s changed since, Song?”

“I know I did wrong,” she said. “Next time-”

And somehow, it was still the wrong answer.

“You can’t make yourself without flaw by… precedent, somehow” Maryam bit out. “I do not care that you lost control, I care about what I saw when you did. That’s what needs mending, not words thrown in anger.”

The Izvorica passed a hand through her hair, looking like a woman only a stiff breeze away from toppling.

“If the Thirteenth keeps, this is not the last time we will be left scraped raw and with reasons to claw at each other,” Maryam said. “We’ll crack again, in months or years to come.”

“And next time I will be ready,” Song insisted. “I do not repeat my mistakes, Maryam.”

“You’re not listening,” the other woman said. “I don’t want so sit with you smiling until the next pop, Song, never knowing you’re silently swallowing one thorn after another until the moment where your belly bursts and you spit them all out in our faces.”

Maryam shook her head.

“Gods, but in that moment I think you genuinely hated him,” she said. “And part of that is on Tristan, but it’s also on you. Because it got that far without anyone doing about it and you’re the one who’s supposed to want the Thirteenth Brigade to work.”

That more than anything else Maryam had said, rang true. And cut deepest.

“There is only so much I can do,” Song got out. “I am not…”

She swallowed, unsure what the right words would be. ‘Perfect’ would be arrogant even in denial. ‘A miracle worker’ was putting Tristan on a pedestal, if an ill one. He was not some evil spirit without reason. The urge to claim you had failed at a high rung of the ladder, Uncle Zhuge once told her, was a common reaction to having lost your footing much lower. A grand failure was easier to swallow than a petty one.

“I don’t know what I am to do,” Song admitted. “When we first met at the Rookery I thought I knew what lay ahead, but since we came to Tolomontera I have been lost.”

“And if we were still at the Rookery, I’d wave all this away,” Maryam said. “But we aren’t, and I can’t excuse the mistakes woman in front of me for the sake of the one I met there.”

She sighed.

“History won’t weigh on the scales, Song,” Maryam told her. “That’s what this… bloodletting taught me. The one thing I can’t forgive from this whole debacle is that when Tredegar called me useless I had nothing to contradict her with.”

“You are still learning,” Song carefully said.

“That’s an excuse,” the other woman firmly said. “I have had too much truck with those of late. I have been gnawing at grudges instead of looking ahead, it’s no wonder I fell behind.”

Maryam let out a yawn, covering it with her hand.

“I am not keeping to these hours to spite you, Song,” she said. “Yue’s pushing harder because she’s heard rumors the Thirteenth had a blowout, but I’ve been volunteering past what she asks.”

She leaned in.

“I am stepping forward instead of being dragged, and it has made a difference.”

“So you have gotten real answers,” Song said. “Not just…”

Been told lobotomy was a potential solution.

“They only brought more questions,” Maryam said, “but that is the road: fill the unknown piece by piece until you are left with a map. Until the next time I am called useless, I can look that person in the eye and call them a liar.”

“You are not useless,” Song told her.

The Izvorica’s face shuttered again, but Song was too tired to wince. They matched gazes for a long moment, silver to blue, until the signifier looked away.

“I’m not sure,” Maryam quietly said, “whether I hate or love that you really believe that.”

She pushed off her seat, snatching up her cloak.

“Good night, Song,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

A beat,

“Good night, Maryam,” she replied.

Not quickly enough that she was addressing anything but a retreating back.

Song emptied the rest of the cold tea into the garden bushes, trying not to look at the iron teapot she had dented in her rage. How it still served but might be injured for good.

How that felt like the worst sort of omen.

—

They headed to class together in the morning. Maryam had not accompanied her like this in days so it felt like a victory, however trifling one.

Still, with Teratology looming ahead Song was glad of even such a small thing. She did not speak much on the way, instead reciting inside her head the readings she had done. Not that Maryam seemed in all that chatty a mood. Professor Kang, Song suspected, would be eager for an opportunity to dole out humiliation for any perceived failing of hers. To stay a step ahead she had gone to the private library in the Galleries and picked out the three works she judged most likely to be upcoming assigned readings for the class.

Two of them were Teratology manuals, of which there were multiple copies with some in different print – a sign they had been in use for long, classics. She had read up to the fifth chapter in each. The third work was the one she spent the most time on, however. It was a treatise, not a proper book, but its title and author had commanded her full attention: Systematic Collapse, by Yun Kang.

It was a methodical, detailed analysis of what the fifteen years following the Dimming had done to the lands of the Republic of Jigong. Too detailed for him not to have been out there, seeing it with his own eyes. It had made for… harrowing reading, but read it Song had. She was prepared.

The walk through Scholomance to get to class was somehow even more wearying than it had been the first day, perhaps because Song knew what was waiting for her at the end. She kept her wits about her, ignoring the temptations the school dangled their way – shortcuts and hidden libraries, a warm kitchen smelling of freshly baked bread and once a scared child screaming. That one had a few students hesitating before their friends pulled them back.

Scholomance, Song saw, was watching them from the walls. Learning what had worked and what had not. No, she thought. Not learning. Remembering. It had waned, starved of souls to feed on for so long, but corpse after corpse it was gaining back in strength. In mind.

It was a grim thought, and it was in a grim mood she arrived in class. She and Maryam had arrived ahead of most, and they took the same desks near the middle of the room. The air in the crypt always felt slightly damp, and Song’s eyes could not help but stray at the stuffed lemures looking at her from the walls and ceiling. It was as if Kang had a hundred eyes, each of them staring at her unblinking.

Song was careful to avoid looking at the front of the class where the professor stood, not to give him an excuse.

Angharad arrived with the Thirty-First shortly before the beginning of class, and much like the last few students to hurry in they were sweaty and harried. Zenzele even had a cut on his cheek, a sure sign that Scholomance had tried something. Not that Professor Kang cared.

“Another twenty seconds and you would have been late,” he chided. “Laziness is not a habit to boast of.”

Shalini looked furious, but Ferranda laid a hand on her arm to keep her from speaking. The infanzona had good instincts. Denied a reason to continue hectoring them, Professor Kang hummed and passed by his desk to snatch up his wooden baton while Angharad settled at the desk to Song’s left, sparing a nod her way.

“Now that the distractions are over with,” Professor Kang said, “let us begin.”

He began his lecture without so much as a glance her way but Song knew better than to lower her guard.

She would admit, however, that he was a compelling speaker. Unlike Professor Sasan he did not invite discussion, but neither was his lecture the kind that put students to sleep. After spending half an hour outlining the fundamental differences between an ‘animal’ and ‘creature’ – the latter term being a catch-all term including lares and lemures, though he noted that less scholarly literature also referred to them as ‘monsters’ – he laid out the basics of the Takata Index for them.

It was the manner by which the teratologist of the Watch ranked the threat of particular creatures on a scale of one to ten. Kang flatly informed them that they should memorize the criteria he had written on the slate, for they would be tested not only on listing them but by applying the Takata Index on example creatures.

Then he pivoted her way and it began.

“Captain Ren,” the professor smoothly said. “Who was it that first laid out a distinction between lares and lemures?”

He wanted her, Song thought, to answer ‘the Second Empire’ so he could tut at her inexactness. Fortunately for her, she had read the second chapter of Categorias Naturales.

“Cornelia Marca, on behalf of Emperor Raul II,” she replied. “Sir.”

The man paused, stroking his beard.

“A basic answer,” he said, and moved on.

A few minutes of learning about the early Lierganen origins of the formal discipline followed, but the swerve inevitably came.

“Captain Ren,” he thinly smiled, “how is it that creatures from regions hundreds of thousands of miles apart can share the same physiology? Let us take lupines for an example.”

Arbor Vitae, fourth chapter. He had changed manuals.

“According to the theory of origin, sir,” Song replied, “it is because these creatures came from the same original animals. In the case of lupines, dogs.”

His face tightened.

“Speculative at best,” Professor Kang said, turning away.

Twice now he had come for her and missed. Unless he was deaf he would be hearing the same whispers spreading across the class she did. It was one thing for a professor to pick on a student, another for that professor to fail. A man worried about his reputation would have stopped.

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Yung Kang did not.

The next question he asked her was only tangentially related to what was even being discussed, about the proper name for the mutations aether caused in plant anatomy, and there she had to admit ignorance. The smirk returned.

She could not answer the next two questions either, and after the last he sighed in disappointment.

“It seems you will need all the help you can get, Captain Ren,” the professor said. “You, in front, your name?”

He was addressing a short Izcalli girl sitting in the front row, her head shaved save for a stripe going down the back and two tufts on the sides. Contracted.

“Captain Tozi Poloko,” she replied. “Nineteenth Brigade.”

“Trade seats with her, Captain Tozi,” Professor Kang ordered.

Song wilted under the gazes of the classroom as she was made to pack up her things and move them up front, the other captain sending her an unfriendly look for the trouble. Kang ceased questioning her after that, but he made it a point to always walk back and forth near her with his baton trailing across her desk. It made her tense every time and fall behind in taking notes. The lecture lasted close to three hours in whole, and shortly before dismissing the class the professor leaned in close with those shining black eyes.

“Stay behind after,” Professor Kang ordered her.

Song put away her notes even as the rest of the class began to leave. Maryam glanced back twice, but the professor’s cocked eyebrow dissuaded her from lingering. Soon she was the only one left, the professor shuffling papers on his desk. After waiting there for five minutes, Song dared to clear her throat.

“Sir,” she cautiously asked. “What can I do for you?”

Professor Kang looked up, seemingly surprised.

“Still here, Ren?” he said. “You will be late for your next class.”

She grit her teeth. Was he really that petty?

“As you say, professor,” she stiffly replied, grabbing her bag.

He smirked.

“Although, since you are here,” Professor Kang idly said. “I am curious – are you a jiang wu practitioner, Captain Song?”

She blinked in surprise.

“Sword dances?” she asked. “No, sir. I never learned any.”

She had been taught traditional swordsmanship, certainly, but still one meant to be used – not a largely ceremonial performance. Sword dances took skill but not necessarily the same skills used in genuine combat. Bafflingly, the answer brought a vicious sort of satisfaction to the man’s face.

“No,” Kang smiled. “I thought not. Go on, then. Get going.”

She was glad to, uncomfortable standing alone in the room with a man who meant her ill. Song had tried to think of the professor as a test, something she could make a reputation from, but today made that… difficult. Kang seemed entirely willing to go as far as he needed to make her pass as ignorant – how many in the class would have been able to answer the questions she did correctly? How many who were not Savants? It was with gritted teeth she left.

Reaching the hall outside, Song found she might be the least to leave but there were still some lingerers. A pair of Tianxi was standing at the end pf the hallway, by the stairs, talking in low voices. One was contracted. His name was Hong Hua, and he could move… the location of wounds by touch? Interesting. She tore away her gaze before it could be noticed. It took three more steps for Song to recall one detail – that particular spelling of ‘Hua’ as a surname, it was uncommon.

Almost only used around the southern shore of Hehou River, the border with the Imperial Someshwar. The Republic of Jigong’s border with the Someshwar, to be precise.

Song heard the classroom door close behind her, and it saved her life – she glanced that way, eyes widening when she saw two more students had hidden on either side of the door. One had a pistol aimed at her, and as he pulled the trigger she ducked. The shot sounded, the bullet tearing into her bag and sending chunks of paper flying. That was her notes, some part of her dimly raged. Her own pistol was not loaded, a dire mistake, so instead her sword cleared the scabbard as she dropped her bag. It would only get in her way.

“Help,” she shouted, but there was no one.

Only her, enemies and a closed door. The ambusher without the pistol – contracted, Renshu, something something all-devouring – let out a sharp laugh, unsheathing a curved dao saber as he stepped forward. Movement behind, but if she let them dictate this she was dead. Ignoring the threat at her back she ran towards her ambushers, ignoring the surprise on their faces as she rushed the pistol wielder. The contracted saberman stepped between them as the other man yelped, dropping his pistol and fumbling for the straight sword at his hip.

Two steps, thrust. The saber came to swat down her blade but Song was already moving out of the feint. Pivot, sweep low and cut – ‘Renshu’ hastily backed into the door to avoid getting his throat sliced, impacting it with a thud. The other man got his blade out, just in time for Song to smoothly drop and sweep his leg. Always moving, gathering strength like the wind. He stumbled back, head smacking against the wall as he fell. Dropped his sword.

Saber strike from the left, a quick cut to her sword arm’s shoulder. Not the neck? Not a feint either, Song found as she flicked a strike at his knee to trip the faint but found him leaning into the blow instead. She turned withdrawing that probing blade into a rising pivot strike at Renshu’s face that had him leaning back, momentum against him and… there, she slid her boot’s toe under the dropped sword, tossing it straight up.

She tossed her sword at Renshu’s face, forcing him back with his saber high, snatched the other sword out of the air by the grip and smoothly slid it into the other man’s throat as he got back on his feet – his movement only driving it all the way through. She ripped the sword free as the sole woman screamed Liu, turning to face the others. Step forward, breathe in and out. Never stop moving.

Renshu would soon be at her back, so she swept forward towards the pair charging her.