Chapter 51

Song would not have thought of it if she had not read ahead in The Sea of Shapes.

The fresh reminder that Hooks’ physical form was a construct and that she was in truth moving through the aether yielded an interesting thought: what, exactly, stopped her from ‘flying’ as high up as the length of Maryam’s logos allowed? The answer was ‘not a thing’, so the younger Khaimov was sent up into the sky to survey the entire span of the scrapyard.

She’d had to borrow one of Ishanvi’s coal sticks to draw on the floor, but at Song’s feet now lay a rough sketch of the trash labyrinth ahead of them. Hooks had even marked two potential exits, one of which she believed might lead to the wasp hive structure – the kobalos lair permanently attached to the aether furnace. If that was true, then they were a single room away from the halfway mark of the Trench.

Unfortunately, the room in question was a battlefield.

Song looked down at the strokes of coal on the floor, the lay of pathways and the two larger clearings where an X had been traced. The two most furious fights, by Hook’s reckoning: one was a large open field of scrap where a host of kobaloi were besieging a smaller force of revenants in a fortified position, while the other was a small hollow where a dozen paths connected and the onjancanu was fighting off revenant incursions trying to get past it.

Both were broadly to the west, though the latter was significantly closer to the center.

Song stared down at the map, mastering the urge to worry her lip as she held her arms folded behind her back. An idea had begun to dawn, but she needed one last report before she decided.

“We could punch through those eastern paths in twenty minutes-”

Song did not startle, though her arms tensed behind her. Tristan was getting disquietingly better at sneaking up on her.

“- but if that were the plan, you wouldn’t be asking for me,” her Mask finished. “What do you need?”

Song flicked him a look, gauging the way he stood. Loose-limbed, but in an almost forceful way. Tristan had a grip on himself, but he was itching to push forward. As far as he was concerned every hour spent on anything but advancing was one frivolously spent. He’d agree with her, see the sense in it: only the unambitious settled for a mere two birds per stone.

“How close are they?” Song asked.

A pause, not for him to recall the information but to lay down her question on the floor of his mind as the first piece of a new puzzle. He was assembling a fresh conclusion, and it was fascinating to watch it happen. A glance at the coal map, at her, back at the map. A frown.

“Tall Bibek was at the crossroads,” Tristan finally replied. “I give it even odds he saw me.”

Song hummed even as her Mask drummed a hand against the arm he’d just folded. It wouldn’t matter even if the Eighth’s crew had not seen him, she thought. If they headed into the room with the dropping floor instead of the right one, the moment Captain Pillai saw that the room’s traps had not been triggered he would know to double back and head towards the scrapyard instead. But it also means the hourglass has been flipped, they are right behind us.

“Lahiri’s crew?” she asked.

Tristan shook his head.

“They got waylaid, Scolomancia shifted a killing room in their way,” he said. “I didn’t get a good look at its insides, so it’s guesswork how long it’ll take them to clear.”

It’d only had the time to waylay them because of Angharad’s suggestion of passing the wounded into their care, Song thought. Still, the trade had been worth it. Only one of the two crews would be easier to handle, and Saran Pillai’s was arguably the weaker of them as well.

“It will last long enough the god will be able to lay down another path if it wants to,” Song said. “Only Pillai’s crew will make it here in time.”

His eyes narrowed as he turned back to the map. As expected, the piece she’d just given him was enough for him to figure out the rest. Planning with him, sometimes it felt like cocking a gun. The satisfying click of everything coming into place exactly as it should, the promise of violence when the trigger was pulled.

“That room is going to be a death trap,” Tristan warned, pointing at where the revenants were being besieged. “We’ll have to slip between it and that crossroads, but Scolomancia put its warlord where the roads knot for a reason.”

“You think the onjancanu is there to block of a path to the anteater,” Song guessed.

That was unfortunately feasible. That creature being there and too precious to risk was the only reason the god hadn’t cut its losses and left them here to face the revenants alone.

“Then if we get too close to that path, it will leave the crossroads to cut us off,” she muttered.

“Smalls rooms and narrow paths are better grounds to fight an onjancanu,” Tristan pragmatically said. “But we’re going to need heavy hitters for that. And we will need to fight it, because unless I read you wrong you’ll be needing access to that path.”

He crouched to point at the long, oblique ravine of scrap that began just south of the crossroads and reached most of the way back to the large yard near the entrance. That ravine was one of the two eastward paths that did not lead right into dead ends, and the one Song had marked in her mind as the one she would need to use.

“We have four Navigators,” she replied. “It is a risk, but you’ve seen what a coven can do against greater beasts than an Old Tyrant.”

He cocked his head to the side, gray eyes searching.

“You’re telling me this,” Tristan decided, “because you know I’m the only one who won’t try to talk you out of it.”

Song looked away.

“Well, you didn’t misread that,” he acknowledged. “But I’ll caution you that we can’t play it too loose with the wounded. Izel would consider it a line crossed and Angharad would almost certainly object.”

Song dipped her head in acknowledgement. If the path was not properly secured, she would call off the entire affair.

“Stay safe,” she told him. “The real delve only starts after the aether furnace.”

“We’re going to have to work on your encouragements sounding less like threats,” he drily replied, but he was smiling.

Song let him slip back into the rearguard without another word, composing herself. It would work. The Eighth might develop a grudge over it, but she had not forced them to chase her tail. If you set the helm after seeing the wind, you didn’t get to complain about where that wind brought you.

She wiped the lines of coal with her boot.

—

Gods, but it was a shame they’d come here to fight.

Izel wished it had been to explore, because where others saw a pile of sharp edges and rust strewn with garbage he saw a veritable treasure trove. And not even from a purely material standpoint: the large mounds of scrap metal had layers from different times, a fascinating glimpse of the occupants of Allazei over the years. There were bronze rods of antique make and crucible steel blades, gears of Antediluvian alloys and pillars of cheap Second Empire brass.

You could read a manuscript’s worth of history from the way one particular pile was half furnace iron and half cast copper pieces, run a finger down the implied trade routes and discoveries. One could tell a lot about a people by what metal they used and how they used it.

But they were here to cross, not to linger, so instead Izel tightened his grip on his pistol and forced himself not to stare too much at the improbable Lierganen brass jewelry he saw – a trading trinket before the Second Empire swept over the isle, or a sign Allazei had been swimming in so much brass that they were… No. Focus. He could wait until they were back to camp and ask Ishanvi if she had a reading recommendation about the Kingdom of Sologuer.

“We won’t be climbing the piles unless our captains turn into fools, so you can stop staring fearfully at them,” Emergency Rations said.

The short Tianxi then pulled at his beard.

“You useless coward,” he casually added.

Just ahead there was a sharp crack, a musket firing, followed by an immediate shot back and a shriek. Izel’s eye strayed to the tunnel ahead, its arched ceiling come into being when two piles of scrap fell against each other.

“Using your contract on me could be considered a breach between our brigades,” Izel replied after dragging away his gaze.

“Just a one?” Emergency Rations muttered. “I thought for sure that would…”

He shook his head, offered a bright bandit’s smile.

“And that can’t be true, because Ren uses her contract on all of us constantly,” Rations said.

That- huh. Well, that was not actually untrue.

“Coyac,” Thando Fenya sighed, rubbing two fingers against his forehead like he was staving off a headache. “You do not need to tolerate this. Xical very clearly ordered him to find out what makes you tick.”

“You could make me stop with the threat of violence,” Emergency Rations noted, then turned an expectant look on him.

Another crack, shouts and what sounded like gibberish. He did not flinch.

“I will do great violence to you, if you do not cease,” Izel tried.

The twin unimpressed looks leveled at him made him squirm a little bit. As did the scoff from the side, when the Savant from the Forty-Ninth finally acknowledged she was there standing besides them. Xiadani Jobe – it was passing strange, seeing a traditional Seven Valleys name appended to a surname like Jobe – was not pleased to have been assigned to their unit and Izel could not blame her.

She was a conscript, and of her cabalmates one was sequestered behind a wall of Navigators while the other had already been wounded badly enough to be sent the way of the First Brigade.

A sharp whistling sound from ahead had all four straightening.

“It’s our turn,” Thando Fenya said. “Ready yourselves.”

None answered, but Emergency Rations idly spun his axe to loosen his wrist and Xiadani checked her pistol for the third time. He breathed out, reaching inside his knapsack to feel out the grenades waiting there, and tightened the strap back just in time for the second whistle.

“Go,” Thando Fenya hissed, and took the lead.

They ran into the shadow cast by the arch of half-toppled scrap towers, boots rasping against the layer of dry rust and dust in faint puffs of red, and headed back into the dull glow of the Trench. Izel blinked, eyes getting used to the light, and stepped into the madhouse.

The yard looked like spilled guts, a fat and towering piled having dribbled out a field of rotting wood and broken weapons. On either side of the pile narrow corridors flanked by scrap piles allowed in the enemy – black-cloaked revenants kneeling with their salvaged matchlocks on the right side, kobaloi all over the left with barbed javelins and skittering feet. Facing them, behind low mounds of scrap students crouched with their muskets and traded shot to keep their foes from pushing into the yard.

Their destination was just ahead, across the mounds and past the length of the yard, another arching passage heading west. The four of them ran towards it, spread out so they would be harder to shoot.

“-sweep the heights,” Imani Langa barked, “if they get in javelin range we’ll all regret-”

Thando was most ahead, but when his steps stuttered long enough for him to pop a pistol shot – he barely looked where he was aiming, but the kobalos shriek of pain told Izel he’d landed his shot anyway – Emergency Rations went past him. Izel brushed past Thando as well, stopping only when he heard a thump. Behind, he saw that Xiadani had slipped on oil-slick dust and he doubled back to help her up.

Stolen story; please report.

She took the hand, and he pulled her to her feet just in time to hear crack, crack, crack as a furious musket exchange drowned the yard in smoke and a man shouted in pain ahead of them.

Emergency Rations, his cloak was shredded and his leg bleeding. Cursing, Izel moved towards him even as Xiadani shot right past to join Thando under the arch. He grabbed Rations by the arm and dragged him towards the nearest mound of scrap, the man gritting his teeth as Izel bent over to lessen his profile. Thando popped out of the arch to fire again, but it was clear the man had not intention of heading back into the fire to help beyond that.

The blackcloak pressed against the slope of the mound was familiar: Cressida spared him half a look and a nod before flattening against the scrap, waiting for the smoke to clear enough she could see what she was shooting at. Izel stayed behind the cover, helping Rations bind the wound.

“Wait,” Cressida quietly said. “The smoke has thinned. Any moment now-”

Gibbering shrieks, and out of the white a pair of mail-decked kobaloi came out bearing barbed spears. Cressida promptly fired her musket in the first one’s head, reaching for her pistol as the second closed the distance only for Izel to grit his teeth and half-rise long enough to fire his own. His grip had been off, he went wide, but the kobalos swerved to the right – and was shot in the chest by Imani Langa from further down the line, collapsing with a shriek.

Izel bent down to grab Rations’ arm, the man reaching for him, but any thought of making a run for it was killed by the cracks from the distance. Two shots only buried themselves into the mound with sprays of garbage, but the third passed over the cover and whizzed a few feet past Izel’s head. He hastily dropped back down.

“Why are they focusing fire on us?” he hissed.

“We think they only have animal smarts,” Cressida replied as she reloaded her musket. “That in the absence of tactics they follow set instructions, so Cai Wei told them to focus fire on anyone wounded.”

Izel cursed, and they remained stuck behind the mount for two more volleys. Emergency Rations’ ruddy, leathery face slackened from the twisting pain it’d worn earlier after the man unwound a paper and swallowed the small round pill in it, but unless whatever that’d been had also healed his leg their odds of making it across unharmed remained unpleasantly low. Izel went pawing at his pack, undoing the strap, but it slipped out of his grasp and he cursed. Pushing himself down he placed his hand on- huh.

Was that… He withdrew his fingers, finding he’d been leaning on a piece of doorframe. And while there must be hundreds of these around but this one, while a dark blue, had a very particular sheen to it. Sharper than polished metal, as if pushing light away. This was, he realized, a piece of tomic alloy. Without hesitation he tore it out of the mound, breaking off the mundane metal frame holding it and wrapping it with cloth from his bag before stuffing it in there. What a find, he giddily thought.

Right, his bag. He’d been reaching for it for a reason.

Izel removed one of the grenades, the one with the two crosses and the circle, then pulled the strap on his bag before reaching for his matches.

“On my mark, look away from the front,” he shouted.