Chapter 40

Waiting in the hall, Maryam had to resist tapping her foot against the ground in what would be too open a display of nerves for her to tolerate.

The chapterhouse was far from deserted at this time of the day, but she was not in a part of it that saw much traffic. At the furthest bound of the bastion, to the right of the stairs that led up to the private studies, there was a narrow and poorly lit hallway of stone benches leading to nothing but a barred door. Behind it, Maryam there would be twisty stairs driving below to a set of three tombs.

They had once been connected to the crypt that served as the entrance to the Abbey, but that doorway was bricked in and covered up when the tombs were turned into obscuration chambers back in the Century of Accord. Nowadays the thick, unmarked oaken door at the end of this cramped hallway was the only way to reach the chambers and there were wards on it vicious enough that none but a Master of the Guild could lay hand on it without the right key and expect to keep any of their fingers.

Maryam would, soon enough, be going down those stairs to undergo her own obscuration.

For the health of her body and mind, she was overdue the ritual. It was a necessity for all wielders of Gloam eventually, until not even resorting to it was enough to keep the ravages of the poison they wielded at bay. While it was theoretically possible to live to relatively old age as a Gloam wielder without undergoing obscuration, you’d have to confine yourself to only infrequent minor workings while constantly exposing yourself to Glare and even in those cases there would be… costs.

Tristan often described Sacromonte street witches as fearsome old ladies, but Maryam suspected that most were in truth rather younger than their appearance suggested. Without obscuration the accumulated Gloam was spread all around the body, so skin was often one of the earliest parts to deteriorate. It was why there was hardly a nation in Vesper that did not have tales of witches and sorcerers being bent old folk with crooked features.

Maryam did not consider herself all that vain a woman, but she would rather not age herself before her time. Only when she caught the echo of the sound did she realize that at some point she’d begun tapping her foot, almost cursing as she forcefully pressed down her sole against the ground as if to punish it for its temerity.

“Nervous?” Hooks quietly asked.

Her sister was seated across from her, half in the light of one of the Glare-less candles in the chandelier and half in the shadow. She’d amused herself by splitting her conjured Akelarre tunic in black and white, the pale going in the shadow and the black in the light. With every flicker of the candles the tunic roiled to match it, an impressive display of control that was also entirely pointless. Control came naturally to Hooks, she was not training anything.

Maryam was not the only one the silence was getting to.

“Aren’t you?” she replied. “We hardly had to anything when we underwent the rite of kindling, but this will be in our hands.”

The Craft used a sequence of five rites craftfolk could undergo across the years, and the Ninefold Nine had kept hidden knowledge of another two. The rite of kindling was the first of the sequence, and in some parts of the lowlands it was considered the formal beginning of the apprenticeship – since Grasp and Command could only be measured after the forging of a soul-effigy, some unscrupulous practitioners had left themselves the out to avoid being saddled with weak or unstable apprentices.

While the methods of execution differed, the fundamental concepts of obscuration under the Craft were largely the same as those under the Akelarre. Practically speaking any tradition that allowed use of the art and did not also embrace most of its practitioners dying before they hit thirty must use some form of obscuration, whose basics always overlapped somewhat with those of the other traditions.

“I still say we should have attempted the rite of onset to continue the sequence,” Hooks murmured. “What we saw in the Cauldron-”

“Would have required more help than we can feasibly receive,” Maryam interrupted. “We don’t have Mother to call on favors for us this time.”

Maryam still remembered that first rite, how smooth and seamless it had seemed, but then Mother and two other high-ranking members of Ninefold Nine had personally handled it for her. It was the equivalent of three Akelarre grandmasters personally overseeing her obscuration, a privilege not even the most influential of Watch princelings would be able to afford. Those who reached such heights within the Guild were not the kind of people that could be moved by money or favors anymore.

Besides, even if the help of those grandmasters could be obtained she wasn’t sure it would work. The rite of onset involved the obscuration of fingers, which the Watch held to be linked to Didactic Signs. Craft tradition instead associated it to illusions and mental domination, the latter of which the Akelarre frowned upon using at all while the former was associated by Navigators with the obscuration of eyes, ears, nose and tongue.

“Their method is so… shabby, though,” Hooks muttered.

“Fewer than one in ten Akelarre die from their first obscuration, even those that botch it,” Maryam reminded her. “Back home it was one in three, and when the rite of kindling was botched it usually fractured your mind.”

Being the apprentice to a craftswoman of Izolda Cernik’s caliber had been privilege in ways it had taken her years to realize. She’d not had the lace and dresses of a Khaimov princess raised in her father’s court, but she’d been the sole apprentice to a young, prominent member of the Ninefold Nine and that was no small thing. Mother’s favor had been considered worth courting by all because unlike the even-more-influential elders of that council Izolda Cernik could be expected to be around for at least another three decades, accumulating power and influence.

Doing her a favor was not just horse trading, it was an investment.

“In the long term their method is worse for our body than the sequence of rites done correctly,” Hooks stubbornly insisted.

Which, Maryam must admit, was probably true.

Much like how Signs were not necessarily the most powerful way to wield Gloam but were a stable and reliable method, the Akelarre obscuration process was conservative but secure. A teacher of the Craft was expected to handle the rite for their apprentice in one of the sacred groves during the right part of the season and yet it was still not unheard of for those who’d overestimated their skill to accidentally kill their first apprentice carrying it out. The careful ones traded favors with older craftfolk for their help.

In comparison, Watch obscuration was so simple and straightforward that it could be undertaken by the practitioner themselves without any supervision whatsoever. It was tradition that at least a journeyman Navigator should be present to help prevent younger signifiers botching the process by accident, but the only actual physical necessity for it was a Glareless room and a span of time uninterrupted. Naturally, this stability came at a cost.

The Watch’s method not only left behind traces of Gloam in the body – which, over time and multiple obscurations, would clump together and turn into the black vesicles that were the early physical signs of a Journey’s end – but the process took much longer and was generally less precise. It had taken barely an hour for Maryam to have her brains obscured as a girl, but using the Akelarre method while starting near one in the afternoon today she was unlikely to be finished before evening.

The lack of precision also influenced the Guild beyond the obvious, leading Akelarre signifiers to avoid obscuring the parts of themselves that required detail work until they had sufficient control – or at all. It was open knowledge that the majority of young Navigators began with their organs or their limbs, the parts least requiring precision, while a minority having naturally higher Command instead obscured the parts associated with Acumenal Signs in a process only marginally more difficult.

Out in the world only masters and the finest journeymen of the Akelarre were allowed to take contracts to safeguard ships through Gloam storms because, while any taught signifier could use a Thalassic Sign, only those with such a level of mastery were precise enough to obscure the parts of the body associated with them. Lungs were even more difficult than veins to obscure, since they could not stop moving during the process.

It meant that the vast majority of Akelarre signifiers tended to be strongest and most familiar with the same three branches of the art – Ancipital, Didactic and Acumenal – while more skilled Navigators usually began to deepen their mastery of Thalassic Signs around the time they started aiming for a silver ring.

Contrast this with how Professor Formosa had learned that Maryam’s brain was obscured before puberty and openly wondered how she was not dead or a howling lunatic, since obscuration of the brain and spine was rare among even masters. Maryam had thought that absurd when Captain Totec first told her, since in the lowlands obscuration of the brain was known as the rite of kindling and almost universally used as the first rite of the sequence.

“We’re not getting an emergency field obscuration, we’re getting the elaborate Scholomance treatment,” Maryam finally said. “Besides, skill also plays a part in the Akelarre method. Between the two of us I expect we’ll be able to leave no traces behind, or at least few enough it won’t matter.”

“Well said.”

The two of them almost jumped out of their seats, Captain Yue snorting at the sight. Maryam held back a glare, as there was no way she’d been so distracted by the conversation she would not have heard the older woman approaching. Yue must have used a Sign to mask her steps.

“You girls are a little late in taking my recommendation, but it’s better late than never,” Yue said. “You’re still intent on going for the veins?”

Maryam nodded.

“I believe I’ll most benefit from growing my affinity to Thalassics,” she said.

And she was hoping it would help with stringwork, too. Speed and control would make it more viable a tool to use in dangerous situations.

“You should have the control necessary not to accidentally poison your own blood in the process,” Captain Yue noted, ever reassuring.

The older woman fished out an almost comically large silver key out of her pocket. Maryam turned to glance at the end of the hall, looking for the fourth, but there was no one else approaching.

“Should we not wait for my overseer?” she asked.

“I’m already here,” Yue drily replied, unlocking the door.

They both hid their surprise. That the senior Navigator of Tolomontera would be personally overseeing their obscuration couldn’t really be taken as anything but a mark of favor. On the other hand, odds are she’s doing this mostly because she’s curious about what will happen. As far as Maryam knew, she was the first signifier originally obscured under Craft tradition to now undergo it under the Akelarre. Yue might have found that worth taking notes about even if Hooks weren’t part of the equation.

And she was, which would make it twice as worth the study.

Still, Maryam did not bother to hide her relief at the announcement. It might make a genuine difference to have a signifier of Yue’s skill there if anything were to go wrong, which her mentor had to know. It was an almost touching gesture, and she could not help but to compare it to the woman she and Song had once caught Yue arguing with. Colonel Cao was not being so kind to Song, who had taken the threat about as Maryam expected her to.

Boiling rage that rattled the lid of the teapot it was trapped in, just itching to spill out.

Between her and Tristan they had managed to keep Song on track, aimed at results instead of damage, but she doubted that Chunhua Cao understood quite how much of an enemy she’d made through that conversation. Maryam had always expected that the ambitious colonel would one day try to shake them down over her signature on the auxiliary contract, so she’d not been disappointed. Song, though, had thought better of Cao. Her captain’s disappointment had sharp edges.

Maryam and her sister silently followed their teacher down the cramped, cold stairs into the grounds beneath the bastion, only the candles at the bottom serving as a guiding light. The hallway down there was clearly not meant to be such, more of a narrow antechamber turned into one by the bricking up of the old entrance, and the way the candleholder were so close to the opposite wall felt almost oppressive.

Yue led them to the end of the hall, pushing open the iron-barded door and taking one of the candles off the wall before gesturing for them to follow. The room had been a tomb, once, and still felt like one. The lower half of the walls was painted in long-faded gray, while an ornamental strip of worn carvings ran around just under the ceiling. There’d been more inside at some point, as the stone floor still had scars from where heavy objects were dragged, but only one part of the original decoration remained: a large stone casket, stripped of its top.

In the corner were a chair and table, the latter laden with several kegs of Glareless lamp oil for the small lantern that Yue immediately went to light with the candle she’d brought. The older Navigator also set down a small glass pot on the table before moving to check on the pair of barrels and the small bucket by the table. Both barrels were filled with saltwater and hanging off a nail on the side of the second was a complicated-looking contraption of brass tubes.

Maryam grimaced : she was not looking forward to that being in her mouth. Hopefully it had been washed since the last obscuration.

“Come,” Captain Yue ordered. “The night blossoms first.”

Maryam dutifully padded up to the table and took the glass pot being pressed into her hand. She unscrewed the lid, nose wrinkling at the almost rotten smell inside.

“Urgh,” Hooks muttered from just behind her shoulder. “It looks more like a paste than a mixture, too.”

“As always, thanks for the encouragement,” Maryam sighed, eyeing the thick dark purple liquid.

Well, there was nothing else for it. She quaffed the brew like was a feast drink, struggling not to gag at the genuinely horrid taste – like rotten, bitter plums – and to let not a drop escape her lips. She even licked them afterwards, to Yue’s approving nod.

“They’re not as fresh as they would have been last week but these were the genuine article, not dried blossoms,” Yue said. “I imagine the taste was even worse, but the effect will be sharper.”

Maryam nodded, not quite trusting herself to speak without retching. The trance the mixture induced helped a signifier to feel out the Gloam inside their body, the first part of the method the Allazei chapterhouse used to help along obscuration. As for the second, well, Maryam shed her cloak while Yue picked up the bucket and began filling the open casket with seawater. It was cold in here, too much for comfort, but it’d have to be borne.

“It’ll be all right,” her sister whispered, hand on her shoulder.

As much for herself as for Maryam, she felt from the finger on the veil. Hooks slipped back into her, leaving Maryam to strip herself down to underclothes before climbing into the casket. She didn’t lean all the way down, not yet, instead waiting for Yue to fill it up further. Already she was feeling numb in a way that had nothing to do with the water or the cold, the night blossoms distancing her from the sensation of her body. Gods but the mixture worked quick.

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“Sit up,” Yue instructed. “It’ll be easier.”

Maryam did, dimly, and as her teacher when to take the brass tubes she felt Hooks slip into her eye. Neither of them was quite willing to look Yue in hers when she came back bearing the contraption.

“Thanks,” they quietly said. “For doing this.”

“You have been less unpleasant a student than I expected,” Yue said, clearing her throat and not quite meeting theirs either.

Their teacher then fastened one end of the brass contraption against her face. It left her nose and mouth free, if connected to tubes, and could be propped up against the sides of the casket to stay in place straight – a way to let her breathe freely even when submerged. Captain Yue delicately lowered her into the saltwater entirely, eyes closed, and even after the back of Maryam’s head came to rest against the bottom of the casket she felt Yue toss in another few bucketfuls to make sure she was fully underwater. It worked better that way.

A hand plunged into the water to squeeze her arm, which she dimly felt, and Maryam let out a noise of understanding. She could begin.

Maryam extended her nav through herself and wondered at the clarity of what she found: it was the difference between looking at a flower in a patch of the same or on a white piece of paper. The night blossoms had sharpened her sense for the Gloam within herself, let her nav sense them as stains and bumps, but it was being buried in saltwater that made it all stand out. The stark boundary surrounding her body made it impossible for her to perceive anything but herself, none of her perceptions polluted by ambient aether or Gloam.

It was as auspicious a beginning as she could be granted, so Maryam got to work.

She traced the Sign she’d been taught, the orb and crown, and clutched it tight. She did not attempt to strengthen or quicken it, knowing that endurance was the true objective: instead she held it in place and waited.

Slowly but surely, like iron drawn by a lodestone, the closest traces of Gloam inside her body were drawn in by the Sign. They slithered through her flesh, accumulating slowly but surely, and Maryam thought of nothing but maintaining the Sign. When a thick enough chunk was accumulated she finally released the Sign, taking hold of the Gloam before it dispersed and beginning to feed it into her own flesh. She started beneath her brains, darkening the paths through which her blood flowed and slowly filling them with Gloam until they would take no more.

By the time she’d reached the height of her shoulders she was out, so she traced the Sign again only pointed at another part of her body and began to gather anew.

Hooks, mind intertwined with her own, had only observed for the first round but now she acted as well. Akelarre obscuration was like passing a Gloam lodestone through your body and using what was drawn in to obscure part of yourself, but the imprecision of the process left behind traces. Iron filings too small to be drawn in unless you passed right over them. So Hooks traced her own Sign, formed her own lodestone and passed where Maryam’s mind struggled to reach.

Everywhere she missed, every part she forgot. It accelerated the accumulation of Gloam, and hopefully would leave much less of it behind. Perfection was likely beyond them, but they could be a cut above the rest.

The second time she was able to fill the veins all the way down her left arm, to the end of the fingers.

The Gloam had begun to set in where she first wove it and Maryam could feel the flesh within her changing even as she worked. Maryam could feel her veins becoming more… flexible, as if they were not quite flesh. Their insides grew sensitive, Gloam flowing through them feeling almost like water on the skin. This is how it helps Thalassics, she realized. The currents of Gloam would flow through her veins when she opened herself up, she would know them as intimately as if they were her own blood.

The sisters wove together, obscuring the veins going down her right arm and feeling them thrum as they began to work on the thicker veins and arteries near the heart.

That was when Maryam felt the first pulse.

Beginning at the nape of her neck, weight began press down. She startled, ending the Sign and letting Hooks hold the Gloam they’d gathered so she could run her nav against the flesh where she felt this. Maryam found nothing, but after few heartbeats passed there was a second pulse and that one she caught. It felt like a hammer blow to her nav, something trying to punch through, and even as Hooks hastily wove the Gloam they’d accumulated into veins she felt the weight begin to gather again.

On the third pulse it punched through, and for the barest of moments Maryam thought she glimpsed a black butterfly.

Then the Cauldron began pouring out into her soul.

A heartbeat later she was blinking her physical eyes as someone ripped brass tubes out of her mouth, surrounded by a cloud of ashen steam in an almost empty casket. Maryam convulsed, she and Hooks desperately trying to force their nav up in the way of a breach like a cork on a river. Someone was shouting in Cathayan and Maryam dimly realized where she was, when and with whom.

“Listen to me, girl,” Yue shouted. “You need to close the loop, close it now. It’s your only way to live.”

Oh, Maryam thought. Almost absent-mindedly she left her dimly shouting sister to hold back the tide, nav trailing back down to the veins. She found the last work Hooks had done, the veins close to the heart, and understood what Yue meant. It wouldn’t be the Cauldron itself that killed her, it would be the way it poured past the obscured veins into the rest of her body. She needed to close the circle so it fed back into itself, so she could put the flood back in the box.

But how could she when she had no more Gloam to use? She could not trace a Sign, not with Hooks using most of their strength to contain the shuddering Cauldron, so-

“Take it,” Yue hissed.