Chapter 49

It wasn’t a Meadow, as the Guild would never allow one to be built outside land they controlled, but Black House did have a lovely roof garden centered around a pond fed by a false river. Sitting by it felt like drinking half a swallow of lukewarm water instead of quenching your thirst, but it still soothed Maryam’s mind to listen to the flow while Lieutenant Mitra finished his examination.

The wild-haired signifier let out a small noise of interest, then withdrew his nav from her.

“I have rarely seen such a textbook case,” Lieutenant Mitra said.

Maryam breathed out in relief.

“You have seen this before?” she asked.

“Only twice in person, but I’ve studied the theory in depth,” the Someshwari said. “You smashed your head against an aether seal.”

Her brow rose and she crossed her legs under her, bare feet tickled by the well-kept grass.

“That,” she began then hesitated, swallowing a flinch.

The memory of the two words she had read in the Graveyard Book still felt like a gong being struck next to her ear. Even when she thought her way around them she still felt the… vibration in the air, so to speak.

“The words,” Maryam settled on. “They were layered atop something I could not make out. They are the seal in question?”

“Correct,” Lieutenant Mitra said.

He sat haphazardly, legs extended and kept sitting only by leaning on his palms put against the ground.

“The good news is that you suffered aetheric backlash only because you kept trying to peer past it,” he continued. “A few weeks of not doing that will let the resonance fade. You are to avoid any and all contact with the seal until then.”

“And it will repair the damage?” she asked.

He laughed.

“A body does not heal merely grow over its wounds,” Lieutenant Mitra said. “Think of the backlash as small doses of poison swallowed with every attempt to peer through the seal. Over time your body will pass the toxins, certainly, but it does not undo the reality of having drunk arsenic.”

“How bad?” Maryam quietly asked.

“Permanently? Negligible enough it could not be measured. Temporarily? Fragility for a few weeks, perhaps months. The most noticeable part will be the sensitivity of your logos, like skin with a rash.”

“But I can still signifiy,” she said.

“Everything is permitted,” Lieutenant Mitra noted. “All limitations are arbitrarily drawn lines in the sand, the futile attempt of trembling children to make sense of entropy’s inevitable embrace.”

She cocked an eyebrow. A moment of silence passed.

“Yes,” he sighed. “You can still signify. Be careful with your logos and try not to place your soul in too much disarray.”

His gaze was knowing when he spoke that last part. He had suspicions, then. It made sense, considering Alejandra had apparently told the rest of the Fourth that Maryam ate Gloam creatures. A detail that was entirely untrue only when it came to the plural.

“I will keep your advice in mind,” she blandly replied.

The man laughed.

“I’m sure,” Lieutenant Mitra dismissed. “Still, I will confess to some surprise at finding an aether seal in a place like Asphodel. It does explain that empty layer you encountered, at least.”

“What is an aether seal, sir?” she asked. “None of my teachers ever mentioned them.”

“Likely because they are more than passing rare,” he noted, “on top of being ruinously expensive to make and usually not all that effective against the entities most warranting their use.”

He pushed forward, hair moving with him, and snatched a small rock from the grass before setting it down between them.

“Consider a god,” he said. “An aether intellect that fed on emanations sufficiently to form a coherent mind and ethos. A creature that simultaneously has boundaries, a set consciousness, and none – it will keep growing and self-redefining until it no longer can. How does one destroy such an entity?”

“Conceptual damage,” she replied. “Offering charity to a god of greed, earth to a god of the sea.”

He nodded.

“Now consider a god whose ethos is too esoteric to be turned into a weapon,” Lieutenant Mitra said. “The example most frequently used is that of Fenquzhu, the Tianxi god of philosophical mereology – that is, the study of the connection between part and whole.”

Maryam bit the inside of her cheek, considering conceptual poison for that. Difficult without knowing more of mereology, which she supposed only fed into Mitra’s point. She shrugged her surrender.

“Several kings of Old Cathay attempted to destroy it, as its embodied philosophy contradicted the teachings of the fledgling Cathayan Orthodoxy, but they found that mereology was a sufficiently well-crafted system that it could incorporate opposing arguments into itself,” Mitra told her. “Imprisoning the god changed nothing, either, as the ideas themselves could not be caged so prayer kept reaching it.”

“So what did they do?” Maryam asked.

“They killed the god repeatedly over the next centuries and drove the scholars underground through persecution, resulting in a hidden sect,” Mitra said. “A branch of it still exists in the modern Republics, I hear, though it has little to do with the original philosophical society.”

“That isn’t a solution,” Maryam frowned, “it is painting over the problem.”

“Indeed, though the seed of a better answer lies inside those old royal decrees,” Lieutenant Mitra said. “The modern god Fenguzhu, while bearing the same name as that ancient deity, is observably quite different. It was made so by its worship and teachings being constrained to a hidden sect for centuries instead of being openly debated by scholars, resulting in a rather more mystical interpretation of a once purely philosophical concept.”

“The aether taint it fed on was different, so it became different,” Maryam summed up.

“It is so,” Mitra agreed. “It thus follows that a god can be leveraged through prayer, through the aether it feeds on. An aether seal is the brutal, straightforward application of that logic.”

And he had given her enough pieces to put it together.

“The seal is a block on the god’s name,” she said. “To keep prayer from reaching it, to starve out a deity whose concept is too difficult to poison until it fades away on its own. So the words I saw were…”

“The ‘name’ layered over the true name of the entity,” Lieutenant Mitra said. “By trying to reach beyond you effectively plunged your mind into a binding of intentionally poisoned aether until sickness ensued.”

Maryam let out a low whistle.

“That cannot be easy to accomplish,” she said. “Else the Watch would use it for all the rowdier deities, no?”

“As I told you, it has costs and limitations,” Mitra said. “The god in question need to be imprisoned for it to have any use, else it will simply give a new name to its worshippers and get around the seal, and to so thoroughly imprison a deity is never cheap or easy.”

“The brackstone shrine,” Maryam slowly said. “Shrines, most likely, and the empty layer with a sphere of salt at the heart of it.”

“The details fit, though coincidence is often a trickster twin to design,” he replied. “Another limitation is that an aether lock is a measurable, finite imprint on the aether achieved through use a particular machine developed by the Second Empire. If it that imprint is weaker than the entity it is meant to lock, that god will simply unmake it.”

“So it can’t be used on second-order entities,” Maryam said. “Because no existing machine is that powerful.”

“It is so,” Mitra nodded again.

That made aether locks a rather niche tool, she thought. It would only work on third-order entities and higher, but the number of such gods that would both warrant such an investment of time and resources and could feasibly be trapped into a prison in the first place had to be fairly small. It wasn’t enough to put the god in the hole and lock up its name, either, the jail had to be maintained until it had starved to death. That meant boots on the ground, kept there for decades or maybe even a century.

Most nations would think it simpler to simply kill the god and outlaw its worship as the kings of Old Cathay had, to limit the threat and live with it.

So then why did House Lissenos pour a fortune into an aether lock when they were fresh out of a civil war and young to the throne? With Watch help they would have had the know-how to make such a lock, but there must have been a reason for the fledgling dynasty to pour so many of its badly needed funds into such a grand undertaking. That the god whose cult had begun the Ataxia would be the one imprisoned seemed most likely, if hardly certain, but would even feeding a bloody civil war warrant such treatment?

Every land in the world had its gods of war, and they were to the last vicious carrion things. Yet they were not proscribed, for men that did not wage war were a rare thing indeed. Lieutenant Mitra stretched out, rising to his feet. Feeling their time coming to an end, Maryam bit her lip.

“If the locked god has begun to slip containment,” she said, “we could have a dangerous situation on our hands.”

“Or it could be a starved, diminished entity that has little left in common with that which first went into the prison,” Lieutenant Mitra said. “By all means you should report your theory, Maryam, but Vesper is no stranger to too-shallow graves. I would wait on word from Stheno’s Peak before deferring to fear.”

He was unusually serious as he talked so Maryam only nodded instead of arguing as she felt a flicker of urge to. Already she had a half-written report in her room that Wen was waiting on, she would make sure to finish it and impress on him the potential importance of the discovery before they headed back to the rector’s private archives.

That and the rest of the Thirteenth needed to be told. Song had been methodical about ensuring they shared their findings with each other every morning before parting ways, but when Maryam had begged off last night before the brigade banquet her captain had not insisted.

“We part ways here, I think,” Lieutenant Mitra said. “Captain Ren seems intent on speaking with you.”

Maryam glanced back, finding Song standing by the stairs to the roof. Not close enough to overhear their conversation, but enough to be noticeable. The small cloth bag in her hand made it plain what she had come here for, and that was overdue.

“Thank you for your help, Lieutenant Mitra,” Maryam said.

“I enjoy teaching,” the Someshwari smiled. “Until we next meet, Maryam Khaimov.”

She nodded back, watching as Song passed by him with a respectful salute on his way out. Soon enough her friend was lowering herself into the grass across from her. The Tianxi cleared her throat.

“As you will be headed back to the archives this afternoon while we meet with the Brazen Chariot, I thought to request your help now,” she said.

Maryam shrugged.

“Good a time as any,” she said. “And I’ve a few things to tell you anyhow.”

Song smiled gratefully, removing the wooden bowl from its bag. The curse had been firming up since she spent those days stuck inside the rector’s palace: a purge was not urgently needed, but it was headed in that direction. No wonder she looked tired, her sleep must have been a feast of nightmares. Maryam could sympathize. She’d had that horrid dream about being strangled and eaten alive every other night, since making shore on Asphodel.

If it got any worse, she would ask Wen to travel back to the Lordsport to sleep in the Akelarre chapterhouse there and find out if resting a proper Meadow changed anything. Rolling her shoulders, Maryam watched Song fill the bowl with water and focused.

Song had not, but she was more than willing to learn.

—

The Brazen Chariot reached out in the middle of the night, and the time they’d given was barely past noon on that same day.

They were being cautious, Song thought, so they would not be swept up in a Watch operation. That same caution was reassuring, in a way, for fear of the black meant they were unlikely to be walking into an ambush. She was still glad of Angharad’s company as they headed to the closed tavern in the northeastern ward they’d been given as a meeting place. Tristan was slowly turning into a better shot, but he was no fearsome battler.

Even limping, Angharad was more dangerous blade in hand than he was.

They arrived at the tavern ten minutes early and found their interlocutors had arrived even earlier. It took Song but a single step into the building to figure out why the criminals had picked it: theirs was a single long and narrow room with one door in front and one door at the back, dusty tables and chairs filling it up in clutter.

It would be trivially easy for the Brazen Chariot to flee to the street if it came to that, and once they reached the streets the Watch was sure to lose them. Song’s eyes moved from the surroundings to the waiting criminals, satisfied with the meeting place, and there came her first surprise of the afternoon.

Galenos the Brazen did not look like the head of a gang of criminals.

A small old man whose craggy face was strewn with laugh lines, with grey arched eyebrows and a matching professorial mustache, he looked like someone’s favorite grandfather or at least a toymaker of some sort. The effect was somewhat spoiled by the contract unfolding in golden letters above his head, in which the Crowned Charioteer granted him the power to siphon the heat out of anything he touched and impart it on any piece of bronze in his sight.

He had a lantern on the table, just to his left, and Song idly wondered how quickly the button on her Watch uniform would burn through cloth and flesh with all that heat crammed into it. Instant, she figured, or near enough. Yet that admittedly dangerous power was not worth the price it had cost the man, in her opinion: he could no longer feel anything by touch. Not heat or cold, not the wind on his face or even what he held in his hand.

“Come, rooks,” Galenos smiled at them. “Have water and bread from me.”

It was a single bowl and a plate with a small loaf of bread, which they shared – Song going first, as captain, then the others. Now that guest right was established, some of the tension in the shoulders of the two thugs flanking him loosened. The odds the Watch had come to fight were greatly lessened, for it would tar the reputation of the order in Asphodel to break such an old and respected rite. The three of them settled in the seats across the table from the criminals, Song in the center and Tristan to her left.

Galenos introduced his companions before they sat down on either side of him.

“Knuckles,” he said, nodding at the large man to his left, “and our lovely Red Maria.”

Lierganen in both name and looks, the latter, though that was not so rare in Tratheke. Though there was still a distinct Asphodelian strain with dark hair and blue or green eyes, the years and the press of people from Old Liergan and the rest of the Trebian islands had made the classic Lierganen looks just as common – except among the nobility, where such a thing would be considered vulgar.

“Captain Song Ren of the Thirteenth Brigade,” she replied, giving nothing more.

It still got a flinch from all three Asphodelians, and Red Maria made a sign warding off misfortune while muttering a prayer to the Circle. She ignored the steady look Tristan fixed her with. It was mere superstition, nothing to take heed of.

“A bold number to take,” Galenos said. “Not a fearful lot, you, though I would have guessed from your stepping around one of our warehouses and then sending word to ask for more of our attention.”

Song cleared her throat.

“It was not our intent to interfere with your business,” she said, “and the Watch has no particular interest in the affairs of the Brazen Chariot. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

Knuckles scoffed, the pile of muscle with his mangled eponymous knuckles seeming unconvinced.

“You forced us to burn a finely hidden warehouse.”

Song drummed her fingers against the table, inkling her head towards Tristan – who gave the other side a charming smile.

“You were already evacuating that warehouse, Master Knuckles,” he said. “Your guard admitted as much. And wise of you too, given what it stood in proximity of.”

Knuckles spat to side, the sound of wet on the floor almost resonant. Song hid her disgust; Angharad did not.

“I don’t like your tone, Sacromontan,” the large man said. “Who are you to tell me what’s wise?”

“Someone who knows things you do not,” Tristan cheerfully replied. “A familiar feeling, no doubt.”

Red Maria laughed, which had the man half-risen out of his chair with a snarl before Galenos put a hand on his arm.

“Peace, Knuckles,” he said. “I am sure Captain Ren intends to elaborate on this alleged wisdom.”

“Our business in Tratheke is the ferreting out of a cult,” Song told him. “In that pursuit, we followed an assassin through an ancient aether pathway – which led into the very teahouse connecting to your warehouse.”

Galenos turned pale brown eyes on her, calmly sipping at a cup of water.

“The city is full of talk about an assassin’s attempt on a particular man,” he carefully said.

“The very same,” Song said.

The implication that someone who had tried to kill the Lord Rector had then popped out next to their smuggling cache put the fear of the gods in them, as well it should: for a relatively small basileia like theirs to be involved in such matters might well mean being wiped out simply because the lictors felt like making a point.

“Fuck,” Red Maria bluntly said. “Since the red scarves haven’t been setting our houses on fire, I’m guessing you kept your mouth shut about that.”

“While the Brazen Chariot was mentioned in our report to our superiors, so was our belief it was not involved in the plot save by unfortunate coincidence,” Song replied. “But my cabalist brought out a salient detail: you were already evacuating the warehouse when we found it.”

“Your guard mentioned this to be unusual,” Angharad added.

Her tone was a little flat, likely because the girl in question had frankly admitted that a lone individual finding a Brazen Chariot stash was usually likely to result in a sliced throat rather than a migration.

“And you want us to tell you why,” Galenos mused.

“I would prefer not to leave any question pending, so that our investigation might move on,” Song said, which was not quite a threat.

But it wasn’t not a threat, either.

“We’re not afraid of the Watch, Tianxi,” Knuckles sneered.

“You should be,” Angharad frankly told him.

The sheer sincerity in that retort threw off the big man, who scrambled for a reaction for a long moment before deciding on anger.

“Shut your mouth, cripple,” he sneered. “Else I will break that stick on your-”

Song cocked her head to the side, finding Galenos the Brazen’s eyes.

“Does Master Knuckles speak for all of you in this?”

Irritation flicked across the old man’s face, the grandfatherly air turning almost reptilian for that beat before it all came back into place.

“Knuckles will sit down and be silent for a span,” Galenos said.

He turned a look on the large man, who swallowed loudly and sat down in his chair. He looked away, like a pouting child. Song did not think it a coincidence that both he and Red Maria wore bronze necklaces.

“We’re always happy to lend a hand to the Watch, of course,” Galenos the Brazen said. “But talk is dangerous, Captain Ren. Especially with folks in fine black cloaks.”

Red Maria leaned forward.

“And the Chariot doesn’t take on risks for free.”

“One would think your lives a sufficient prize,” Angharad contemptuously said.

Galenos found her eyes.

“Does the Malani speak for all of you in this, Captain Ren?” he smiled.

Song sighed, shaking her head at Angharad.

“She does not,” she replied. “We are willing to hear terms.”

“Reasonable terms,” Tristan idly added.

“I am a most reasonable man, you will find,” Galenos the Brazen smiled.

The reasonable man wanted them to smuggle crates from the Lordsport into the city for him on official Watch carriages, which Tristan seemed to find acceptable enough but Song flatly refused. While she understood that contracts might force her to break local laws on occasion, that was never to be a first resort. She offered, instead, a lump sum of gold. Tristan looked a little aggrieved when she did and Red Maria chuckled.

“We start flashing around proper gold like that, Captain Ren, and questions will be asked as to how we got it,” she said. “If you want to bribe us, pay in goods.”

Song was not entirely opposed, so long as the worth was not greater than the coin she had offered, so the haggling moved over what goods were to be offered. What the basileia wanted was plain enough.

“Muskets,” Galenos baldly said. “Failing that, blackpowder.”

“Blackpowder can be obtained legally in Tratheke,” Song noted.

“And if you buy a whole barrel, the lictors follow you home afterwards,” Red Maria drawled. “No one bats an eye if the rooks buy up a fort’s worth, though. Powder’s worth a fortune on the black market right now, everyone is scrambling for it.”

Galenos shot her a sharp look at that last part, but it was too late. Ah, their friend was looking to turn a profit.

“Why’s everyone buying?” Tristan idly asked.

Too idly. Like her, he was matching that latest revelation to their visit to the empty warehouse. Only so much powder could be smuggled into Tratheke before someone noticed. Better to obtain part of your stocks through the same basileias helping you hide inside the capital.

“Dangerous times,” Knuckles grunted. “If Palliades croaks then the throne’s up for grabs and powder will be worth its weight in gold – shot or sold.”

Black House had large reserves of gunpowder, so in truth this would be one of the easiest trade goods for the Thirteenth to get their hands on. All that would be required was making a requisition through Captain Wen, and should he approve the need they wouldn’t even need to dip into brigade funds. Even better, the entire process would be legal.

Angharad leaned in close.

“I would hope,” she murmured, “you are not about to arm hardened criminals who will then use those arms to continue extorting the people of Tratheke.”

Song swallowed a grimace. There was, of course, a difference between legal and moral.

“That would be overpaying, if blackpowder is worth what you say,” she told Galenos. “I am told, however, that you smuggle liquor.”

“True enough,” the old man said. “And?”

“Get me a list of wines and liquor of equal value to my earlier offer,” she said, “and they will be delivered to you.”

He laughed.

“Cheeky,” he said. “You’ll buy them in Lordsport for less and avoid tariffs by bringing them in as Watch supplies.”

Song smiled and did not deny. He haggled for much better terms, and she conceded slightly better ones instead – a larger sum’s worth of drink than earlier, but with tariff avoidance it would likely end up costing her around the same. Angharad poorly hid her relief, and in truth even Tristan looked approving. Galenos was surprisingly understanding that she would not sign a contract, as a signature would actionably implicate the Watch.

“Business relies on the worth of one’s word,” the old man said. “I might not know you, but the black has a reputation for holding up their end. I’ll bet on that.”

As Red Maria walked off to go put together a list for them to take back to Black House along with the location to bring the goods to, Galenos lit a pipe and offered them the same. All three declined, to the old man’s chuckles.

“Ah, if only I had been so careful as a youth,” he said. “It is too late for me now, sadly.”

They waited patiently for him to tell his tale, which he deigned to begin after a few puffs.

“We had three on guard that night,” Galenos said. “One of them was out for a smoke when that Tianxi woman came out through one of the boarded windows. He had the good sense to rouse the others and follow after the potential leak.”

The end of the pipe was cherry-red, and the foul smell of cheap Izcalli tobacco filled the air. A filthy habit, though Song would admit it was not uncommon in the Republics.

“Our girl was out of it, so she didn’t notice the tail,” the old man said. “Guess hers wasn’t a soft landing. Either way, she passed through the Reeking Rows and bought a coach on the main street. Our man lost her there.”

A pause. Her contract is not always active, Song thought. It must be consciously used, and she must have not seen a need to pay her price when she thought herself alone. That was already valuable knowledge.

“Fortunately for you, we got friends in the coaches,” Galenos grinned. “Our friend the coachman said the face wasn’t the same we described, with the tattoos and all, but he remembered the ride. He crossed wards for her, brought her down in the southwest all the way to Chancery Lane.”

He raised a finger.

“Where, and here is your money’s worth, she headed straight for the Karras workshop,” the old man told them. “She knocked on the alley door, even though it was late at night, and when someone came to look she showed them something. After some arguing they let her in, which our man thought mighty odd.”

Karras, Song committed to memory. She did not know the name, but the largest workshops and warehouses in the southwestern ward were all owned by the Trade Assembly. The old man sucked at his pipe, blowing the smoke upwards afterwards.

“I figured that meant she was Yellow Earth, so it would have been borrowing trouble to tie up the loose end,” Galenos said. “Simpler to clear house instead, so that’s what we did – until you stumbled onto the last gasps of our effort.”

Tristan cleared his throat, earning a curious look.

“The teahouse doors leading to your stash were welded shut,” he said. “Was that your work?”

“It weren’t,” Galenos said. “One of ours stumbled on the other entrance to the basement about twenty years ago – there was a crack in the floor – and after we battered our way through the other floor we found the doors like we left them. Didn’t look like it’d been used in our time, either.”

“Have you ever been there?” Song asked.

The old man snorted.

“No,” he replied. “Knuckles has, though.”

Song’s eyes moved to the man, whose dislike of them all was plain.

“The back wall of the basement is made of different stone than the rest,” she said. “Have you ever seen stone like it anywhere else?”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

The big man frowned, and to his honor seemed like he was genuinely thinking it over.

“Once,” he finally said. “There’s a brothel near the Reeking Rows and the room where they keep the wine has a wall like that.”

Song’s eyes narrowed.

“That room, it is their basement?”

He nodded. Tristan let out an incredulous laugh.

“Someone built a brothel next to that smell?”

“Cheapest in Tratheke,” Knuckles shrugged. “Good coin in it, there’s not much else to do around there.”

Song and Tristan shared a look. They would have to investigate that wall, as the existence of several such shrines in the northeastern ward could be proof of Maryam’s belief that some entity – possibly the one under this aether seal – was being contained by the empty layer. And with Angharad departing for the country to morrow while Maryam kept digging for them in the archives, it would have to be one of them doing it.

“This Karras,” Angharad suddenly asked, “why do you think his workshop has ties to the Yellow Earth? Are they a sympathizer?”

“The family owns the largest trade fleet after the Anastos, they’re in it up to their neck with the Republics,” Galenos snorted. “I don’t know if he’s got sympathies, but it doesn’t matter: you do big enough business with the Tianxi, you’ll get some Yellow Earth in your workers. It’s like their version of lice.”

He flicked a glance at Song.

“No offense, Captain Ren.”

“I had not been inclined to take any,” she noted, “until that.”

Much as it pained her to consider it, it was looking more and more like the Yellow Earth had been the ones to try to assassinate the Lord Rector. Yet the arguments put forward by Hao Yu and his cohort had been solid then and remained so now. Not all Yellow Earth sects are united, she thought. It could be a radical was behind it and their own factions is now trying to avoid taking the blame. That might go some way in explaining why they had pointed her towards a plot by the ministers: it would keep her occupied long enough for them to clean house.

Not something to discuss here, however. They got the name of the brothel – it did not have one, only a yellow crescent moon as a sign – and the list, then parted ways with the Brazen Chariot.

“Always more questions,” Song muttered when it was only the three of them. “If the Yellow Earth is behind all this, this is a dead end for our contracted investigation: I cannot imagine one of their sects being beholden to a cult like the Golden Ram, especially when its membership is full of nobles.”

“It could be an alliance of convenience,” Angharad suggested.

“But what convenience is that?” Tristan asked. “Even assuming the Yellow Earth wants to back a coup, the Trade Assembly hasn’t got the guns to seize Tratheke if the Lord Rector bites it. The Council of Ministers just might, though, and our Republican friends know it – else they wouldn’t have pointed Song at the tail of that plot. So why try to kill our good friend Evander?”

“It could be a factional struggle inside the Yellow Earth,” Song said. “When I met with Hao Yu, his second seemed significantly more aggressive. It was a play on their part, yes, but by my read not entirely.”

“Too early to jump to conclusions, I think,” Tristan mused. “I’ll have to get into that workshop, find out the lay of the land. It could simply be our assassin friend paid off someone there to hide her in case things went south.”

Not impossible, Song conceded, but then why do so in the southwest? It was not as wealthy as the southeastern ward or the Collegium, but a hideaway there would still be significantly more expensive to buy than in either of the northern wards. Angharad rubbed the bridge of her nose as they walked, looking exhausted.

“How many flavors of treason can there be in one accursed city?” she complained. “Asphodel seems to grow coups like weeds.”

“Our captain’s lover does seem like a somewhat negligent gardener,” Tristan solemnly agreed.

“I will strangle you, Abrascal,” she swore. “With my own hands, just to watch that twinkle slowly go out of your eye.”

“Song,” Angharad reproached.

She coughed. Perhaps that had been a little too harsh.

“Think of the taint on the Lord Rector’s reputation, should his mistress commit murder in broad daylight,” Angharad gravely said.

She glared at them both.

“And to think you were complaining of treason, Tredegar,” she scorned. “I will remember this.”

Song had to threaten to dock their pay in the carriage back for them to stop, and even then it was a narrow thing.

—

Maryam returned to the private archives for a single book.

She would have preferred to read it back in the safety of Black House, but the sole limit the Lord Rector had put on the Thirteenth’s rights to the archives had been a ban on taking books outside. Given the… peculiarities of the volume Maryam had come for, she must reluctantly concede the man had a point. It was not the sort of thing one would want to leave the confines of that cloistered place with only one way in and out.

Wen was in a surprisingly fine mood as they came up, considering the news she had delivered this morning – than an ancient god, perhaps even a god of the Old Night, might be breaching its prison. In truth most of the Thirteenth had been, if not indifferent, then unworried by the news. The sense she had gotten out of them was that so long as the shrines and layers held, this whole affair was better reported to the Watch and left to those more fit to investigate it.

Maryam did not disagree entirely. It was hard to, after learning how close she had come to cracking open her skull yesterday. On the other hand, if the plots afoot in the city circling the Lord Rector’s throne were worth keeping an eye on then so was this.

And unlike noble greed and some blackpowder dream of revolution, Maryam could feel it in her bones that there was something about all these details adding up together: the tempestuous aether, the god in the tomb, the resurgence of the Golden Ram cult, the brackstone shrine and the seal and the Asphodel crowns. It felt like there was some secret at the heart of it all, tying all the mysteries together, but she could not make it out.

It was a frustrating feeling, not helped in the slightest by Wen Duan’s chipper mood.

“Did you know,” he said, “that the lift we’re on is directly over the larger Antediluvian lifts that connect the Collegium floor to the palace?”

She shot him a surprised look.

“That would mean someone built a goal in the middle of the rector’s palace, three levels up,” Maryam said. “Who thought that was a good idea?”

“Oduromai King himself, apparently,” Wen said. “He wanted all his wives locked up in here after he died in a chamber above, so that when they passed they would follow him into the aether as servant spirits.”

“Charming,” Maryam grimaced. “God of heroes, is he?”

“Certainly not of wisdom,” Wen noted. “Imagine eternally binding yourself to six people you’ve jailed to death on purpose.”

Her lips twitched at that, the lift in her mood lasting through the senior archivist being nowhere in sight and having been assigned Master Alexios as an attendant today. She dismissed the man after claiming the keys to the forbidden section, knowing exactly what she needed. She kept an eye out, and after a quick turn around the room found Roxane ensconced at a desk and busy transcribing a waterlogged book onto a clean manuscript.

The girl waves back happily, almost spilling her inkwell, and looked in a fine mood. Not a punition, then. Pleased, Maryam let the matter go. Spending too much time around the girl would only harm her.

The book was where she had found it yesterday, the small leatherbound volume with the Asphodel crown engraving on the front. She found an alcove where no one would be able to look over her shoulder, out in one of the shadier corners of archives, and after lighting a lamp sat down to dig into it. The contents were in Antigua, she found, but in an archaic turn of it – and the lines were so densely packed it made for hard, slow reading.

It was the story of Oduromai King, from the moment he set out to sea, only they did not always call him that. The name was used interchangeably with Odyssean, and it was not clear if either was a sobriquet or simply different ways to translate the word from the original Cycladic. It seemed to Maryam as if Oduromai might be a formal title, perhaps, and Odyssean the man’s more common appellation – it was certainly used more often by his companions, while instead other rulers and gods called him Oduromai.

Which was not half so interesting as the fact that Song had seen a contract to a god called the Odyssean on her first night at the palace, and unless Maryam’s memory failed her greatly that contractor was Cleon Eirenos. The very same noble that Angharad was to depart for the country estate of tomorrow.

The problem was, there was already a god called Oduromai. Asphodel’s god of heroes and sailors, arguably their chief deity if not necessarily their most powerful – he was, after all, the founder of the Rectorate. Central to its founding tale. How could there be two such gods? She had heard Oduromai was a god manifest, sometimes seen at his temples across Asphodel. Curiosity burned, turning her back to the book after she secured ink for her notes.

It was only when Wen came to look in on her she realized that hours had passed, and she was only a third of the way through the book. She declined his offer of a meal, and after none too subtly checking if she having a manic fit the overweight Tianxi forced a cup of water on her and told her he’d be reading in a corner and to tell him when she was finished.