Chapter 38

He’d not slept nearly enough, but still Izel found himself sitting at an empty table in the Rainsparrow Hostel’s eatery as the morning lights swept into Port Allazei.

Alonzo, who ran the morning service on fourthdays, had let him in before the hall officially opened and even offered him a plate – near-stale bread and sausages that one needed very sharp knife to slice, but it had still been a kindness and Izel had thanked him profusely for it. The older man only patted his back and told him to help put down the chairs if he felt so thankful, which he had. He’d then settled in a corner with his papers and ink, trying to make sense of the results.

The tests he had put his lenslight through haf been comprehensive. He’d sat down first with Mei Qiao – who was a Savant on the metaphysics track – to get her advice on the theory, then with two other tinkers to figure out a set of practical tests. Helena for the pure mechanics, Jingyi for the metaphysics. He’d then run through the tests five times, to largely the same results. This was usually a good thing!

The problem was that those results were insane.

At least he’d identified there was a material component. Instead of the simple coal gas he’d used as fuel previously, Izel had tried three different gases to add heat to the lenslight: coke, brine and ghost gas. Coke gas saw the phenomenon continue identically, ghost gas saw it disappear entirely and brine gas had seen the phenomenon happen twice and not thrice. That was a recognizable pattern. Coke gas was made through an entirely mundane process, while ghost gas was collected from the bodies of Lierganen ghost wisps and thus always bore a charge in the aether.

Brine gas, the standout, had first been discovered by the ancient Tianxi when drilling the ground for brine. It was thus exposed to salt but at varying concentrations, which might explain why sometimes it affected the lenslight and sometimes not. That was the part that made sense: the phenomenon, Izel has come to theorize, only took place when the fuel used was entirely without charge in the aether. Purely mundane.

What didn’t make sense was that the machine had technically functioned no matter what gas he used. In a sense, anyway.

Ghost gas, and sometimes brine, had actually delivered the results Izel had been after from the start: they’d increased the output of Glare fourfold. It was a thoroughly impractical solution from his perspective, as there simply wasn’t enough ghost gas or enriched brine gas in existence for their use to be feasible a solution to the problem he wanted to solve. Still, it had been comforting to realize that he wasn’t entirely on the wrong track.

The problem that when he’d used instruments to measure the temperature of the aether-forged lenses, the heat it accumulated, it was identical – within tolerances, anyway – whether the lenslight was heated by charged or mundane gas. In other words, they both created the same improvements in power but when mundane gas was used it simply didn’t show.

So where the fuck was it going?

He’d not somehow disproved that Glare was absolute, thank the gods for that, the power was still magnified he just couldn’t find where it was going. But that was what the testing was for, getting an answer. So instead of only testing the output of the lenslight with metal plaques dusted with lunar salt, he’d diversified what he aimed the light at. And there was when the results had entirely stopped making sense.

First, he’d aimed at the most Glare-sensitive materials he could get his hands on. The small piece of inert Rhadamantine quartz he’d aimed the lenslight at hadn’t even warmed to the touch, like the light coming out of the lenses hadn’t touched it all. He’d then exposed it to a fist-sized chunk of nyxian marble, wondering how the lenslight’s beam would interact with stone that was essentially infused with veins of solid Gloam.

The resulting explosion would have killed him if he’d been inside the device vetting chamber.

Aether tinkering resulting in violent explosions was not nearly as rare as Izel would have liked, but he was still startled by the sheer power of it. Fascinatingly, when he’d gone to study the remains of the nyxian marble – after making sure the lenslight was largely unharmed and making a note to armor it further – he’d found that they weren’t even warm. The lenslight hadn’t affected the strangely propertied marble at all, just the veins of Gloam trapped within.

Which made it all the more baffling when Izel put a simple sheet of iron in front of the lenslight and it slowly became heated where the beam of light touched. It did the same with stone and ceramic, then outright set cloth and wood aflame. Which was absurd, because Glare carried heat – men tanned when standing too long in it, could become glareburnt – but even accounting for the magnification effect of the lenses it should not be carrying anywhere enough heat to begin turning iron red.

At least he’d figured out why the lenslight had never left a mark on the wall when it reacted to regular stone: the debacle vaults had walls of yellow bricks mixed with salt and magnolia ash. The phenomenon, whatever its true nature, seemed not to affect aether-charged material so it had not affected the testing room’s wall either. It was the same reason while only the sixth plaque had been affected: the part that was scorched was not the lunar salts but everything else, and the sixth plaque had the least concentration of salt so it allowed for a visible effect.

Izel had ended the testing after that, retreated to town with his piles of notes and creeping dread under his skin. He’d found something, that was much was no longer in doubt, but he was beginning to wonder if that door might not have been better left closed. Not only had he failed to establish usable magnification, what he had discovered… Aimed at lemure, a creature touched by Gloam, would the lenslight violently evaporate the substance in them as it had the nyxian marble’s black veins?

He thought it likely would, though he’d have to test to be sure. There was one thing that needed no testing, though: if it was turned on a man, the lenslight would burn them. It wouldn’t set skin on fire but it would scorch it severely.

The beam would be less lethal than a pistol shot while significantly more expensive and difficult to wield, but it was painfully obvious that the most straightforward application of the lenslight was as a weapon – be it against men or creatures. And that was thinking small: a sufficiently large and gas-fed lenslight might be able to melt a city wall, if the phenomenon scaled. The proper thing to do would have been making a larger lenslight to test if that were the case, but the very thought had his stomach roiling.

 

Despite everything, despite fleeing across the sea and leaving it all behind, had he still made a damn weapon? Moonless Night, maybe it was just in his blood. Running through his veins, the calamity that was his father breeding true no matter how much he fought his nature. No, it couldn’t be. He wouldn’t let it. Izel just needed to go through the equations again, find a way to make them work. To make the lenslight more than just a way to fucking burn people alive.

When the hand came down on his shoulder, he almost leaped out of his seat.

“I see you’re already up and at it,” Tristan cheerfully said.

Gods, the tinker thought. He’d not even realized that the hall was filling, or that Tristan and Angharad had come up to him. He licked his lips.

“Good morning,” he managed, wiping the ink off his fingers on his opposite wrist.

Gray eyes flicked to the plate Alonzo had set down by him, finding that he had only nibbled at it.

“Let’s get a meal in us,” Tristan easily said. “And put away your things. We’ll be meeting Ishanvi at the teahouse after this, so your morning studies are finished.”

Izel let the pair of them nudge him through a breakfast – Angharad kept heaping food on his plate, for some reason – and he felt less nauseous by the time they left the Rainsparrow. Neither Song nor Maryam would be coming along. The latter had to visit Fort Seneca to finish the papers that would finally see the arrangements regarding the merchantman and skimmer made official, as when such large sums were involved there were formalities to observe and the bureaucracy had been slow to move even by Watch standards. The captain had meant to leave at least a week ago and was getting impatient.

As for Song she had been invited to have breakfast with Colonel Chunhua Cao, which she had spent half of last evening preparing for.

Eastward they went until the end of Hostel Street, then they turned the corner upwards onto Templeward until they found the right place. The Do Sau Ghode teahouse wasn’t as prestigious or luxurious as the Tianxi establishment further up the street, but it was at least twice as large and thrice as frequented. Izel preferred it, as the formality and ceremony of the other teahouse could feel suffocating to the uninitiated – among which he counted himself.

Besides, a rule he tended to prefer coffee though the prices the Chimerical served it at had seen him wean himself off the drink last year. Tozi had instead made a point of continuing to get at least one cup a week even though she could barely afford it, as a point of pride. A demonstration that she might have been cast out by House Poloko but she could still afford to live as a Sunflower Lord’s daughter.

It would have been easier to shy away from that memory, still half-fond and made all the sharper for the guilt that brought, but Izel owed otherwise. He had remanded her to the Circle when he’d shattered her skull, ended this life and her chance to make something better of it, so it was his responsibility to bear the burden of her memory. To carry her with him as he chased his own end, his own return to the Circle Perpetual.

He was jolted out of the thought by a jab into his ribs.

“Is the tea here really that bad?” Tristan asked in a murmur. “Song holds up her nose at it, but it’s Song.”

Izel cast a fond look at the Sacromontan, seeing right through the attempt at distraction but not appreciating the gesture any less for it.

“It’s quite serviceable,” he replied. “All apologies to Song, of course.”

“I prefer her own brewing to what I have tasted of theirs,” Angharad loyally interjected.

Izel laughed, not disagreeing and for more reasons than she knew. He had looked into obtaining Kuril greenleaf, the tea Song occasionally made him and Maryam, only to learn that not single shop in Allazei sold it. The Han Ya teahouse served it but did not offer the leaves for sale, which likely meant that Song Ren had leaned on Stripe connections to get her hands on a bag.

“Don’t you think I didn’t notice that hedge in there, Tredegar,” Tristan amusedly shot back, leading them into the teahouse.

Even as the two in front spoke to the attendant and were given directions to one of the siderooms, Izel eyed their back with fascination. Tristan had teased Angharad as long as he knew them, but there was now a… lightness to it that was new. The thief had liked the mirror-dancer before, he thought, but also considered her a potential threat. Now there was hardly a trace of that wariness left.

Izel had been with them nearly the whole way and still could not have pointed out any turning point. Perhaps that was what had seen it succeed: Angharad had relentlessly worn him down with genuine friendship over weeks until even the most dedicated of the thief’s mistrusts flew a white flag.

Passing through a neatly paneled corridor, they found the door the others had been told to look up for. It was not marked with a number but the stencil of a monkey. A simple knock later they were bid to enter, the girl they’d come to meet already inside. Even as Tristan opened with teasing – getting fancy on us, Kapadia, paying for a sideroom instead of sitting the commons – Izel entered last to afford himself the time for a closer look at Ishanvi Kapadia.

Their first meeting had hardly counted, since she had been drifting in and out of poppy sleep and so badly bruised she might as well have been wearing a mask. That was still true. She was bruised even worse than Song – not from a worse beating, he’d guess, but simply more delicate skin – but her spectacles hid much of the black eyes so at a glance she looked better off. The way she was so careful when rising to greet Tristan and Angharad told him her ribs still hurt, and the scrape on her chin was scabbing eye-catchingly.

Her eyes behind the glass were bright and attentive, so she wasn’t on the poppy. Or at least not strongly enough it’s visible. She was dressed in a regular’s fit, with a delicate hairnet that allowed her braid to lay on her shoulder and a collar that was slightly open. The brass buttons on her uniform were freshly polished, her cloak had been recently ironed. Ishanvi had taken care of her looks before coming here, yet refrained from touching up her face with cosmetics the way Song did. She wants us to see the bruises, he thought.

“-Ishanvi, Izel Coyac,” Tristan said. “Izel, Ishanvi Kapadia.”

“It is a pleasure to meet you formally, Izel,” Ishanvi immediately said, holding out her hand.

“The pleasure is all mine,” he replied, shaking it.

Firm grip, for a scholar, but then she used a blunderbuss. For all that she had a slender frame, if she didn’t have some strength to her limbs such a gun would be more likely to shatter her collarbone than hit a target. This was largely a social call, so Izel allowed himself to be led to a seat at the pastel-painted table. When asked, he ordered a cup of Mankari green tea.

“Bold,” Ishanvi noted at his order. “You never know what you’ll get with Mankari greenleaf.”

She wasn’t wrong. The tea was named after the Someshwari equivalent to a titled count because of an old saying – every count has a garden – and the sheer number of places it grew meant it could be relied on to taste flowery but otherwise varied greatly.

“I enjoy the surprise,” Izel shrugged.

As much as it was largely his first instance of speaking with Ishanvi it was also Angharad’s, and the noblewoman displayed conversational graces that Izel could only admire. By the time the tea arrived Ishanvi had been drawn into a conversation about the Watch sources on the subject of their occupation of Port Allazei and how even without access to sealed reports simple supply papers made it possible to tell when the order’s interest in the port had waxed or waned.

He traded an amused look with Tristan across the table. It sometimes showed that Angharad had been trained to be a charming host: she had a knack for finding a subject someone would be interested in and being visibly interested in what they expounded about. Izel had caught himself ten minutes into an explanation of how aether-forged glass was made not a month ago.

As Tristan seemed perfectly willing to allow this to go on forever, Izel found himself thrust into the role of minder. They’d not come for a purely social call.

“Though this is quite fascinating,” he slid into a gap of the conversation, mostly meaning it, “our captain did ask us to collect your own’s response. If you do not mind, best to see to that before we forget.”

Ishanvi’s face tightened, which immediately had her wincing.

“Acalan declines the offered meeting,” she evenly said. “She says she sees no need to discuss a matter that is already finished.”

Tristan let out a low whistle, the reaction the other two Unluckies at the table had been too polite to indulge in. That the captain of Ishanvi’s brigade would pass on even speaking to Song was unexpected. She must have been very afraid of being dragged into hostilities between the Thirteenth and Forty-Ninth to refuse even a mere conversation.

“A most craven response,” Angharad cooly observed. “You are owed better by one who claims command over you.”

Izel hummed. But then the Two-Hundredth Brigade wasn’t a true cabal, was it? It was a holding brigade, a temporary arrangement until its members transferred elsewhere.

“This is why our year thought little of holding brigades,” Tristan noted. “They’re not real backing, just paper strength.”

That was true, but Izel suspected that perhaps Captain Acalan might have been more inclined to go out on a limb for Ishanvi were there any chance of her actually staying with the Two Hundredth. Ishanvi was actively working to get out of that brigade and into the Thirteenth, however, so why should her captain take such risks? Considering all the troubles the Unluckies were embroiled in this year, it was not imprudent to want to keep a healthy distance.

Neither was it laudable, though. Captain Acalan might come to regret the impression she had thus made, in the years to come.

Conversation resumed after and Izel let himself be carried along, knowing that the hourglass was running out on the time to spare before they must set out to class. His Mankari greenleaf was aggressively flowery with a hint of woodsmoke, an odd combination, and he did not force himself to finish the cup. Tristan was the first to withdraw, claiming he had an errand to run, and Izel’s brow rose. The Mask had gone on quite a few ‘errands’, of late. Izel did not know who he was meeting with, but it did not seem to be about the hunt.

Angharad was the second to fold, having left her firearms at the Rainsparrow, and Izel urged her to go.

“I’ll finish my cup and be along,” Izel told her. “I’m sure Ishanvi can keep me company for a few sips without you playing hostess, Lady Tredegar.”

Amusingly that had Angharad flushing in a rare display of open embarrassment, as if she had just realized what she’d been doing the whole time. That distracted her enough that she did not remember Izel’s tea would be quite cool by now, or that he had not so much as touched the cup in five minutes. No so Ishanvi, who was watching him from across the table.

“We will wait for you on Hostel Street,” Angharad assured him before hurrying away.

The door closed behind her and Izel gave the girl across the table a smile. She smiled back, tucking a loose strand of hair back into place. His gaze slid past her hand to the bottom of her teacup, where the leftover leaves had clumped together. The pattern he’d half-glimpsed came to life, a grass snake the color of jade coiling comfortably in the waning warmth. The Bone Thief’s touch, under his aspect of the god of wisdom.

The serpent was not properly feathered in precious stones, but there was no mistaking that particular shade of green.

“Most people know how to use strength to their advantage,” Izel said. “It takes cleverness, to leverage your own weakness instead.”

Ishanvi licked her lips, avoiding the swollen parts carefully.

“Pardon?”

“I am not condemning you,” Izel clarified. “It wasn’t harmful, even if it was calculated. You took a beating with two of us, then you made it plain that there is no brigade behind you. They will be itching to bring you into the Thirteenth.”

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“You make me sound like some cunning schemer,” Ishanvi Kapadia said.

He considered that.

“I expect it was mostly impulse, deciding to stand with them when Morcant came for his revenge,” Izel said. “You saw an opportunity, took it and it paid off: Maryam thinks of you as having one foot in the Thirteenth already and she was going to be the most difficult to sell on adding to the brigade.”

Ishanvi snorted.

“Her and not the actual agent of the Krypteia?” she asked. “She’s not that ornery, Izel. It’s like dealing with an old pandit, only if their glares could literally set fools on fire.”

Pandit was the Someshwari equivalent of ‘professor’, from what he recalled, though there were differences in the meaning. And while Izel could understand comparing her to a crotchety old professor, that was very much underselling how dedicated Maryam Khaimov could be to spite. She had spent the first several months of his tenure in the Thirteenth subtly mispronouncing his surname – which she referred to him by almost exclusively – in different ways purely to snub him.

By the second month he’d been too impressed by the sheer amount of effort that must involve to continue being nettled.

“You got under Tristan’s skin,” Izel noted. “He won’t argue for you to join up, but he won’t argue against either and that silence will ring loud with the others.”

Song would put stock in that, and he suspected Angharad might as well. Izel politely ignored the grass snake hissing inside Ishanvi’s cup, though it was swaying quite cutely. No matter how darling an omen, it should not be leaned into.

“He’s the most distrusting of us, usually, so I am curious what you did to get him to lower his guard,” he added.

Ishanvi’s face closed and she looked down at her cup.

“I didn’t do anything,” she finally replied. “He’s the one who helped me out of a bad spot.”

Ah, Izel thought, recognizing that look on her face. As a fellow recipient of the hard bludgeon known as Tristan Abrascal’s kindness, he could only sympathize.

“He’s quite artless about it, isn’t he?” Izel commiserated. “But it’s so sincere it works anyway.”

“So it isn’t a trick, when he does that?” she quietly asked.

Spoken like someone who had been wondering about it at night ever since. And in truth, Izel thought it was a trick. Only not Tristan’s but his teacher’s. Someone who had seen the ember of grace in the boy he’d been and, instead of snuffing it out had buried it deep so that when it came out it would be so unpracticed as to slide right through even the wariest of guards. There was, however, no point in telling Ishanvi that.

“He doesn’t do it on purpose,” Izel said, confident of that much.

“It’s true, then, that the last Nineteenth tried to off him in Asphodel and they still recruited you from the wreckage,” Ishanvi slowly said. “I thought it was a rumor gotten out of hand.”

“Abduct, not kill,” he said. “Though it might have come to that anyway.”

He shook his head.

“They are all better souls than they have any right to be, given the roads that brought them here,” Izel said.

She cocked her head to the side.

“Is this the part where you warn me off hurting them?”

“If I thought you meant to do so, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” he replied. “And I don’t know what doom it is that you believe the Thirteenth will help you face, but I hardly expect it could be worse than what others have brought in. No, this is the part where I ask you a simple question.”

Her brow rose.

“By all means.”

“Would you be happy in the Thirteenth, Ishanvi?”

She visibly stalled.

“They are all talented people, but they can also be difficult to live with,” Izel gently said. “Myself included.”