Chapter 30

Izel Coyac rubbed the bridge of his nose, vainly trying to slow down the incoming headache.

He’d been at this for two hours now, moving down from his desk to the cottage’s drawing room in the hope that the view out the window might inspire him, but he could not seem to find where the mistake was. And there must be a mistake, because the last two tests of the lenslight had resulted in the same anomaly he had first found with Helena.

He did not dare approach Professor Achari without first having ensured his calculations were impeccable, lest he be made to wear the pair hat next class for having approached an instructor without having his works checked by other tinkers first. There was something peculiarly embarrassing about wearing the blue foot-shaped hat. Anyhow, he’d asked Jingyi to take a look and his friend had agreed that theoretically the mathematics involved were sound.

Of course, pure mathematics only got you so far when the likes of Glare and Gloam were involved.

He was startled out of his thoughts by a cup of tea being set down well to the left of his papers – Kuril greenleaf, by the smell, and he perked up. Song Ren, who even at her least formal buttoned up her nightgown up to her neck and wore another layer over it, went around the table and slid into the seat across from him.

“You look frustrated,” Song said.

“I cannot seem to fit the underlying theory of my work with its actual results,” Izel admitted. “It does not fit with my understanding of Glare.”

She eyed his cup of tea meaningfully and duly took a sip, then another for it was even more refreshing than he remembered. Hard to believe something tasting so delicate came from the Raj of Kuril, that rugged land of valleys and mountain passes.

“I am told it can help to explain one’s work to someone less schooled in such matters,” Song offered.

He snorted. Relatively less schooled, anyway. His captain regularly had higher marks than him in Theology, which was somewhat absurd given that his Deuteronomicon classes were essentially applied theology. Still, it was this or smashing his forehead into the table until enlightenment ensued so an explanation seemed the wiser course. He sipped at his tea, then leaned back into his chair. How best to get her to understand? He’d have to start with the basics.

“Not to crib from Professor Artigas’ speech too much,” Izel said, “but what is the Glare?”

“It is a physical and metaphysical force that imposes order on everything it comes in contact with, taking the form of light,” Song replied without batting an eye.

A perfect textbook answer, straight from Gatsheni’s Philosophy of Essences.

“Metaphysically speaking, that’s accurate,” Izel said. “It’s an Akelarre’s answer, which Artigas is. But for a tinker the answer is not enough, because ‘takes the form of light’ is something of an approximation. Glare looks a lot like light and acts in some of the same ways, but it isn’t.”

Song’s brow rose ferociously, as if rebelling at the thought of a class reading being less than entirely correct.

“How is it wrong?” she asked, leaning in.

“There are forms of light that our eyes can’t see,” Izel told her. “It’s how lemures and hollows can see in the dark when we can’t, for example. But Glare is not a purely physical force and because of that it is not constrained by the rules of the Material the way light is. The most important property is that Glare is a self-contained force and cannot be dimmed, only amplified.”

“Yet Glare lights are famously softer than direct pits of Glare,” Song pointed out.

“Sure,” Izel said. “Because these do not project Glare but light infused with Glare. Think of it as pouring from an endless pot of ink into a river so its current grows colored. Palestone pillars like what the Second Empire used are essentially the brute force version of this, their glow fading not because the Glare itself has weakened but because the amount of Glare the palestone was capable of holding ran out.”

Even if you used infinity to fill a waterskin, it could still only hold a waterskin’s worth of water. That limitation was why the upper ceiling on the ‘power’ of Deuteronomicon works involving Glare was determined by the available materials – you worked with what you were able to trap, and what you were able to trap depended on the material means at your disposal.

“A consequence of that property is that Glare, when amplified, loses nothing of the power spent to amplify it. This is a breach of the observed rules of the material world, which are that something is always lost in transactions of power because the transaction itself has a cost.”

Song’s brow rose and he could tell he was losing her. He bit at the inside of his cheek.

“When you and I burn a piece of wood,” Izel said, “the flame eats the wood to sustain flame. But this is not a perfect process, there are losses.”

“Embers, ash,” Song cautiously agreed.

“When dealing with Glare, the entire piece of wood becomes flame,” he said. “Perfectly.”

“That sounds as if it might have heavy implications,” Song admitted, “but I struggle to parse them.”

“In practice, it means that flames equal to more fuel than the piece of wood will have burned,” Izel said.

He picked up one of his draft sheets and a charcoal pen, quickly sketching out a basic machine: a chamber with the piece of Glare, connected to a second chamber with several later of aether-forged lenses.

“This is a basic Glare emitter,” he said. “The Glare in the first chamber, which we say has a power of ‘two’, goes through the lenses. Each one of them is a ‘transaction’, in this case one that focuses the Glare into a smaller beam, and the result…”

“The Glare emitted by the machine at the other end has a power of more than two,” Song finished.

Normally the gains of that transaction would be minimal, but aether-forged lenses significantly improved the margin.

“Exactly,” he smiled. “Now, my lenslight is hardly any more complicated.”

He picked up the charcoal pen again, sketching a second machine. The first chamber was the same, but the second chamber bore a gas burner as well as the aether-forged lenses. He tapped the burner with the pen.

“Heat amplifies Glare, so the second chamber burns gas to raise the temperature,” he said. “After which the amplified Glare goes through the same series of transactions.”

“Why burn gas at all?” Song asked. “What does it achieve?”

He hummed, choosing his words.

“My machine is a proof of concept, not something meant for use,” he said. “Its point is to prove a theory: that amplifying Glare with heat and lenses can result in quadratic yield of what was invested into it by burning gas.”

And Song might not be a tinker, but she was far from slow on the uptake.

“Because if that is true, a gas burner ten times the size would result in a massive gain,” she said.

He beamed, nodding.

“Now, there are only so many ways to measure those theoretical returns,” Izel said. “I am using plates inlaid with different concentrations of lunar salt, which would burn under specific strength of Glare emission.”

“And something isn’t lining up,” she said.

He nodded.

“There are six plates,” Izel said. “Going from most sensitive to least. That the first three burned means that the amplification added by burning the gas made it to the end of the machine. Yet the fourth and fifth plates did not burn at all.”

Helena had insisted twice that creating a set-up where an amplification was not dispersed by leaks in a machine made of largely mundane materials was already a significant achievement, that while the lenslight itself was not all that useful a device it could become an extremely useful component in other machines, but Izel was not moved. He had set out to achieve something specific with the lenslight and had not. That could only be called a failure, despite having stumbled over ancillary benefits.

“So the returns did not multiply despite the lenses,” she said.

“That was my assumption,” Izel said, “before the sixth plate burned.”

She blinked.

“It was not a false result,” Izel told her. “I tested it twice more with different sets of plates.”

Song cleared her throat.

“Is that not mathematically impossible?” she asked. “Either the power increased or it did not.”

“You see my issue,” he tiredly said. “I cannot find a flaw in my calculations, which means it must be in my premise. It must be a property of Glare I am unaware of. I will have to consult a teacher.”

“You sound defeated,” Song noted. “Are they not there to help?”

“Oh, I expect Professor Achari will either help me through or show me how it is a dead end,” Izel said. “My fear is that the heat is the part that makes it all go awry, that I need another amplification method.”

Song leaned back into her seat.

“And why is that something to fear?”

Because the vast majority of Candles run on heat, he thought.

“Heat amplification is easiest to adopt,” Izel said, which was as much of the truth as he was willing to speak.

It had to be easy. It had to be so easy that it was a choice not to use it, an act of deliberate cruelty, because anything less would not be enough. His fists clenched. Gods, let it be that the heat was not the issue. If it was that would mean going back to the drawing board and starting from scratch. Izel finished his tea, letting the conversation lapse, and found the knots in his shoulders loosening ever so slightly.

Talking about it had changed nothing, save perhaps making him see that he was forcing himself to go over the same numbers out of fear that Professor Achari’s solution would not be what he needed it to be. The outcome had been decided hours ago, now he was just flailing in the hope of undoing the inevitable.

“Thank you,” he finally said, after emptying the last of his tea. “I was getting obstinate to no end.”

“Do not thank me yet,” Song said. “There is need for us to have another talk.”

He grimaced. There were only so many subjects that could be about.

“Yaotl,” he said.

Song inclined her head.

“She has been banned from the Workshop and the Ossuary, as have been the rest of the Nineteenth,” she said. “Your work, I take it?”

“I lodged my complaint,” Izel warily said. “As is my right.”

“I do not disagree, or disapprove,” Song replied. “But this ceased being a personal affair of yours some time ago, Izel. When you take measures like this, I would appreciate being told instead of learning through Gallery gossip.”

He passed a hand through his stubble, finding it was growing too thick. He would need to shave again soon.

“That is fair to ask,” Izel admitted. “I should warn you, then, that I have put up a going rate for my tutoring.”

Tutoring the years below you was not mandatory, but it was encouraged by the teachers and a board had been placed that allowed second years to offer tutoring over specific subjects at a price of their choice. Izel had offered his time for Teratology and for general mechanics, the latter being first-year classes common to both tinker tracks.

“You’re not asking for coin,” Song stated, eyes narrowing.

“I ask for them to vandalize the houses of the Nineteenth,” he plainly said. “Break windows and doors, spoil food, toss trash and offal inside. Destroying class assignments warrants extra time, if proof is brought.”

Song swallowed.

“This week,” Izel continued, “I will be paying children to throw shit and mud at them in the streets.”

“You’re serious,” Song said.

“I am.”

Izel still remembered what it was like, being on the wrong side of stares at the Calendar Court. Being pointed at, snickered, taken from. He did not expect the Nineteenth Brigade to suffer such treatment for long without either breaking up or lashing out stupidly.

“She will retaliate in kind,” Song warned, “and she has deeper pockets than we do.”

“She will try,” Izel said. “And find, I expect, that this is a small island and sinking one’s reputation into the gutter has consequences. And even should she find willing hands?”

He shrugged.

“I wish them good luck finding the cottage,” he said. “The streets around here are not kind to lingerers. The only other place to ambush is Scholomance, a fool’s game.”

Song studied him.

“If you are sure,” she said. “Then we may discuss strategy.”

He blinked.

“You want to do more?”

“The Nineteenth is a brigade not run by a Stripe and fielding four Skiritai,” Song thinly smiled. “You would be surprised at the number of brigades in her year that want it snapped like a twig.”

And no one, Izel soon found out, did reprisal quite like the Stripes.

—

It’d been two days since the ‘Battle of the Barrels’ and as far as Maryam could tell the only way anyone would ever shut up about it was if they got gagged.

She did not begrudge the other part of the Thirteenth their acclaim, truly. And it was a lot more exciting to talk about the battle-trap that had killed more lemures in a day than the entire Allazei garrison had in all of last year than of the slow, methodical grinding of the delvers through the Trench. No, the part that got stuck in her throat was that the Thirteenth’s name was at the heart of the talk – along with the Second and Thirty-First – so every single time another Navigator asked her about it she had to swallow the reminder that she had not been there.

She had not helped, advised, been involved in any way. Captain Yue had been there, and she’d not even learned until afterwards!

The few whose take on the battle she would have welcomed were instead infuriatingly tight-lipped. Angharad had been all too grim since she attended the funeral of her dead Skiritai friend – which neither Tristan nor Izel had been invited to – while Izel could only be moved to speak of the fight in between moaning about how one of the cannons had been wrecked and it’d emptied the last of their funds to repay the Garrison for it. She hadn’t even known about the funds, and part of her wondered if it was because they’d feared she would ask for a loan.

And Tristan, Tristan only smiled and nudged the praise the way of others before changing the subject. That’d stung the most of all, the realization that she was being managed. Held at arm’s length, treated as a potential problem.

Meanwhile apparently all was forgiven between Tristan and Izel, which still wasn’t half as much of a splinter under her nail as the way she kept running into the thief talking quietly with Angharad in the drawing room, poring over maps and supply lists. She could not recall the last time she had felt as much as an intruder as when she’d passed by them on the way to the kitchen and the conversations had stalled out when she was near, only resuming when she was going up the stairs.

“You should say something,” Hooks told her, running a comb down her hair.

The bone comb, not the nice nacre one that someone had stolen for her. Maryam grimaced.

“What, exactly?” she replied. “That I find their treatment since I abandoned them to fend for their lives in order to go treasure-hunting for a library has been distant? I wonder why.”

Song’s speech at their last dinner before the split had helped, but only so much. In the end a line had been drawn and choices made. Now they lived with the consequences.

“Maybe that’s true,” her sister replied. “But neither of us are good at guilt, Maryam. It’ll turn to spite soon enough.”

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She moved to trade places, if only so she wouldn’t have to answer. That the Orels were a day late on their planned return from Kofoni did nothing to improve her mood, but the last straw came on secondday when Maryam nearly blew her hand off. She managed to contain it at the last moment with her sister’s help: they yanked the Gloam down, and it streaked the side of her thumb red instead of swallowing all five fingers in a conflagration.

The broken Sign sizzled and sputtered on the stone before dying, the two of them staring down in horror.

Hooks stepped out of her shadow, face drawn tight, and Maryam eyed the dark red mark on her thumb with something like disbelief. It wasn’t a bad burn, in an hour washing it with water would get rid of the crusted blackened edged and then the skin would heal as if it had been but a scrape, but she’d not made such a blunder out of a Sign in a long time.

“It’s not getting worse,” Hooks quietly said. “But neither is it improving.”

“It’d been two weeks since we had a slip-up,” Maryam said. “What changed?”

“It doesn’t matter,” her sister said. “We lost control of a Sign in the Abbey cell, Maryam. Can you imagine if we’d been practicing upstairs?”

She grimaced. Down here, the Gloam was as placid as the Gloam ever got. If she’d been in one of the ranging rooms upstairs, though, that slip up might well have cost her half her hand.

“Our Command is fine,” she said. “This is entirely the Grasp.”

It was as if they became temporarily blind to how much Gloam they were actually drawing. It’d been the same when she blew up Yaotl Acatl’s bag by accident at the beginning of the year, and again when she overdrew facing Bingwen.

“We need to talk to Yue,” Hooks said.

“You know what she’ll say,” Maryam replied. “She’s been saying for months we need to undergo obscuration.”

“Then we undergo obscuration,” Hooks flatly replied.

She glared at her sister.

“Doing it when our Grasp is unstable would be wildly dangerous,” Maryam bit out. “It told you we should have done it before reaching into the Cauld-”

“You weren’t complaining when the stringwork saved us at Misery Square,” Hooks sharply cut her off.

“We can’t even use that now, because-” Maryam began, but she forced herself to breathe in.

It wasn’t her sister she was truly angry at. She was just angry, because she’d made the choices that were supposed to be the right ones all this time and now if felt like the house was collapsing on itself. It felt like punishment, and there was no one to blame so it felt like everyone was to blame.

“We go see Captain Yue,” she made herself say. “There is no point in bickering down here.”

“On that,” Hooks muttered, “we agree.”

Maryam spared one last glance for the void facing the edge of the cell, the empty dark, and tore her gaze away. It was never wise to stay down in the Abbey when your thoughts took a dark turn. She picked up her bag, allowed herself a drink of water and made for the stairs – only to find that, slightly higher up, someone else was standing and looking straight down at her.

“Maryam?” Amaru Wayar called out. “Are you quite all right? I felt that Sign collapse.”

The Izvorica hid her dismay. She couldn’t think of anyone she would have wanted to catch her failing at elementary signifying, but also of few she would have wanted to catch her less than Amaru.

“I got distracted,” she lied. “Sleepless nights are catching up.”

Amaru studied her for a moment, too polite to be openly skeptical.

“If you say so.”

They didn’t talk on the way up, and Maryam hurried to Yue’s private study before Amaru could try to trap her in conversation. The captain was usually doing paperwork at this hour, so it was no surprise that after a sharp knock Maryam was told to enter. Yue always welcomed a distraction from the stacks, and tilted back her chair as the pale girl entered.

“That’s a Gloam burn on your thumb,” Yue noted. “What happened?”