ã€ŠMoonshotã€‹


 Prologue

    Somewhere deep and disparate, in a castle with no walls, old dreams are ending.

    Impulses sway through brackish muck- coiling into scattered thoughts, dissolving into freezing water. Centuries of drowned evolution have shorn it of both an identity and a capacity for abstraction. There is no sense of curiosity, because there is no sense of anything. A bolt of stimulus arced down here, into the crushing cold, but the reaction has taken weeks to compile.

    If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

    A relic, an actual thought, finally thrums through that inhuman house.

    It¡¯s returned.

    Over the months it takes for her awareness to reassert itself, she understands that she did not ask it to come back.

    Slow-churn thinking, a grey and shocking realisation: she is no longer alone.

    Her limbs take far less time to assemble than her long-wrecked mind. It will be weeks before she realises what she is seeking, in any meaningful sense. City-long arms stretch, up up up, to taste the air on a million kelp-slick fingertips.

    She was always very patient.

 Chapter 1: Iseult

    Iseult

    ¡°No, wait, the money, captain, think of the-¡°

    Younger than me. Cocksure, charming, hair greying at his temples. I know his type. Not used to losing.

    He wheels like a kestrel, frame swept wide. It¡¯s quick, he knows we¡¯re all watching him. I flick my gaze down to adjust my cuff just a heartbeat after we make eye contact, which means I don¡¯t look away quite quickly enough.

    ¡°Captain! A moment of your time! Ignore these,¡± and here he gestures dismissively at the trio of departing sailors. One turns and delivers a sneer and a contemptuous hand gesture, her wrists glittering with brass bangles. ¡°Gormless shellbacks.¡±

    It¡¯s difficult to place him, just from those words. The cut and colour of his suit means he¡¯s bought it here, in Ildathach. But his drawl and his hair marks him from further west, possibly around Crowmere. There are little hints about him from across the continent, beyond the borders of Yvreathe: an ivory cravat splashed in Wraithwild-damask, a row of gorgeous buttons on his coat that could only have come from much further abroad, in Khazraj.

    He approaches me politely, so I¡¯m forced to place my pencil down on the bar and close my notebook. To his credit, when he shakes my hand he does so with a gentleman¡¯s grip, leisurely instead of bone-crushing. When his eyes inevitably flicker downwards to the tattoos on my hands and fingers, he studies them politely, without a trace of shame.

    If he¡¯s noticed me measuring the immense heft of his shoulders and the weight of his expression, he¡¯s too polite to make a point of it. Perhaps he¡¯s doing the same to me. I give him the blank look I reserve for men of his sort, the kind of well-dressed gentleman who approaches a woman like me in a lounge like this.

    ¡°Evin Tumble. Tumble! Yes, as in Colt & Tumble. I¡¯m the latter.¡±

    Also part of his plan, then, this quick off-balancing disguised as a casual introduction. I make a mental note and promote this conversation from boring to manipulative. There¡¯s something unusual about the set of his teeth in the light, the flintlock percussion of his speech. Something predatory and watchful.

    The rest of the room, a varied mixture of the higher-paid sort of sailing crew and warehouse workers, is pointedly not watching us. I let my gaze fall politely on the tasteful decorations of the lounge, speckled as it is with little islands of fashionably bored clientele. This decade¡¯s chic- light tile floors and dark wood walls. There are a dozen other places in Ildathach that share the same aesthetics. Soft amber candlelight reflects off of a number of stylish touches. A display case for baked sweets. A gin glass. Evin¡¯s ring catches this light, too, and I refocus on the man.

    I¡¯m aware of the intensity of his stare and the fervour of his enthusiasm. There¡¯s an expectation there¡­ oh, right. I speak.

    ¡°Iseult. Morrin. And I am a bulletsmith. Or a mathematician. Not a captain.¡±

    Not my birth name, to which most people who speak only Irdcheol react with either a panicked look or a stammered imitation. Evin Tumble¡¯s face beams with sudden recognition.

    ¡°Thought as much. Iseult Morrin! In the flesh! Of all the places in Ildathach. I saw you from across the room, and I knew you were a sigilist from the,¡± and here he gestures vaguely at my daybook and at the badge of my profession, a lit crimson brooch that is only now starting to fade to pink. ¡°But I didn¡¯t realise it was you. The accent, that makes sense,¡± he squints at me, then taps a finger in the air. ¡°You don¡¯t look particularly like your picture, you know. You don¡¯t have the-¡± and here he swirls his hand in the air in front of the bottom half of his face, and looks at me expectantly.

    I shrug, muster myself into yet another repetition of this exact conversation. ¡°I think the artists took some liberties.¡±

    He doesn¡¯t press the subject, mercifully. ¡°Anyway. Yes. Fascinating work. I¡¯m from Crowmere, you know. Or just outside of it. Salted my burns trading with Wraithwilders before joining up with Wynne Colt and making Colt & Tumble. Been doing business all over the continent, these days- even done the flight to the Far Coast! Who knows, maybe we¡¯ve worked together before! Well. Before Colt & Tumble really started specialising in excavations, anyway. I don¡¯t suppose there¡¯s a lot of overlap between witchery and mining.¡±

    There is, obviously. Explosives and precision, just scaled differently. There¡¯s no possibility he¡¯s ignorant of this. I¡¯m taken aback by his casual slur.

    ¡°I¡¯m rambling. I¡¯m rambling! Typical. Or so I¡¯m told. Allow me to not mince words. I need to hire a crew. Small time. Simple job, really. You see, we at Colt & Tumble have some rather deep pockets. And our backers have deep pockets too. And we¡¯ve got a plan.¡± He says that last word with a particular resonance. His eyes are positively glowing at this point.

    ¡°You¡¯ve probably heard musings about this already, a woman of your, hah, calibre. It¡¯s about the moon.¡±

    That last sentence he speaks with a sacred delivery, pausing to suck air between his clenched teeth. I blink, and try not to let my surprise be obvious.

    ¡°You should see the look on your face! I thought Bani Yathrib were supposed to be hard to impress!¡± he guffaws loudly, boisterously, dominating the conversation before I can interrupt him. ¡°No, not the real moon. The new one. The counterfeit.¡±

    *

    About half a year ago, we acquired a new moon.

    Just to clarify, there was nothing wrong with the original moon. She¡¯s still there, of course. But there¡¯s a new one up there too, a tiny grey mountain that circles quietly overhead about once a week. Sometimes it transits across the face of the original, which is always a bit disconcerting. When it first appeared, there was terrible unrest clear across the continent, from Yvreathe to Khazraj. Across all of Calacar, really: the citizens of the Far Coast allegedly held a two day celebration after it was originally sighted.

    Comets are famously portentous omens, but an entire moon? Everyone in Khazraj calls it the Leaden Heresy, which all things considered is probably the best name for it. On the sunrise side of the continent, we call it the new moon. I remember my neighbours actually spoke to me, for the first time, during those first heady weeks when it appeared. The entire city of Ildathach was in uproar.

    Every seven days, you can see it pass overhead. It¡¯s tiny, but you can¡¯t miss it, especially when it traverses the sun. It¡¯s estimated at almost exactly eight miles above the ground: higher than the highest eagles, but low enough to occasionally brush underneath wispy cirrus clouds. Too high and too fast for airships, even ones with modern engine halos. Balloons are totally out of the question. In typical Ildathach fashion, our city has become jaded to its presence, and in the last six months the new moon has shifted from appalling portent to banal curiosity. It doesn¡¯t seem to do anything, or bother anyone. Talking about it, analysing it, trying to stop it- it¡¯s like trying to fight winter. So now, it is accepted.This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

    This is what makes Evin¡¯s obsession so unusual. Most of the city¡¯s gossip has graduated to more fecund snoopery- the sudden surge of noble rot in the waters around the Wraithwild, especially near the city of Brixa Thalaam, and rumblings of yet more unrest from bitter clans in the Aergan. It is not my habit to talk to other people, but even I¡¯m aware of the news. Until this little meeting, until Evin Tumble¡¯s unexpected zeal, the new moon was last season''s gossip.

    *

    ¡°I beg your pardon?¡±

    I¡¯m hiding my disbelief in conversational chaff, scrabbling for more time to think. He¡¯s all grins and fiery eyes. I place my lukewarm drink on the table, using the condensation from the base of the glass to outline an ordered, organised pattern on the wood. The timber under my hands is spotless, worn from decades of use, and I draw a small measure of comfort from its weight and its age.

    He repeats himself casually, absurdly. I delay again, with another conversation filler.

    ¡°You can¡¯t be serious.¡±

    He shrugs, good-naturedly. I wonder how much of the real Evin Tumble I¡¯ve met tonight, and how much of it is an act that he uses to talk to people like me. Underneath the casual hand-in-pocket slouch of an Ildathach gentleman, the dashing cut of his jacket, the fashionable hairstyling, the real him is down there, peering out at this conversation, hidden behind walls and walls of spectacle and bombast.

    One last try. ¡°But¡­ why?¡±

    There¡¯s a lull in as he digs through his satchel. I take a moment to inspect the crowd around us, relishing the pause in the conversation as Evin shifts focus. Most of the previously curious watchers from around the room have loosened their attention, instead opting to huddle into private conversations or hunch indifferently over their drinks. A group of out-of-place sailors cackles wildly in the centre of the lounge. I watch one slap another on the back, then slam a heavy fistful of spiral-stamped coins onto the bar before leering at the heavily bearded, blank-faced man serving her. She spins back to her group, face drawn into something between a sneer and a snarl, and for the first time I see the massive tattooed chevron crossing her face from temple to temple. She catches my eye and winks before cocking her head back to the barman and saying something that evokes another wave of grating guffaws from her crew.

    Evin uses a kerchief to scrub the already impeccable table and places something lustrous in front of me. Two somethings, actually. Daguerreotypes, mounted in a frame of some dark wood, one above the other. They show the same thing, at two different levels of magnification. The new moon, etched in breath-taking precision onto brilliant silver plates. I¡¯m impressed.

    ¡°You wouldn¡¯t believe how much of a pain in the arse it was to get these made. Or perhaps you would. I¡¯m sure you can appreciate the difficulty of tracking a moving object with a telescope, so on and so forth. Engineering and mathematics,¡± he wiggles his fingers in what I can only assume is a suitably mathematical pantomime. ¡°Anyway. Yes. The effects are rather breath-taking.¡±

    He¡¯s not wrong. I¡¯m almost afraid to touch the prints: they¡¯re metal, and obviously protected by a layer of what I can only assume is higher-quality glass, but I¡¯m reticent. Just the cost of making them is enough to give me pause. The fake moon, at least from these pictures, blossoms in on itself in a series of patterns, fractal forms that appear random from a distance, but sharpen into staggeringly complicated designs from the first picture to the second. It certainly looks nothing like our normal moon. Even in the second frame, the one that magnifies the lumpen mountain to such an extent that it frames only a portion of the thing¡¯s craggy face, I can see the patterns of precise lines blur into smudges right at the limits of the camera¡¯s resolution. They¡¯re familiar, impossibly. Nobody outside of the Wraithwild makes sigils even remotely similar to this, and these configurations are of a wholly alien dialect to the knotwork I¡¯m familiar with. But the intent is unmistakeable. Wards, charms, geometries, whatever your preferred nomenclature.

    I take a moment to drink in the pictures, momentarily forgetting my scepticism. His plan is ridiculous, yes, but these prints are magnificent. My frostiness clangs back down when he speaks again, when I remember he¡¯s there.

    ¡°We can estimate a few things from these pictures, you understand. Until Colt & Tumble was able to actually produce the images, we weren¡¯t particularly interested in the new moon. But you can see it clearly. It¡¯s not just a rock. We don¡¯t know what it is. But these areas here?¡± his hand circles a pair of outcroppings that, to me, simply look like the rest of the mass of the moon. ¡°Nickel. Iron. The new moon¡¯s small, obviously. But it¡¯s probably half the size of the city of Ildathach proper from what we can tell. Think about what that means. Just in mineral wealth.¡±

    Regretfully, I tug my gaze away from the reverie of the pictures and inwardly grimace at this gross normalisation of the miraculous. His casual framing of such a gorgeous thing in terms of vulgar revenue is jarring. We should be talking about magic, or mystery. Instead we¡¯re discussing money. He¡¯s a miser, ogling a painting, seeing only the gold in the frame.

    A few minutes ago, I wasn¡¯t even thinking about the damned moon. Now I¡¯m defending it.

    His pragmatism goads me into a response of some sort. I repeat what he said, moments earlier, reflecting these same blunt words back at him.

    ¡°So you¡¯re going to shoot it out of the sky. With a gun.¡±

    When he shrugs, he does so with his entire body. ¡°Well! It¡¯s not like we can fly that high with a balloon! And it¡¯s moving too quickly! And besides which, what would you rather do with it? Let someone from the Wraithwild or Khazraj catch it? Perhaps in our own side of the continent- someone from Yvreathe. Ys? Crowmere? I¡¯m from Crowmere, and I can¡¯t imagine how awful it would be if the princes got their hands on that. How about those animals from the Far Shore? I¡¯m sure they¡¯d want a piece of this prize.

    ¡°No. Iseult, it has to be us. Colt & Tumble, with the blessing of the Chaplain himself. It¡¯s going to happen, you understand. It¡¯s just a matter of if you want to be a part of it.¡±

    He¡¯s engrossing, I¡¯ll give him that. The flow of his charm is hardly stymied when he pauses to nonchalantly order something unusual-sounding from a passing waiter. Thus armed with a clay bottle of something that smells like liquorice and turpentine, he steers the conversation to other topics, deftly refilling both of our glasses. We talk for hours.

    *

    Later, I get a measure of the type of man that Evin Tumble is, after the contract has been signed. After the absinthe. Once he has what he wants from me, hints of the real Evin start to show from under the fa?ade.

    He drops the light flirtations as soon as I put my name to paper, though his industrial cheerfulness remains. No shadows on his face, or sinister, villainous cackling. His demeanour flattens, and I wonder if he is indeed younger than I am, or if he¡¯s simply done a tremendous job of screening his age with his barrels of confidence. I excuse myself well before midnight, and he doesn¡¯t protest or race to follow me. Doesn¡¯t even take his hand out of his pocket to bid me goodnight. When I step outside into the residual summer warmth, I am alone, save for the general crowds of Ildathach in the evening and the soaring light of the aurora overhead.

    Typical.

    The walk back to my flat is lonely, though to be honest the half hour or so that it would normally take is shortened and condensed by the amount of alcohol I¡¯ve just consumed. I find myself fumbling with the lock to the front door of my workshop, my free hand locked around the wicker cap of the tube that Evin gave me. Colt & Tumble¡¯s contract, now inked and rapidly drying in the scroll case tucked under my armpit. I sprawl onto my settee, fixating on the gleaming surface of the river outside my window. What have I gotten myself into.

    But, to be honest, that is a problem for my future self. For now, I sit in the dark, idly picking at the lid of the case, and watch warm lanterns sputter and flicker across the inky waters of the Ilda River.

    *

    It is clear that I forgot to draw my curtains, for the sunrise wakes me. In protest, I bury my head under the settee cushions and attempt to force myself back to sleep, to quell the hangover currently stewing the top of my skull.

    *

    It¡¯s still there.

    What was even the point of drinking that much. I never drink that much.

    I mourn, momentarily, and pretend it is for some reason nobler than the smouldering creaking in my temples. It didn¡¯t used to be like this. It took me almost a month to walk from to Ildathach, over a decade ago, after my disastrous first year in Brixa Thalaam. When I first arrived , I had work. Or, rather, I had to work. The drinking and the carousing only emerged in these past gentle years. And now I am here, and I am hungover. Before I can squash it, a floating accusation, a remnant of my parents, smothers a gentle and all-encompassing judgement over me.

    Something digs into my armpit. Scroll case.

    I am neither hungry nor happy. I am, however, outrageously thirsty, and stagger towards the water pot in the kitchen. The worn pump handle is cold, which is comforting. I open the case one-handed to unfurl the scroll, and my eyes blur over as I try to dissect the contract.

    Light slants in sideways through the window, and it is a simple enough thing to look at the scroll. On mornings like this, though, when one is forced to work against one¡¯s will, there¡¯s a particular unkind masochism in attempting to read unfamiliar legal text. Years ago, I would¡¯ve ploughed through it, reading the entire thing, understanding nothing. Now, headache permitting, I stare at the paper for about twenty minutes, hunting for the little tricks people in this city likes to spangle these documents with. Nothing, so far.

    It took me a year to gain fluency in Irdcheol. It¡¯s not tremendously different from Mutafasih, truth be told. But these people don¡¯t think like mine. Like everything written must be shorn, greatly or gently, of actual meaning. This contract is an excellent example, because it spreads over three pages what could be accomplished in three lines. Why does everything in Yvreathe have to exist outside of what people know, why can it not instead simply be what people say? Everything important becomes draped in these charades.

    This momentary flare of anger dispels my hangover, momentarily. It returns as my irritation subsides. It¡¯s hard to focus on the contract.

    I remember a night from my childhood, waking to a Wraithwild sunrise. I remember sitting up to see the silhouette of my father breathing deeply in the empty breeze, the vista before him magnificent and desolate and empty. He had turned, and smiled, and his face bore the wear and love of centuries.

    The hangover cackles in the roof of my skull. This sullenness is probably just wreckage in my blood, left from the absinthe.

    My attention span leaves me. I slump back in the chair, contract now held in two gently quivering hands. I close my eyes and think.

 Chapter 2: Sean

    Sean

    Thumbs beneath the blade, eight fingers on top. Have patience, and have faith that what you¡¯re doing is actually helping. Take a moment to clear the iron scrapings from the axe head, as the build-up clogs the whetstone. My mother taught me the ritual, back in Llancreg, when she showed me how to sharpen my first axe.

    This is not my axe, sadly. The small hatchet that I keep beside my equally diminutive fireplace is barely the length of my forearm, and is weighted in a way that would¡¯ve made my parents laugh. The blade in my hand is a woodman¡¯s tool, borrowed from my friend Drustan, who was at first insulted when I asked if his tools were sharpened, during yesterday¡¯s luncheon. I told him about the ritual, and he¡¯d returned to our next meeting with a glint in his eyes and a bagful of battered tools.

    Pure meditation is tricky. I¡¯ve never been good at it. I used to be forced to practice, and wasted hours and hours of my childhood trying. Losing yourself in a menial task though- that¡¯s much easier. Wish my father had taught me that, instead of telling me to just will myself into thoughtlessness.

    You draw the blade over the stone, you lift it, and you trust time and repetition will take care of the rest.

    Twenty minutes later, I pause to take care of the pot of coffee bubbling on the miniscule embers of a breakfast fire. It¡¯s brass, a personal pot, filled with the good grinds from Hubal. The type that¡¯s so thick you can stand a spoon in it. This coffee is a palate cleanser for this week¡¯s dragging afternoons, which have been drenched in the weak, newly fashionable drinks from the Far Coast. I seize the cup by a delicate handle and gently pour myself a tiny measure.

    When I take the axe head under my hands, I can feel the difference in the steel. I run my finger down its flat, shaving-flecked face, and take a moment to pause and change stones to a finer grit. The conversation Drustan and I had yesterday bubbles forth, occupying the hollow space in my thoughts that the meditation carves.

    *

    He¡¯s skewered the yellow fruit, a firm and succulent thing the size of an eyeball, on a delicate fork. Sir Drustan Tilian speaks with the particular irony of a socialite, the class of men who scrabble at all times to be in a state of nonchalant dismissal. We¡¯re past the point in our friendship where he perpetually employs sarcasm as a replacement for actually being clever. But that reflexive sardonic attitude does re-emerge, from time to time.

    ¡°As in, rhymes with potato? The creatures of the Far Coast are very creative with their names.¡±

    He pops it into his mouth and chews with a dramatic, thoughtful expression.

    After a moment he frowns and reaches for a wine glass. ¡°A bit watery, truth be told. Perhaps not for me.¡±

    I shrug. This theatre isn¡¯t for me, anyway- there¡¯s a party at the table behind me, three ladies, one of whom, Miss Ciara O¡¯Sullivan, I met at a greyhound race last year. Two of them have dyed their hair with quicklime, and are wearing their braids and baubles in Crowmere chic. They¡¯re the only other occupied table in Birch¡¯s, and Drustan is taking advantage of the atmosphere of rakish bachelorness that he drags around with him. I am in a similar social standing, of course, though am generally less inclined to advertise. Besides which, Drustan looks like his father, and most of the sort of people in his circles and his circles¡¯ circles are aware of the Tilian family, and their political prowess. I actually knew his cousin, from my childhood; almost all of the wool in ounceland Llancreg eventually ends up in one of the Tilian clans¡¯ far-flung storehouses.

    Drustan, of course, didn¡¯t grow up in Llancreg. The idea of him being within five yards of a sheep is hilarious.

    Conversely, most people in Ildathach aren¡¯t particularly familiar with my family. The artful ones claim some familiarity, trusting that their bravado and my politeness will carry them through any potentially dire social awkwardness.

    Birch¡¯s is surprisingly empty, for a weekday afternoon. Drustan, half-splayed across from me, is a slight man, and lounges imperiously in his luxurious chair. His lapel is pinned with a citrine-studded orchid, and his close-cropped red hair matches the hall¡¯s wallpaper quite charmingly. The two of us, sat in dark suits and bright cravats, make a matched pair in the centre of the room. We¡¯ve been presented with a charming spread of slightly more unusual foods, spices and ingredients that are on the forefront of Ildathach vogue. While he¡¯s concluding his little inspection of the fruit, I take a moment to attack my own dish- a collection of chicken livers, stewed in Far Coast spices. Once it¡¯s clear that he is no longer performing for the women behind us, and we can have an actual conversation, I offer a correction.

    ¡°Well, the actual Tecuani name is unpronounceable. And they, of course, would never eat it. Also, these aren¡¯t from Cabochon. They¡¯re hothouse grown, just outside Ildathach. I don¡¯t think these could survive the journey from the Far Coast.¡±

    He leans back, savouring the wine and the sunshine falling through the immense skylights that are the hallmark of Birch¡¯s dining hall. Two other fruits sit on the salad plate before him, like little golden baubles. I demolish my chicken in the time it takes for him to take several desultory pokes at the rest of his meal.

    I personally don¡¯t join in his condescension. As far as I¡¯m concerned, the fruits are delicious. I don¡¯t say this, of course, because that is a certain gaucheness you reserve for private conversations, when your friend is not trying to attract the attention of three women. When the waitress collects our plates at the end of the second course, the tomatoes are still lolling on the tiny island of salad that Drustan has left them on. Her face does not betray her opinions on his wastefulness. My own plate is desolate in comparison.

    Drustan clears his throat, and looks at me meaningfully.

    ¡°So have you given the matter any thought?¡± I have, for weeks now.

    ¡°Not a tremendous deal,¡± I lie, ¡°it all seems rather uncouth.¡±

    Drustan barks out a brief, needlessly piercing laugh. He dabs at the corner of his mouth with a white kerchief before absentmindedly running a finger down the length of the cravat at his throat.

    ¡°Oh it most certainly is. But hardly more vulgar than spending all day training the Constabulary, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    I¡¯m still not entirely sure what Drustan actually does with his days. Sir Drustan and I are technically peers, though were there to be any sort of social calculus performed to determine our precise social standings I would fall significantly short. He is the sort of gentleman who tends to make his money by having a lot of money.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    ¡°Certainly more vulgar. And without any of the benefits either.¡±

    A light, obvious tittering from behind us. The ladies are returning the signal from Drustan¡¯s slightly-too-loud guffaw.

    ¡°Well,¡± he drawls, ¡°it would only be a fortnight or so. And I must correct you, dear Sean, because travelling with Lady Keir does have certain benefits.¡±

    My eyebrows ratchet to their highest possible position. He continues, with a gleam in his eye. ¡°Being in the Lady¡¯s graces may bring with it certain social benefits. She is more than capable of performing the Ysian excursion herself, I assure you, though sometimes she desires company. Safety in numbers, and all that.¡±

    ¡°Trailblazing through a boreal forest, praying to not be ambushed and feasted upon by quick-elms, then cultivating chilblains on some forsaken mountaintop near Ys does sound more romantic when you phrase it like that.¡±

    I finish the sentence with a flourish of overexaggerated hand-signs, imitating Ysian talk.

    His grins, and his eyes linger on a point just to the right of my shoulder, to the audience he has now engaged with. When he raises his glass in a mock toast, he does so with a wolfish grin.

    ¡°Well then, shall I add you to the coterie? Lady Keir does prefer these matters to be organised. Though we¡¯d have to do something about your tremendously boring personality. The Ysians won¡¯t know what to do with you.¡±

    I roll my eyes. ¡°I appreciate the offer, Drustan, but for now I¡¯ll pass. Perhaps next time the Lady would like to hunt a gwyll, she will think of me.¡±

    He toasts the air, and adopts a pained expression. ¡°Surely you¡¯re far too young to be this dull.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not dull. I just don¡¯t enjoy your sort of sport.¡±

    ¡°Ah, well. More for me then, I suppose. When you die, you ought to donate your body for schoolchildren to gawk at. ¡®Behold, industry¡¯s latest and most fiendish creation: the most boring man in Yvreathe.¡¯¡±

    Dessert arrives, courtesy of our solemn waitress. A thick, gorgeous blancmange. Drustan generally pecks tepidly at his appetisers and main courses, but he is likely one of Ildathach¡¯s champion dessert eaters.

    We finish the meal and he hands me a heavy burlap sack, which clanks heavily against my knees after I accept it. After we¡¯ve said our goodbyes, he circles and swoops back to the table behind us. I gather my hat from the front of the hall and walk out into the Ildathach streets.

    *

    A shadow, deeper than the rest, passes the window above my head. It is accompanied by several light footsteps. A doorknocker from Saint Mantis¡¯, maybe. Or an inkseller. I detach, sadly, from the memory of Birch¡¯s. I am about to don my politeness, but pause when I hear a familiar voice.

    ¡°Whelan? Whelan!¡±

    A woman¡¯s voice, recognisable. Presumably she¡¯s also the one now hammering on my front door, rattling it in its ill-fitted frame.

    ¡°Sean. It¡¯s Iseult. Open your door.¡±

    Oh, right. I stand from my workbench, carefully placing the whetstone and the axe head onto the battered table. I remember, perhaps a second or two too late, how Iseult generally approaches problems.

    ¡°Wait, don¡¯t pull too-¡°

    That cracking noise is my door handle being pulled directly out of its housing. I close my eyes for a fraction of a second and debate whether to be upset at Iseult for breaking my door, or upset at myself for never fixing it.

    ¡°Sean. Open the door. It¡¯s me.¡±

    I can hear her much more clearly now, because she¡¯s flicked open my letterbox and is trying to talk to me directly through it. I cross the rest of the room in a few steps.

    ¡°Hello Iseult. Would you please step back a moment.¡±

    I hear her shuffle backwards, and I unlatch both deadbolts and let the door swing open.

    Iseult Morrin. Well, technically, Isr¨¡ Mahrin- a name change that resulted from the clash between her pride in retaining her heritage and her impatience in having Ildathach tongues stumble over her real name. It took me weeks to get it right, and she rolled her eyes every day I practiced. Even afterwards, once we¡¯d known each other for several months, she¡¯d still asked me to use her adopted name, as if my attempts were still, somehow, offensive.

    I haven¡¯t seen her in years.

    She¡¯s brimming with an unexpected and uncharacteristic enthusiasm. She¡¯s also missing the accoutrements she wore the when I first met her, those months in the Aergan. No more hood, no more veil- and most jarringly, no more firearm. Her attitude seems more genial that I remember, but I¡¯m surprised by how little her appearance has changed. There are a handful of grey streaks at her temples. More lines in her face than I remember, and the cut of her city clothes is more refined than it used to be, but she looks otherwise the same. With some people, the change of years is wrought upon them all at once, and a few years can age them a decade or more. Not so with Iseult. Or perhaps she always looked like this, always occupied a special place in my mind: a woman of deep, sharp lines.

    The blurred ink of the tattoo that covers her lower face and neck, from the edge of her mouth to her ear, has faded slightly. It plunges down her neck, hidden by an unfashionable dress, stopping somewhere around her clavicles.

    She¡¯s holding a piece of my door in one hand.

    Despite this, I am delighted to see her. We embrace. I grin as she awkwardly waves the door handle at me as well, and motion for her to step inside.

    ¡°Come in! Come in. I was just finishing up.¡±

    I have absolutely no idea how she knew where I lived, though I learned some time ago not to question Iseult when she manifests these small marvels. As I wave her inside, she shucks off her shoes and her coat, and looks around for an unoccupied rack to hang it upon. My home is, by the standards of an Ildathach gentleman, fairly empty. The deadbolts click back into their housing, and my door returns to its normal state of rattling at every mild breeze that passes through my open windows. She offers me the door handle, and I take it without protest and slip it into one of my pockets. Another problem to be dealt with later.

    She peers around my empty flat, and fails to hide the look of disappointment. She was never good at subtlety. A second later, she straightens, like she has just remembered something. Her hand darts to one of those slick black pouches she¡¯s always carrying, and just as I remember, it is filled with an assortment of specialised tools. Cooked garlic sausages, bread, a glass jar filled with amber whisky. I smile. She remembers.

    Theoretically she moves in at least some of my circles, though I haven¡¯t seen her since our time in the Aergan. Actually seeing Iseult Morrin attend a social event would be astonishing. But, of course, she likely either ignored or refused the invitations which flooded her letterbox for months, and over time the rumours and the stories of the gunner in the Aergan would have been churned by other social fodder. We start chatting, and by the strange charm of friendship it is as if no time has passed at all- no awkwardness swells to fill the gulf of years. She seems more comfortable, too. Her language has shifted: her bearing, softened.

    I pour her a cup of coffee, gesture for her to sit on my single dining chair, and we reminisce, meandering through several familiar topics, skipping over more private ones. My health, my jobs, her recent contracts, reminiscing about the war. The longer we chat, the more I notice that the Ildathach habits that she has adopted over the last few years are just part of a superficial veneer. Bits of the old Iseult begin to assert themselves throughout the conversation, peppered flecks of stubbornness and impatience. I¡¯m glad of that, at least.

    An hour later, she finally arrives at the reason behind her visit. ¡°I¡¯ve got a commission. I want you to help me.¡±

    ¡°You know I can¡¯t do much with sigilry or sortilege-¡°

    She shakes her head, spilling dark auburn hair over her shoulders.

    ¡°Not like that. Not just my type of work. More like the old days. Minus the fighting, probably. One job, just to collect a shipment. Also, yes, some sigil work, but that¡¯s for me, not for you. Apparently they can¡¯t do it themselves, easily. And look,¡± she pulls out a slick sable envelope and waves it at me. ¡°Twenty percent, up front. Tell me that¡¯s not interesting.¡±

    I frown. Iseult is not naturally a trusting person. She continues, ignoring me. ¡°It¡¯s for Colt & Tumble.¡±

    Not an answer that really explains things. I already recognised the envelope, anyway, that distinctive flashy combination of grey wax and midnight stationary.

    ¡°So what¡¯s the job?¡±

    She grins because she knows I¡¯m in. Of course I¡¯m in. She also knows that I have to pretend to be convinced.

    ¡°We¡¯re sailing to Brixa Thalaam.¡±

    I raise my eyebrows, and hazard a question. ¡°To visit your-¡±

    ¡°No,¡± she frowns, as if she hadn¡¯t considered that option. ¡°Not them. I doubt they¡¯d be anywhere near the city, these days. We¡¯re going to Brixa Thalaam to meet with one of Colt & Tumble¡¯s ¡®consultants¡¯. A man by the name of ¨¡breen il Kutrib.¡± She says it without hesitation, and it takes me a moment to parse the Thalaami syllables. ¡°He¡¯s got a package for us- five tonnes of Wraithwild oleum. We¡¯re going to bring it back here, to Ildathach. For some reason, it¡¯s tricky for them to send their own people.¡±

    I nod, pontificating. ¡°Makes sense. Colt & Tumble has been rubbing the wrong shoulders in Crowmere. And near Ys. There¡¯s a bit of a thing going on, between Wynne Colt and the shipping cartels. You know what it¡¯s been like since Gallowglass and Grimm managed to secure the tax rights in the docks from their services during the war. I think that scene last week in the Malachite Rooms was something to do with her- Wynne Colt, I mean, and one of the Vardon & Company¡­¡± she stares at me, eyes very gently defocusing. ¡°Anyway,¡± I hastily add ¡°it might not be the best time for them to send too many ships abroad, either by air or by sea. They¡¯d want to hire out.¡±

    ¡°Right.¡± She says, dragging her attention back to the conversation. ¡°They¡¯ve got a ship for us as well. Apparently we¡¯re an add-on to an existing cargo trip. Fine. Once we¡¯ve gotten the shipment, we¡¯ll sail back to Ildathach, and get the rest of the payment.¡±

    This is already more interesting than anything I¡¯ve heard in the last few months. ¡°Do you know the name of the ship?¡± Iseult shakes her head and winces. ¡°Can¡¯t remember. I know it¡¯s written down in the contract.¡± Shame. I might¡¯ve known the captain.

    ¡°Alright, fine. Why do they need five tonnes of oleum? What are they going to do, burn down a mountain?¡±

    A grin from ear to ear.

 Chapter 3: é“†de

    ¨ªde

    In his letter, Mister Tumble told me to meet him in Jejune at noon, so I arrived half an hour early and circled the neighbourhood for fifteen minutes. I¡¯ve already clambered up a ladder that demarcates the dividing line between the half of Ildathach that has already been raised above river-level and the half that has not, and am now firmly in an elevated, and therefore wealthy, part of the city. The meeting place is across the street from me and is tremendously and improbably daunting. I check, for the fifth time, that it is the right place. It is, of course; each of the dull gold capitals that spell out THE TARNISHED MINISTER are set in hand-sized typeface over its juggernaut doorframe.

    I grew up in Ildathach, and have lived her my entire life, but I¡¯ve never been in this exact part of the Jejune district. Some of Jejune, the docks, I know. But down these little alleys, past the clusters of buildings that pop up to accommodate the various mariners and longshoremen of the docks, I¡¯m a little out of my element.

    The caf¨¦ looms on a corner, built in that post-Calamity style of intensely baroque fractalism. I¡¯m struck with the idea that I can¡¯t get a full picture of the building¡¯s fa?ade in my head, as it is so entirely crammed with baroque crenellations and detailing. The building was probably white when it was new, and is now greying gently. On this soggy summer day the overall effect is an air of subdued dignity, one that could easily collapse to shabbiness with a change of the light. I march towards the great wooden doors, run my hands over the needlessly large bronze rivets embedded into their bulk, and push them open.

    After entering the Tarnished Minister, now only about a quarter of an hour early, I sit on one of the oversized crimson sofas in the foyer and try to peek past the sneering, owl-like host into the lounge beyond. He scrutinises me for half a moment before deciding to ignore me. I can¡¯t see Mister Tumble¡¯s broad figure anywhere in the depths of the caf¨¦. This is hardly surprising, as the low light and the shisha smoke make it difficult to make out any details of the clientele.

    This is not my personal preference for meeting location. Judging from the clothing that the few patrons I can see are wearing, my fears of being overdressed are completely unfounded. I smooth my skirt and settle in to wait.

    The couch I¡¯m slowly submerging into is worn to the point of cracking, and exceedingly comfortable. I¡¯m cosy, and the inside of the Tarnished Minister is redolent with the warm smells of tobacco and coffee. Years of use has dyed everything a pleasant sepia- the walls, the carpet, the small gilded portrait of Saint Barely. Traditional and totally indecipherable Saint-hieroglyphs have been carefully inscribed under her frowning face. A cuckoo clock is mounted on the wall across from me, flanked by immense hothouse plants. Its face is worn and clean, carved in churning lines that mimic early uncharmed knotwork. I watch the filigreed tin hands twitch with every second, caught in the hidden gearing of the machine. The hand is released, finally, and leaps a minute closer to twelve. Three minutes until my meeting.

    A couple sweeps in through the entranceway, bringing with them a momentary burst of street ruckus before the heavy doors once again gently slide shut. Both are tall, confident, and older than me. The host stiffens at the interruption, then smiles thinly at them as they approach. The man, an Ildathach gentleman, glances at me for a moment, and I look away before he notices me watching. The woman, who wears a scowl on her walnut complexion, doesn¡¯t look at me at all. I glimpse a flash of darker flesh at her neck and chin, a regular mottled pattern that looks like some sort of skin disorder.

    The woman steps forward and speaks in a low murmur to the host. He nods emphatically, slick coiffed hair barely shifting on his suddenly enthusiastic head.

    The trio disappear into the caf¨¦. I continue waiting patiently for Mister Tumble.

    Eleven minutes past the hour, he still hasn¡¯t arrived. The enormous glass skylights of the Tarnished Minister trap the heat in the front of the caf¨¦, and both the host and I have lines of sweat ringing our shirt collars. The huge, leafy plants on the lobby are certainly enjoying the heat, though we two are sadly not. He looks up contemptuously as I shift minutely on the couch, doing his best to convey a sneer with only his eyes. I sigh and go back to waiting. Another ten minutes pass, and I stare at the barely cracked beige paint on the walls with all the intensity I can muster, trying to will Mister Tumble into existence.

    My focus is interrupted by a polite cough. It is the host, and he is staring at me, purposefully. I half rise.

    ¡°Are you perhaps waiting for someone?¡±

    I stammer out a response and cringe at my own uncertainty.

    ¡°I¡¯m here to meet Mister Tumble.¡±

    ¡°I beg your pardon? You must speak up.¡±

    ¡°I said I¡¯m here to meet Mister Evin Tumble.¡±

    The corner of his mouth twitches. His eyebrows begin migrating, from their base resting point as the lintel of his sneer to higher, more suspect grounds. They slowly rise up his face, before reaching their apex, a position of maximum possible contempt. I watch as he moves a finger theatrically down what must be a ledger on his small plinth. The pettiness is striking, the scorn that oozes from the tyrant of this tiny principality, lord of the entrance to a coffee lounge.

    ¡°I¡¯m terribly sorry,¡± he almost yawns the words out. ¡°But there appears to be no Evin Tumble on the list today. Is it possible you are mistaken?¡±

    My palms start sweating. I jerkily stand, caught halfway between indignation and politeness. Is this a test of some sort?

    ¡°Can you- can you check again, please? Evin Tumble? As in Colt & Tumble?¡±

    A delicately raised eyebrow.

    ¡°Ah, yes, Colt & Tumble. Why didn¡¯t you say so? They¡¯ve already arrived, you must have been waiting for quite some time.¡±

    I swallow my fear back down. How can I be late? I was early!

    ¡°Follow me, please.¡±

    The host leads me into the depths of the Tarnished Minister. Past the glorious, skylit box of the entryway, the caf¨¦ descends rapidly into a dim, smoke-filled chamber. I watch a man blow a great cloud of fragrant scarlet smoke into the air, his eyes matte and listless in the muted light. Another table, host to a raucous party, laughs over canapes and pots of beer. We weave in and out of thickets of wicker chairs, board games, and a score of sharply dressed men and women.

    Near the back of the cavernous hall, far enough away from the windows that they¡¯re actually illuminated by a small candle, I see the couple from earlier arguing animatedly. Neither of them notice us as we approach.

    The man, wielding a wooden waterpipe hose in one hand and gesticulating wildly with the other, has hung his coat on a nearby rack and has rolled up his shirtsleeves. The waving hand is highlighted by muted flashes from a blackened brass ring, which catches in the dim light here in the back of the caf¨¦. His beard is short, razor-groomed in a style similar to how the boys at the university sport their own. Compared to his partner, who is gaunt and almost completely still, he is both massive and vibrant. The cravat wrapped around his throat is splashed with a gorgeous emerald pattern, the only unusual touch clothing amidst his gentleman¡¯s attire. He glances up at us as we advance and flashes me a smile.

    His companion doesn¡¯t acknowledge us. She¡¯s dissecting a chicken leg with a firm precision, thin, tattooed fingers gripped hard around the filigreed pewter cutlery. If she¡¯s bothered by her companion¡¯s tobacco cloud then she¡¯s not showing it. Her face is set in a neutral scowl, and she seems content to allow the gentleman to continue his gesticulations and his story. What I thought before was some sort of strange shadow or possibly skin disease reveals itself to be an immense tattoo, running in a gentle arc from the corners of her mouth to her ears. The ink covers half of her face and her entire throat, which is almost wholly black. Thin, blurry lines, simple letters and geometries that I recognise as Bani Yathrib script, curve down her neck and face and disappear beneath her clothes.

    ¡°-which is why you should just not bother with it- oh, hello.¡±

    He¡¯s been watching me as we approach. She has too, but her gaze is far colder than his, and my neck bristles with the sensation of being studied.

    Our attendant leaves me without a word. He marches haughtily back towards his kingdom at the front of the cafe, leaving me alone with the couple. The woman replaces her knife and fork, and dabs patiently at her mouth with a checked kerchief. She regards me with a cool stare.

    ¡°You¡¯re late.¡±

    I laugh, forcing it just slightly. I stop when I see she¡¯s not smiling. ¡°I don¡¯t see why that¡¯s funny,¡± she continues.

    She¡¯s not really blinking, and her eyes reflect the candlelight in a flat predator¡¯s stare. Her companion coughs.

    ¡°Iseult, she was sat in the entrance when we got here.¡±

    I look at him, and he inhales an immense lungful from the waterpipe before standing smoothly and smiling. ¡°Please! Let me find you a seat. I¡¯m Sean Whelan. From ounceland Llancreg, on the Aergan border.¡± He shakes my hand with a respectful grip, though his hand feels like a block of wood. There¡¯s a barely noticeable strain in his voice, from speaking with a lungful of tobacco. He gestures towards the woman, who hasn¡¯t taken her eyes off of me. ¡°And this,¡± he blows an immense cloud of topaz smoke into the air above us, ¡°is Iseult Morrin. Bani Yathrib mathematician, from the Wraithwild.¡±

    She nods at me, and my shock that it¡¯s her, the gunner, ricochets entirely off of her disinterested frown. She seems content to let Mister Whelan talk, which suits me perfectly. He places the pipe down and casually passes me an unwieldy wicker chair from a nearby table.This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    ¡°I take it you¡¯re the second sigilist. Iseult here brought me up to speed. Don¡¯t know a lot about you, other than the fact that Evin seems to think highly of you.¡±

    There¡¯s a long pause, until I realise that that was an invitation to speak.

    ¡°I- oh. Yes. Hello. I¡¯m ¨ªde. ¨ªde Ceallaigh. Just finishing my apprenticeship at Saint Listless¡¯ College. I got a letter from Mister Tumble, he explained his idea,¡± his utterly insane idea, to hunt and kill a piece of the sky, ¡°and asked for me to meet here. Is that how you two met?¡± Here I gesticulate vaguely with both of my hands.

    ¡°No.¡± Miss Morrin speaks, before Mister Whelan can open his mouth. ¡°Evin came to me in a lounge. He recruited me. I recruited Sean.¡±

    I need to make a good impression.

    ¡°Yes, well, that means we¡¯re going to be working together! I¡¯m very sorry, forgive me, but are you¡­ the Iseult Morrin?¡±

    They share a look. Iseult chooses to ignore my question completely.

    ¡°Why did Evin decide on you?¡±

    Is this how this sort of business is normally done? ¡°What do you mean?¡±

    She doesn¡¯t repeat herself, and chooses instead to raise her eyebrows and lean back to rest her chin on the palm of her loose fist. Her curled fingers almost obscure the huge tattoo that runs across her face, and I wish the lighting was better so I could see the letters and shapes carved into her skin.

    ¡°I think what Iseult means, ¨ªde, is that she would like to hear more about you.¡±

    Mister Whelan¡¯s affability is an almost exact reversal of his partner¡¯s demeanour. He gives me a friendly smile before taking a considerable, bubbling pull from the shisha. The act doesn¡¯t diminish his smile at all.

    ¡°I, uh, I was contacted by Colt & Tumble two weeks ago. By letter, but delivered by an actual employee. She made it very clear I was to read the contents quite seriously. I actually finished my studies at Saint Listless¡¯ College a few months ago, but am concluding my research, which has taken longer than normal. So I¡¯m a sigilist, but not technically graduated, not yet. I wrote a small paper,¡±

    ¡°With which professor?¡± Iseult butts in, frowning.

    ¡°Professor Laird.¡±

    She relaxes.

    ¡°Anyway, I wrote a small paper,¡±

    ¡°On what topic?¡± Again, an interruption. Saints.

    ¡°Calorific rays.¡± I spit out, irritated. If she wants to be boorish, I can be as well. ¡°Do you know what that is?¡±

    Miss Morrin nods, blank-faced. ¡°Yes.¡±

    Oh.

    Mister Whelan shrugs, full-gestured, with his shoulders. He breathes out a stream of citrine fog. ¡°Well I¡¯ve got no idea what a ¡®calorific ray¡¯ is.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s, ah. Well. If you draw or etch a light sigil, yes, it makes warmth, right? And then depending on how you configure the sigil, which architectures you decide to employ, what materials, how good your focus is, you can make a lot of heat, right?¡±

    He nods, smiling. Iseult tilts her head. I press on, and begin to gather sureness as I explain this very familiar topic.

    ¡°Anyway, you make a light sigil. Say using a Belenus architecture. Could probably get a very weak written on this table, if you gave me a few minutes. Would have to take the tablecloth off first, though. You make a basic one, let it activate, and then you take a prism, a, uh, a triangular piece of polished glass, and you place it next to the charm. And, well, you¡¯ll notice that the light that comes out of the sigil splits itself into different colours. It makes a little portable rainbow. Red through violet.¡±

    They¡¯re both staring at me.

    ¡°So, yes, this rainbow. Um. If you measure the temperature of the light, all the way across the spectrum, you¡¯ll find that it¡¯s hottest at a certain point. At a point just beyond where the prism stops showing light that you can see.¡±

    Mister Whelan¡¯s genial head bobbing doesn¡¯t stop. But Miss Morrin raises her eyebrows. She speaks.

    ¡°Light that you can¡¯t see, yet is there. I knew I¡¯d read the name Elspeth Laird somewhere. I read her paper two weeks ago. She discovered calorific rays.¡±

    I did, but she published the research. ¡°Yes! Well, we all did. Without Doctor Laird¡¯s guidance, I never would have developed the experiment. Anyway. That¡¯s the most interesting thing we¡¯ve discovered in the past three months. Colt & Tumble must be interested in¡­ something like that. The light beyond the light. I¡¯m not sure.¡±

    I breathe deeply. I think I did a good job. Mister Whelan glances over at his partner for just a moment, then turns back to me and changes the subject.

    ¡°To answer your question, ¨ªde, yes. She¡¯s the same Iseult Morrin as the one you¡¯re thinking of.¡±

    My first thought is that she looks nothing like her portrait. I decide not to say it, and she speaks instead.

    ¡°I know I don¡¯t look like the woodcut.¡± Oh Saints, can she read minds? ¡°But many people in Ildathach weren¡¯t particularly interest in this face,¡± she gestures, simply, bracelets flashing in the gloom. ¡°Or in a Bani Yathrib name. Preferred their celebrities to be more local. So, for now, Iseult Morrin. All the stories you¡¯ve heard are probably wrong.¡±

    Not a mind reader then, luckily. I nod along, afraid to say something that will shatter the fragile civility I¡¯ve managed to maintain with her. Iseult Morrin. One of the four thousand. I wonder if Mister Whelan was with her in the Aergan, then. He certainly looks the part.

    ¡°Have you ever built an enormous gun and killed a low-flying moon before?¡± Mister Whelan sets his waterpipe down and leans in close, brow furrowed.

    ¡°I, uh. Not. Not as such, no.¡±

    He grins, agreeably. ¡°I should hope not. Still feels a bit strange saying it, though I know some people in Khazraj who would be very interested in the idea. Not as good with the actual shooting part though.¡±

    Miss Morrin frowns. ¡°Yes, but more pleasant to work with. And better sigilists. Generally. But your college, ¨ªde, Saint Listless¡¯. Part of the new knotwork movement. I¡¯ve heard good things. More structure than those Wine Party lunatics.¡±

    ¡°The College is doing our best to reconcile the two types of knotwork. Sun-sigils and death charms both. I myself have been doing a lot of research,¡± I blurt out. ¡°Not just the calorific rays. I mean, that¡¯s the most famous part. But that¡¯s not my research. It¡¯s just something that Doctor Laird told me to do. It¡¯s what she¡¯s interested in.¡± I gather myself. ¡°Honestly, though, I¡¯m significantly more interested in different configurations.¡±

    ¡°More Belenus architectures?¡± She asks, amused.

    ¡°No. Not that. Three dimensionality.¡±

    She delicately replaces her cutlery on the table, and dabs at her mouth with a chequered serviette. The white and red cloth juxtaposes the inky darkness of her tattoos. ¡°That¡¯s abnormal.¡±

    ¡°Yes. But certainly possible. The mathematics is challenging, yes. And the actual act of sculpture is¡­ slippery. Technically much more difficult than normal knotwork. But we know that scrimshawing is possible- I mean, the Bani Yathrib are famous for it!¡±

    She does not react at all to this statement. ¡°And have you managed to actually create something slippery?¡±

    ¡°Well¡­ no.¡± At this, Miss Morrin leans back into her chair. ¡°But,¡± I continue, ¡°I¡¯m close. I think. I¡¯m going to get it sooner rather than later.¡±

    Mister Whelan smiles gently after taking a tremendous pull from his waterpipe. He gives me an encouraging nod, breathing out a gout of yellow smoke, and his colleague speaks. ¡°Well, let us know when you make any progress. There¡¯s an idea amongst my people that sigilists- or, human sigilists- aren¡¯t capable of creating any sort of true knotwork like that. Brains don¡¯t work like that. Only the Tecuani on the Far Coast can manage it, and they¡¯re hardly interested. Etching designs on the surface of a bullet is one thing. Making an entire sculpture that acts as a single sigil is another.

    ¡°Still, interesting. Or, perhaps, at least more interesting than you were before. Discovering a type of light that you cannot see, that nonetheless transfers energy- I think most people would not find this as curious as you or I do. I wonder if that¡¯s why Tumble invited you onto our little expedition.¡±

    She hasn¡¯t changed her countenance at all. The words are friendlier, but her face might as well be acid-etched. Miss Morrin continues, after pausing for a single sip of water.

    ¡°What do you know about the other partner? Colt?¡±

    I swallow, and squeak out the truth. ¡°I don¡¯t know anything about him.¡±

    ¡°Her,¡± says Mister Whelan, gently. ¡°Wynne Colt. And I wouldn¡¯t worry about it too much. She¡¯s by far the quieter of the two, and does most of the heavy lifting in terms of actually running Colt & Tumble. Evin is for flash. Her dad actually started the whole show, but he retired a few years back. She¡¯s half Aergan. Not really one for socialising.¡±

    There¡¯s nothing else for me to say, so I nod politely and enthusiastically. When it is clear that no more information is forthcoming, Iseult abruptly changes the topic.

    ¡°The job, as it stands, is relatively straightforward. We¡¯re going meet with one of the ships chartered with Colt & Tumble¡¯s, the Gundog Walking, in five days. After boarding the vessel, we¡¯re going to sail to Brixa Thalaam, to deliver some cargo to an office there and onboard various sundries. We,¡± and here she points to herself and Mister Whelan, ¡°specifically are going to visit one of Evin Tumble¡¯s associates in Brixa Thalaam, and will collect a specific cargo from him. Five tonnes of oleum. You do know what that is, correct?¡± She addressed that to me. I nod.

    ¡°Chemical harvested from specific trees in the Wraithwild. Mostly from,¡± I realise what I¡¯m saying as I recite what I learned in school, staring at Miss Morrin¡¯s tattoos, ¡°Bani Yathrib tribes. Who then sell the residue, as a form of resin, to Brixa Thalaam. The residue is refined through a process that the Thalaamis have never shared with the outside world to create oleum, which has unique characteristics. Including exploding.¡±

    Iseult looks at me for a long moment, then nods once. ¡°We¡¯re going to sail back here, deliver everything to Colt & Tumble, and then get paid.¡±

    I nod, then ten seconds later, after Mister Whelan starts telling a story about someone whose name I missed, I frown.

    Five tons?

    *

    The meal is superb. I did not order anything, and was afraid to offer my opinion when Mister Whelan asked what I¡¯d like to eat. A plate in a place like this could cost far more than a day¡¯s food for my mother and my brothers, and my scholarship barely covered my lodgings, let alone extravagant meal bills.

    He refused to accept my payment, either, and instead covered the entire cost with a single note. The food did not stop, directed at Mister Whelan¡¯s behest. After he had summoned an attendant, Mister Whelan had squinted at me for a moment, as if in deep consideration. "Perhaps- ah, no. I''ll not pretend to know you well enough. I''ll order the game, then. Bison? It''s very agreeable!" He detailed this to the waiter, flanking it with a flurry of other requests before I could sputter forth a response of any kind. I wanted to decline politely, to protect my politeness and my wallet in equal measures, but was unable to do so.

    Cod, a salty fillet of some sort of fish, chicken soup, three pork pies. Pigeons, some sort of bread, a roasted fruit from the Far Coast. Bison. Apricots. He mentioned most of them by their full names, and the sauces, and even told us a little story about the whisky he ordered. This may have been normal behaviour for Mister Whelan, because Miss Morrin seemed entirely unphased by these actions. I, however, listened and ate to a degree that I had rarely done before, and was far beyond the level of comfortably full when dessert, a cube of jelly and port, eclipsed the table.

    I wonder what my family would think about this. I¡¯ve never seen this variety of food in one place. I¡¯m fairly certain my brothers would at the very least act like miniature versions of Mister Whelan. My mother might actually be too taken aback, or too polite, to touch the food at all.

    Sometime afterwards, when Miss Morrin had excused herself, Mister Whelan offered me a cigarillo. I declined, and he nodded, lighting it using the candle in the centre of the table. I do not know when the polite time to excuse oneself during a situation like this is, so I remain seated. I¡¯m also unsure if I am capable of rising, or if I have stuffed myself with enough ballast that any attempt at movement will be tricky. We have at this point made significant inroads into the whisky as well, but my practice with drinking far outpaces my practice with eating, so at this point I am merely tipsy.

    ¡°So,¡± he holds up a thick finger, and taps it in the air. ¡°Colt & Tumble has employed Iseult Morrin for help with killing the moon. She fits in the plan- she speaks Thalaami, she knows the Wraithwild, she builds guns for a living. She employs me,¡± he taps a second finger, ¡°Sean Whelan. Served with the Ildathach army, one of the four thousand, now a lazy socialite. I¡¯m not sure what my exact role in this whole thing will be, but Iseult trusts me, which is enough.¡± Now he taps a third finger. ¡°But Evin Tumble also approached you, ¨ªde Ceallaigh. Sigilist-in-training at Saint Listless¡¯, almost completed. I understand why Evin Tumble chose us. I¡¯m not sure why he chose you, over his other options.¡±

    The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. He doesn¡¯t think I¡¯m good enough. When I respond, my voice is just on the cusp of cracking. ¡°Well, I¡¯m very good at sigilwork, and I-¡°

    He shakes his head, and holds up both hands. ¡°No, no, that wasn¡¯t an insult. You also can¡¯t answer my question, really. I¡¯m not worried about you being bad at knotwork. What I am worried about is how Colt & Tumble fit into all of this. Why you, specifically?¡±

    It¡¯s strange. Ever since Mister Tumble contacted me, I had been wracked with anxiety. But I hadn¡¯t framed it as a measure of why he would choose me specifically, over the other options at Saint Listless¡¯. Or, thinking about it, any of the other Colleges in Ildathach.

    ¡°Maybe it was random? Maybe he just chose my name out of a list?¡±

    Mister Whelan tilts his head, staring off into the dim light of the Tarnished Minister. He breathes once, heavily. ¡°Maybe. Maybe not. I don¡¯t think I¡¯ll be able to reason out an answer, either way. In my experience, though, if you understand why people do things, fewer surprises pop up in the future. Also,¡± his eyes flick back to mine, ¡°it¡¯s Evin Tumble.¡±

    I swallow. ¡°Yes.¡±

    When he cocks his head, he does it slowly, like a dog trying to understand a trick. ¡°And that doesn¡¯t mean anything to you.¡±

    ¡°I. Um. No.¡±

    A man a few tables away from us turns his head irritably at the sound of Mister Whelan¡¯s gunshot laugh. ¡°Alright. Yes. I apologise. I¡¯m not laughing at you. I just know some people who would possibly literally kill for the chance to know Evin Tumble. He¡¯s certainly well regarded by the people you¡¯d want to be well-regarded by. Chaplain¡¯s Office included. Also.¡±

    I swallow. ¡°Yes, Mister Whelan?¡±

    ¡°Well, first. Sean. Please not Mister Whelan. We¡¯re going to be travelling together for several weeks. And secondly, just¡­ don¡¯t let other people talk for you. And don¡¯t assume that you¡¯re always wrong, when other people say it.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry?¡±

    ¡°This is not me criticising you. You seem nice, intelligent. Polite. But just keep in mind. You¡¯re leaving the world that you¡¯re used to. You¡¯re entering a new one, which is filled with people like me, and like Iseult. And the thing I will tell you right now, the only thing I need you to remember, is that you have spent your entire life being trained to be polite, and demure, and to say no and to apologise. I don¡¯t have to be a haruspex to see it, and sometimes keeping your head down- it¡¯s a good thing. But remember to stick up for yourself.¡±

    My stomach plummets as the floor drops from under me. I don¡¯t respond for a second or two, and he looks at me, concerned. ¡°A haruspex is a-¡°

    I cling fast to the word, at least one thing I can control, and interrupt him. ¡°-an Aerganite who slaughters an animal and reads the future from its viscera. I know.¡±

    He raises his eyebrows. I continue, into less familiar waters. ¡°Sean. I¡¯m terribly sorry. I¡¯ll try to be better in the future.¡±

    He looks at me for a few beats, and drags patiently on his cigarillo.

 Chapter 4: Sean

    Sean

    The week blurred on, in that peculiar way that summer weeks occasionally do. Weather turns fitfully in Ildathach, so my outfits hewed to a blustery tempo. I wore a shooting jacket during my last session with a client of mine at the beginning of the week, a pleasant enough coxcomb who needed to learn how to wear the cavalry swords that are just now teetering on the brink of fashionable. For my midweek classes with one of the more belligerent department of Gallowglass and Grimm, I taught in nothing but a shirt and a thin coat. By the end of the week, I had returned to the shooting jacket, and shivered quietly at the unseasonable cold.

    Ildathach bustles around me. Hundreds of blank faces- shuffling, uncurious crowds. It is, at least on this street, an onslaught on the senses. Smells and sounds. Of the former, nothing positive can really be stated. I¡¯m not, thank the Saints, living near the tanneries anymore. But the pack animals that clog the muddy roads create an odour that cannot be beaten back by the restaurants, the perfumeries, or the swarms of street florists. Orchids are particularly popular this year. Every fashionable soir¨¦e or caf¨¦ or lounge, must be draped and cluttered with endless bushels of flowers, imported at great cost from Cabochon on the Far Coast. In response to this demand, the city has become infested with flower sellers. Social status means that I¡¯m wearing one now, pinned to my lapel.

    Street hawkers raise their voices over clacking hoof steps, competing with creaking wagon and tromping feet. I step neatly around a young boy who is currently hurling eye-curdling insults at a woman leaning out of a balcony two stories up. He¡¯s clutching a wicker basket, which is attached to a rope, which is attached to a pulley, which is clutched by the woman. He¡¯s claiming that she¡¯s stiffed him, though he phrases that sentiment in a way that is uniquely and improbably crass. Their background bickering is swallowed by the general murmur of the street, and I pace forward over uneven, poorly-set cobblestones.

    The threshold between the neighbourhoods of Browne Lane and Coin and Woe is obvious, as the road is abruptly flanked by uniform clutches of stark-white townhouses. The street here is clean, at least: cows, horses, naemi, and other pack animals are all banned from the district. I carve my way through the streets, dodging the crowds down Hackcloth Road. Uncharacteristically, Incandescent Square seems relatively empty, and I plough directly through it, scattering a horde of idle pigeons in my advance. There are a handful of pilgrims at the cage in the centre of the plaza, robed and knife-wielding adherents of Saint Mantis. The Saint¡¯s corpse, still wearing her ancient armour, slouches on a throne in the centre of the cage. The amulet on her chest is beautiful, and filigreed in unreadable Saint-language. Given Saint Mantis¡¯ history, it almost certainly implies something unpleasant.

    I heard a rumour that the rubies and diamonds coating her ancient bones are fakes, and that the real ones had been stolen centuries ago. One of the dazzling stones in the centre of her jawbone catches the light as I walk by. The parts of her skull that were shattered by her sisters have been covered with tasteful ornamentation. I pass the corpse, the sad mortal remnants of an immortal Saint, and quicken my pace. The pilgrims don¡¯t look up at me at all.

    Past the square, down the streets again, through a sea of brown wool coats and light summer hats. A handful of waist-coated men lounge in a whitewashed doorway, sharing a loaf of bread and pulling eagerly at a narrow shin of beef. One of them, noticing me, raises a water flagon in salute- though whether this is friendly or mocking, I do not know. I nod back.

    My route takes me past the borders of Coin and Woe, down streets and alleys that I¡¯ve trod a hundred times. I stroll past shops I¡¯ve never been to, even after spending years wandering past them. Truth be told, I couldn¡¯t recall the names of half of them, even if you pressed me. I pass under the gantries of the Liar¡¯s Bridge, breathing a lingering redolence of rust and spiderwebs. Overhead, the webwork of riveted iron strains silently under the weight of the water from the canal it supports. I first saw this bridge two decades ago, and I remember gripping my mother¡¯s hand as hard as I could when she walked us under it.

    A woman with the burn scars of a musketeer watches the foot traffic from a perch about head-height off the ground. She¡¯s wedged herself in a sitting position in the pigeon-infested gantries, and is swathed in a threadbare, stinking blanket. One leg is poking out of her rags, the skin practically scarlet, and has a texture more like wood than like flesh. She is bolt-upright and sweating, her cheeks flushed and bloated with a mouthful of henbane leaves. I don¡¯t meet her placid stare.

    Under the Liar¡¯s Bridge, through another cobbled street, then finally onto the dirt roads that mark my emergence from the old city, from the centre of Ildathach. The shopfronts change abruptly, happy to revert back to their normal panoply of competing colours and sizes once freed of the restrictions of the heart of the city. Most of the buildings in this part of town are in the process of being raised by the Chaplain¡¯s battalions of labourers. The road and half of the street is significantly lower than the buildings on the other side, which are supported and braced by hundreds of jackscrews. I peer into the cement-packed darkness below the building fronts, and wonder how long it¡¯s going to be before my own home is hoisted as part of this fight against the rising banks of the Ilda River.

    Only half of the buildings around me are now in the venerable style, their architecture fading and cracking. Of these, only a handful are not wearing their age well. Some are entirely new, the fevered workings of Ildathach¡¯s steadily maddening corps of architects and artists. What the Tecuani and the Dunaidh family did not destroy, the city itself has begun to dismember. I pass an ink-seller in tweeds who is unhappily sandwiched between an oyster monger and a just-opening cockfighting ring, each swarming with pedestrians and workmen. He gives me a bedraggled look, then points with his chin at a sight down the road. I turn my head to follow.

    A Constabulary pack marches down the street towards me, five guards in olive overcoats and spiked helmets. One of them looks like he could be one of my students, but I know better than to ogle too long to find out. One is slight, but the remainder are broad-shouldered, genderless beneath those immense green coats. Completely impractical for the summer weather, but certainly imposing. No weapons or hands visible.

    They trample past me, barely giving me a second glance. I¡¯m close enough to smell the sweat roil off the coarse-spun overcoats, to see the worn patches on their arms. The Dunaidh family crest, the new one, stitched in scarlet over a cream background. Crown atop a crucible. They¡¯ve left a perfect track of boot prints in the sucking mud, and I watch them march like clockwork down the road, before turning a corner. I walk on, in the opposite direction, glad to have avoided the attention of this patrol. Not that this is the last one I¡¯ll see today.

    I think it¡¯s quite unlikely that the Constabulary will ever inspect me without at least some forewarning. To be clear, I¡¯m not hiding anything, though realistically a Constabulary pack has never really been stopped by something as trivial as a lack of evidence. It¡¯s been decades since the Chaplain¡¯s Office declared certain families enemies of the city. The Whelan family, homed in distant Llancreg, has never really attracted the attention of the Chaplain¡¯s Office. Luckily for us, we never had any real allegiances to Ildathach¡¯s royals, so when the Dunaidh family slaughtered all of them my grandfather¡¯s father was more than happy to continue swearing fealty to the new rulers of the city. In Ildathach, the horror stories of the Chaplain¡¯s reach have started to die down. The midnight raids have stopped, or at least become exceedingly rare. A certain amount of largesse has been established and cultivated with the city, as the Chaplain¡¯s Office is slowly transitioning towards eradicating cholera and typhoid instead of political rivals. We all pretend to accept that ¡®Chaplain¡¯ should be a hereditary title.

    Still, though. The Chaplain¡¯s Office is, very rarely, fantastically unpredictable. I met one of my former students for a drink, a few weeks ago, after he had been promoted to a Watch Captain. He¡¯d mentioned, amongst a variety of other tall tales, the stories of the Chaplain¡¯s fondness for eels, and the ponds in which he kept them. After a goliath measure of gin, he¡¯d coloured these stories with what the Chaplain did to certain political detainees, and how fat the eels would be after he¡¯d thrown those unfortunate parties, alive, into the ponds. The Watch Captain had insisted, multiple times, that those creatures had fangs the length of his thumb.

    Allegedly, eels are one of the Chaplain¡¯s favourite dishes. He has a reputation for serving them to prisoners.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    Just drunken stories. Probably. My feet slip slightly in the mud as I cross the street to my home. Walking down to the front door is tricky, for two reasons- the steps down to the door are narrow, original pre-Calamity stone that were likely never fitted well when they were originally set over a century ago. Additionally, I have clogged as much space as possible with greenery, most of which I have yet to attend to after a fortnight or two of neglect. A begonia shrub, set in the wall beside my window, is aggressively attempting to colonise as much of the fa?ade of my flat as possible. Similarly, my petunias and my antirrhinums are waging a slow war of attrition against each other, crowding patiently towards the sunnier parts of the steps. Ildathach does its best to fill my little garden with litter, and I really have neglected clearing out the detritus of dung and playbills from the various alcoves in which they¡¯ve gathered.

    I slip past the plants on my way down from the street to my apartment. My new door handle is snug and unweathered. It should be. I spent hours getting the fit right.

    *

    Morning in Ildathach is, on the surface, beautiful. The air is atrocious, compared to Llancreg¡¯s, as it is full of soot and chemical effluent and smog and presumably whatever arcane energies are bled into the world by the city¡¯s industrial knotwork. The last time I returned home, my lungs ached with the taste of the countryside. In the city, when I wipe my nose the kerchief is always stained grey by the dust.

    When the sun is low, though. Something about the way it strikes the manufactories, which have been belching acrid clouds for hours, is truly gorgeous. I stare at the smoky kaleidoscopic spray of the mid-morning sun, then continue walking and devour the remains of a fist-sized loaf of brown bread. I veer east out of Quilton, to the border of Jejune.

    This edge of the district is the eventual residence of the wealthier sort of captains and industrialists, and is avoided by many who want to avoid the dock¡¯s otherwise surly reputation. I plough through another flock of pigeons, who coo darkly as they reform into a mob behind me. Minutes later, while strolling past the lobelias in one of Jejune¡¯s many tiny, flat-cobbled parks, I take the longer route around a similar gang of crows. Pigeons are one thing. Crows remember you.

    My boots are covered in street-muck by the time I make my way to the low, long Gallowglass & Grimm building. I am stricken with a moment of superheated panic when I step behind a horse on the street and am immediately almost crushed by a caravan of frantic squawking naemi. The birds don¡¯t bother me, but the stressed whinnying of the horse does, and I am paralysed for a moment with memories of grinding hooves and the long, bloody spears of howling knights.

    The Aergan traders sling countryside curses at me in Aerinic as I stumble backwards, avoiding the idiot gait of their awkward, massive animals. Naemi are somewhere between cows and trees in terms of general intelligence, but every Aergan child knows the threat a nervous bird represents. These naemi have had their beaks blunted and their claws cut, but being kicked by a five hundred pound bird is fairly unpleasant no matter how you slice it. In the ensuing fracas I manage to stumble squarely into a muddy puddle with my first step and a mound of cow shit in the second. Thus spattered (and, sadly, mocked by a passing child), I make my way to the dark warehouse of my employer and prepare to remove my shoes.

    Luckily, this is part of the plan anyway, because we are fighting. I enter under a huge, looming portcullis, holding my boots apologetically as I say hello to the scrivener at the front desk. Mercifully, he brings me a pail of water and offers no cutting remarks.

    Minutes later I pad socks-only into the building, shuck my rucksack in a chosen courtyard, and wait for the mercenaries to arrive.

    They emerge as an obstreperous pack. Mostly men, a few women, from all over the continent: Yvreathans, Wraithwilders, even a few scattershot Al Khazraj, far from home. All are dressed in red trousers and red shirts, some of them sport red sashes or red bandanas. Their sandals are red, their weapons are held in red sheaths. On their chests, red on red, the stylised G of their employer. The fighting wing of Gallowglass & Grimm, the other half of what is an already ruthless banking organisation, and as permanent a fixture of the belligerent part of Ildathach as the army is. In polite company, both halves of the Red Bank are noted for their simplicity, thoroughness, and dogged determination. In more honest conversations, or in villages or boroughs that have been visited by the various specialists that make up the more intimidating parts of the company, we use crueller adjectives.

    Every Red Bank mercenary in the city is always happy to practice fighting. There aren¡¯t as many as there used to be, during the war, but you see them on ships and caravans, sometimes lurking outside of banks or manors. This pack knows me, and treats me with a modicum of respect. They all know how to fight, but they don¡¯t necessarily know how to fight together, which is the job that Gallowglass & Grimm has hired me, and a handful of other veterans, to do. I adopt a less friendly persona, greet them, and begin.

    Forty-five minutes later, I stand before a pair of Gallowglass & Grimm brawlers, one of whom is currently doing his best to strangle the life out of the other. They¡¯re doing what I taught them- the currently winning fighter has taken his opponent down and is positioned behind him, choking him with one sinewy arm. Rank straw sticks to his bare back. They struggle, thrashing along the floor. I take a moment to read the massive tattoo that has been scrawled on the front of the victim¡¯s writhing chest. Orthodox liturgy, inked just under his clavicles:

    ONE HUNDRED MEN ONE HUNDRED SAINTS ONE HUNDRED SINS ACCUMULATE

    The technique is good. I say so, before any serious damage is done by the choke, and the pair detach. They take a moment to breathe- the loser has bent over double and has both hands on his hips. Half a minute later they¡¯re clashing again, practicing the same manoeuvres. Say what you will about the mercenaries, they¡¯re relentless. Last week, we had to extract a tooth out of Yeoman Owain¡¯s hairline after he rammed his head into the now-hospitalised Mister Meagher¡¯s jaw.

    There are a handful of other bouts occurring about the straw-strewn plaza, and I take a moment to observe each one. All the mercenaries are good enough that most of what I do is minute: a sentence or two of instruction, a nudge with the toe or the tip of a practice sword to show them better positioning. A few minutes later, I find myself being stared down by a fatigued yet baleful Al Khazraj sergeant.

    She¡¯s dropped the wooden practice sword that she was supposed to be using. I, because I am not an idiot, have not. The rest of the troupe coagulates in a semicircle around us- some quiet, some laughing, all exhausted. Sergeant Al Khamdi, flush with her victory over Mister Moss in the spar previous, had joked about being good enough to teach the class. I doubt she¡¯d imagined I¡¯d actually rise to her implicit challenge, but I know what happens when you let these things fester.

    They¡¯re all good at this. This is the primary issue with teaching the Gallowglass and Grimm pack. Half of them served in the Ildathach military, and the other half come from pugnacious backgrounds from across the continent. Some of them are undoubtedly better than me at certain things- Mister Soames, for example, is an Aerganite who grew up within a hundred miles of me, and every tenth shot he can split one arrow with another from twenty yards. I¡¯ve watched all of them, over these last few weeks, and I must admit that in a fair fight Sergeant Al Khamdi would, occasionally, kill me.

    She¡¯s circling to my left, away from the arc of my swing, and when I switch my sword to my off hand she too shuffles and reverses her footwork. There¡¯s a calculation from her side, to attempt to negate my swordsmanship by throwing her own weapon away, to utilise my gentleman¡¯s gravitas against me and disarm me with social rather than literal pressure. This is a trap I recognise, and I will not humour her, so the first thing I do is completely reverse my grip on my practice sword until I am clutching the blunt wooden blade, swing it low, and hook her lead ankle with the cross guard.

    Sergeant Al Khamdi drops, startled, but recovers enough to not break anything or lose her composure. I toss my sword to the audience and grin, arms wide, eliciting a braying laugh from the crowd. The Sergeant worms her way forward, now recovered to a low crouch, and instead of letting her seize my ankles or my wrists or trip me or throw me or rise under me I crouch down myself and pull her bodily over me, so that she is above me and I am below her. Entirely taken my surprise by this manoeuvre, the sergeant slots neatly into my plan and begins grappling me in earnest.

    I have a fairly sizable number of these little tricks that I can employ on the unexpecting, but unfortunately I¡¯ve already displayed a number of these to the mercenaries.

    There are a lot of things that happen, all at once, but none of them are particularly important. I am much larger than the Sergeant, I am not tired, and, most importantly, I am fairly certain I know what she will do, because I have been teaching her. This is the difference between using the sword or the fist or the knee and wrestling- here I am patiently building towards an inevitable goal, and if she does not resist in certain small ways I will eventually win. She struggles, writhing and fighting, seizing my clothes in a shockingly strong grip. I wedge my feet between her flexed legs and lift her, keeping her off balance.

    Perhaps it is the cheering from the crowd, or my own overconfidence, but I am surprised when she surrenders her wrestling position, and rears up, pulling her body into a moment of immense strength, then drops her weight down on my face via her elbow.

    Saint, I am seeing stars. My entire vision goes black and the back of my head slams into the cobblestones, audibly. I taste sand as my teeth grind together.

    She shifts again, pulling for another thunderous strike. I can¡¯t actually see her, but this time I buck my hips, and her attack is sloppy, robbed of power. It glances off of my forehead, and my sight swims back. She moves again.

    Saints. I can¡¯t even see her face.

    I end it. There is a limit to her ferocity, and although with swordsmanship there is something to be said for recklessness and bravery, the same does not ring true when tangled like this. I switch the position of my limbs around her, seize her opposite arm, thread it between my body, and position myself to break it. This does not take her by surprise, but she has been fatigued by nearly an hour of hard training, and I have not.

    She grunts, squirming, and for a moment I think she will escape, but I raise my hips just slightly and she yields almost instantly.

    When she asks me later how close she was to winning, she does so with a humility and a respect that I don¡¯t expect. I laugh it off, because I have a reputation to uphold. My advice is earnest, and my compliments aren¡¯t forced. But I tell her she¡¯ll have to try much harder in the future, which is a lie.

    I should¡¯ve been more careful, less overconfident. If you tell someone that no holds are barred, you can¡¯t be surprised when they try to kill you. Something my mum used to say. The kind of pain that the sergeant inflicted on me is far from the heart, and I¡¯m more disappointed in myself than I am legitimately injured.

    When the mercenaries leave, they do so with a measure of deference, a boisterous troubadour swagger, and a probably decreased chance of challenging me the next time we meet. I wait until I¡¯m home, far from any prying eyes, before I inspect the damage in the mirror and cool my face with a fist-sized block from my icebox.

 Chapter 5: é“†de

    ¨ªde

    It¡¯s a humid morning. Heat rolls off the ocean, mixing with the salty morning air and lacquering me in a sheen of uncomfortable sweat. Chained airships visible from halfway across the city guide me towards the docks, and my meeting location with Sean and Miss Morrin. The current clutch of ships, a squadron of five or six, are illuminated by a combination of crimson engine halos and twinkling lanterns. They bob serenely in the early dawn, the undersides of their hulls lavishly painted in swirls of Ildathach livery.

    The number of ships prowling Ildathach¡¯s skies has increased every year since I was a teenager, and all of the vessels here bear the Chaplain¡¯s seal on a prominent and visible part of their hulls. I pass under their great shadows and feel a temporary wobbling vertigo as I glance up into the hovering school. Each is a short-masted barge, clad in charmed wood and metals, crowned by a matte scarlet ring that occasionally blossoms peals of intense smouldering fire. Some vessels have a pair of these immense halos set in parallel or perpendicular arrays over multiple masts. One, a monstrous vessel near the head of the harbour, has three. She creaks loudly as I scurry under her, and the stamped crest of the Chaplain¡¯s Office has been branded a hundred times in a checkerboard pattern on her underside. She bobs once, a minuscule movement, and releases a fantastic gout of flame from her rear ring. I feel the weird warping of the ship¡¯s bulk as I scuttle under it, and my hair gently settles back onto my shoulders when I step out from under the vessel¡¯s shadow.

    Further down the coast, and a few miles outside of the city, sprawls the birthplace of Ildathach¡¯s airships: the walled manor of the Wine Party. Every two months, when their engine halos begin to lose potency, each will inevitably float back to that secretive place, where sigilists and charmers employ whatever arcane knotwork they invented to get the things to fly in the first place. Sigils that work for weeks, without a sigilist present. When I was born twenty years ago, such a thing was considered impossible. Or so my professors say. Professor Finneces insists that the airships are a result of experimentations with strange sciences from the Far Coast. But Professor Finneces is also in many ways quite mad.

    The sea is clearly in view now, peeking between the empty spaces between buildings and spires. The syllabus at Saint Listless¡¯ had been exhaustive in its coverage of the city¡¯s history, so even though I¡¯ve never actually been to this part of the docks, I have at least a sort of academic adjacency to the subject of the sea. Most of Ildathach is built on previous iterations of Ildathach, and Jejune is no exception- these huge brick docks are built on limestone blocks hewn three centuries ago, which were in turn dropped into the ocean to build the foundations to expand the city in the first place. The Dunaidh family, wisely, kept the Saints-founded docklands intact during their takeover of the city.

    Still, it is one thing to know the numbers behind Ildathach¡¯s trade from lectures on the flow of goods from the Wraithwild, from Khazraj, from the Far Coast. It is another to see it, to feel the sweat and the salt ground into the bricks. A pair of labourers are marching through the street towards me, gripping a monstrous haul between the two of them- an armoured grey-shelled lobster easily as big as either one of them, its tremendous claws lashed shut with several lengths of rope. They eye me suspiciously as they pass, like they¡¯re worried I¡¯m going to try to steal the beast. I try to stay out of their way, and watch the sad, scuttling legs of their prize flail uselessly in the morning light.

    I focus on the horizon, and the sea that is now more emerging more frequently than not past the silhouettes of cranes and low-slung warehouses. Crowds of labourers have begun to form and bustle about the wide, filthy streets. The sun is low on the ocean, and has been for some time, and half a sky away the tiny new moon begins to peek above the flat, sparkling sea. I scurry out of the way of a wide cart, laden with crates and straw and boisterous workers. This boulevard is the haunt of net-menders, many of whom have already emerged from either block houses or tattered cloth tents propped against more permanent lodges and warehouses. I pass through to a new street of shad-fishers, many of whom join me in the growing ebb of men and women making their way to the docks. Sean was kind enough to draw a map to the meeting place, so I unfold the parchment from my dress¡¯ pockets and am pleased to note that I have made it almost all of the way to the right place on memory alone. Up around the corner here, through this archway labelled HIGH DOCK TWELVE, then up a flight of very worn and very large stairs. I take the steps two at a time, and as I round the corner, I begin to understand the vast scale of Jejune, and its forest of docks.

    Combined like this, bobbing together, the ships extend along stone wharfs and barnacle-encrusted woodwork from here all the way to the horizon. Rigging so complex and so intricate that it almost forms knotwork geometries adorns every large vessel. Most of the ships are moored some distance from the land, and the rising sun chases them all in gold and white. Sweeping clouds of gulls offer a sense of scale for distant craft, and for the first time I consider the size of the things. They¡¯re more like cathedrals than boats.

    Some are from climates far, far from ours. Most are Yvreathan vessels- if not from Ildathach, than from the major city-states closest to us: Caronek, Ys, western Crowmere. Interspersed between our familiar ships are cogs and barques from the Wraithwild and Khazraj both.

    I spot two boats flying rare totems. Both are whalers from tiny Sallowsnap, hulls festooned with hooked and pointed ivory. They are some of the smallest ships in the harbour, though makes up for their lack of bulk with a potent, surly viciousness.

    Our voyage will not take us that far east, to the desolate waters near the Torment. Nor will it take us to the western half of the continent and the bristling states of Al Khazraj. Rather, we will sail north- hook around Caronek waters, sail serenely past Crowmere, and eventually arrive at our destination of Brixa Thalaam, halfway between Yvreathe and Khazraj. The Wraithwild, the narrow buffer zone that cleaves the Aergan from Cotton Castle.

    I like maps. When I was younger, in the Ragged School, cartography was the first subject that my teachers noticed me in. The same love of precision and detail carries over exactly to sigilwork.

    This brick dock is two floors above street level, yet it¡¯s almost parallel to the wide, barely-moving deck of the ship where I¡¯m supposed to meet my new companions. She is not an airship, and lacks the sleek lines or fiery engine ring of the boats I saw on my walk through Jejune. The Gundog Walking is a massive trading cog, proud and creaking, and her deck is host to at least five or six dozen scampering sailors. I spy Sean and Miss Morrin on the other side of the dock, and begin to walk over to them. He waves at me- she¡¯s staring into the sea, eating an apple out of a burlap sack. Even from this distance, I can see there¡¯s something different about his face, a ruddy mark slashing over his eyes and forehead. All around me, men and women scurry over the docks and the ship, trailing ropes and shouts, readying the vessel in preparation for the voyage.

    ¡°You! Cumberground!¡±

    I¡¯m not sure what that even means. But I¡¯m very certain it was directed at me.

    The woman currently shouting at me is about ten yards away, and looks roughly as tall as my collarbone. Her hair is a shock of shaggy blonde, peeking out from under some species of nautical hat. The hat, combined with her sweat-slicked fringe, half-conceals a sigil-worked eyepatch. Her coats, for there are two despite the heat, are a mess of colours and designs. She¡¯s rolled one sleeve to her elbow, exposing a bewildering tangle of tattoos. I notice some more complex designs that look like Wine House designs. Whoever she is, she¡¯s-

    ¡°I¡¯m talking to you, cockchafer! Get out of the way!¡±

    Alright that was a bit more direct. I pivot and narrowly avoid getting flattened by a pair of sailors pushing a steaming, sigil-etched box across the dock. Its mass is evident as they strain to slow it down, the unwieldy bulk barely shifting as their muscles cord and strain to control it. One of the pair is wearing a necklace of metal-clad fish bones, and the tendons on his neck strain mightily underneath it. The woman turns and glides smoothly past the struggling crew, then stalks neatly towards me. Now that she¡¯s closer, I can read the glyphwork that has been engraved onto her eyepatch. It¡¯s gorgeous.

    ¡°They told me that we had a couple of real dogfuckers who were going to join us for the voyage. Now I¡¯ve seen mister happy executioner,¡± here she stabs a hand, knifelike, in the direction of Sean. ¡°And miss spooky Bani Yathrib,¡± her hand moves, adder-quick, at Miss Morrin, who has suddenly taken an interest in me from across the dock.

    ¡°But I don¡¯t know who you are.¡±

    Her single working eye, roiling like a furnace, is trying to bore its way into my forehead. I remember what Mister Whelan said, about sticking up for myself.

    ¡°I¡¯m ¨ªde Ceallaigh, the sigilist?¡±

    She raises both eyebrows. I¡¯m trying to stare at the knotwork on her eyepatch, because the fiery intensity of her remaining eyeball is honestly distressing.

    ¡°Alright, ¨ªde the sigilist?¡± She¡¯s not asking it as a question. She¡¯s making fun of my nervousness. ¡°Why don¡¯t you stand there,¡± and she points to the archway I walked through to come to the dock. ¡°While the adults do the work? Hey?¡±

    He said to stick up for myself. He said to stick up for myself.

    ¡°No.¡±

    I honestly mean to say more, but the words all seem to lodge themselves somewhere halfway between my heart and my brain. By the time I¡¯ve spoken, she¡¯s already turned away from me, wearing a genial smirk. I watch, in horror, as she slowly swivels back to me, her expression frozen. Once again I stare at her eyepatch, and am seized with a mounting fear that this woman will actually murder me.

    ¡°Listen here, you thin-fucked bobolyne. If one of my crew ever tried that with me, your feeble, barely congealed brain would not be able to comprehend the colossal degree of punishment that would be wrought upon him or her. Do you understand me? There are no cities, no seas, no worlds where this would come to pass. And if I you would like to try that again, you will find that I am more than happy to render this treatment unto you, you passenger.¡±

    Oh Saints.

    ¡°Yes. You have fucked yourself into a position hitherto uncharted by any explorer in your stunted, idiotic lineage. I am Omarin Holofernes, captain of the Gundog Walking. And you, Miss Pengrinder, Miss Narrowly-Avoided-Catastrophic-Suicide-By-Sea-Captain, will stand there, until I deem it acceptable for you to board my ship.¡±

    She glowers like a sun-sigil- not just her face, but her entire body. I¡¯m held in place, not even breathing, like she¡¯s going to summon another Calamity, aimed only at evaporating me. She turns and I fold, almost literally, and withdraw myself to the archway near the dock¡¯s entrance. When I board the ship about an hour later, I do my best to stay hidden from the maniacal captain. Her sailors grin savagely whenever they shove by me.

    *

    ¡°You didn¡¯t!¡±

    I¡¯ve known Sean for less than a week, but he howls at my misfortune with the schadenfreude of an old schoolfriend. Somehow, his frivolity is contagious. Well, slightly. I¡¯m still nursing the horrible captain-Holofernes-induced pit in my stomach.

    We¡¯re underneath the heaving deck of the Gundog Walking, sandwiched into a miniscule berthing barely the width of a few graves. It¡¯s outfitted with four bunks, though there are just the three of us. Between our packs, our beds, and our bodies, there is just enough room for us to hunch around the cabin¡¯s tiny table. We¡¯ve been at sea for a few hours, but this is the first time all three of us have simultaneously been in the compartment. I cannot particularly say I enjoy the damp claustrophobia, though it¡¯s better than the risk of leaving the room and running into the captain.

    The ship strikes a particularly belligerent swell, and Sean uses a thin finger to pin a biscuit to his pewter plate. His forehead is freshly marked with a long, ugly bruise which swells the flesh around his eye socket and gives him a slight squint. Half of one eyeball is permanently bloodshot, though this has no impact at all on his sanguine demeanour.

    The constant bobbing, the cramped air of the cabin, and the terrible social malaise that has been inflicted upon me by the captain have all worked together to entirely drain me of energy. Unlike the other two, I dare not leave the room, despite its suffocating lack of windows or ventilation. I can hear the sad calls of the food animals through the tarred wooden planks. Ship-noise, both from baying sailors and the Gundog Walking herself, drift frequently throughout our cabin. Whenever the ship pings or creaks, it sounds to my ears that she is about to spontaneously disintegrate. Nobody else seems worried, so I do my best to bottle my anxiety.

    ¡°No, really, ¨ªde. That¡¯s incredible.¡±

    I throw my hands up. ¡°You told me to stick up for myself!¡±

    Miss Morrin¡¯s uninterested mien shifts for the first time, cracked by a glint of smugness. ¡°She has a point. You did tell her to stick up for herself.¡±

    Still on the cusp of laughter, Mister Whelan puts his hand on his chin and rests a scarred thumb on his jawline. His mirth is vaguely comforting. I feel a little better. I¡¯m very curious about the injury that he¡¯s acquired in the days we¡¯ve been apart, but I don¡¯t dare ask him directly.

    ¡°Alright. Alright, fair play. I¡¯ll speak with the captain. But, Saints, that¡¯s very funny.¡±

    Miss Morrin occupies the entire other half of the room. The bunk below hers is unoccupied, and it is where she has decided to store her belongings. A sort of cave has been built around where she¡¯s currently sitting, comprised of a stack of books, a sealed rucksack, and an immense oilskin tube, fastened with a sling for easier carrying. She had been in the process of writing something in one of her notebooks when Mister Whelan had slammed the door open and started this conversation.

    I¡¯m sat on the rough wool blanket I brought with me on the journey, one of the few items that has survived my childhood and three years at Saint Listless¡¯. Sean has taken the bunk above mine, though he¡¯s currently leaning back on a tiny stool that is one of our only pieces of furniture. He¡¯s illuminated by a gorgeous light sigil that Miss Morrin must have prepared before the voyage. The radiant slate dangles from a rope that is in turn hooked into the cabin wall, and the swaying of the ship skitters deep shadows across both of their faces.Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

    Her knotwork is unlike what I¡¯ve been taught at the college. Staring at light sigils while they¡¯re burning is generally never a good idea, and it¡¯s hard to study the thing surreptitiously while having to squint heavily to even get a feel of it. The style is highly compacted, and she¡¯s drawn the knot in a way that¡¯s slippery and angular, simultaneously. I can follow the intricate curves in only the vaguest sense, but it would easily take me an hour just to write this knot, let alone the time it takes to calculate the curvature and density of shapes to get it to work in the first place.

    If creating the artful charm hollowed her, I can¡¯t tell. Normally you can see it in people¡¯s eyes, when they¡¯ve written something this good. I¡¯ve gotten two-day headaches from sketching glyphs half as dense as her little sigil.

    Six weeks ago I was near the top of my class at Saint Listless¡¯. My research into three dimensional knotwork was being noticed by a handful of professors. I had been invited for an interview-before-an-interview for a potential Wine Party experiment. And now, like an idiot, I¡¯ve decided to broaden my horizons, and am consequently stuck in a dipping wooden cupboard with a frigid war heroine and a man who thinks that my misery is hilarious.

    ¡°Anyway,¡± Sean smiles, finger still pinning the biscuit in place. ¡°Right! So, ¨ªde, you¡¯re from Saint Listless¡¯. And Colt & Tumble thinks that you¡¯re an interesting enough sigilist that they¡¯ve told us to include you in this little crew. I hope the college has a good curriculum for knotwork, because Iseult here can cut a dream in half and use it to burn you alive from a hundred yards away. Seen her do it in the field.¡±

    That¡¯s a joke. Probably a joke? The contempt that Miss Morrin projects at all times manifests here with a second-long eye roll. ¡°I don¡¯t know a lot about knotwork,¡± he continues, ¡°but I do know that working with more than one sigilist on a single project can be tricky.¡±

    I hazard a response: ¡°Well, maybe Mister Tumble needs some sort of help charming the oleum on the way back to Ildathach? That type of work can be done more easily by two than one. I mean, if you think about it, any sort of alchemy is going to be easier to work in the Wraithwild than in Ildathach because of the way the geography interacts with the material and the knotwork. And any sigilry done on the oleum containers or the fluid itself would be better off started a few weeks in advance so Colt & Tumble workers have less to do, right?¡±

    Sean looks surprised, then turns to Miss Morrin. Sigil-wrought shadows streak across his face as the ship rolls gently. ¡°Is that true?¡±

    Miss Morrin nods, then continues my train of thought. ¡°Evin insinuated as much. It¡¯s not specifically in the contract, I checked. But I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if they tried to get us to do some knotwork beforehand. You know these company types. Still,¡± she turns and scrutinises me. ¡°Oleum¡¯s an interesting medium. How comfortable are you with that kind of work?¡±

    Saints, finally someone asks me a question I can answer. I almost trip over myself with my eagerness to help. I¡¯ve never worked with it directly, of course, because I am a sigilist, not an alchemist or engineer. But our professors were, if nothing else, exceedingly thorough. I start talking.

    Twenty minutes into our conversation, Sean excuses himself from the table. Miss Morrin and I discuss theory, for an hour. More than once, she nods at a reference to Wine Party or Glyptic Society research, and says phrases or nouns in languages I don¡¯t understand. At one point, she excuses herself to retrieve a notebook from an oilskin bag, and takes a moment to consider notes written in a dense, finely-detailed script. I stop talking as she traces a tattooed finger down the creamy parchment.

    Iseult¡¯s hands and face are wreathed in patterns that I can only guess the meaning of. Her neck, a block of almost solid black ink, is even more unusual. I¡¯ve actually studied drawings of this style of tattoos before, at Saint Listless¡¯, but this is the first time I¡¯ve seen Bani Yathrib tattoos outside of the context of a book or scroll. Symbols of power, etched into flesh, invoking esoteric sigilwork that sparks lively debate amidst a certain sect of Ildathach academics. Adherents to a handful of Saints tattoo themselves with various liturgy and iconography, so I¡¯m not unused to the idea. Saint Listless¡¯ had scattered notes on the subject, a handful of second-hand testimonials, set into slim journals deep in the library¡¯s archives. I remember reading, or maybe it was hearing, that those tattoos retained shreds of potency long, long after their power should have faded. That they were made by using rare tinctures, desert or forest inks harvested by the thimbleful from exotic plants, then mixed with pulverised fossils, incarnagris, or the harvested gut-fat from people who had died violent deaths.

    That tattoos are fascinating, but truth be told I¡¯m burning to ask her a question about her bullets. Saint Listless¡¯ wouldn¡¯t give me access to their tiny supply of Bani Yathrib ammunition, and the reproduced paintings that are placed in the museum and the library aren¡¯t any particular help. Even in my lectures, I never actually saw a real scrimshawed bullet. The closest thing to true three dimensional knotwork on Calacar, one of the most divine secrets of the Bani Yathrib. Our college¡¯s collection, I know, came from the undignified looting of a dead tribesman, and I¡¯ve never even come close to finding a hint as to where I might study a real knotwork bullet anywhere else in Ildathach. Nobody I talked to was willing to let me take a look at the precious little scrimshaws, not for something as trivial as a student¡¯s personal research project.

    Now, just in front of me, sits a woman who makes and carries dozens and dozens of the things. I¡¯ve heard them rattle when she sits down. Each ball inscribed in exotic knotwork, engraved as one complex, sigil-creating line. Impossible magic, insanely overlooked by sigilists in Yvreathe, who find it unfashionable and archaic.

    Right in front of my nose.

    Saints I need to ask her about her bullets.

    If she reaches some sort of conclusion from her studying, she decides not to share it with me. Eventually, Miss Morrin appears to have become totally absorbed in her readings. She doesn¡¯t object or even notice when I escape the cabin to alleviate my claustrophobia and search for Sean. There is no torchlight outside of our little room, and I can barely make out the step-way up to the deck of the ship, tens of yards away to my left. To my right, I can still hear the sad clucking of chickens, locked down here in the dark.

    My foot catches on the planking as the ship rolls gently, but I catch myself mid-stumble. The sunlight from the above decks is getting closer.

    I wonder what made Miss Morrin leave her home, to move to, and, according to the stories about the four thousand, bleed for Ildathach. I¡¯m not sure what to think of her. Even when we¡¯re discussing sigil theory, most of the time she regards me with a completely blank face. The rest of the time she looks at me like I¡¯m an idiot.

    I emerge into the sea air, and stare into the impossible flat plain of the sea. My desire to find Sean vanishes, instantly. I stare, and a bell sounds in my bones when I realise that we are completely out of sight of land. The thought fixes me to the decking, and my hands begin sweating when I see sailors scurrying not only on the decks bout me, but in the rigging and spars above. My heart catches for a moment when I see one leap, catlike, from one position to another.

    After a few minutes of being lost in that wild, endless blue, I realise that being above deck will dramatically increase my risk of seeing the captain again. This thought alone unshackles me from the hypnosis of the rolling saltwater around me, and I retreat belowdecks and return to our quiet little room.

    *

    The Gundog Walking bobs with the rhythm of the sea, and I lean my weight into the bed and let myself roll with the waves. This rocking struck me with a light nausea when the ship initially left the shore, though that has since damped itself into a rather more bearable queasiness that I can easily ignore. I tighten my grip around a worn pencil stub, idly doodling in a blank page of one of my notebooks.

    A thought distracts me as the Gundog Walking rams through a wave. Are Ail¨ªn and Fionn alright? The rest of those thoughts wash in immediately after- about not just my brothers, but my mother as well. I hope they¡¯re all alright. I hope they¡¯re alright, and I feel guilty about only thinking about them now, hours after we left Ildathach. When I said goodbye to them the day before, my mum had seemed proud, but hesitant. My brothers were excited, and spent most of our dinner teaching me about the monsters that live in the Wraithwild. I remember being that age, ignoring my school¡¯s foreign history lessons in lieu of asking the teacher about the weird animals that inhabit those weird places.

    I am focusing on the feeling of the motion of the boat when Sean appears in the doorway, returning from his rounds of meeting the crew and presumably engaging them with his onslaught of bonhomie. He grins and looks at me, pencil in one hand and tarot in the other, cross-legged on my bunk. The sheaf of papers under my wrist represents a few hours of sigil-mathematics. I¡¯ve been trying to puzzle out a workable configuration of the same three-dimensional knotwork that has irritated me for half a year.

    ¡°What are you doing?¡±

    He saunters over to my bunk and stands over me, at the foot of my tiny bed, and waits for me to stammer out a response.

    ¡°I, uh. I¡¯m drawing a sun-sigil.¡±

    It strikes me that Sean has absolutely no understanding of knotwork. His carefree grin compels me to explain further.

    ¡°But in three dimensions. Like a regular knot that works in on itself, but also one that uses the shape of its own intersections to create denser information structures. Rather than a regular sigil. Which is flat, obviously. We can apply the same principles to a, uh, a sculpture, and achieve similar results. So I can create a sigil in a much smaller space. Theoretically. Eventually.¡±

    A patient nod. He doesn¡¯t press me further.

    ¡°Ye-es.¡± The syllable stretches out, contemplative. ¡°I see.¡± His eyes travel over to my left hand. ¡°And the cards?¡±

    ¡°I, uh, I¡¯m, well. I¡¯m looking at the tarot.¡±

    Sean lights up, like a child on Imbolc. He gestures with one thick-fingered hand. ¡°Do you mind if I take a seat? I¡¯ve never seen an actual reading before! Just, you know. The people at the festivals. The magicians and so on,¡± he grins and wiggles his fingers, magicianly. ¡°My father never let us actually pay for one. In Llancreg it would be a bit¡­ unbecoming.¡±

    I try not to be rude. ¡°Well, many of the street readers in the Ildathach festivals might be actual sigilists, maybe part of the Wine Party, and-¡°

    ¡°Anyway, how does it work? Could you do a reading?¡±

    I pause my shuffling. This was just supposed to be a meditation for me, but Sean just seems so earnest.

    ¡°Well. Okay. There are a couple of problems with doing a full reading here on the ship,¡± there are about a hundred problems, starting with the fact that we¡¯re jammed into a storage room, facing west, on a boat, surrounded by saltwater, ¡°but, well, this should work. Here.¡±

    I pass him my deck, and he takes it thoughtfully. I gesture for him to give it back, and he does so, bemused.

    ¡°So now the deck is a little bit aware of you, at least. I want you to think of a question, but please don¡¯t tell it to me just yet.¡±

    The Gundog Walking leans sideways, riding a strangely violent swell. We sway with it, and I close my eyes in what I hope is a sagacious expression.

    ¡°You probably know that the tarot can¡¯t exactly predict the future. In many ways, it gives interpretations of what has already happened, and allows you to focus on what may happen based on previous events. It¡¯s supposed to help you look at things differently, from outside of your own biases.¡± I¡¯m paraphrasing one of my lecturers, Doctor Finneces, who taught us the application of tarot to sigilwork. The old man always had a knack for theatre, though here I eschew his legerdemain. ¡°First, now that we¡¯re shuffled and the cards know you, we offer a share to the Saints. Tell me when you feel I should stop.¡±

    He tilts his head, then his eyebrows raise ever so slightly as I begin removing cards from the top of the deck. I move them one by one, facedown, to a neat pile to my left. They won¡¯t be useful again. He raises a hand, and I stop.

    ¡°Second, I deal four cards.¡±

    The spread, in this case, is a diamond configuration, with an empty centre. I deal anticlockwise, starting closest to Sean. My hands hover for a moment over each card, then I reveal them sequentially, feather-light, and relish the feeling of the cardstock and the rough wool of the bedding.

    ¡°The Sun. The Dove. The Knight of Spirals. The Fool, inverted.¡±

    He¡¯s watching me with a quiet, focused interest. I¡¯m actually trying not to use fortune-teller¡¯s theatrics, but there¡¯s something about the moment that seems graver than I expected. The ship is still listing, its timbers still groaning under the strain. Here, on my bunk, Sean and I stare at each other in a moment of chilled time.

    I deal the last card face down, in the centre.

    ¡°You can choose to invert that, if you wish.¡±

    The moment stretches on.

    ¡°Alright, ¨ªde, I¡¯m going to be honest, I have absolutely no idea what that means.¡±

    That sense of gravity shatters, and I¡¯m back in a scratchy bunk, being stared at by a bemused socialite. He holds his hands up.

    ¡°No, I mean¡­ this is great! Really! But what is happening? What do I do?¡±

    I sigh, inwardly, imagining Doctor Finneces¡¯ disappointment. In my defence, I never understood the professor¡¯s love of spectacle. I gesture towards the face down card in the centre.

    ¡°Look, the cards mean different things if they¡¯re facing one way or the other, right? If it¡¯s inverted or regular. So here, this card in the middle, you don¡¯t know which way it¡¯s facing. So you can choose to turn it upside down or not before you reveal it. It¡¯s a nice flourish. It gets you connected with the tarot.¡±

    He frowns, reaches for it, then hesitates. His fingers brush the card, but he chooses not to reconfigure it. When he reveals it, it is Saint Anchor, inverted. Cryptic Saintly script is stamped on the bottoms of his sandals. I breathe in and close my eyes.

    Five card spread, unbalanced, unfocused, on a moving ship. A charlatan¡¯s performance, not a real reading. We couldn¡¯t use this tarot to attune a sun-sigil, let alone try anything more complicated.

    ¡°The card you¡¯ve just flipped, the only one you touched. Saint Anchor. Inverted, it could mean a few things. You see how he¡¯s just been run through with swords, ten times?¡± All cards are based on the first tarot, which was designed by the Saints just over a millennia ago. But there has been some artistic drift, over the intervening centuries. My deck features a classic depiction of Saint Anchor, done in an Ildathach style. ¡°It could normally mean being a victim, or being violent. But inverted, with the meaning reversed, it could mean-¡°

    ¡°Betrayer,¡± he whispers, suddenly serious. I pause, then continue. ¡°I suppose so. Or one of fifty other meanings. It¡¯s not always literal, if that makes sense. Sometimes it¡¯s¡­ okay. We¡¯ll move on.

    ¡°That card closest to you. A good card, a nice card. We¡¯re pretty sure that the Saint-hieroglyphs translate to something very close to ¡®sun¡¯- hence the enormous sun printed on it. If you¡¯ve seen a sun-sigil written down before, you can see the similarities. Knowledge, love, light, obviously. Something to be coveted, or won, or desired. Generally associated with an object or a place, but it could be a person, maybe. Combined with this next one, the Dove. Look at the way it¡¯s drawn. Doves are innocence, obviously, but sometimes this is more about flight, or escape. You see how it¡¯s depicted, flying away from the bird catcher? It¡¯s a good combination of cards, these two. Anyway.¡±

    I adjust both remaining cards, straightening them out, making the knot look more respectable.

    ¡°Two left. This one, closest to me. The Fool, inverted. The Fool isn¡¯t literally an idiot, though it sometimes can imply a naivete or a lack of something. Similarly, inverting it doesn¡¯t imply genius. Sometimes it¡¯s being too conservative. Sometimes it¡¯s being too carefree. Finally, this one,¡± I tap the last card. ¡°The Knight of Spirals. A hero. Something good. Sometimes stubbornness, sometimes something unstoppable. An avenger. It depends.¡±

    I shrug. Doctor Finneces would be happy with the reading, if dissatisfied with the lack of flamboyance. Sean nods, and I can¡¯t tell if he¡¯s satisfied or just being polite.

    ¡°So¡­ what does it mean?¡±

    I shrug. ¡°Well, what was the question you asked yourself at the beginning of the reading? Hopefully you remember it. I¡¯ve tried this with my brothers, before, but sometimes they forget and we have to start over.¡±

    There are a few insurmountable issues with tarot reading. The first is that the primary usage of a tarot deck lies in reorganising or reconfiguring extant magics, rather than in murky future-divining. All cards, regardless of what country they come from, are derived from incomprehensible Saint-language, and truth be told there is enough ambiguity and variance in interpretation that exact translation of even a single card has proved impossible. A handful of seers and crackpots across the continent claim to know the truth behind the tarot, and preach their own interpretations for specific cards or sets.

    As you can imagine, this makes meaningful readings quite difficult.

    He frowns, and starts to open his mouth when the door to our cabin creaks open. Miss Morrin takes one step into the room, the splash of black at her throat and face lending her a wraithlike demeanour. She takes a cursory look at the two of us, crammed onto my bunk, and snorts once.

    ¡°Doing a little light reading?¡±

    Her bootsteps are quiet and catlike, and as she paces towards us I wonder again what I ever did to insult her.

    ¡°¨ªde is showing me a tarot reading,¡± beams Sean. She folds her arms.

    ¡°If I could have your seat, Sean.¡± He shrugs and uncoils himself from the bedding, slipping off the side of the bunk onto the floor with an easy grace. She kicks off her boots and hauls herself onto the bed. The bullets in her body clack and shift when she stoops and sits down into the same cross-legged position that Sean was in. Now that he¡¯s been ejected from the position, Sean watches us, chin raised, arms crossed.

    ¡°Alright, ¨ªde. Let¡¯s see. Five card spread, in a knot. Sort of a modified La R¨¦n design. No Complication configuration on this centre card, here.¡±

    ¡°I didn¡¯t want to make things too unwieldy for him,¡± I respond. A true configuration tarot, not one of these parlour readings, takes at least four more cards.

    She nods. ¡°Fair. Oh, and I see you¡¯ve already given several cards to the Saints, as well,¡± here she gestures towards the cards to my left, facedown. ¡°Very nice. A nice little Yvreathan reading. But.

    ¡°Have you ever seen a Bani Yathrib reading before?¡±

    I actually have, and long to say that, to deflate the ego that this woman is bringing to bear on me. But I¡¯m also deeply curious. Seen a Bani Yathrib reading, absolutely, in a manuscript. The Bani Yathrib tarot is similar to ours, but with no Saints. But I¡¯ve only studied their readings in books. I move to gather the cards and let her reshuffle.

    ¡°What are you doing?¡±

    I freeze.

    ¡°I¡¯m¡­ picking up the cards. So you can do a reading.¡±

    Iseult grins.

    ¡°The cards are already dealt. I¡¯m doing the reading.¡±

    I look down. The spread is the same. Iseult continues.

    ¡°Focal, centre card. Saint Anchor, what we would call The Ten of Swords. Next, the Knight of Spirals. Inverted. After that, The Fool. The Sun, inverted. And the Dove, inverted.¡±

    Her eyes flash, like she¡¯s spoiling for a fight. Bani Yathrib or no, I have spent the last three years at Saint Listless¡¯, submerged in sigilry and symbolism. I rise to her challenge, frowning.

    ¡°Iseult, this reading has already been finished. You can¡¯t just read Sean¡¯s question from the other side like that, that¡¯s not how it works.¡±

    ¡°Why not? The yantra is set. The cards have spoken. Now it¡¯s just interpretation. I haven¡¯t touched your deck, sigilist. I¡¯m just confirming what you¡¯ve read.¡±

    That feeling is back, that latent weight of portent. Iseult continues.

    ¡°Sean. A Ten of Swords is a foul card. Violence, hatred, betrayal. An ending of a thing. The Sun, inverted. A drowning, perhaps. A curse. A poisoned goal. The dove, inverted- my word, this is a grim reading that she¡¯s dealt you. Manipulation, imprisonment, sociopathy. The Fool, well, that one may be rather self-evident. And last, the Rider of Coins, inverted. Ah. Well that just seems a bit too much.¡±

    Iseult reaches to the card closest to me and flicks it with one tattooed finger, so that it is now facing her.

    ¡°Much better. A heroine.¡±

    A dram of sweltering indignation.

    ¡°You can¡¯t do that! You can¡¯t just- change the cards like that?¡±

    She smiles, and leans back into her cross-legged position. Saints, I hate that smile.

    ¡°Why not?¡±

    ¡°Because they¡¯re not your cards to change!¡±

    ¡°Are they yours?¡±

    She says it with a quiet hush, and she¡¯s right. Her face is poised, pantherine, and I see in her expression a shadow that I have not seen before. Deathly, alien, foreign, cold, clawing, darkly and awfully set in deep, empty years. This woman, this nomad from the Wraithwild, touches the cards with the skeletal grasp of a Saint. A slab of churning panic boils in my gut.

    I glance at Sean frantically, for help, but gain nothing. He looks at me sympathetically, then tilts his head at Miss Morrin. She is Sean¡¯s terrible opposite. So, so spiteful. I can¡¯t think of anything to say, so I stop myself from speaking and feel the panic inside of me turn into anger.

    ¡°This is a difference between our people, you understand.¡± She speaks levelly. ¡°I have lived in Ildathach for more than half of my life. I know what philosophy has shaped you. But you do not at all understand what the Bani Yathrib are like. How emptiness shapes us. How this,¡± and here she taps the Knight of Spirals, ¡°and this,¡± then her chest. ¡°Are the same.¡±

    I hope she can¡¯t read the rage in my heart. I just want her to go away.

    ¡°Thank you for your time, ¨ªde. You can use my deck in the future, if you¡¯d like to refocus that reading.¡±

    With that, she unfolds her legs. Both her knees crackle as she extends them, and she winces. When she reaches the floor, she puts her boots back on, rifles through her pack for a notebook, and leaves.

    Sean looks at me sympathetically, and holds my hand as I bite back my anger, a twinned thing oriented towards Iseult Morrin and my own helplessness.

 Chapter 6: Iseult

    Iseult

    ¨ªde, brooding and sour-faced, stays in the cabin as I return to the deck of the Gundog Walking, following Sean. He¡¯s leaning on a rain barrel, still sporting the livid black eye that one of his students gave him, and he takes one look at me as I stumbled choppily over to him and asks if I¡¯m alright. I say yes, while choking down an acrid nausea. The answer is, of course, no. Haven¡¯t done proper boats before. Up, and down. Up, and down. Sickening. He leaves to speak with Captain Holofernes about ten minutes later, so I am alone.

    Sean told me to focus on the horizon, but Sean also said that ginger and time would help. There¡¯s no sea within a hundred kilometres of Llancreg, so if Sean knows anything about sailing I will be-

    ¡°Fuck me in half, are you actually the Bullet Witch?¡±

    The sailor who has appeared spontaneously at my elbow is barefoot, and must have tried to be quiet as he sidled up to me. I am very glad that my nausea keeps me from starting. I shoot him what I hope is a withering glare, stamp down my queasiness, and offer a retort. ¡°Are all of you this forward?¡±

    He grins, revealing a row of clean, uneven teeth. He slouches casually against the rail, entirely immune to the sea-sickness that is happily gurgling inside of me.

    ¡°Right you are. Don¡¯t get a lot of celebrities on a little bilge-barge like ours. We wanted to know if you were the real bricky.¡±

    ¡°And what do you think?¡± I don¡¯t even know what ¡®bricky¡¯ means.

    That same ingratiated, safecracker¡¯s smile.

    ¡°Not sure yet. Sure time¡¯ll tell.¡±

    He unfurls himself from his half-recline, and makes to leave. I hold up a hand. ¡°One moment, sailor,¡±

    ¡°¨®engus.¡±

    ¡°Sailor ¨®engus. Just one thing.¡±

    The Gundog Walking dips, then begins to ascend a swell.

    ¡°If you or anyone else on the crew ever calls me a witch again, I will put these bullets in you by hand.¡± He opens his mouth, half serious, and I cut him off before he starts. ¡°No. Do not. I am not joking. Miss Morrin will do. A witch is someone you behead, then bury, upside down, with a brick breaking her teeth. I am not a witch. You are treading waters here, sailor. And do you know what happens to men who tread water for too long?¡±

    He looks at me, sneer frozen, and I see the concern in his eyes. He masks it with a short, hollow laugh. ¡°No.¡±

    ¡°They drown.¡±

    That flashy, pride-saving smile. ¡°Alright! Alright, Miss Morrin. We¡¯ll be seeing you.¡±

    The sun blurs by. Eventually the queasiness does, too.

    I spend most of the voyage in our little cabin, reading, and the days pass under my patience.

    *

    I don¡¯t need a sextant to know we¡¯ve crossed into the waters of the Wraithwild, because the air gradually becomes spangled with a smell like the ghosts of iron and pine. The sky is lacquered and radiant. I am coming home.

    Captain Holofernes and the rest of the Gundog Walking notice it too, and change their movements accordingly. Everyone has shucked their Ildathach-garb, and a few of the sailors have stripped shirtless. The paler ones slather themselves with various pastes, grumbling about the glare of the western sun, the strange strength of the light that rolls off these emerald waves. Their tattoos are amazing, a hodgepodge of wards from different cultures. Al Khazraj glyphs, Yvreathan sigils. Some of those inks are, shockingly, still seething with latent power.

    Technically, this trip is taking longer than it needs to. Captain Holofernes mentioned this in passing, and I asked a mate yesterday what she meant. He had grinned, and was more than willing to explain it, in seemingly excruciating detail. If he hoped to lose me in the jargon and the minutiae then he failed to do so.

    Amongst the many, many dangers of the seas of Calacar (there are literally thousands, he told me, seemingly on the cusp of listing them all), the primary point of concern for the captain during our particular voyage is a vortex. This one, the one we gave a tremendously generous berth, is called Finbar¡¯s Throat. The mate, an Al Khazraj, uses its proper name: Tawma Bayd. Either way, as with many of the other various whirlpools, vortices, and eddies that speckle the surface of Calacar¡¯s oceans, the Tawma swirls near the western fringes of the Crowmere coast, sucking in the flotsam of the northern sea. This hunger would, the mate assured me, wholly consume the Gundog Walking, were she so careless as to sail near the mouth of the thing. Calacar¡¯s various whirlpools are an established, charted hazard, and losing a ship to one is a sign of unbelievable carelessness. Sometimes ships make the more dangerous journey between the Tawma and the coast, and run the dual risks of either crashing into concealed sand banks amidst the Crowmere coast¡¯s bewildering tides or being pulled into the merciless currents of the vortex. But there¡¯s no reason for the ship to take that risk, so we add a considerable number of hours to our journey. As the crow flies, this trip could be completed in roughly five days. Safety, unfortunately, enforces a minutely longer schedule.

    After I excused myself from the mate¡¯s lecture, I returned to the stern of the Gundog Walking to join a member of the crew and watch a pair of dolphins crest the sea in our wake. Occasionally, they emerge through islands of matted, green scum, which break apart like the thin skeins of ice that form on the Ilda in the winter. Days into our voyage, I¡¯ve mostly adjusted to the swaying of the ship, and alleviate the lightest brush of queasiness by staring at the sailor¡¯s grip on the guard rail. Her head is shaved, aeronaut-style, and her hands are tattooed, knuckles to wrist. The swirling patterns of an air sailor, a verbiage that I¡¯ve only recently begun to decipher. That particular spiral- a thousand miles. Repeated a dizzying array of times across her forearms, and who knows where else. Other shapes, some metaphorical, some literal. A painted tale of hunts and flights. I remember talking to her quietly, comparing tattoos and tall tales, on the second day of our voyage. What was her name? Alma? Alannah?

    Another sailor sidles up to us, a cluster of billhooks bundled in his arms. He offers one to my quiet companion, then looks at me. I accept, though am not precisely sure what he intends me to do with the thing. He nods, gratefully, and the sailor (Awlda?) sets her face and spits into the sea. One of her forearms is dense with a tattooed knot of writhing snakeskin. These tattoos blur between overlapping shades of blue and black, courtesy of asymmetries in the way she has worn her sleeves and the way her skin has tanned and faded over the years. Stylised sea-monster coils- a sturwurm, I think. Seeing an actual sturwurm at sea would be a catastrophe. Having one engraved into flesh is, apparently, acceptable. Not for the first time, I regret not dedicating more time to studying the sea-ink, to teasing any of its useful secrets from the crew or from what scant literature I¡¯ve seen in Ildathach.

    She gestures towards one of the islands of viridian scum that is clinging to the ship¡¯s hull, and speaks disdainfully. One of her front teeth is missing.

    ¡°Noble rot. Don¡¯t have this problem in the sky, eh? Can never tell when it¡¯s just a clump. Sometimes these rot pillars go down for miles. Not great for the ship.¡±

    Most of the algal gunk is behind us, though this small islet has latched itself onto the stern of the Gundog Walking. It¡¯s not moving, or coiling, but it does seem strangely interested in the wood of the ship. The pair lean over and hack at it with the billhooks. I stand beside them, occasionally hooking a meagre portion of the dense, cloying stuff. It¡¯s not easy work, and a half an hour of labour in the midday sun has me sweating.

    ¡°Have to get rid of it as soon as it starts congealing on the hull. Always seems to attract more. Then you¡¯ve got a rotberg, and then you¡¯ve got a problem.¡±

    We finish the job. I learn the slapdash insights that sailors have regarding the rot- that it washes up on shore when it wants to die, that eating it curses you, that it occasionally snatches ships, totally, from the open sea. I¡¯ve never seen the rot act so aggressively. Unmoving piles of rot spackle beaches all along the coast of the continent, home to nothing but sand fleas and crabs. They leave, soon after, and leave me with the quiet beauty of the Wraithwild sea.

    The dolphins disappear below the rot-flecked waves, and do not return. The drumroll strength of the sun, somehow the same temperature as it was in Yvreathe but noticeably more brutal, beats down upon the deck. Even before we see the shore, I can feel the potency of wilder magics in my clenched fists.

    A few minutes later, ¨ªde approaches me on the creaking deck. She¡¯s still wearing Ildathach-clothes, and appears to not care about the change in climate. As with the sailor, we stand side-by-side, quietly. I wonder where Sean has gone. Normally she clings to his side, and the two have taken to spending an hour a day practicing Sean¡¯s profession while abovedeck, much to the amusement of some of the sailors.

    ¡°So you¡¯re from the Wraithwild?¡±

    The ship lists like it¡¯s punch-drunk, and I wonder if she¡¯ll go away if I don¡¯t speak.

    Over the last few days, Sean mentioned to be nicer to her, on several occasions. Fine.

    ¡°Yes.¡± I debate saying more, and imagine Sean¡¯s disapproving face at my frostiness.

    This turns out to be unnecessary, because my reply releases an unexpected flood of words from ¨ªde. ¡°We¡¯ve only read about the Bani Yathrib in books. You¡¯re the first one I¡¯ve met in real life. Well, really met. Obviously they come to Saint Listless¡¯ every once in a while as visiting scholars. Is it true that most of you don¡¯t live in cities? Are your tattoos from a specific tribe? Is it true that you don¡¯t believe in the Saints? That you pray to the sun?¡±

    Well, I know Sean isn¡¯t always right about people. I debate telling her about the Wraithwild. The landscapes measured in miles, not yards. The unrelatable and the unreal. The biomes which shift by the decade. I opt instead to pluck at the wall of questions and hope that she¡¯ll pick up on the vagueness of my responses.

    ¡°We believe in the holiness of the sun, yes.¡±

    ¡°But,¡± and here she reconsiders, as if waiting for the resolution of some internal dialogue. ¡°The Saints actually existed.¡±

    The Gundog Walking sags under a particularly large swell, and I consider how stupid this point is. ¡°The sun actually exists.¡±

    ¡°Well, yes, of course the sun exists. But the Saints founded Yvreathe and Khazraj and the Wraithwild! They had actual real impact! You can see their work all over Ildathach! All over the continent!¡±

    Be nice. ¡°Yes. We don¡¯t doubt the Saints existed. But do you believe in the Saints of Khazraj? Or even the Tecuani Tetrad, the Far Coast Saints?¡±

    She shakes her head. ¡°Well. No. They¡¯re not our Saints.¡±

    ¡°Right. Yvreathe¡¯s Saints extend to the western edge of the Aergan. But for us, we don¡¯t believe in the holiness of people, Saints or not. We believe in stars.¡±

    ¨ªde cocks her head. ¡°Wait. All of them?¡±

    ¡°Yes.¡±

    ¡°All of the stars?¡±

    ¡°Yes ¨ªde. All of the stars.¡±

    ¡°You pray to all of the stars?¡±

    Be. Nice.

    ¡°Well. No. We don¡¯t pray to anything. We just know they¡¯re there. And that they love us. And that we are made of the same fire that they are, and so is everything on Calacar. It¡¯s hard, sometimes. To see the evil in the world, and to know it is a perversion of what was intended by the sun. The stars don¡¯t tell us to do anything. They don¡¯t give us tasks; they don¡¯t ask for prayers. They just love us, totally and unconditionally.

    ¡°Maybe some of the Saints were never human. Maybe they were like stars.¡±

    Miraculously, this minor blasphemy stops her. It¡¯s not the type of thing I¡¯d normally say, but she seems so¡­ earnest. She doesn¡¯t press the matter, doesn¡¯t ask about how our religious differences fit into the Saint¡¯s threefold deaths, or the mistletoe and the bulls, or any of the other religious incongruities that this divergence brings forth. Perhaps the part of her brain that fuels her curiosity has finally been caught by the part of her brain that realises that I¡¯m forcing myself to be nice.

    ¡°When you say¡­ they love us, do you mean-¡°

    ¡°No, not literally,¡± I cut her off. ¡°Just¡­ if you accept that the Saints built Yvreathe for you, and they founded your city, and they performed those miracle: understand that the stars built Calacar for everyone. That¡¯s it.¡±Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

    Long minutes pass, and she squeaks out a goodbye before stepping back to the hatch that leads belowdecks.

    A sailor saunters up to me, hands tight around a truly vicious looking harpoon, and asks me if the dolphins are still following us. I shake my head, and he shrugs noncommittally. He grins at ¨ªde¡¯s retreating shape, and makes sure she sees him leering when she turns around to descend the ladder. On the horizon, racing from one side of the ocean to the other, I spot the new moon. It moves across the eastern sky in a shallow arc before passing in front of a high, wispy cloud, then sinks gently under the horizon.

    *

    Docking at Brixa Thalaam is unremarkable. First mate Ceinfryn speaks a flat-accented Thalaami, with a fluency that surprises me. The overseer¡¯s mood is more jovial than that of the sour-faced inspector who held our ship for an hour in the Ildathach docks. She¡¯s not even carrying a weapon. When the men and women of the Gundog Walking share bread and coffee with the harbourmaster and his entourage, it¡¯s not a forced friendliness. Maybe it¡¯s the weather.

    A colossal statue of Saint Teneral, Brixa Thalaam¡¯s only Saint, welcomes us into the harbour. His two titan-feet are planted on opposite sides of the narrow canal that leads us to the city¡¯s protected bay. I¡¯ve never sailed into Brixa Thalaam, but the Saint looks just as majestic as he did two decades ago. His welcoming arm beckons the Gundog Walking to the docks, and gulls roost on the bronze halo that frames his affable features. The gleaming javelin in his other hand must be close to forty yards long.

    When we¡¯re sailing between his legs, one of the sailors points up, and makes a vulgar reference to the lack of detailing around the statue¡¯s groin. It must be an old joke, because the rest of the crew groans before she finishes speaking.

    We glide through the lapping tide, under the clear heat of the morning sun. In Ildathach, the heat follows the sun slowly, and the warmth of the day only really arrives hours after the sun has first emerged. Here, thank the stars, the light and the heat are drawn together, hand in hand. I smile as the sun suffuses my bones again, and bask in the heat that rises off the clear ocean waters.

    Sean murmurs something behind me, and I glance over at him. He isn¡¯t talking to me- he repeats himself, to ¨ªde, who is slack-jawed next to us. ¡°Clear the space.¡±

    She looks over at him, confused, and he tugs her shirtsleeve with one gentle hand. When she steps forward, the sailors who take her place immediately start organising loose coils of nearby ropes, and nod their thanks to Sean.

    Brixa Thalaam, the largest city in the Wraithwild, has sprouted and flourished inside of this protected bay, connected to the sea by the long canal carved by Saint Teneral. The sea is calm, and clear, and the bay floor can be seen clearly, perhaps eight or ten yards down from where we are now. I stare for a moment at the scintillating patchwork, mesmerised by the beauty of the water-polished stones. The Thalaami boast that their bay has colours that cannot be found anywhere else on Calacar. The movement of the Gundog Walking and the gentle sway of the sea transform swathes of the seabed into muted, glitter-hued rainbows.

    A memory catches me by surprise, one of those ones that floats up, unbidden, after years. My first time in the city, as a teenager after leaving the Bani Yathrib. Spending those first few days outside, pulling a rock from the bay and being lost in its vibrant beauty. Ten seconds after fishing it out, I found it unbelievably gorgeous. Ten minutes later, after it had dried completely, it was just another rock.

    I¡¯m steeped in an unexpected feeling of sad romance, and I carry this memory with me as we spend several minutes docking, leaving the Gundog Walking, and prowling the streets for the building where Evin¡¯s contact lives. Colt & Tumble has given us an address, but in true Thalaami style there are no actual street names anywhere.

    It seemed bigger, the last time I was here. Ildathach is the biggest, densest city on Calacar- Brixa Thalaam is barely a third its size. The streets are more ordered than I remember, or perhaps they are simply better organised than Ildathach¡¯s. Before leaving the docks, we pass a shockingly well-behaved flock of blunt-beaked naemi, marched down a wide avenue by a bored shepherd to whatever slaughterhouse awaits them. Two decades ago, these streets were overwhelming. Now all I notice is the flat beige of the stones and the centuries of dirt ground between worn flagstones.

    Outsiders and Thalaamis mix at every intersection and street corner, merchants from across Calacar intersecting in this nexus, hawking and howling. Wherever we walk, we see quiet barefoot men and women, we hear the rustle of soft cloth, we smell the heady rush of cloves and charcoal. Everyone in Yvreathe wears clothes that are some variation of blue, green, or brown. Here the streets are rampant with gorgeous colours. There¡¯s another difference, once that I only notice now, after spending so long in Ildathach. Everyone is carrying a weapon.

    We attract the wary gaze of a Wraithwild thylacine as we drift too close to a Thalaami butcher, and ¨ªde starts when the animal rolls itself upright from its reclined position and cough-barks at her. Its owner, who is gripping an immense cleaver in one hand and is gesticulating to a series of chopped organs with the other, doesn¡¯t seem to care. The thylacine doesn¡¯t break eye contact with ¨ªde, who spends several seconds staring at it before we push on down the street.

    Brixa Thalaam is cut in half by a single immense boulevard, and it is by this road that we tread, over the hours, towards where I think Evin Tumble¡¯s contact should be. In Ildathach, everything is some sort of grey or green- even the sky generally keeps a sad, foggy hue. The Wraithwild sun beats flatly on all of us, but Brixa Thalaam, chased in orange and white, bears none of the melancholy that seems permanently seeped into Yvreathan stone. There are fewer people, yet a greater number of smiles. I smell cardamom. I feel happier.

    I also get significantly less attention here than in Ildathach. Few pedestrians openly gawk at my tattoos, and the throngs of streetside hawkers and cart-salesmen switch to approximations of Bani Yathrib greetings when they see me approach. Sean, resting his hand on the hilt of a short sword the width of his palm, drinks everything in. Our young sigilist does the same, though her shock and glee are far less reserved.

    Khazraj lies adjacent to the Wraithwild, so there¡¯s many more Al Khazraj in Brixa Thalaam than there are in Ildathach. Five soldiers, Al S¨¡qa guards from the distant Hubal Queendom, march beside us. Their faces are hidden behind scowling white masks. Each carries an enormous cannister slung to their chests: Hubalite sun-spikers, kept in hard cases to protect their lenses. They entirely encircle a smaller figure, dressed head-to-foot in black lace and barely visible between her pack of Al S¨¡qa guardsmen. Whoever she is, this Hubalite dignitary, she¡¯s a far long way from home, and important enough to warrant an immense degree of security. Nobody stays in the way of the pack for very long, and they plough through the crowd like a boat through the Thalaami bay.

    This city has a sane government: fewer enemies, both inside and out. You get so used to seeing squadrons of heavily armed Constabulary in Ildathach that you forget what it¡¯s like to be in a normal place. We settle into a slow stroll through the main thoroughfare, up light inclines and around the tiny green spaces that Brixa Thalaam is famous for. We hook off the path, tracing through streets that I half-remember- the storefronts have changed and shifted, but the buildings are the same. Either way, the sunlight and the sandstone are familiar enough, brief nostalgic totems of my adolescence. At one point we stop for coffee, and ¨ªde drops her pack instantly, massaging her shoulders. She is captivated by a gently curving Thalaami building, a single stripe of wood some two stories tall that bends gracefully around an apartment block, sheathing the entire fa?ade in a thick sheet of purpose-grown heartwood. No tool-marks mar its flawless, swirling surface, save for where its inhabitants have hewn great windows out of the timber.

    We press on, coffee-fuelled, drawing closer to the address Evin gave us. There¡¯s a heaviness in the afternoon light, and the blanketing vibrancy of the sun lends a pleasant, feral feel to the buildings. I pause to catch my breath on a flight of stairs. We¡¯re six stories up, treading the bleached fungalboard stairwell of a seemingly endless row of apartments. Gorgeous iron balconies jut into the street from wide-windowed houses, shading the stones below.

    This is the building that houses our contact.

    These aren¡¯t the solid stone steps of Ildathach. These aren¡¯t even the vaguely treacherous wooden steps of Ildathach, for that matter. Our search for the address has led us deeper into Brixa Thalaam than foreigners normally travel. I spent less than a year in the city, almost two decades ago, and never ventured this far into the stranger quarters. Stares greet us from unfriendly figures lurking in hard shadows. Most of the windows here are intricately carved wooden frames, cut through with eddies and heavily-detailed holes to let the light in. The mushroom boards that this stairwell has been built from squelch pleasantly underfoot.

    I look down at Tumble¡¯s letter, and check the address against the tiles mounted above each door. No, no, no- yes. I knock.

    The door squelches open, pleasantly- like a ripe mango ground underfoot. The man who opens the door is small, wizened, and wrapped in the alabaster cloth of an Al Khazraj nomad. Distant cousins of the Bani Yathrib. I greet him in polite Thalaami, and he gently nods without offering a response. He invites us past the threshold, vaguely waving us in with a shovel-like hand. I remove my shoes and tell Sean and ¨ªde to do the same. Whether or not the old man cares about our manners is a mystery, for he disappears through another door and we are left standing, barefoot, in his foyer.

    As with most Thalaami buildings, the walls here are tall and the corridor is thin. I¡¯m struck with the beauty of the entrance- the simple designs worked into the tiles, the spotless interior. Sean leans forward, whispers awkwardly into my ear: ¡°So do we¡­ follow him?¡±

    In truth, I have no idea. I was counting the number of slippers in our contact¡¯s shoe cabinet, searching for non-Thalaami footwear in case there are other guests in the apartment.

    The old man¡¯s wiry head pokes out through doorway he disappeared into, and he again wordlessly gestures for us to follow. We do so.

    Sickly waterpipe vapour billows from the room, the redolent smoky sweetness of the Far Coast. Tigerleaf, by the acridity. The old man holds the door open for us as we pass quietly inside. I know Sean will be fine in this setting, but I take a moment to glance back at ¨ªde to make sure she¡¯s not doing anything embarrassing. She¡¯s not, for now, and follows us with curious eyes and a dazed smile.

    Immense cushions in a parade of colours and patterns are scattered tastefully about the floor, and on one of these pillows perches our contact. Behind us, the old man closes the delicate fungalboard door in almost total silence. Our contact smiles, and welcomes us in accented Irdcheol: ¡°Friends! Welcome. Please, sit.¡±

    He offers us, Thalaami-style, to share from the shisha, and starts assembling extra hoses onto the gorgeous ivory vessel.

    The man is dressed in traveller¡¯s attire, in the manner of a Wraithwild city-dweller. His clothing is immaculate, so this attire is either for tradition or show. His loose white shirt is cinched at the waist by a belt of charmed discs, most of which have been inscribed with simple emptiness configurations. His hair is cropped short, as is his beard, and his face is long and patient. I graciously take the pipe that he offers, glad to feel the heat return to my lungs.

    Besides the man, who is almost certainly Evin¡¯s contact, the room is strewn with tasteful Thalaami designs. Thin scarlet rugs cover most of the tiled floor, and the ceiling has been vaulted and decorated with dense marquetry. A copper chandelier droops from a thick iron spine, which has been hammered into the centre of the ceiling. It sits, heavy and idle, bereft of candles or incense.

    The tigerleaf is strong, significantly bitterer than the herbs that I am used to. He speaks to me, in Thalaami: ¡°We make a different blend these days. Delicious.¡±

    He blows a crimson cloud overhead, politely. Simultaneously worrying and frustrating: he¡¯s clocked me as a new returnee to my own country. Or Evin Tumble gave him some forewarning. I, conversely, can read very little of him.

    Sean, ¨ªde and I are arrayed on various cushions, sitting cross-legged across from the contact and his squat glass table. Coffee has been arranged, apparently, and the old man who greeted us at the door arrives with extra cups and a dallah with no actual words exchanged between him and our contact. He leaves with the same eerie quiet.

    I regard our contact over the rim of a delicate coffee cup, acknowledging that our hospitality has been confirmed and the conversation can properly start.

    ¡°I am, as you are aware, ¨¡breen il Kutrib,¡± he says, returning to Irdcheol and omitting the remainder of the title that he would normally reserve for polite Thalaami or Al Khazraj company. The delicate ivory of his waterpipe bounces in one hand. His own coffee lies on the table, untouched. I introduce myself, and Sean, and ¨ªde, and slip into the easy ritual of Thalaami dialogue. We burn through several cups of coffee before any concrete questions start. ¨¡breen moves first, and with surprising bluntness.

    ¡°I am not entirely sure what Colt & Tumble plans to do with the material they¡¯ve requested. It is a ghastly thing, oleum. Typical of the gentleman¡¯s rather heavy touch. Tremendously difficult to make, quite specific in application. Used to be able to squeeze it out of whales, before that whole unpleasantness. But as for Colt & Tumble- what are their plans? Phosgene? Weapons? Please,¡± his voice has shifted to a purr. ¡°Enlighten me.¡±

    The man speaks with a specific articulation, like he believes that his words are going to someday be carved into stone. In most other situations, I¡¯d be wary of revealing too much. I know that Sean would tell ¨¡breen the entire story immediately- not due to any sort of naivete, of course, just because that¡¯s how Sean is. As for ¨ªde, I have no idea, nor do I truly care. By the way she¡¯s burning through the waterpipe, she¡¯s content to simply simmer in the background.

    I weigh the benefits of being deceitful. ¨¡breen and Evin certainly know each other. And besides which, Evin never explicitly told me to be discrete. Besides, Colt & Tumble are building a titanic artillery platform in the northern sea, from which they will try to kill a moon. How long can they keep that a secret? I start to summarise the story, then pause and start again, editing with only sparse omissions. He listens politely, alternating between coffee and tigerleaf.

    A few minutes later, ¨¡breen holds up a long-fingered hand. ¡°I understand for now. Truthfully, the truth is far stranger than I expected. You certainly possess a particular bravery to try.¡±

    His hands move with a practiced precision as he refills the cups. First ours, then his. His skinny frame belies an unexpected strength, to lift a tin Al Khazraj dallah like that. During this refilling ceremony I track, through his immense windows, a seagull as it soars through the heavy summer heat.

    ¡°The entire stockpile of oleum under my control, and under the control of my associates, would weigh approximately five and a half tonnes. That will be a sufficient amount to pay for my previous engagement with Colt & Tumble.¡±

    The way he says it, there¡¯s a catch. There¡¯s always a catch. His expression is polite, almost pained.

    ¡°Things aren¡¯t, however, quite that linear. Ms. Colt¡¯s activities around the Salting Bleaks laid me in her debt. They also, however, laid her in mine,¡± his eyes narrow, become pantherine. ¡°There is a favour that must be repaid to me. To me and a number of others, in truth, but I will accept the compensation. How much do you know of the Shorn Peak?¡±

    It¡¯s a ridiculous question. I¡¯m Bani Yathrib. He carries on, without waiting for me to respond, and I realise halfway through his explanation that this speech is for the benefit of the other two. It also has the added bonus of preventing me from asking him what Colt & Tumble actually did in the Salting Bleaks, a hundred miles northwest of here. Something heavy, by the way he¡¯s choosing his words.

    ¡°The Peak is, of course, far, far southwest of Brixa Thalaam. It bleeds magic into the Wraithwild, and its foothills are a toxic wilderness. Until recently, these lands have been centralised around the mountain itself. The air is choked with poison, the water tends to boil the blood of men. Nobody actually makes it all the way to the base of the Peak, you understand. In recent months, though, there has been a,¡± he pauses, and fumbles for the word in Irdcheol. He asks me the phrase in Thalaami, and I translate the closest word I can, to which he nods and continues.

    ¡°-Sporing. A piece of forest we normally only associate with the foothills of the Peak has overgrown to an area that previously we understood, near the town of Nabat. Its presence is being very closely watched by all manner of Wraithwild actors, myself among them. I, however, am restricted from travelling to this forest- what we are calling a Bloom. As are all of my associates. But you are not, my friends.¡±

    ¨ªde cuts in, brow furrowed. It¡¯s the first time she¡¯s spoken the entire time she¡¯s been here. ¡°Sporing?¡±

    ¨¡breen nods, and gestures towards the table, strewn with the accoutrements of his hospitality.

    ¡°Say that large bowl is the terrain that immediately surrounds the Peak. And say our cups are the various permanent settlements of the Wraithwild.¡± He pauses to rearrange the geography. ¡°For reference, Brixa Thalaam would be somewhere over here.¡± and here he waves to a vague area of space about a yard away from the table¡¯s edge.

    It¡¯s an easy enough metaphor. The bowl-and-cup arrangement has the look of an orrery, with the Shorn Peak/bowl occupying an empty circle of space in the middle of the table. Diametrically opposed, a small cup that must represent Cotton Castle, and the beginning of Khazraj proper, on the other side of the Wraithwild. A few scattered totems, each representing a Wraithwild town or village, keep a respectful distance from the central bowl.

    ¡°As you know, the closer you get to the Peak, the more potent the magic of the Wraithwild becomes.¡± His finger traces a graceful curve towards the bowl. ¡°Very few Wraithwilders will ever even see the Peak, as we won¡¯t risk crossing the thresholds close to the mountain. Even the bravest tribes barely reach the foothills,¡± his eyes flick to me, meaningfully, ¡°and they are quick enough to leave. Too close to the Peak and living things change, or die. Or both.¡±

    ¡°Life still thrives in the shadow of the Peak. But people do not. If you find the Wraithwild steppe unusual, you have no idea how strange things can become that close to the Peak. And now, you see, a piece of that land has moved. Spored is, perhaps, the best word for it. It¡¯s like the one of the strange zones that make up the outskirts around the Peak,¡± he leans over and plucks an empty bowl from a side table, ¡°Is moving north. We refer to it as a Bloom.¡± He places the empty bowl down, closer to another cup on the table. His hands are pointed directly at it. ¡°It¡¯s within a dozen miles of the town of Nabat. It¡¯s either moving slowly, or expanding daily.¡±

    If Sean¡¯s interested, he¡¯s concealing it. Maybe he¡¯s waiting for my reaction, or maybe the fact that a piece of Wraithwild can migrate doesn¡¯t surprise him. ¨¡breen reaches the end of his monologue.

    ¡°I will arrange a Pathfinder for you. He will lead you to the Bloom. Tell no other Thalaami what the plan is. Once you¡¯re in the Bloom, your guide will help you acquire something for me. Something that I have craved for quite some time now. Once I have it, the oleum is yours.¡±

    The frankness of his request, combined with its unexpected caveats, takes me by surprise. I thought we were here simply here to collect cargo from the contact. Now he¡¯s changed the parameters, leaving us wrong-footed.

    Sean¡¯s frowning, trying to catch my eye. We need to talk.

    ¡°¨¡breen - thank you very much for your hospitality. And for the privilege of being offered this task. Do you mind if we retire for a moment to discuss this further?¡±

    I unfold myself from the turquoise cushion before he offers a response, wincing as my knees pop. Sean does the same. There¡¯s a little clinkclink as ¨ªde returns her coffee cup to the table with caffeine-jittery hands. Evin¡¯s contact doesn¡¯t stir, but I feel his gaze settle on the nape of my neck as we leave the room and return to the foyer.

    ¡°What do you think?¡±

    Sean¡¯s question has a specific weight, and his grimace conveys the response he wants me to make.

    I shrug, and counter simply. ¡°Did you expect Colt & Tumble to give us an easy job? If it were something that could be done this simply, Captain Holofernes could have taken care of it. Besides which, it¡¯s not like we have to go to the Peak. Just near something that used to be in its foothills. I¡¯m actually more interested in finding out what they did at the Salting Bleaks. Why they even know this man in the first place.¡±

    Sean raises his eyebrows, then frowns, absorbing this information. ¨ªde speaks.

    ¡°But how are we even going to get to Nabat? Isn¡¯t that at least a day south? And how sure are you that we can navigate in a Wraithwild forest?¡±

    ¡°We walk. Main road is safe, or should be safe enough. Fewer bandits out here than in Yvreathe, and I speak Mutafasih in case we run into any Bani Yathrib.¡± I don¡¯t mention the faint hope I have of that precise eventuality. ¡°Making our way to the Peak itself would be impossible. Everyone knows this. I¡¯m not concerned that we¡¯re being marched to our death- if this Bloom is similar to the forest around the Shorn Peak, without the threat of dying after being exposed to it for a few minutes, it should be doable.¡±

    I¡¯ve made up my mind.

    ¡°Yes. We go with this Pathfinder, we get whatever it is ¨¡breen wants, we get back. This is the Wraithwild. Nobody does any weird political games here, or tries that kind of scheming, not like in Ildathach. And it¡¯s not like we can say no, unless you want to go back to Colt & Tumble empty handed.¡±

    Sean looks at ¨ªde, then back to me, and pinches the bridge of his nose. I wonder if he suspects that there¡¯s some unstated reason why I want to head back into the Wraithwild. ¡°¨ªde¡¯s not wrong, you know. It could be dangerous. I trust you, but we¡¯re not from this country. All I know about the Shorn Peak are the stories.¡±

    I nail him with a look that I hope conveys my point. ¡°Of course it¡¯s dangerous. But it¡¯s not like we¡¯re helpless. Besides which, stop thinking in Yvreathan terms. We¡¯re not being sent to die out in the woods, we¡¯re not part of some master scheme. Colt & Tumble employed us. We can settle their debts. We¡¯re getting paid for it. That¡¯s it.

    ¡°And as for the stories- we¡¯re not going to the Peak itself, because that would kill us. We¡¯re going to something related to it. But we¡¯ll never see the mountain itself.¡±

    They both stare at me, clearly unhappy. To be honest, I don¡¯t really care. There wasn¡¯t ever really any doubt what the outcome would be. Yvreathans have a lot of stories about the Shorn Peak, though none of them ever travel near it. If these two are worried about being killed by a knotwork volcano or a star-signaller or whatever other theory about the Peak is currently being pushed around Ildathach, that¡¯s their problem. Not mine.

    We pad back to the meeting room, into the red-tinged haze. I bow, then sink back down onto the cushions. My companions remain standing, so I address our host in Thalaami.

    ¡°¨¡breen il Kutrib. We, of course, accept.¡±

 Chapter 7: é“†de

    ¨ªde

    My feet aren¡¯t blistered quite yet, but they¡¯re getting there.

    Saints, it¡¯s humid. It¡¯s grey, it¡¯s misty, the ground is smothered in a cloudbank that diffuses the heat into an oppressive cloying wetness. The light is muted, the sounds are not, and the sun floats, inundated, in the mist-drowned sky. I swing between wondering about my feet and wondering about what my family would make of all of this.

    Iseult seems so cautious, always. Cautious and guarded and untrusting and the fact that she accepted Mister Kutrib¡¯s suddenly changing request so readily seems unusual. But I¡¯ve never done anything like this before. Maybe this is how things work, in business.

    The road is a mat of thick black dirt, interspersed with grey gravel that seems sprinkled on as an afterthought. It snakes off into the fog some two hundred yards away. We haven¡¯t seen any other travellers since we left the city, though in this weather we¡¯d not be able to spot any approaching party until they were quite uncomfortably close. When I learned about the Wraithwild a decade ago, I was told that Brixa Thalaam sat adjacent to a frightful, roiling desert. Now we¡¯re sweating in a foggy scrubland. Such is the nature of the shifting climates of the Wraithwild.

    A watchful guard had almost stopped this whole trip, just on the cusp of Brixa Thalaam¡¯s immense gates. As per Iseult¡¯s instructions, I¡¯d remained silent and nodded placidly as the steel-armoured man, along with several of his compatriots, had started a seemingly-friendly conversation with the Pathfinder. At some point during the flurry of hand gestures and shouts, Iseult had cut through the slowly boiling conversation by interrupting the increasingly animated guard with a firm, rhyming phrase. The clanking bag she¡¯d tossed to him almost hit him squarely in the nose. He snatched it from the air, and felt its weight with one black-gloved hand.

    Iseult walks ahead, with the Pathfinder, setting a swift pace that I find uncomfortable but will most certainly not complain about to the others. He had mentioned his name to me, twice, and both times I wasn¡¯t able to understand any of his velvet Thalaami syllables. I always thought I was good at reading the Thalaami alphabet, though that skill apparently doesn¡¯t translate at all to actually speaking the language. The two of them talk frequently, in low tones, and I stare at their backs and try to keep pace.

    Our guide is small and condensed, and his white travelling clothes mirror Iseult¡¯s dark robes. Unlike the rest of us, his dainty beige pack carries scarcely five or ten pounds worth of goods, and he moves with a light and loping grace. His skin is the same burnished tone as Iseult¡¯s, though his hands and face are worn in a way hers are not. When he grins, which is often, he does so with his entire face.

    She carries her belongings in a square leather rucksack, topped with a rolled-up Aergan tartan. Her left hand is empty, and occasionally gestures in some theatrical motion in time with their conversation. Her right hand is resting on the sling of a waxed case, which contains a truly enormous firearm. I¡¯d seen the shrouded thing, of course, during our trip over in the Gundog Walking. She never carried it on deck, and opted to keep it secure it in that case, which had (or perhaps still has) been warded with some particularly vicious knotwork. I didn¡¯t even try to inspect the sigils directly, and when I attempted to judge their potency with some tests of my own I felt the raw hint of their power shriek past me, wind from a carriage barrelling inches away. The case is half as tall as she is, and thick as a thigh, though if the weight taxes her it doesn¡¯t show.

    Sean walks at the rear position of our little troupe, obviously suffering, though he too refuses to say anything. He¡¯s carrying the most weight, by far, and has decided to secure all the extra food, water, and cooking supplies within his own pack. When we¡¯d set off from Brixa Thalaam, he¡¯d filtered naturally to the back, mentioning something about ¡®pacing¡¯ and ¡®marching order¡¯. To be fair, this is his area of expertise, so I didn¡¯t ask any questions. Whenever I turn to check on him, which is actually quite frequently, he never seems to be trailing too far behind. His face is pink with effort, and the sticky humidity is evident in the sweat that has already soaked through his overshirt. His left arm swings idly, catching the muffled, misty breeze. His right never strays far from the cross-guard of a sheathed Ildathach sword.

    This environment is like nothing in Ildathach, or the countryside around the city. It¡¯s like nothing I¡¯ve ever seen or heard of, save for in books and songs. There are woodcuts and drawings of Wraithwild flora in the library, of course, and our professors did occasionally use the unusual biology of this part of the continent to prove one point or another. But it is one thing to see a flower, perched on a steam that looks like a rooster¡¯s leg, static and sanitised in a textbook. It is quite another to watch it flex and spasm in the wind, to see its great ruby petals swing to watch you as you walk by. We see ten such marvels emerge and disappear into the mist in the course of our first hour on the road. Wraithwild geography changes annually, sometimes monthly, so it¡¯s no great surprise that its wildlife is equally tumultuous. I remember seeing maps, of complex patterns where the landscape would shift over a decade from swamp to desert to badland, seemingly at random. The trees in this country grow fast.

    I¡¯ve already sweated through my underclothes, and I can feel the damp even on the outside of my coat. There¡¯s a similar band on Iseult¡¯s clothes, from where her pack and her case rub against her body. Our Pathfinder, by contrast, is completely immune to this weather. His own rucksack is slung carelessly over one shoulder, and seems unusually small compared to ours. I notice with a start he¡¯s not even wearing boots, just a pair of worn sandals.

    The initial exhilarations of being in the Wraithwild, of soaking in the wild magic of this stranger land, dissolve after a few miles of road pass under my feet. Now that initial, heady rush of curiosity has ablated to a dry patience. I pause to drink another swig of water - at this rate, my canteen will be dry before the sun sets. There¡¯s a satisfying thunk when I drop it, and let the strap bounce it against my thigh. Sean had helped me unpack and repack my travelling wear this morning, showing me how to distribute the weight across my back and my body. This might be how they do it in the Ildathach army, but to me the immense jangling weight of is incredibly uncomfortable.

    Life bursts around us, unnatural in thickness and variety. Even the dirt seems to hum with an enthusiastic zest, sprouting trees, fungi, and more unsettling forms with an impossible density. I¡¯ve seen fragments of the deep wilderness of Yvreathe, in zoos and daguerreotypes and woodcuts. They pale in comparison to this menagerie. It is only thanks to the deadening mist and the bleak grey sun that my focus isn¡¯t trapped by a hundred small wonders. The Bloom that ¨¡breen asked us to visit is a day¡¯s walk, possibly two, from Brixa Thalaam. We¡¯re not even close enough to see its distorting affect upon the land, I am already overwhelmed by the Wraithwild.

    The flora and fauna are already strange enough. I wonder what the people are like. We passed a caravan within the first few miles of leaving Brixa Thalaam, but the merchants were hooded and quiet, and we exchanged no words at all. They¡¯d waved to the Pathfinder and Iseult, tactfully ignored Sean and me, and clanked by on quiet wheels.

    Every road that spirals into Ildathach is flooded with men and women. It¡¯s inevitable. Her spiralling roads are clogged with immense imports of grain, meat, and merchants. In return, the city churns out textiles and industry. When you walk out of the increasingly fuzzy boundaries of the city, you¡¯re greeted with a horizon-spanning line of humans and animals, all straining to the monstrous appetite of the city.

    By contrast, the caravans around Brixa Thalaam dwindled immediately, then thinned to nothing as we left sight of the city. You hear stories about Bani Yathrib mathematician-raiders and strutting Wraithwild processions, but out here it¡¯s as empty a place as I¡¯ve ever been to. I shudder, and grip the straps of my rucksack tightly.

    At one point, the road is bisected by a brown, malty river that flows under what for appears to be a thirty-foot long tree, grown in a great arcing bridge over the gummous water. Its pale sides are thick with a gorgeous emerald lichen, twitching gently under the wings of thousands of dirty-blue moths. Iseult and the Pathfinder have stopped at the base of this tree, and are staring intently at a patch of boulders that juts out of the water some distance downstream. Just as I march up to them to ask what they¡¯re looking at, Iseult shushes me and points.

    Newts should be about the size of a hand, maximum. They should not be twice the height of a man. They should be black, or dull brown. They should not be the colour of dirty quartz, and their slimy hides should not be interspersed with ghastly yellow feathers.

    They should also not stare back at you.

    Sean joins us without comment, and we have this strange little showdown, our party and the grotesque lizard couple. The animals, who are lounging on a rocky outcropping that camouflages them surprisingly well, regard us with cool, level glowers. Their heads are wide, twice the size of a horses¡¯, and when one of them yawns it reveals row upon row of needle teeth. Thankfully, they surrender before we do- they look at each other, pause, and slip noiselessly into the river. Only when we see them surface, significantly further downstream and away from us, do we cross the tree-bridge. Even the Pathfinder holds a machete in his hand as he makes the crossing, staring intently down at the muddy water on both sides.

    The miles blur under our feet. Everywhere, almost suffocating, the soft light of the Wraithwild stamps down upon us. Leather straps from my pack criss-cross my torso at several points, as does my canteen belt and the ridiculous sheathed machete that Sean insisted on securing to my thigh. Everywhere the straps rub against me has been worn raw. When we stop to form a rough camp under the boughs of an orchard of stone-clad palms, and the setting sun dyes the sky into a gorgeous swathe of pinks and crimsons, I feel an incredible, sticky relief as I peel my rucksack from my sweat-drenched back. Sean offers to hunt, though he¡¯s stopped by a gentle word from the Pathfinder. Instead, we snack on a ration that our guide brought from the city- some sort of smoky, grey-brown paste flecked with scarlet seeds that he smears thickly onto flat, coal-blackened bread. It is one of the best things I have ever eaten.

    ¡°This,¡± Sean says a few minutes later, breaking the silence from the four of us eating, ¡°is delicious. What¡¯s it called again?¡±

    Our guide says something in Thalaami, which I don¡¯t catch. Sean mimics him; the Pathfinder flinches. Iseult tries instead. ¡°No, Sean, it¡¯s-¡°

    She says the name of the food again. When Sean repeats it, the Pathfinder and Iseult look at each other, wincing.

    ¡°Alright, fine. Well, it¡¯s great. Wish we could get this back in Ildathach.¡±

    An owl hoots somewhere far, far away. In the slumberous damp of this fog, it could be ten feet away and I¡¯d have no idea. Our two Wraithwilders lean together for a moment, the Pathfinder saying something rapid to Iseult. She nods.

    ¡°He wants to know more about Colt & Tumble. ¨¡breen didn¡¯t tell him much before the job.¡±

    I assume that¡¯s not directed at me- my ignorance on the subject matter has already been established. But it does lead to a slippery sort of question. What is our Pathfinder¡¯s relationship with ¨¡breen il Kutrib? Servant? Contractor?

    Sean inhales deeply, folding his arms over his broad chest. He leans back, eyes unfocused, looking directly upward. ¡°Fair enough. Colt & Tumble is currently run by Miss Wynne Colt and Mister Evin Tumble. She¡¯s the daughter of Darragh Colt, the trader, and has a reputation for being somewhat reclusive. I¡¯m sure you can fill him in on what you think about Tumble.¡±

    Iseult smirks. I pick up a twig and start idly breaking it.

    ¡°In terms of Colt & Tumble, if he¡¯s in the dark about what they¡¯re up to, then he¡¯s in the same boat as us. They came here some time ago, met his,¡± and here he points to the Pathfinder, ¡°boss, did some deal in the Wraithwild, then headed back to Ildathach. Kept things under wraps, never even made enough of a splash to really start the rumour-mills back home. But either way, the company itself follows the drumbeat of its leaders. They don¡¯t stop, they know what they want, and they¡¯re smart enough to get things done. Anything else on my part is just speculation.¡±

    When it¡¯s obvious that Sean has stopped talking, Iseult scratches the back of her neck, then relays Sean¡¯s story back to the Pathfinder in about a sentence. She doesn¡¯t understand why both Sean and I find this funny, but the Pathfinder does, and thanks us by extracting a dessert from his tiny pack.

    Afterwards, sated, Sean shows me how to organise my sleeping spot. I¡¯d not really considered the logistics before, and the process takes longer than I¡¯d imagine. First, he chooses a location, on a slight incline in case of rain. He pulls my pack apart, using the straps to create a web from which he hangs the blanket I¡¯ve been hauling as a shelter. At one point, he marches over to a broad stretch of moss and simply cuts an enormous bundle directly off the ground, then throws it down under my makeshift tent, topping this mattress with the bear pelt and tartan that makes up the rest of my sleeping gear. I thank him, and fall asleep almost instantly despite the deafening chorus of a billion night-time insects.

    *

    When I wake up, my entire body hurts.

    Why did I come here.

    I shift under the rough blanket, moving tentatively. Even my ribcage hurts. Even my armpits hurt. I spend a few minutes remaining totally still, as if the soreness will evaporate if I spend these first waking moments moving as little as possible. I give up when I start coughing.

    The sun is up, though again is drowned, so while the landscape around us is thick with grass and flowers, they appear sickly and muted. We are scarce feet from the black dirt of the road, on a hillock miraculously bereft of biting insects or crawling plants. I am, apparently, the last person awake. I try to crush my blanket into the tight roll that it was originally, but fail my first attempt. My second is no better, and at last Sean lumbers over and shows me, kindly, how to squash the fabric with my knees and wrestle it back into its original sausage shape. His hands feel like bark whenever they brush against mine.

    There¡¯s something about the air in the Wraithwild. It¡¯s hard to describe. On the occasional damp breeze rides familiar scents- iron and pine. But there¡¯s something else there too, a feeling of stickiness. I can¡¯t breathe deeply enough to fill my lungs, ever. I try, and wince as the act of breathing brings with it a painful soreness along both sides of my ribcage. A whole land lacquered in a wet weight, and me, aching and complaining, in its centre.

    Iseult is at the base of the hill, and is poking at half of her gun with a tiny brush the size of her finger. She doesn¡¯t look up. Rings on her weapon catch the muted morning light, and for the first time I notice the depth of the inlaid glyphs, the alien knotwork that has been burned into the device. I feel an unexpected pang of jealousy.

    This feels voyeuristic. I instead choose to entertain myself by watching the Pathfinder half-seriously chase a gang of squirrel-sized octopuses from around his own sleeping area. He¡¯s yelling something to them in Thalaami. After the creatures have been corralled into a nearby tree, squawking darkly, he returns to the foot of his sack-like bedding, and pokes at the low embers upon which he has placed a battered, hook-beaked coffee pot.

    A few minutes later, he approaches with a handful of tiny cups, and offers one to me. I take it with a reciprocal smile, and look down into the tiny measure of Thalaami-style coffee. It smells¡­ warm. Sean, at least, is drinking his with a look on incredible contentment. I quite enjoyed the brew that we were served at Mister Kutrib¡¯s house, so drink it eagerly.

    It is bitter and disgusting. I finish it, politely, and feel the rivulets trickle into the mile-deep trough of my famished stomach.

    We troop on for half a day, stopping twice to eat under the muddled sun. Soil underfoot, undergrowth on both sides. Occasionally the plants grow so tall overhead that they blot out the diffused smudge of sun, other times they retreat from the path and emerge only as paltry meadows or lawns. For one reason or another, the landscape occasionally becomes dominated by certain plants- flowers that look like goldenrods, lavenders. Cedars. The noise of animals and insects is constant, though I have seen nothing moving today save the weird, cartwheeling tree-octopuses in the morning. There are occasional pockets of inexplicable strangeness that I suspect are increasing in frequency as we are drawn into the warped land surrounding the Shorn Peak¡¯s sporing. The first one, a perfectly cubic tree that wept a foul, lilac sap as we walked by, disgusted me. After a half dozen more of these uneasy, disquieting sights, I find myself growing more and more jaded to their presence, until they simply blend into the normal strangeness of the Wraithwild countryside. Fatigue returns in fits after the first few hours, beaten back by the drudgery of the road only to return later, seething. Were it not for the others, I would have stopped long ago.

    Eventually, I emerge from the mindless half-death of our marching. I realise that I¡¯m fixated on a tree, a proud and massive thing that for all the world looks like a Yvreathan willow. It lurks scarce yards from the black earth of the road. I must have been staring at it for several seconds before my thoughts, banished by the fatigue and the boredom of the road, reel themselves back into my head. The tree is split open, directly down the centre of its trunk, and the dark brown of its bark has been sundered to reveal a horrible mass of beige and carmine that resemble so many packed yards of knotted intestines. This great cleave extends through the ground, presumably into its roots, one of which has burst from the ground almost vertically, some distance from the main body of the tree The way it has been broken, its mass falling into two neat halves, gives the impression that it is offering a welcoming embrace. Black and twisted growths crown its branches, decaying forms that give the whole thing a ghastly, rotting air.

    ¡°Lightning strike, I think.¡± Sean stares at it with me, and I pray he¡¯s right. Either way, it changes my perception of the tree. What was once a blasted, haunted thing is now simple and miserable. I look back once as we march on, and watch the stricken tree-corpse fade gently into the mist.Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!

    The stretch of road we finally pause at looks virtually identical to all the others we¡¯ve crossed so far. It snakes away into the distance, eventually disappearing into the hungry tangles of the plant life around us. On one side of us is a grove of extremely thin trees. I take the opportunity to remove my pack, then rap on the trunk of nearest one. Tin?

    A frantic bird bursts from the pipe-tree. I realise with a start that its head is simply a cat¡¯s skull, complete with a shockingly white mane of hedgehog spines. The bird thing hisses a sort of burping snarl at me before alighting.

    A burst of low, sad syllables sighs from the tree. I refuse to believe that it just spoke Thalaami.

    ¡°Here,¡± the Pathfinder points in the opposite direction, over a jumbled scree-slope speckled with tufts of yellow tobacco plants. It looks identical to the thick plant growth we¡¯ve been hiking through for hours. I glance over at Sean, and am comforted by the indecision on his face. Our guide continues talking. Iseult watches the treeline, arms folded.

    ¡°The Bloom is here. Stay close. Use machetes.¡±

    ¡°Wait, wait,¡± Sean pipes up, ¡°we¡¯re going into that? How do you know that¡¯s the Bloom? Aren¡¯t we suppose to reach a city first?¡±

    He¡¯s right, I realise. They¡¯d talked about it during the meeting with ¨¡breen. A town called Nabat.

    Apparently this question doesn¡¯t merit a response, and neither Sean nor I press the issue as we follow the pair of Wraithwilders through the meadow.

    The first few yards look reasonable enough. Waist-high snapdragon fields with the occasional cluster of stony outcroppings. But the forest that looms ahead of us, a sudden, cliff-like wall of foliage, is more menacing. I can¡¯t see anything living at all in those viridian depths, even though the air around us is clogged with cries and whistles. The Pathfinder shrugs his wiry shoulders, then points to an innocuous looking tree right at the fringe of the ominous woods.

    ¡°You see flowers? Black. And leaves? Not part of tree.¡± He¡¯s right, I realise with a start. Saints and gall. The leaves follow the rhythmic, breezy swaying of the branches, but none of them are physically connected to the tree itself. Each floats half an inch above the bark. ¡°Wraithwild trees are still trees, even when they are different. That is not normal tree. He comes from Shorn Peak. So, Bloom is here. Through,¡± he waves a desultory hand at the jungle, mimicking Sean¡¯s voice ¡°that.¡±

    Iseult nods and unbuckles her pack. When she stands up to she¡¯s holding a two-foot machete.

    Sean¡¯s holding two- a machete and the sword he¡¯s brought from Ildathach. That seems quite wise, actually.

    Our guide speaks again. ¡°We look for bee. He looks like bee, but he is not. You will hear him before you see him. When we meet hive, we need honey. Only small weight.¡±

    I stare at the Pathfinder expectantly, before realising he¡¯s doing the same to me.

    Right then.

    A wild wind of courage has seized Iseult, and she blazes a trail through the remainder of the meadow before I can muster a response. Plants fold under her, and she raises her machete and begins slashing at the thicker growths at the edge of the forest. We follow, the Pathfinder catching up immediately. Sean and I move more slowly, and he turns to me as we reach the threshold between the field and the jungle, and gestures at the dismal underbrush.

    ¡°Do you smell that?¡± I don¡¯t, and shake my head. ¡°Fungus and rot. It may get worse inside. I¡¯ve brought a few measures of laudanum, and I¡¯m sure that those two know some local cures, but¡­¡± he pauses, gesturing with a machete at the verdant underbrush. ¡°The newts and the trees and such aren¡¯t the real threat. It¡¯s always exposure and sickness, just like in Yvreathe. The longer we stay, the more likely both of those are likely to become problems.¡±

    I understand. Time is important. Iseult has already reached into her pack to retrieve two charmed slates, and finishes the sigils with a single line of what must be consecrated chalk. They activate a few seconds after she¡¯s placed them into simple, protective cages, and she holds one of these lanterns in one hand and passes the other to the Pathfinder. We march into the Bloom, four humans and a pair of lights in the creaking darkness.

    *

    Into the stinking, sunless depths. A hundred yards into the brush and we¡¯re plunged into a dismal twilight, the pallid daylight lost and listless under the swaying ceiling of the forest canopy. The sun-hushing fog has grown thicker and more dreary, and stops us from seeing more than fifty or a hundred yards into the treeline. Muted pillars of sunlight wink into existence, then vanish as the trees shift in the wind and the gloom reasserts itself. I tighten my grip around the straps of my rucksack as a screeching rattle booms through the trees, screaming into the breeze before fading back to the ever-present background hum.

    Now that we¡¯re inside the woods, and the muddled grey darkness has swallowed us entire, a low lump of dread has congealed in my stomach. Rank ferns sprawl in these depths, choking out most other foliage between the titan trunks of massive trees. Moss sprouts from everywhere else. The plant life here seems subdued of colour or vibrancy, and alternates only between corpse-white and darkest green. The whole growth, dead-seeming despite the noise of the insects and animals around us, is locked in perpetual fetid autumn.

    Our progress is stymied almost immediately by the thickness of the brush and the hills hidden underneath treacherous mounds of ferns and vines. A triplet of yellow mammal eyes stare at me from the shadows of a paper-barked tree. A moth the size of an owl beats its wings softly, ten yards overhead. At one point I am convinced a snake is wrapping itself around my boot, and give a strangled yelp, but it is just the slow-moving stem of a curious fern. This is somehow worse, and I stick close to Sean afterwards.

    Undeterred, we work our way through the undergrowth. Actually using our machetes is much more time-consuming than I expected. We attempt to circumvent the more ominous looking knots and tangles, and the horrifically-spiked trees, and the strange amalgamations of lichen and vines, because using machetes to wade through such obstacles is immensely tiring. About an hour into our trek, we stop at a cluster of boulders that look like roughly carved granite faces. Gorgeous ivory fungus bursts from their head-sized eye sockets. My hand grips involuntarily around my machete as an almost certainly human howl bursts through the trees beside us, and the Pathfinder, for the first time, holds up a hand to force us to stop and listen. A stalk of eyeballs, growing from a tree about ten feet above me, shudders at the noise, then slowly reopens, turning to regard us with an idiot stare. Five seconds later, the foggy silence of the mist resettles around us like snowfall.

    The road through the Wraithwild was unusual. This, the oppressive hazy dimness under the canopy, is madness. I find myself immediately missing the light of the path- at least there all we had to worry about was the blanket mugginess and the potential for unhospitable Wraithwilders. Here, in the Bloom, strangeness waits for us in every hollow. The air will be quiet for an hour, then burst with yelps and songs. We press on, and I pray to the Saints for a break in the treeline. Our path meanders drunkenly between gullies and impassably deep thickets. I hope that the compasses that Sean and Iseult are using still work, and that the residual magic of the Wraithwild isn¡¯t pulling us to some new, sinister pole. We walk, and walk, for hours.

    Light, ahead. Stark and sudden, and certainly not a bad sign- though at the Pathfinder¡¯s cautious request we edge carefully towards this unexpected clearing. We¡¯re standing on the cusp of a vast meadow of alabaster and ivory, thin spikes of the stuff growing densely, like glistening grass. Even the fog seems beaten back, lifted from this treeless expanse. Iseult shrugs, then passes through the treeline, taking a moment to prod at the white soil with a tentative boot-tip. We follow, warily, and the blades crunch pleasantly underfoot.

    The shining grass only stretches a third of a mile before being interrupted by a clutch of mauve-tinged trees, each of which is crowned with disquieting, lung-like gas sacs. While the meadow beneath us tinkles in the breeze in a billion tiny chimes, those trees swell and deflate to their own rhythm. Watching their great, minute-long breaths is at first disquieting, and then actively unpleasant.

    Naturally, Iseult and the Pathfinder decide to camp near the trunk of one of these grotesque tree-things. Closer to their immense bulk, I realise that each trunk is clad, root to lung, in massive, fleshy scales. We stop when we reach the base of the largest. An unexpected positive side effect of this is that I can no longer see their crowns, and now have to crane my head to notice the enormous gas sacs pulsing slowly above me.

    The downside is now I can now clearly hear the trees take their immense sobbing breaths, about once a minute.

    *

    Iseult and the Pathfinder are playing some tiny board game in the dying light of the evening, something that involves black and white discs and raised voices and a tiny wooden board marked with pointed, regular fangs. Relishing the opportunity to decompress, I bring my notebook out of my rucksack and idly sketch a knotwork sculpture in a spare margin.

    Sean has taken his role as watchman seriously, and has sequestered himself about ten yards up the scale-clad trunk of one of the lung-trees. ¡°It¡¯s pretty easy!¡± He had called down, sinking a tent peg into the thick flesh of the plant. ¡°It¡¯s more like skin than bark!¡± If that¡¯s supposed to encourage us to join him, he¡¯s sorely mistaken.

    He¡¯s carved a little bolt-hole at the top of one of the tree¡¯s immense, horse-sized scales. After a disgusted shout from Iseult, he¡¯d stopped dumping the excavated tree-flesh anywhere near us. From this perch, he spends a fair amount of his time staring at the horizon, though occasionally glances down at the three of us. When he sees me looking, he gives me a wave. I grin and wave back. The machete he¡¯s sharpening flashes in the evening light, and he goes back to running the thick blade over a tiny sharpening stone in his lap, legs dangling over the side of trunk.

    The thrum of the Bloom has not changed in the hours we¡¯ve been resting in the clearing. Occasionally, the cries will be punctuated by a particularly savage keening, or the noise of something being messily devoured. For the most part, the only animals I can see are songbirds and flies. Now that the sun is setting, the din rises to even greater heights- noisome cicadas competing with screeching birds and other, more exotic creatures.

    It¡¯s like nothing I¡¯ve ever felt before. It¡¯s gorgeous, even if it comes at the price of my blistered feet and exhausted back. A beautiful, soothing lull. I¡¯m dragged, not entirely unwillingly, into drowsy repose.

    Sean calls down from the trunk of the tree. I can¡¯t quite make out what he¡¯s saying.

    A response from Iseult. The quiet of the evening stretches away.

    There¡¯s a very subtle noise. A tinkling, like chimes. Sean shouts something, more urgently.

    My name.

    The Pathfinder and Iseult are up, and sprinting towards me. I¡¯m slumped against the base of a smaller tree, the one with the quietest and least asthmatic gas-bag. I startle, and stand up, and see a puddle of blood pivot roll slowly over the meadow, splashing towards me.

    It¡¯s slow. Red. Like smeared rose petals. It pinwheels, strangely, a mess of muddy crimson visible only in patches where the glass blades of the meadow begin to sink into it. The effect is hypnotic, and the tinkling is the sound the plants make as they are swallowed whole by this carmine sludge. It is not a single shape, but is instead a mass of brushstrokes, all gently gliding through each other. The swarm is wider than a house, and shorter than an ant.

    The mass wheels towards me. I am sprinting to the base of the tree that Sean has taken his watch in, all semblance of fatigue evaporated. He¡¯s roaring above me. ¡°Up up up!¡±

    Me first, with the Pathfinder¡¯s assistance, all thoughts of soreness or pain gone. I struggle to pull myself up the rope that Sean has attached to the flesh-tree. The rope is painfully coarse, and I seize it with all my might and begin to climb.

    No good. I can¡¯t get the traction. I step awkwardly up the stalk, my body perpendicular to the tree, and barely make it a few yards off the ground before my back seizes and my hands lose their strength.

    Iseult spits something, panicked. She rips her jezail out of its case, and starts fumbling with a pouch on her stomach. I scrabble at the rope, sweat soaking into the rough fibres, and feel my hands tear as I make a few scant feet of progress. Both Wraithwilders are underneath me, trying to push me up the stalk.

    Barely twenty yards away, the red rot begins to circle the tree. It moves with a mesmerising lethargy. More and more of the glass disappears into it in a hungry bout of tiny chimes. It is getting closer. It is thirty yards across.

    I try as hard as I can, whimpering, to climb.

    I can¡¯t.

    The Pathfinder is next to me. How? He has fat knives in both hands, and is punching each into the trunk of the tree, hauling himself upwards. He stops for a moment and desperately tries to pull me upwards by the back of my shirt. With our combined strength, I muster a few more feet of altitude. Iseult is still standing in the meadow at the base of the lung-tree, hands flitting over the body of her weapon. I¡¯m barely my own height above her.

    The rot spatters closer, hungry.

    I am ripped upwards, in one enormous movement, gaining at least a yard, then stopping momentarily, then rising again. I tear my sight away from the mesmeric swirl, and look up to see Sean, standing hunched against the flesh of the tree, pulling the rope up in great coils. His toes dangle into the air, even as his forearms flex as he hoists me. He must have ripped out a chunk of tree-flesh above his little enclave for him to stand slightly more upright in.

    The rope underneath me starts to flutter. Iseult is climbing, catlike, the rope wrapped around her tattooed hands. She¡¯s practically leaping up the tree, with one hand grasping the rope and the other her firearm. There¡¯s a pattering clamour as her various pouches and satchels rattle in the ascent.

    The Pathfinder seizes my collar from above and pulls me onto a tiny ledge he has sliced out of the flesh of the tree. Sean grunts audibly as my weight leaves the rope, and Iseult bypasses us entirely a few moments later. The Pathfinder and I stand, backs to the trunk, on a ledge scarcely a yard wide and half a foot deep.

    Beneath us, five yards down, is a dreadful, hungry thing. I¡¯m seized with a sudden vertigo, and dig my heels and fingers as hard as I can into the bark of the tree. I feel it sag under the pressure, and my fingernails tear into the disgusting, spongy mass. Beside me, the Pathfinder begins hacking away a larger space next to us, loosing great hunks of tree-flesh. I can scarcely move my head, so I do not know what Sean and Iseult are doing. If I lean forward too far, I will surely lose my balance and tumble into the ruin below. The great red pattern lurks, orbiting the trunk of the tree, vulture-like.

    It¡¯s very obviously waiting. The pattern shifts in an immense series of hundreds of interlocking blobs, each swelling and diminishing like raindrops on flagstones. Every time it moves, it consumes more of the meadow¡¯s glass, leaving behind nothing but desiccated, orange-dyed dirt when the stains shift and spasm. Like the ground itself is diseased. A vile red streak arcs slowly towards the tree I was dozing under, and cuts a quiet path of stained soil in its wake. White glass blades drop into the slowly wheeling shape, and do not return. My pack teeters on the precipice of that vile shape, then falls into it, as if from a great height. It makes no difference that the ravenous, blurring redness has a shadow¡¯s depth. The stain remains underneath where I was, even as a hundred other smudges flock and circle around it.

    I watch the languid churning of the rot. It flocks and rolls about us, and soon there is nothing left in the meadow around us save the stains, the trees, and the barren soil the thing leaves in its wake. From here, it looks familiar. We learned about this in school. Saints above, I¡¯ve seen a picture of this before.

    The Pathfinder taps me gently on the arm, interrupting my thoughts, and then wraps a soft hand around my shoulder when I startle. I look over to him, and he points to a hollow he has rapidly excavated in the bark. Deep, tall enough to sit in. The inside of the tree, this inner layer of wood, looks hideous- sprawling pink and brown whorls, the high tang of blood. He lets go of my shoulder and points at my palms.

    Oh. Not the tree then.

    Both of my hands have been ruined, and the gory sight of the blood and torn flesh is enough to return that horrible, woozy vertigo. I have left immense, slick bloodstains on the surface of the tree, where I seized the bark. Even now, blood runs down my forearms and spackles the tree and the ground below. His eyes are wide as he seizes me by the wrist and shuffles me into his little carved hollow. When I sit down, and start to stare at my ragged palms, the pain hits me all at once. I bite back a sobbing moan.

    He leans out, looks up, and calls to the others in a language I don¡¯t understand.

    A few seconds later, a satchel drops into his outstretched hand. He rifles through it, and pulls out two bolts of beige cloth bandages. He mutters a prayer under his breath, and I recognise nothing but the syllables for Saint Teneral as he begins to fix my rope-ruined hands.

    The work takes twenty minutes, and all I can do is try to bite back my tears and watch the blots orbit us.

    *

    ¡°An emptiness configuration.¡± She calls down.

    ¡°Yes, I heard you. We call them death charms. And yes. But I don¡¯t have tools!¡± I reply.

    Iseult and I have been shouting up and down to each other for the last minute or so. She and Sean have dug their own cave into the tree, about three yards above the Pathfinder and me. The Pathfinder has spent his time digging fervently into the soft shell of the tree, stopping only when he reached a glittering, pearlescent heartwood about four feet in. This has given us a surprisingly comfortable, if disgusting, shelf to rest within. The quiet crimson ruin still circles us below, individual swatches blending into each other in a hundred different orbits.

    Above us, in the slowly growing twilight, the sky is beautiful. The stars have just begun to shine through the light of the setting sun, and the moon (the real one) has started its stately journey overhead.

    ¡°You have my tools. They¡¯re in the bag I threw down to you.¡±

    She¡¯s right. Her worn satchel is still standing upright where the Pathfinder left it before he tended to me. He¡¯s staring straight down into the writhing mass beneath us, and turns his head slowly as I shuffle over to pick through Iseult¡¯s things. I wince as my palm catches on a metal stylus, and try not to bend my fingers too much or get blood on her things.

    She¡¯s right. Slate, chalk. Enough for at least a minor sigil.

    ¡°Alright!¡± I call back up. ¡°Are you sure you don¡¯t want to do it?¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s not too much sunlight left. I have to scrimshaw this bloody bullet, unless you want to give that a try.¡±

    I do not. ¡°Alright. What do you want me to do, exactly?¡±

    There¡¯s a pause. I can¡¯t see what she¡¯s up to. I wonder if she¡¯s going to try to shoot the pinwheeling rot again.

    Sean¡¯s voice, now. ¡°She¡¯s doing some calculations.¡±

    I wait.

    ¡°¨ªde! Do you know what an Irecura configuration is?¡± I do, courtesy of Saint Listless¡¯ College: a basic modification to a death charm. I confirm this to her. ¡°And the Anhrod?¡± Also yes. ¡°Then yes. Do both, in a basic death charm, two-in-three, delayed for whatever amount fits the charm. At least thirty seconds though.¡±

    The empty slate seems too small for her request. I try to visualise the patterns in my head.

    ¡°Okay,¡± I call back, and look down at the small slate in my hand. ¡°Is there anything else to write with? All you have in here is chalk and a steel stylus.¡±

    ¡°No. Although it would be more effective if you wrote it in blood.¡±

    I pause for a moment, and stare at my bandaged hands.

    ¡°That was a joke, ¨ªde. Sort of. Next time try not to wreck your writing hand though.¡±

    I sigh. ¡°What can I say. As an absolute failure, I am a massive success.¡±

    That elicits a laugh from Sean. I look at the Pathfinder, and he shrugs. Judging from the sky, I only have about an hour an hour of daylight left. I unwrap the bandages from my right hand, wincing, and gingerly take a pencil from Iseult¡¯s pack. My fingers burn as I begin to write. I start the slow process of emptying myself into my work, something I¡¯ve done hundreds and hundreds of times before. Slow and focused, and the pain bleeds away into the sunset.

    First, do the arithmetic to calculate the geometries. Then bend the charm to your heart.

    *

    Inscribing the actual knotwork takes about ten minutes to complete, from start to finish. I could¡¯ve drawn it in two, if my hands worked. The bulk of the work involved, as always, is mathematical- the weight and complexity of the knot itself is determined by optimised ratios of areas, angles, curvatures, and a dozen or so other variables. I¡¯ve done similar work a dozen times before, but not with Iseult¡¯s strange little square slates, or with injured hands. The Pathfinder is staring at me in wonderment.

    I remember professor Driscoll from my first year at Saint Listless¡¯, her infinite patience during our attempts to attune basic sigilwork. ¡°Take your time. Every smudged mark will return, magnified. Draw once, but perfectly.¡±

    Forty five minutes after I started, the charm is done. I¡¯m exhausted, and the sigil has hollowed me far more than normal. No mistakes in the linework, with triple-checked mathematics. Consciousness sweeps back, like a tide. So does the pain in my hands. Knotwork was never this tiring in Saint Listless¡¯. My breathing is as slow and laboured as the tree¡¯s.

    It¡¯s compact. Iseult suggested a combination of an Irecura and an Anhrod configuration, which means this particular charm is asymmetrical. Most of the slate is dominated by a simple circle, outlined in tight, symmetrical braids. The square at its centre is crammed with tiny knots, as are the clutch of interwoven knots that spin like pearls from the main body of the charm. My head rings with the growling strength that I¡¯ve fixated into the magic. Now that I¡¯ve finished, I struggle to remain focused as the hollowing starts, driving static-flavoured nails into my thoughts. Colours slowly wash out of view.

    I call up to Iseult that it¡¯s done. She had finished her own scrimshawing a few minutes earlier. Sean, against all reason, is napping. I pass the slate to the Pathfinder, who regards it thoughtfully before tying a length of rope around it and lowering it slowly down the length of the trunk. He shouts something up the tree, and a few seconds later Iseult calls down, in Irdcheol: ¡°He says your knotwork looks good.¡±

    A negligible pause. ¡°Not that he¡¯s a sigilist,¡± she adds. No other comment.

    He unreels the slate about six inches short of the red swirls that are still silently circling. There¡¯s very little noise other than the thundering of my pulse in my ears. Yesterday, the dusk was heralded by a discordance of birds and bugs and peculiar things that I don¡¯t have names for. Today, it¡¯s quiet enough that I can hear the noise of Iseult loading and preparing her gun.

    With achingly delicate movements, the Pathfinder begins to swing the slate. Not too much, or too fast, just enough to get it far enough from the tree for Iseult to actually hit it. Tiny movements of his hands translate into great, sweeping pendulum arcs. A little dark square against a seething carmine pool.

    When Iseult fires, several things happen.

    The first is the incredible slamming sensation of noise. It shatters the silence of the evening like a crack of captive thunder. The bullet whips by our ledge with a ferocity I can feel, and slams directly into the ground beside the slate, several inches wide. It fizzes and crackles in the dirt, and the crimson stains appear to buckle and flee around it.

    The Pathfinder didn¡¯t flinch at the bullet, and calls out something in a dry, flat tone. I hear Iseult mutter her retort. ¡°Yeah, yeah. That¡¯s why I made two.¡±

    Her second shot strikes the edge of the charmed slate just at the apex of its slow swing. The sigil should collapse faster than I should be able to notice. But time feels treacle-thick, and I swear I can actually see the charm unravel.

    First, the scrimshawed knotwork engraved upon her bullet devastates my sigil. The death charm, keyed to bleed its energy slowly through the configurations Iseult directed, collapses in on itself and instead releases all of its power in a fraction of a second. A rough cylinder of empty space approximately three yards across and one yard tall appears around the sundered knotwork, and for less than a heartbeat I can see the stains and the ground and the bark of the tree swim into greater detail.

    Then the air collapses, and the crack of the bullet striking the slate is echoed a hundredfold by a stentorian roar as the sigil¡¯s power manifests. A wave of sound and crashing wind strikes us, and I have to screw my eyes shut in the agony of that onslaught. My hands are clamped over my ears, and my mouth is slack, just as Iseult told me. But we never did anything this idiotic in Saint Listless¡¯, never even considered writing a piece of knotwork and shooting it.

    Where did she learn this? How did she know it would work?

    When I open my eyes again, the stains are writhing. They have fled the area around the trunk, and are piling on top of each other, skirting and writhing in a pattern that is immediately distinct from its earlier movements. Each piece of rot spasms and squirms, even the pieces that are not moving, and the effect is disorienting and grotesque. After a few moments, one piece in particular begins swelling- before, only the largest of the swatches were the length of a person. Now, one stain, its edges bubbling with some sort of freakish reaction, has swollen to the width of a house.

    It still isn¡¯t making a noise, even as the stain seems to roll through itself, even when the wriggling edges and pieces of the thing cohere to form silhouettes of impossibly dense organ meats, of a throat and a sheer, ghastly beak-

    Even when I see it, clearly, a dead, doll-like eye, all in black, a jewel that gazes blindly upon us before rolling into itself.

    The shape is flat, and passed, and the stain turns sideways into the world and flows into nothing.

    There is nothing to say, and after a while the ringing in my ears stops. I unclasp my hands from my ears and close my mouth. The Pathfinder is staring at the crumbling orange dirt where the stains had demolished our meadow. With slow, deliberate motions, he pulls up the rope that was holding the slate. Its split ends are singed and smoking, and the slate has disappeared entirely.

    My pulse hammers in my head, almost drowning out the patient shuddering breaths of the great trees around us.

    I stare at the dead sand below. I imagine it will take me hours to fall asleep, despite the hollowing that gnaws at my brain.

 Chapter 8: Iseult

    Iseult

    I wake up and immediately try to ball my fists, wincing at the pain. The grating is in my wrists and fingers again, cracking softly, like a delicate threat of broken glass. I relax, and elect instead to stare down into the still, stained dirt that used to be a meadow of the Bloom glass. A loose handful of light sand skitters across the blighted ground, blown in the morning breeze. I can smell a river, somewhere.

    My hands are still shaking. And now, I notice, I¡¯d spent the night with part of my leg out of my blanket, to combat the oppressive night-time heat of the Bloom. Now my leg is riddled, knee to ankle, with furious red insect bites.

    If I die of malaria or creep-fever due to Tumble¡¯s idiot contact demanding some idiot honey then I will ensure my spectre will haunt Colt & Tumble until the end of days. All of this, just to indulge a man¡¯s manic desire to kill a flying mountain.

    Sean jerks, startled, when I place my hand gently on his arm. He¡¯s wrapped himself in his travelling tartan, and unlike me is entirely bite-free. His wild eyes catch mine, then soften.

    ¡°Pathfinder Dahi? ¨ªde?¡± Good questions. I¡¯ve informed Sean several times that our Pathfinder¡¯s name is actually Tdhahi, though in Sean fashion he has decided to confidently and repeatedly mispronounce it.

    My neck is twinging. I try popping it, and find that pulling or cracking my spine does nothing to alleviate the tightness. I sigh. ¡°I think I¡¯m getting past the age where I should be doing this.¡±

    Sean gives me a lopsided glance. ¡°Don¡¯t regret aging, Iseult. Too many are denied the privilege.¡±

    I raise an eyebrow, unimpressed. ¡°Good morning to you too. Have you evolved from beating people up for a living to quoting philosophy at them?¡±

    He grins. ¡°Theology. I want to say that¡¯s Saint¡­ Bombast. But I can¡¯t remember. Good quote, though.¡±

    I look down. ¨ªde is huddled, covered in Tdhahi¡¯s cloak. She¡¯s sleeping with her face resting on her hands, legs dangling over the empty space beneath the shelf they¡¯ve carved into the bark. As for Tdhahi, only his tiny feet are visible- he has decided to burrow headlong into the bark of the massive flesh-tree. Sean and I abstained from that particular task, out of concern for what we would find inside the trunk. Flesh gets infested, and I¡¯d rather not learn what a meat-tree parasite looks like. Sean rubs his face with his hand, running the edge of his palm over the stubble he¡¯s sprouted on this trek to the Bloom. It¡¯s good to see him like this, without the precisely-trimmed facial hair of the city. Reminds me of when we met.

    ¡°They¡¯re okay.¡±

    He yawns, then starts methodically cracking his knuckles.

    ¡°What was that thing, by the way?¡±

    A soft, honest question. He hadn¡¯t asked last night. I sigh.

    ¡°A d¡¯hain. A-¡± I translate to Irdcheol. ¡°Traveller. We don¡¯t know what they really are. I¡¯ve personally never seen one, because they don¡¯t seem to travel far away from the Shorn Peak. Maybe this one was included in whatever process caused the sporing ¨¡breen was talking about. They live on the surface of the dirt, most of the time. Away from people. And they can eat anything, given enough time. A bit like slugs. You can always follow them by the trail they leave.¡±

    He cracks his neck with a slow grinding of his palm against his chin, popping a few stubborn vertebrae. His eyes gleam bronze in the morning sun. ¡°What did it want with us? Just to eat?¡±

    ¡°Probably.¡± In truth, I¡¯m not sure at all. ¡°They hate loud noises. We aren¡¯t sure if they¡¯re intelligent. Sometimes they¡¯ll pass around plants. Sometimes they¡¯ll devour whatever they can get their bodies under. Looks like ¨ªde¡¯s pack is totally gone. They never give up the chance to eat animals though. Lucky for us the Bloom is a forest. We might not have heard it coming over sand or dirt.¡±

    I look down, into the wrecked field below. Everywhere the d¡¯hain had manifested, it had devoured the underbrush. We are at the centre of a sloppy circle of decimated earth.

    ¡°Seemed pretty bloody horrible.¡±

    ¡°Yes. Well, maybe. I don¡¯t think anyone¡¯s ever been able to talk to a d¡¯hain. They¡¯re like storms. You can look into them and see hatred, and power, and death, but at the end of the day they¡¯re just inertia. Maybe we are as strange to them as they are to us.¡±

    He squints into the rising sun, now a good two or three fingers above the horizon. We¡¯re encamped a scarce ten yards up the trunk of the tree, and the canopy of the Bloom stretches out in an immense misty wall all around our little clearing. I follow his gaze, and see a flock of many-winged birds flit silently in the distance.

    ¡°Sure. Still seems pretty bloody horrible.¡±

    He¡¯s not wrong, and follows up with some praise, gesticulating down at our companions. ¡°Good thing we brought a second sigilist. But Iseult¡­ that wasn¡¯t a good thing. I¡¯m here to help, sure, but I didn¡¯t think that we¡¯d be running into anything like that. Why are we really here?¡±

    I was waiting for this. A question asked politely and literally. Telling him the truth, though, is not going to happen. ¡°I want to know what happened to Colt & Tumble, in the Salting Bleaks. I want to know why they owe a debt to a man like ¨¡breen.¡±

    A long time ago, Sean himself told me that the best lies are always built with truthful bones. Something must have happened with Evin Tumble, here in the Wraithwild. Maybe it explains his sudden fascination with the new moon. Maybe Wynne Colt is in on it too. It¡¯s a good cover.

    He squints at me for a heartbeat longer than I¡¯m comfortable with, then nods. ¡°I know. I wasn¡¯t sure what to tell the Pathfinder, when he asked. But to be honest, I don¡¯t know much more than what I said. I asked around, quietly, back in Ildathach. Tried to dig up anything that I could. But it¡¯s much trickier than you¡¯d expect. Nobody really knows anything about what Colt & Tumble did, save their own assumptions and conjectures.¡±

    The conversation lulls, and fills with the background buzz of a forest morning. In the distance, some wet hooting animal barks out a sad little song. He starts again. ¡°I wasn¡¯t able to seriously verify anything. We¡¯re not the only ones who¡¯re asking about Colt & Tumble. Vardon & Company were sniffing around, three weeks earlier. I also heard,¡± he lowers his voice, absurdly. We¡¯re about two stories up, in a breathing tree, in the middle of an unexplored part of the Wraithwild. ¡°The Chaplain¡¯s Office was interested. One of my contacts knows someone who talked with a Dour House agent about the very same topic. A lot of players are asking, is my point. All anyone really knows is, about eighteen months ago Colt & Tumble moved a tonne of expensive equipment and a very small team of professionals into a part of the Salting Bleaks. They hired local help in Brixa Thalaam, then sailed to the Bleaks. Evin Tumble was there. They returned to Ildathach after a week or two, but have been very tight-lipped about it ever since.¡±

    I don¡¯t comment on how deep the paranoia in Ildathach must run for a man to be concerned with being overheard while we¡¯re hiding in a tree, deep in a wandering Wraithwild forest. I take a moment to make sure my rucksack and pouches are buckled correctly, so that I won¡¯t rattle or sway too much when we start walking. Sean looks down, then back to me. ¡°What do you think about ¨ªde?¡±

    I tell him the truth, after some hesitation. ¡°I didn¡¯t want to bring her. I¡¯m glad we did. That knotwork she did wasn¡¯t easy.¡±

    We secure a rope to our little cliff, then rappel down the fleshy scales of the tree. I stop just before touching the new dirt under the tree, and poke it tentatively with my foot in case it does something unexpected.

    An hour later, after breakfast, we orient the compasses and leave our meadow, stepping gingerly across the sinking earth left in the passing of the d¡¯hain. I¡¯m familiar with the way the Peak bends compasses and maps, but the directions seem to have held overnight. The soil rots and crumbles underneath us, turning not into mud but a kind of loose orange silt. It is a relief to return to the glinting crunch of the glass blades. When we pause at the edge of the meadow, poised to return to the darkness of the Bloom, I feel a palpable sense of anxiety at the thought of plunging back into the foggy shadows.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.

    Time to get it over with. I march past Sean and Tdhahi, joining ¨ªde at the shadowy threshold.

    She¡¯s not in good shape. She¡¯s exhausted, and bleeding. Both her hands and both her feet are bandaged, then bandaged again, and she shuffles through the brush with a sad, loping shuffle. We do our best to skirt major obstacles- great iron cairns, pools of rank mercury, particularly grotesque looking vine thickets. The more banal impediments are actually more of a challenge than the exotic ones, and we spend long hours navigating treacherous scree slopes and dense knots of underbrush. At one point, Tdhahi stops us all dead in our tracks, pointing with a machete at the tangle of rocks ahead.

    ¡°Problem?¡± I ask. He shakes his head, then shrugs and responds in smooth Thalaami. ¡°Vipers, I think. Better to take the long way around than risk anything.¡±

    There¡¯s nothing in the jumbled scree that indicates any sort of viper nest. ¡°How sure are you?¡±

    He looks at me pointedly. ¡°In truth? Perhaps there are no vipers, and this is pointless. Or this is the work of a devilish predator, which has invaded my thoughts and tweaked my suspicions. It would not be unthinkable.¡± This monologue in his native language is starkly contrasted with his choppy, faltering Irdcheol. He¡¯s a different person when he speaks Thalaami. ¡°So yes. In short, not sure at all. Nevertheless, I¡¯d rather not get within fifteen yards of a potential nest.¡±

    ¡°Fifteen yards? How big do you think they are?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s the distance I¡¯ve seen a viper spit.¡±

    I fall in behind him and swat at a slavering, palm-sized mosquito. She dies easily, though this does little to stem the interests of her compatriots, who harry us for miles. Tdhahi winces, then shucks off his minimal pack and takes a swig of water from one of four goat-skin bags. He gestures respectfully towards me. ¡°You¡¯ve done this before.¡±

    I nod. He¡¯s just being polite- even if he can¡¯t read my tattoos, he¡¯s from the Wraithwild, so he knows what they imply. When I was younger, the part of the Wraithwild my family roamed through lacked this deep, cloying mist. Nevertheless, even if the foliage is unfamiliar, there are similarities between this Bloom and certain other places I¡¯ve walked before. Though far from the badlands that my tribe trod in my youth, I can feel the spiralling energy of this place, and find it intimate.

    ¡°My grandfather,¡± he continues, after wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. ¡°He was Bani Yathrib.¡± My ears perk up. ¡°Dead, now, of cancer. Ate him up from a young age. My other grandparents said it was because he spent too much time in the deep parts of the Wraithwild. So¡­¡± he shrugs, and I can¡¯t tell if he¡¯s looking for me to say something. I choose not to, so he is forced to continue. ¡°I¡¯m a descendent of the Thamaut tribe.¡±

    My ears perk up. He notices, and hastily adds: ¡°Do you know these people?¡±

    So he definitely doesn¡¯t know about me. I relax, and smile. ¡°Yes. They¡¯re a fine folk, I¡¯m told. But I¡¯ve never met someone from your tribe.¡± I gently lie.

    He grins, pleased. ¡°I¡¯ve always wanted to learn more about the tribes. I don¡¯t have a lot of links to the Bani Yathrib, don¡¯t really remember my grandfather at all. And the Bani Yathrib, come to the city less and less these days, like you¡¯re less interested in other Wraithwilders.¡±

    It¡¯s possible. I left the Wraithwild two decades ago, and much could have changed in that time. I give Tdhahi enough information to make him happy. He¡¯s technically Bani Yathrib, but some concepts sound strange to say in Thalaami, and he never learned to speak Mutafasih. He¡¯s significantly more talkative in his native language than in Irdcheol, which I can appreciate. I explain some of the oldest ink that¡¯s engraved on my hands, the powers that the knotwork invokes, the history that has been embedded into my flesh.

    I lie about the tattoos on my neck and face, of course. Luckily he can¡¯t read Mutafasih.

    By midday we are deep in the fetid depths of the Bloom, eating handfuls of the Pathfinder¡¯s mujadara, flanked on all side by trees entirely encased in great, faintly transparent pyramids. Sean runs his hand over the perfect surface of one of the shapes, peering at the tree imprisoned within. Tdhahi winces and mutters a prayer of protection to Saint Teneral as Sean inspects his fingertips, grinning when he confirms they haven¡¯t been burned or frozen or dissolved away.

    The path saps us of energy, and we hike, determined but slow, under the canopy. Without the easy reckoning of the sun, or any sort of permanent landmark, it¡¯s impossible to truly measure our pace. Given the elevation changes and the time we¡¯ve spent marching, we could¡¯ve gone anywhere between five and ten miles by the time I find myself next to ¨ªde, shuffling beside her as she takes careful, awkward steps. She looks over at me and smiles, despite the discomfort. When she talks, it¡¯s the first time we¡¯ve spoken all day, and she doesn¡¯t sound as exhausted as I expected.

    ¡°Clever, what you did back there with the d¡¯hain. Collapsing the death charm with a bullet to make the noise without finishing the sigil. Where did you learn to do that?¡±

    I can¡¯t help but be surprised: she used the Mutafasih word. I counter her question with my own. ¡°Where did you learn about that?¡±

    She winces as a small stone comes loose under her boots. We pause and watch it tumble down the shallow slope, settling finally in a tiny, trickling stream behind us.

    ¡°One of last year¡¯s lectures, actually. Considerations on Western Mythos. I didn¡¯t even realise what it was until we were high up, and it took me until this morning to remember the name. Knew that they didn¡¯t like sound. Didn¡¯t know that they still existed. I dragged my younger brother Fionn to that lecture- he fell asleep about a minute into it. But it was interesting. But he covered a lot of topics I didn¡¯t know about.¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s a lot in the Wraithwild that the rest of the continent doesn¡¯t know about.¡±

    ¨ªde lets her hands swing by her side. Those bandages will need to be changed soon.

    ¡°You don¡¯t really talk about the Wraithwild.¡± She says, quietly. Before I can respond, she rolls through her next sentence. ¡°And that¡¯s fine. Or whatever. How you ended up in Ildathach. We don¡¯t need to talk about it if you don¡¯t want to. I get it.¡±

    I look at her, lopsided. She turns, and raises her chin at Sean.

    ¡°I¡¯m still a bit in the dark about Sean though.¡±

    ¡°In what way?¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s got that way of speaking to people,¡± I don¡¯t change my expression, and she rolls gently into her next thought. ¡°He phrases everything in a way that lets him win conversations. Why? We¡¯re his friends, and I know he fights, but when I see him talk to people I know he¡¯s trying to get what he wants by being nice or being direct or being intimidating. I don¡¯t know if I¡¯m talking to the real him, when he talks to me.¡± She¡¯s surprisingly insightful, for a young academic. I mull this over as she keeps going. ¡°Plus, you know, with him and you¡­¡±

    This warrants a response. ¡°With him and me?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± here she pauses, then blushes. ¡°Are you two, uh.¡± I wait for her to finish. She¡¯s turning as red as the d¡¯hain¡¯s flesh. ¡°You know. Together?¡±

    Both Sean and Tdhahi turn around when I burst out laughing. I actually have to rest my hand on ¨ªde¡¯s shoulder for support, and only stop when I start wheezing.

    ¡°That¡¯s,¡± I stop again to laugh, and to wipe away the tears at the corner of my eyes. ¡°No. ¨ªde. No. That¡¯s not a thing. You have entirely the wrong idea about Sean. And about me.¡±

    She looks annoyed. ¡°Why? Is there something wrong with him?¡±

    The mirth ebbs, slowly, and so does my grin. We continue walking, and I think about it for a moment. ¡°We only travelled together for a few months, truth be told. Before this, I mean. In the Aergan. And I haven¡¯t seen him in years. But sometimes you spend time with someone, and you don¡¯t forget them. Especially after what we went through. But ¨ªde¡­ Sean¡¯s not like that. He¡¯s good at talking. And fighting. Not so good, always, at listening. He never really came to terms with what happened with his family. Every once in a while you see that crater in him.¡±

    ¨ªde looks at me disarmingly, and I scrabble for the words. ¡°You might want to ask him about it directly.¡±

    ¡°Yeah.¡± She looks over at the two men, who have started clambering up a short, boulder-strewn hill. She shoves her bandaged hands into her pockets. ¡°Maybe I will.¡±

    *

    ¡°Irksome things.¡±

    Sean swats at some kind of flitting black insect, eye-sized and menacing his poor sunburned ears. It flees, buzzing across the little campsite we¡¯ve made, and he returns to poking a small pot of stew. It smells, if nothing else, adequate. The ambiguous, bubbling brown and beige stew that is a Yvreathan staple, and the first thing he¡¯s cooked since we boarded the Gundog Walking. A little yellow half-circle emerges from the muck with iceberg patience, seems to regard me balefully, then submerges again. I think that was a potato. I hope that was a potato.

    This time, we haven¡¯t set up camp inside of a clearing. Light is hard to come by, under this immense canopy, so Sean¡¯s decision to stop took me by surprise. He was right though- it¡¯s now an hour after his announcement, and the sun has almost entirely set. We¡¯ve cleared a small camping space on the damp, mossy floor of the Bloom. The trees here look like they¡¯d support our weight. In case we get another visitor.

    ¡°Set up the tents on the slope, near the top of the hillock,¡± Tdhahi had said. Good advice, though the threat of rain seemed unlikely, shielded as we are under the heavy canopy of the trees above.

    Our second night in the Bloom. It¡¯s hard not to be on edge, but I wonder how much the constant sense of tension and the lack of sleep are affecting us. You can¡¯t really tell when you yourself start losing your edge.

    ¡°Should be done in,¡± Sean squints, poking something dark that has risen to the surface of the sludge, ¡°half¡­ an¡­ hour?¡±

    ¨ªde and the Pathfinder are by themselves, about twenty yards away. She¡¯s sprawled, exhausted, on a thick mat of mildly phosphorescent lichen. He¡¯s bent over her, wrapping her hands again and murmuring something soft to her. I see the ribbons of filthy and discoloured cloth hanging from a nearby tree. They were clean, at the start of the day. The quiet conversation seems jovial enough, and I don¡¯t try to eavesdrop. Beside them rests a small coffee dallah atop a tiny, smouldering fire.

    ¡°So how close do you think we are to finding these bees-that-aren¡¯t-bees?¡± Sean, once again, looking up after rapping the wooden spoon several times against the edge of the cauldron. It rings out pleasantly in the dusk, a counterpoint to the screeching of evening birds.

    ¡°No idea. Dhahi didn¡¯t have any comments either. I don¡¯t think he¡¯s leading us to a specific location. Sounds like his plan is to just get to the middle of the Bloom and hope that we run into the bees along the way.¡±

    He looks thoughtful, and wipes a bead of sweat off his brow with a sleeved forearm. ¡°Seems like¡­ not so good of a plan. To be honest. There¡¯s no animal sign? Or knotwork to be done? What effect is this place having on us?¡±

    I¡¯m going to reply sarcastically, but decide instead to consider his second point for a moment. ¡°Well, possibly. I don¡¯t know anything to summon a hive of bees. How would you find a bee in Yvreathe?¡±

    ¡°They normally seem to find me. Especially if I¡¯m eating.¡±

    He has a point. I have no response, and Sean returns to lazily stirring the stew.

    There¡¯s a change in the air. I snap my attention to the treeline, expecting something dire. It takes me a moment to realise that ¨ªde and Tdhahi have stopped talking. She¡¯s frozen, her hand holding a tiny Thalaami coffee mug. The Pathfinder, holding the battered tin dallah in his hand, is also stock-still.

    ¡°Sean?¡±

    He looks up. Tdhahi says something in a low tone. He¡¯s not talking to ¨ªde. He¡¯s talking to her cup.

    ¡°Sean. That bug that was annoying you.¡±

    There¡¯s an iridescent black shape the size of an eyeball resting on ¨ªde¡¯s index finger. It bobs, twice, sinking its head into the coffee cup. Sean hasn¡¯t noticed what¡¯s happening to our friends, and looks at me strangely.

    ¡°You alright, Iseult? You look like you¡¯ve seen a Saint returning.¡±

    The bee arrows away, lost immediately in the shadows of the Bloom¡¯s depths.

    ¨ªde is dead on her feet. She is exhausted. Her hands are bandaged, fingertip to forearm, in white cloth that is already being stained pink. She can barely stand. When she sprints into the underbrush with a gleeful whoop, I am astonished. Tdhahi, seizing his pack, turns to us and shouts an explanation before leaping after her.

    They disappear almost instantly into the underbrush. I am frozen in surprise. So is Sean.

    ¡°Should we follow them?¡±

    I look at our discarded packs, at the tents, and at the campsite we¡¯ve already erected. We¡¯d never find our way back, not at the pace that those two have just bolted away at.

    ¡°I suppose not. Should make sure they can find us again.¡±

    He shrugs, accepting the circumstances. Typical Sean. ¡°What did the Pathfinder say?¡± He asks me. I mull the translation, before realising that Irdcheol has a single word for it.

    ¡°Kismet.¡±

    He stares at the space where they¡¯ve both disappeared to for a few moments, before nodding a few times and returning to poke at his stew.

 Chapter 9: é“†de

    ¨ªde

    All my soreness is gone. I can feel the soles of my feet start to slick with blood. But I don¡¯t care. The bee spoke to us.

    She¡¯s almost imperceptible in the underbrush, bumbling in slow, lazy hops between plants and trees. That said, she is tiny, and we are not, and when she arcs gently over a particularly gnarled tangle of brush or a sudden unexpected pool, I¡¯m forced to swerve my attention between not losing her midnight-black body against the darkness of the Bloom and not losing my own footing on the treacherous forest floor.

    I trample vines and stones and I do not lose the bee. Branches and vines slap at my exposed face. The Pathfinder is pacing me, breathing heavily.

    I can hear her buzzing. She isn¡¯t speaking. But she is expecting us to follow her.

    When she had landed gently on my coffee cup, I¡¯d intended to swat her away. Fatigue had sapped my reflexes. By the time I had raised my hand to remove her, the look of incredulity on the Pathfinder¡¯s face had stopped me. I had glanced down at the finger-sized bug, the tiny dark jewel, and had felt the realisation seize me.

    She¡¯s a buzzing thing roughly halfway between an oil-slick and a bee, and her edges are malleable and flickering. I can¡¯t quite focus on her flickering edges, even when she had perched on my finger to stare up at me. And after she had taken a tiny sip of my coffee, she had invited us, in a buzzing soprano, to follow her home. First in, I assume, Thalaami. Then in a language it took me a moment to realise was an archaic form of Irdcheol.

    We chase her, slowing from a dead sprint to a cautious scamper as we crash deeper into the Bloom. I lose sight of her for a moment, and a fistful of panic wells up my throat. The Pathfinder shoves past me, and I follow him, shielding my eyes with my arms as he charges directly through a thicket of great thorned ferns. His delicate finger points to some inscrutable patch of darkness, and I pray to the Saints that he knows what he is doing. At the edge of my hearing, I can still hear her buzzing.

    Now, after bumbling deeper into the midnight depths of the Bloom, I realise it''s not quite a buzz. The sound saws across my ears, leaves my eyes watering. My brain feels chapped.

    Buzz, buzz, buzz. I let my thoughts syncopate to the rhythm of the bee. Bees? I can see them, suddenly, dazzling midnight bodies flitting through fog and fungal blossoms. We slow to a walk, and follow this steadily building swarm, mesmerised. Through a break in the trees, I spot stars in the sky above us, and the scintillant coils of the aurora.

    There! There. In a clearing ringed by surprisingly ordinary looking palm trees. An immense pale boulder. Or, not a boulder, but a skull- cracked and enormous. If it were ten times smaller, it could easily be human. Whatever ape or monkey it belonged to, I¡¯m glad we didn''t see one on our march through the Bloom. Bees the size of my eyeballs crawl over its bleached surface, clogging its yawning sockets with sable honeycomb. In this clearing, the bees hum like the air before a tempest, maintaining a pitch just under unbearable. Muted throes of sunlight burst through the canopy at strange angles, catching the glittering swarm as it seethes over their yellowing hive The Pathfinder makes a hand sign when he reaches the edge of the clearing, shaking his head. His nose is bleeding. He doesn¡¯t follow.

    Writhing insect bodies scuttle and squirm in rivers over the immense and pitted bones. It''s only when I¡¯m within five yards or so of the appalling skull that I realise how many bees there are. The Pathfinder watches, stonily, from the edge of the copse, knuckles white around his machete.If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

    He had mentioned before, during one of our short conversations in the meat-tree, that the bees wouldn''t harm us. I wonder how he could possibly know that. My tongue lies thick in my mouth, dry despite the humidity, and I walk towards the skull and try to get the bees¡¯ attention. I clear my throat and speak.

    "Hello?"

    The hive bristles, but remains lethargic and imperious. If they heard me, they''re ignoring me.

    "Hello."

    More confidence, this time.

    Still nothing.

    Well now it''s getting insulting.

    "Hello."

    The bees detonate from the skull in a thousand-strong a humming that envelops me in seconds. Insects coat my body like plumage, drinking the tears from my eyes, scurrying through my clothes and hair. The last thing I hear before the sawing noise of endless buzzing overcomes me is the Pathfinder''s frantic shout: "Don''t bite! Don''t bite!"

    Is he talking to me, or to the bees? They''re inside my mouth, perched on my tongue. They sample the words that die in my throat. I retch, helplessly, feel them cover my eyes and ears. There¡¯s a moment of panic when I realise that there¡¯s nothing keeping the bees from crawling down my windpipe and nesting in my lungs. Then they start talking.

    I¡¯m expecting some sort of higher thrum, a glimmer of falsetto foreign syllables like those of the bee who had spoken in earlier. As a chorus, the swarm speaks with a human voice. At first it¡¯s hard to pick it out from the twitching flight, but the buzzing finally ebbs from a crescendo to a drone. They¡¯ve moved away from my ears, and evacuated my mouth. But they cover me completely. Every second I feel tiny convulsions as my body is covered in a twitching, quivering mass of armoured wings and oily, segmented legs. Antenna tickle my eyelashes.

    "Outsider! Remarkable! It¡¯s been a long time. You taste gorgeous." They sound so satisfied. "Why are you here?"

    I reflect that I am not entirely prepared for this question. I¡¯m hardly in a position to lie.

    Honesty seems as good an option as any other, and I¡¯ve never been very good at bending the truth. All I omit from the story, told falteringly as little skittering legs brush my lips, ears, and eyes, is Colt & Tumble¡¯s motive, or what they did in the past. I really don¡¯t want to lie to the bees.

    After I finish, the buzzing swells to a crash before dissolving into a bearable hum. A markedly different voice emerges from the swarm, somewhere around my nose. Are there perhaps different factions in the hive?

    "Debt! Bizarre. You keep much from us. Hidden things? Give us hidden things?"

    Its words chime my flesh. Meaning bolts into my heart. When I gasp, a bee flicks from my lips, irritable. Their bodies form a mass around me that pulses, once, and I understand for the first time how strong they are. Strong and ravenous.

    They¡¯re starving for secrets. I thought I told them the entire story, but they want something from me, something else. I¡¯m reminded of stories of Yvreathe¡¯s Saints. Conversations within conversations, performance pieces that have little to do with the discussion at hand, yet mean everything. I wonder if these bees, these talking miracles of the Shorn Peak, are descendent from the Saintly epoch, and if they too are drenched in myth. If so, I hope they don¡¯t share the same detached, pathological mercilessness of the Saints. Or their sad, doomed destinies.

    I couldn¡¯t hide anything, even if I wanted to. When the bees chatter and thirst, I don¡¯t just hear them in my ears. It¡¯s like they¡¯re living in my head as well, chasing my thoughts. I tell them the only secret that I can think of. That I don¡¯t think I¡¯m good enough.

    The swarm thrums, like a beating heart. Sated bees depart from my shaking body. The ones on my lips are the last to alight, word-drunk, and these stragglers sag woozily in the air. I¡¯m quivering, suddenly free of the weight of thrumming chitin.

    Then they return.

    This time, they don¡¯t settle on any part of my body. They land on my hands and alight instantly, and a tiny, slick wetness grows on my palms. A black droplet has appeared, deposited from the first of a twisting queue of patiently waiting bees. They descend upon me, and minute by minute fill my cupped hands with oil and sable honeycomb.

    Just before they are done, a pair of bees land on both of my ears. I stiffen.

    ¡°Outsider! Thank you. Not a very well hidden secret. But from the heart. Take heart. You are mistaken. Take heart! Cousin covets and keeps the sojourner. Egregious. A boon for you. A boon from us. We taste greatness on your heart. Take the boon. Be careful. It will come if you need it, in dark and drowning places.¡±

    They end their speech with a pair of smouldering syllables. I hear the first, but cannot say it. The second one they say with their blood, or their skins.

    I convulse, stomach suddenly inverted, biting in a scream as that word chars my ears and thoughts. My skull creaks, then smoulders under the weight. Thinking is like burning. My flickering heart swells like tallow.

    Tears evaporate from my weeping sockets. When I shudder my eyelids open, the acrid sting of the faint light is blinding. At first, I can only see the black muck clutched in my splayed hands, and the smoking corpses of two thumb-sized bees. Violet sparks crackle gently on their bodies.

    The swarm is gone, retreated inside the enormous skull. My vision sharpens until I can see the Pathfinder, gawking from the forest¡¯s edge, blood trickling from his nose. I give him a weak smile and take a single stumbling step towards him, cradling the honeycomb with my hands.

 Chapter 10: Sean

    Sean

    ¨ªde and the Pathfinder emerge as shuffling silhouettes in the gloom of the underbrush, and I see them long before they see me. Iseult took the time to write a pair of brilliant sun-sigils, and hung them around our campsite after a brief argument concerning the danger of advertising our location. I give a shout when the pair of them are close enough. The Pathfinder¡¯s head shoots up in my direction, and it takes him a second for him to recognise me against the tree branch I¡¯m perched on. ¨ªde doesn¡¯t look up at all. They¡¯ve arrived on virtually the same trajectory they left on. He¡¯s pretty good, to be able to retrace their path like that.

    Iseult must be moving as well- there¡¯s a clinking noise as she rises, and the scrape of the coffee dallah being taken off the light embers of a cooking fire. Underneath me bubbles the dinner I¡¯ve been preparing. The stew has been simmering for the last hour that the two of them have been gone, though I¡¯ve kept the fire as low as possible to conceal the steam and the cooking smoke.

    Iseult leans against the tree under me, and we watch the pair of them pick their way back to the camp. It¡¯s slow going- ¨ªde isn¡¯t moving her arms. Is she hurt?

    The Pathfinder calls out something in Thalaami, a rhyming couplet that I don¡¯t understand. Iseult says something in return, in that same sing-song tempo. She relaxes slightly, taking her hand off of the trigger guard of her weapon. Her practiced hands work over the gun, sliding the cylinder out, and she rapidly slots out four bullets into her open palm. She pockets these, rests the jezail lightly on the tree beside her, then folds her arms and waits.

    When the pair of them make it back through the gloomy fecundity of the Bloom and reach our little clearing, ¨ªde stumbles. Her face is sunken, as if her features have been pulled and twisted by fingers. There¡¯s a crust of blood around her ears. I clamber down the tree and Iseult and I rush to meet her, but when I reach her and place a hand on her shoulder she shakes her head, still kneeling. She asks me, quietly, for a jar.

    Iseult turns quickly, shooting a worried look at the Pathfinder. He looks at her, and then at me, and the concern and fear on his face is unnerving. When Iseult returns a minute later with a glass jar and a length of lead wire, neither the Pathfinder nor I have exchanged words. We¡¯re both staring at ¨ªde, who in turn has let her head tilt slightly, staring glassily and unfocused at the forest floor. There¡¯s a heart-sized mass in her clutched, wrapped hands. It is staining her bandages black, and drips occasionally onto the thick lichen underfoot.

    ¨ªde takes the jar from Iseult, wordlessly. She shudders and drops the sopping, oily mess into the glass- the honeycomb folds gently from the impact. It skitters at the edge of my vision, slipping my eyes from its glittering edges. The older woman takes the jar from ¨ªde¡¯s unresisting hands, covers it with a lid, and bends a length of lead around the jar¡¯s neck. It takes her a few minutes to draw a sigil onto the lid, and about five seconds for the glyph to brighten and weld the metal around the lid shut. As she does so, the honey sloppily oozes and settles at the base of the jar. It is mercurial, or thrumming, and is comprised equally of bubbling black spheres and hair-like tendrils. The roiling muck seems to be churn the most where it is closest to Iseult, and I watch over and over again as midnight-coloured spikes struggle against the glass like tangles of collapsing veins. It gleams with a matte shine that seems familiar. Like Aergan coins over the eyes of a corpse.

    Life returns to ¨ªde slowly, as if the act of holding the muck was exhausting. She looks at me with a sudden concern. ¡°Can you help me with the bandages?¡±

    When she holds up her streaked forearms, I am struck with a deep wave of pity. The bandages peel away in slippery ribbons, revealing blood and dripping black honey in equal amounts. I cradle those weak arms in my own, and her fingers clamp around mine. Warm, damp. Wormlike.

    She makes it all the way to the end, just as I finish the binding on her left arm, before she starts crying.

    *

    We¡¯ve packed the tents and placed more wood under the cooking fire, which I return to and resume awkwardly poking the stew I¡¯ve been preparing. When I turn, the Pathfinder is standing behind me. It takes me a moment to realise that the grim expression frozen on his face is not from whatever happened to him and ¨ªde in the woods. He¡¯s staring at my food.

    I ladle out three bowls (the Pathfinder politely demurs. He¡¯s staring at the meal with the disdainful curiosity of a housecat). When I bring the meals over to Iseult and ¨ªde, they¡¯re murmuring something to each other in low voices. Jargon-rich, unusual syllables. Magic. Iseult takes the bowl without saying anything, but ¨ªde gives me a sad smile. I notice she¡¯s draped a necklace of iron Bani Yathrib beads around her neck- Iseult must have given it to her in these last few minutes. The bullet in the front has been engraved so intricately it catches my eye for a moment. I know what bullets mean to Iseult, and I hope ¨ªde appreciates the gesture. The pair drop back into their conversation, and I understand perhaps four in every five words.

    I shrug, knowing my place, and return to stamp out the cooking fire.

    Yesterday, the quiet the monstrous stain brought had extended well past when Iseult and ¨ªde banished it. All night, for hours, the sounds of the Bloom had been muted, or far away, or both. I had stared up into the night and watched the real moon track lazily across the horizon, lulled into sleep by the rhythmic breathing of the trees.

    No such luck tonight. Just as I am secured under my tartan (I have given the remainder of my sleeping kit to ¨ªde, who lost all of hers to the creature), a thunderous hooting blasts from the trees around us, some gurgling racket that bolts me wide awake. Only my face, slathered with a salve against mosquitos, emerges from my blanket. I¡¯d rather marinate under the oppressive heat of my tartan than risk any sort of Wraithwild bug-bite diseases. I think of the bee we saw today, and feel a stab of embarrassment that it was neither Iseult nor me, but ¨ªde, who realised what it was.

    We¡¯re letting her rest. I don¡¯t know if she¡¯s asleep. There are a few scant measures of laudanum in the base of my pack, and I palmed the smallest bottle to her without the others noticing. Afterwards, the rest of us drew lots for the watch schedule. The Pathfinder first, Iseult last, and me in the middle with the dog watch.

    I roll over, and can see him, sitting cross-legged against a tree, staring out into the darkness. Iseult undid her light sigils, and stored the now blank slates in her pack. No sense advertising overnight. Still, I can just make out his silhouette, a lump barely illuminated in the feeble moonlight that pierces the canopy above.

    I close my eyes and try to will myself to sleep.

    *

    The Pathfinder is kneeling over me, his thin, pinched face tilted very slightly to one side, as if listening. I am awake, instantly, and remember where we are. Adrenaline begins to leach out of my blood, slower than it arrived. He grins when I emerge, decelerating, from the tartan.

    He removes his delicate hand from my shoulder, before turning and walking over to his sleeping spot. I watch him shuck his clothes, revealing a lithe body, before halfway burrowing himself under a Thalaami blanket. No tinctures or ointments to ward off against insects. He just settles himself and stops moving.

    A few minutes later, I see his chest slow to a dreamer¡¯s pace. Unbelievable.

    It takes me a moment to realise how shockingly bright it is. The moonlight should surely not be able to penetrate to this depth, nor should it be this bright. When I look up, the moon looks normal. That¡¯s not where this light is coming from.

    Under the canopy, clinging to a hundred boughs, are a thousand pinprick lanterns. They flutter, rarely, from tree to tree, bobbing with the nonchalant gracelessness of moths. I look up, and see above me, above everyone, a sea of tiny stars set against the underside of the trees. Their light is strong enough to illuminate the entire Bloom in a faint, ghostly aura.

    I crack my shoulders, retrieve my sword from its resting spot just to the right of my blanket, and start slowly encircling the camp.

    If these moths hadn¡¯t showed up, I would¡¯ve been perfectly happy sitting in a tree not far from my bedroll. Now, as I quietly make my rounds, I note that my chosen spot is perfectly illuminated by a particularly thick cluster of luminescence. No good, then. I see a few spots about the campsite that seem dark enough. Before finding the optimal one to perch myself in, I trudge my way through the underbrush, over to ¨ªde.

    She¡¯s used the insect tincture, that¡¯s for sure. I can smell it from five paces away, before I even really see her. She¡¯s curled under my bearskin, lit by the moth-glow. As I draw closer to her, I hear something that tightens my throat and puts my teeth on edge.

    ¨ªde is whispering something.

    This happens, of course, with certain people. But we¡¯ve been travelling together for weeks, and I haven¡¯t heard her talk in her sleep before.

    What happened to her, with the bees? She told us the story, in two fragments, but neither Iseult nor I were convinced. When Iseult pressed the Pathfinder, he had said something similar- she¡¯d been coated in bees, and they¡¯d talked for a long time, then left her quivering, with her hands filled with honeycomb. Maybe that¡¯s the truth.

    Her voice rises slightly, a nonsense rhythm, a Saint¡¯s glossolalia. Should I wake her?

    I spend the entire night in a tree above her, listening to that garbled susurrus. When the time comes to wake Iseult for the last watch, I elect instead to stay in my tree, never taking my hand from my sword or my attention from ¨ªde¡¯s frantic murmurings.

    *

    By the time we¡¯re packed the next morning, some of the colour has returned to ¨ªde¡¯s face. She still looks awful, but at least her complexion has returned. I mention the latter, as she bashfully returns my bearskin. We decamp, then strike backwards out of the Bloom. Iseult seemed grateful for the extra sleep. I fall behind the troupe, and spend most of my time staring at the back of ¨ªde¡¯s head. The Pathfinder seems confident, and we make very good time.

    About thirty minutes before we reach where the border of the Bloom and the rest of the Wraithwild should be, we arrive at the shores of a large lake. The Pathfinder is staring at it, frowning. I join him. We have returned on a similar bearing to the one we entered in, according to the compasses. Where did this water come from?

    It¡¯s a huge, vague circle, ringed with a mat of orange flowers that are so dense and so vibrant that they obscure the water underneath their petals. As we watch, they twitch slowly- first towards us, then in random patterns, as if they are losing interest. This flower wreathe extends only a yard or so into the rest of the lake, which is completely devoid of life. The waters are still. Stiller than I¡¯ve ever seen a body of water, entirely flat even in the light midday breeze. Sunlight reflects perfectly off its unblemished mirror surface.

    It¡¯s as quiet as it was when the d¡¯hain hunted us. Nothing moves.

    We circumvent the mirror lake, staring occasionally at the glassy surface, our footsteps grotesquely loud in that placid air. When it is behind us, and we are almost to the edge of the Bloom, I check over my shoulder much more frequently than I normally would, imagining threats at every twitching leaf.

    Then, all of a sudden, we are out of the darkness, and into the Wraithwild proper. Iseult literally sighs with relief, and she joins the Pathfinder, who is standing with his eyes closed in the centre of the road. The sun is drowned, yes, but it is there, and the light is welcome after those long miles under the dismal canopy.

    *

    Even outside of the Bloom, away from the maddening strangeness of the forest, we¡¯re not entirely safe. Bandits and highwaymen are rife in Yvreathe, especially in places far away from well-travelled towns and roads. I¡¯m sure that sinister people lurk here, in the Wraithwild. Thalaami brigands. Bani Yathrib tribes. As with before, the terrain blurs between dusty scrubland and dense forest, where trees and ferns occasionally push right up to the edge of the road.

    We¡¯re well into the first day¡¯s hike back when a bough detonates over ¨ªde¡¯s head.

    In her defence, she¡¯s walking dead on her feet. Her ears are still ringed with little crusts of blood, and she can¡¯t even use her hands without wincing. She doesn¡¯t have a pack, because it was eaten by the monstrous red swirl-thing. There¡¯s a gunshot crack, and I snap my head sideways just in time to see the branch start to descend onto her.

    Only her head moves, and she looks up, resigned. The exhaustion and the sadness in her eyes is unmistakable. I erupt towards her, and have taken two steps by the time the tree branch hits the ground.

    I don¡¯t know what the Pathfinder and Iseult are doing, but I reach ¨ªde a second later, taking her head in both of my hands. She¡¯s standing stock-still, strong as a standing stone, quiet amidst the still-quivering tree branches. It missed her by inches, and by some incredible stroke of luck she is situated just at the point where the bough bisects into two separate branches. Had she been one more foot the right or left, she would¡¯ve been maimed or killed by the falling bough.

    I know what shock does to people. But I¡¯m staring at ¨ªde, and I swear to the Saints that she¡¯s not afraid. Her eyes are unblinking, and locked onto mine, like her world is just her and me. She¡¯s not just tired, or weary. She¡¯s not there at all.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry. I don¡¯t feel myself,¡± she says, in a soft, heart-breaking murmur.

    I wrap her in my arms and almost cry in relief when I feel her, seconds later, hug me back.

    *

    We smell the sea at about the same time we see the walls of Brixa Thalaam. A slow-rolling merchant caravan a mile ahead of us fills the entire width of the road, but it slowly congeals to a single-file line as we draw near. As soon as we¡¯re within earshot, the Pathfinder shouts one sentence, just one sentence, and the traders shift from polite to raucous. They¡¯re from near Cotton Castle, and accept our Wraithwilders garrulously, and ¨ªde and I with open arms.

    By the time we reach the gates, they¡¯ve mostly retreated from around ¨ªde. I don¡¯t particularly blame them- she says almost nothing, her eyes glazed like she¡¯s on henbane. Her stiff, juddering walk is difficult to match.

    We enter the city from a different angle, though the houses and buildings look much the same. Our merchant crew leaves us around a large plaza, flanked with squat little beige buildings, marked with swirls of cast iron and gorgeous tilework. We say our goodbyes and slot neatly into the afternoon traffic, joining a herd of boisterous cattle driven by a bored-looking farmer.

    I slowly sneak my hand into my coat pocket, and gingerly touch the bundle I¡¯ve secreted there. Yes, the Pathfinder told us to take nothing from the Bloom. And on the way into those depths, concerned as I was regarding the threats of that forest, I hadn¡¯t considered stopping to take a souvenir. But after passing a copse of house-tall finger-trees, I¡¯d felt the overwhelming need to take something, something to mount or frame or entertain at an Ildathach gathering.

    This desire eventually intensified to the point where, when the others were distracted by a particularly grotesque sapling, I had taken a few moments to collect a flower that appeared to grow in the shape of a human jaw, jewel-teeth included. I¡¯d wrapped the flower in a kerchief and snuck it into my pocket. I¡¯d also collected a brace of dried leaves, splashed in glorious indigo fractals.

    I¡¯d seen a rock, just before we left the Bloom entirely, that looked for all the world like a carved cylinder of malachite the size of my palm. As I stooped to collect it, a foot-long slug had reared up from the dirt next to it, and stared at me with a narrow, judgemental gaze. Its flat face was alarming, as were its bared, human-like teeth, and my hand had hovered over the cylinder for just a moment before I had walked briskly on to join the rest of the group.

    A group of black-clad Bani Yathrib, one of whom is resting an enormous firearm on his shoulder, marches towards us. They wheel before they intersect our path, disappearing down some side street. If they see Iseult, they have no reaction. She¡¯s ahead of me, so I can¡¯t see her face, but I can¡¯t help but notice that her gaze lingers on the intersection where the tribe had pivoted away from us.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

    We march on, exhausted and covered in the sweat and grime of hard travel. The city itself is a nexus for all sorts of nomads and traders, and we hardly cut an unusual shape in the winding cobblestones of whatever district we¡¯re in. It comes as somewhat of a surprise when we stop at an unremarkable-looking caravansary. I hadn¡¯t asked, I¡¯d just assumed that the Pathfinder would¡¯ve taken us to see ¨¡breen directly. The sun hasn¡¯t even set yet: we have several more hours of daylight at least.

    Unsurprisingly, the building is beige, tiled, and has those tall thin walls that seem to be in fashion in the city. A few street urchins watch us from their squat in the road, sitting cross-legged in the dirt. They¡¯re lounging under a small statue of Saint Teneral, his bronze face aged and featureless from the wear of centuries.

    The street we¡¯ve stopped in is a little quieter than the others. I have no idea where we are, but Iseult seems satisfied, so I¡¯m happy enough. ¨ªde leans hard against me as we stop moving, and I feel her shift her weight as she sags, exhausted, against my chest. I wrap an arm around her, and she closes her eyes and just breathes, slowly. The city murmurs around us, a faraway susurrus of laughs and arguments. When the wind whips through the street, it rustles through the broad leaves of the trees that line both sides of the road and brings with it the smell of salt and pine.

    Iseult and the Pathfinder are speaking with each other. I recognise the set of her shoulders, and the unpleasant tone she¡¯s using. She¡¯s furious.

    My first instinct is to figure out what¡¯s happening, but ¨ªde has slumped against me and I don¡¯t speak Thalaami. Instead, I pretend that I don¡¯t hear anything, and take a deep interest in the porticos of the buildings around us. Even when Iseult stabs a hand angrily towards ¨ªde and me, I opt to look up at the intricate iron balconies of the Thalaami buildings, and the wide, dark doors of the inn before us.

    Minutes later, I act surprised when Iseult addresses me, stamping angrily behind us. ¡°He¡¯s leaving us.¡±

    That is actually a bit startling. I cock my head and frown. ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°Tdhahi,¡± She spits his name. ¡°He¡¯s a Pathfinder, literally, so that¡¯s as far as his job with us extends. He said his task is done, so he¡¯s excused himself. After taking us here.¡± She gestures towards the wide, squat walls of the caravansary. Moments before, with the implied presence of the Pathfinder, it had been an oasis.

    ¡°You think this is going to be a problem?¡± ¨ªde hears my tone change, and peels herself off me, concerned. Iseult scowls.

    ¡°He seemed normal. Not planning something, I mean. This isn¡¯t unusual, for Thalaamis.¡±

    I trust her judgement, and rest my hand back on the pommel of my sword.

    ¡°But,¡± she continues, ¡°I¡¯m not sure what the implication is. Do you think he¡¯s gone to collect friends? Why this caravansary in particular? Delaying our meeting with ¨¡breen until tomorrow gives either of them some time to plan, if indeed something is being planned.¡±

    I ponder this. She¡¯s not wrong, of course, and I don¡¯t necessarily disagree with her. I wish I¡¯d been able to speak with the man, to see for myself if I had trusted him or not. ¡°So you think we should choose a different inn? Wouldn¡¯t that be a bit¡­ impolite?¡±

    Iseult taps a booted toe against a loose cobblestone. ¡°Yes. Absolutely. It would be impolite.¡±

    ¨ªde looks between the two of us, head turning slowly. I consider things for a few seconds, and see the exhaustion writ plainly on both of their faces. This paranoia is standard, for Iseult. But she¡¯s not necessarily wrong.

    ¡°How much money do you have?¡± I ask, indelicately. Even Iseult picks up on the bluntness of that question, and her response is understandably brusque: ¡°Why?¡±

    ¡°In case we have to shift our lodgings-¡°

    ¡°In the middle of the night,¡± she interrupts. ¡°I see. So we purchase rooms here, and we leave without being noticed at night, and find another inn to stay in.¡±

    This is not what I was going to say, but it is very characteristic of the way that she thinks. I was just going to search for a more expensive hotel. ¡°Yes,¡± I lie.

    ¡°Alright,¡± she says, enthused. The idea of a midnight getaway has kindled in her a few more minutes of zeal. ¡°We can rest here until a few hours after sunset. Then, we can exit. Preferably out over the roof,¡± she¡¯s pointing at a low-slung part of the caravansary, presumably where horses or camels can be kept overnight. Iseult nods curtly, glancing sideways at ¨ªde.

    ¡°Right. Be ready to move in a few hours.¡±

    *

    Luckily for me, despite her temporary fervour Iseult succumbs to sleep almost the second she lays down. ¨ªde, likewise, has collapsed, exhausted, onto the delicate eiderdown of her own bed. Boots still on and everything. I debate unwrapping her bandages to check on her wounds, but opt to let her sleep.

    This is my first time in a true Thalaami caravansary, and it is easily as impressive as anything similar I¡¯d find in Yvreathe. We¡¯re locked behind a thick dark-wood door, which is flanked with a pair of impressive security irons. Outside of the room, smooth marble tiles set in tessellating patterns expand outwards from a central square pool within the place¡¯s broad courtyard, which is open to the air and clad in the same gorgeous stone. Huge leafy trees in immaculate white pots are placed every few yards around the edge of the space, and featureless stone benches topped with outrageously-patterned cushions offer plenty of places to sit.

    We¡¯ve rented two rooms, from a massive, genial woman named Jala Manaf. She speaks no Irdcheol, but to my surprise does have very passable Aerinic, and she had ranted to me about a pair of Al Khazraj visitors who had left without paying. ¨ªde went to bed instantly, and Iseult had been completely alert and even vaguely sociable for about ten minutes, fuelled by our planned subterfuge. Slowly, over about half an hour of passionate heckling from Jala, she had flagged. I had escorted Iseult across the courtyard to our room, and our host had sent me off with a salacious look and a furious eyebrow waggling.

    Iseult¡¯s paranoia has infected me. Despite the exhaustion of the long journey back to Brixa Thalaam, I secure our door with the security bars, then with Iseult and I¡¯s belongings, then fall asleep in a seated position directly under the locked, shuttered window. The entire night, I keep my sword unsheathed, an inch from my hand.

    Just as I am on the cusp of sleeping, I realise I am being kept awake by the noises that ¨ªde makes in her sleep. She¡¯s making a sort of droning hiss in her dreams. Unless I too am dreaming.

    Nothing happens that evening, and I manage to slip in a few hours of sleep before the sun peeks through the shutters. We leave the next day, and ¨ªde has the good graces not to mention the fact that we all slept through Iseult¡¯s original plan to escape the caravansary under cover of darkness.

    *

    First surprise: ¨¡breen is not at his home.

    Second surprise: Iseult does not seem to be particularly concerned.

    We leave the jar of honeycomb with the man¡¯s servant. He didn¡¯t even invited us in, just shared a greeting with Iseult. No notes, no signets, just a single sentence in Thalaami, and that was it. ¨ªde and I were befuddled, but quiet. She hadn¡¯t said much since this morning, when I¡¯d checked her hands for infection and rewrapped them with scented Thalaami bandages that I¡¯d bought from Jala. Perhaps it¡¯s her age, but she¡¯s healing exceptionally quickly. Physically, at least. I still can¡¯t believe how vacant her expressions are, or how the skin around her eyes has been hollowed.

    ¨ªde shifts her weight awkwardly on the fungalboard decking that skirts ¨¡breen¡¯s apartment. When Iseult says something in a rhyming couplet and puts her hand to her heart, the old man smiles peacefully and shuts the door with a solid tunk.

    We descend the long staircase down, and I ask Iseult what is happening. She answers, lethargically. ¡°We¡¯re done.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s it?¡±

    She nods. ¡°That¡¯s it.¡±

    We make it down to the street, five stories, before ¨ªde speaks. She¡¯s been holding the words in for some time now. ¡°But where is the oleum? Where is ¨¡breen?¡±

    Iseult¡¯s tiredness collapses upon her all at once, and her face creases as if she¡¯s exerting herself. The few square-inches of untattooed flesh on her jaw bob as she opens her mouth to speak, then closes it. Her response is brief. ¡°It¡¯s coming. And he¡¯s not here.¡±

    We wander back through the streets, towards the docks. Our travelling packs are secure in the caravansary, as Iseult¡¯s mistrust has diminished substantially after sleeping a full night in an actual bed. After leaving the district that ¨¡breen lives in we return to a more central part of Brixa Thalaam. The buildings are hued from beige to brown, and exactly arranged in squares and grids that flow up and down gentle hills. None is taller than four stories, but all are tastefully decorated with crenellations and masterful stonework. Great balconies, carved from wood and iron and detailed with the same care and skill that the buildings are, stretch out above the flattened grey stones of the street. They¡¯re painted in deep blues and reds, and combined with the black iron and the potted plants that emerge from myriad points along the facades, they are beautiful. I¡¯m so entranced by the buildings that I almost run straight into a group of pilgrims. The leader, carrying a bulky statue of Saint Teneral on a pole that¡¯s longer than he is, glares at me darkly.

    Iseult perks up and pauses at an intersection. ¨ªde, hands newly wrapped, accidentally bumps into her when she stops. Much to my surprise, there¡¯s no irritated reaction from Iseult at all. She¡¯s smiling. I share a raised eyebrow with ¨ªde.

    ¡°I¡­ know this street.¡± Iseult taps the air with a single finger, starts walking one direction, then shuffles her feet and hones in on the mouth of a crooked alley. Brixa Thalaam¡¯s thoroughfares are huge, Ildathach-sized, but her winding side-streets are cramped and labyrinthine. The sun is blunted by the thin, tall walls of the buildings surrounding us, and we follow our gunner through an alley barely wide enough for two of us to walk shoulder to shoulder. Iseult skirts neatly around a discarded pile of wooden crates, and makes a sharp right. We follow, curious, and find ourselves in a small plaza, a neatly scooped square centred with a placid, tiled pond. Olive trees grow in enormous pots at each corner of the plaza, tiled in a jumble of oranges, whites, and blues. At the plaza¡¯s centre, a trio of Al Khazraj adventurers in travelling robes are arguing loudly around a map. All three of them have fat, leather-bound cases slung to their back.

    I¡¯m not sure what to expect. We walk down one side of the square, the various scattered peoples paying more attention to ¨ªde and me than our guide. A pair of children stop to gawk at me, and I give them a friendly, unreciprocated wave. Iseult points at a black wicker chair, and I understand.

    She doesn¡¯t wait for a waiter. She leaves us outside, and strolls into the wide doors of this caf¨¦, leaving ¨ªde and me to be studied by the locals.

    Coffee. Shisha. Food. All three arrive, at various intervals, and the tabletop begins to fill.

    Saints, the food is good.

    Sated, we bask in the aftermath, stuffed with things that I¡¯ve never heard of, that I regret eating merely because I know I will never taste them in Yvreathe. Iseult grins at me, and I can see whatever irritable mood possessed her last night has waned. ¨ªde made a joke about eating so much she¡¯d fall asleep, and she¡¯s about one more dessert away from literally dozing off in her chair.

    At the end of the meal, Iseult excuses herself, leaving ¨ªde and I to pleasantly marinate in the afternoon light. She disappears back into the caf¨¦, and the shaded heat pushes down gently on my sunburned ears. I would be uncomfortable, if I weren¡¯t so perfectly filled with food, and if we didn¡¯t have an immense brass carafe of chilled water in the centre of our table. I lean back, head lolling and throat exposed, close my eyes, and surrender myself to the afternoon.

    ¡°Hey¡­ Sean?¡±

    That¡¯s not a normal tone of voice. I snap my eyes open and lean forward. ¨ªde is looking at me, face drawn. Concerned, anxious. I tilt my head, grimacing. ¡°I wanted to ask you a question,¡± she continues. ¡°Am I, ah. Am I doing okay?¡±

    She looks shattered. She probably is shattered, because I myself am exhausted by our trek through the Wraithwild. It is a testament to her will that she¡¯s made it this far, without stopping. Or perhaps, I realise with a start, I¡¯m getting old. I hold both my arms wide, trying not to be condescending or trite. ¡°¨ªde. What kind of question is that? You¡¯re doing perfectly.¡±

    Her face reforms into wavering content. Or, does so halfway. She starts again. ¡°It¡¯s just, I don¡¯t know. I almost screwed up with the,¡± and here she says a pair of words in Thalaami which I don¡¯t understand. She sees my confusion and amends her sentence hastily, ¡°the d¡¯hain. And the bees. And now I¡¯ve got these headaches. And my hands.¡±

    Here she holds them up for me to inspect, as if I have forgotten. The bandages, edged in travel grime, stained with various small food stains. No ichor wells up from underneath, neither honey nor blood nor anything more sinister. The look on her face breaks my heart.

    ¡°Hey. Don¡¯t worry about it. Don¡¯t focus on what you didn¡¯t do perfectly. You helped Iseult kill the thing. You talked to the bees. You made it, and I know a lot of people who wouldn¡¯t.¡±

    That same look, that same clash of anxiety and happiness. I press on, sincerely. ¡°I¡¯m serious. ¨ªde. Don¡¯t worry about what you did wrong. We did the job, about as good as we could have expected. Don¡¯t ever think that you have to be perfect. You¡¯ve never done this before, you have no practice, and you really exceeded any expectations we could¡¯ve had of you. Don¡¯t worry about trying to perform miracles. Maybe you yourself are a miracle.¡±

    A fly buzzes over some scarce, leftover humus. I shoo it away lazily, and when she¡¯s comfortable, she speaks again.

    ¡°My mother was so worried, when I left. She didn¡¯t say it, out loud. I don¡¯t think she wanted my brothers to be afraid, as well.¡±

    I nod. ¡°My father hated it when I used to spend nights outside of Llancreg. Used to drive him up the wall, when I¡¯d spend days or weeks exploring the Aergan. Wasn¡¯t a big fan of my time in the military, either.¡±

    I trail off, realising I¡¯m about to dive into waters I¡¯d rather not plumb. I switch the topic, noting that neither of us have mentioned our missing parent. ¡°You¡¯ve got brothers?¡±

    She smiles, actually smiles, from the heart, and her face begins to catch some of its previous enthusiasm. ¡°Two brothers, both younger. In the Ragged Schools, still. Mum doesn¡¯t want them to grow up into the workhouses, so she¡¯s trying to get them through to a college, like me. I send a lot of my scholarship back to them, to help with the costs.¡±

    I grin. ¡°Me too! Two sisters! I mean, not in Ragged Schools. But in Llancreg. They mean the world to me,¡± I lie.

    She¡¯s about to say something else when Iseult returns, and ¨ªde looks down at the leftover food on her plate. Iseult stares at it too, then stares at ¨ªde, and the two enter some sort of weird entente until ¨ªde leans forward, scoops the last handful of stuffed vine leaf into her mouth, and contently nods.

    *

    My father used to cook for my sisters and me, with a tremendous enthusiasm that I have rarely seen matched elsewhere in Yvreathe. As a child, it never struck me as unusual, and it was only until later in life that I understood that ladies and gentlemen of a certain standing were expected to have servants to do that sort of thing, and that for a gentleman, spending really any measure of time in kitchens is considered ¡®eccentric¡¯.

    It was also much later in life that I learned that ¡®eccentric¡¯ was a euphemism, and that my own love of food was much, much more acceptable than my interest in cooking.

    Regardless, my father¡¯s unstated hypothesis was that filling his children with food, constantly, was the greatest possible virtue a parent could conduct. Combined with my mother¡¯s love of riding, hunting, and soldiering, it is likely the reason why my siblings and I stand at least a head above our other, more genteel cousins. It also means that I, after being filled almost to the brim with food and drink, enter a content state that can last for several hours.

    By contrast, Iseult¡¯s happiness dents and then disappears within about five seconds of meeting the guard at the Colt & Tumble warehouse, whose initial sneer is beginning to vaporise as he realises that he cannot actually dismiss the seething Bani Yathrib woman in front of him. He is from Ildathach, by his accent, and he was almost certainly not expecting Iseult to argue with him in fluent, furious Irdcheol. He looks at ¨ªde and me for assistance, before coming to the understanding that we are, in fact, travelling as a unit. He looks to his comrade, who is significantly wiser and says away nothing. I adopt the deadpan stare I reserve for times like this, when I¡¯m allowed to watch Iseult be a social cudgel.

    ¡°What do you mean, we need access.¡± Iseult snarls. ¡°We have access.¡±

    To her credit, ¨ªde is learning quickly, and has adopted a blank-faced head tilt that I also use when I want to see how badly someone can dig themselves into a hole.

    ¡°No, uh. No access to Colt & Tumble warehouse without company writ. Those are the rules.¡±

    Upon mentioning the rules, the young guard appears to rally slightly. He clutches to the authority that has, in turn, imbued him with a semblance of power.

    This sort of appeal has literally no effect on Iseult. I¡¯ve seen this before.

    She leans in, and almost literally growls. The other guard seems actually worried, and begins slowly leaning forward, her hand tightening very slightly around the fire-blackened shaft of her halberd. I try to nail her with a glance, which to my gratification does actually slow her down.

    Without breaking eye contact with the original guard, who to be fair is actually doing his job correctly, Iseult slowly unbuttons a small bag that she¡¯s strapped around her hips. A bullet pouch. What she pulls out of the worn leather is not a gun, or a ward, or a knife, but what I recognise as a familiar piece of midnight-black stationary, crowned in a broken seal of grey wax.

    ¡°I think you¡¯ll find,¡± she says with a wintry tone, unfolding the paper and holding it to his face without looking. ¡°We are indeed agents of Mister Evin Tumble. My name is Iseult Morrin.¡±

    She never uses her name to get what she wants. I¡¯m beaming. Internally, though. Externally, I¡¯m trying to melt the guard with what I hope is a suitably belligerent glower.

    Both guards visibly pale. Thus defused by her demeanour and her name, our original guard nods his head once. He steps backwards smartly, and grips his halberd so tightly I¡¯m afraid he¡¯s going to splinter the wood.

    We stalk angrily through the doorway, into the Colt & Tumble warehouse. The best part of the entire exchange is the fact that I¡¯m fairly certain Iseult has just bluffed her way past the guard by waving her employment contract at him, without actually verifying that Evin Tumble gave us access to his warehouses. ¨ªde and I aren¡¯t even mentioned in that document. I feel very proud of her.

    Our two-hour detour for food and coffee has given ¨¡breen, or perhaps ¨¡breen¡¯s servant, enough time to organise the oleum delivery. We enter through the main door, which is Ildathach-wrought iron, and I notice now that the warehouse is significantly longer than it appears on the outside. It must be a hundred yards or more, and we have entered on the short side of a colossal rectangle. Fungalboard roofing soars high above, set into evenly-spread Thalaami reinforcement architectures. We are surrounded on all sides by a staggering quantity of goods- pots, crates, amphorae, barrels, casks, more exotic items awaiting shipment. All are catalogued and branded with Colt & Tumble labels. Even as we watch, a stream of shirtless porters haul torso-sized wooden crates to the centre of the warehouse, stacking them in a slowly-expanding pyramid. The crates themselves are stained with the sweat of dozens of men.

    I feel a light touch on the small of my back, and spin to look down at ¨ªde¡¯s earnest face. She tilts her head and says, quietly, ¡°clear the space.¡±

    I grin and let her move me out of the way. A gang of Ildathach workers march past, two of them hauling a dark wooden barrel of significant heft. ¨ªde looks like she¡¯s about to say something, but focuses instead on a group of sailors, who are arguing with each other before a stack of nearby barrels.

    ¡°Well this is certainly a sight.¡±

    One of the sailors from the Gundog Walking has strolled up to us. Short, with a flat face and a frame that¡¯s slowly turning to fat. Senior crew. I blink rapidly, trying to recollect his name- ¡°Boatswain Heremon! Excellent to see you.¡±

    I pump his hand with the blood-crushing grip I reserve for the occasions where it is necessary to hide the fact that you¡¯re not confident about someone¡¯s name. The ineffable geniality is insurance.

    I guessed right, apparently. He greets me warmly, then nods at my two companions. Like most of the Gundog Walking¡¯s crew, he¡¯s from Yvreathe- Crowmere, judging from the pendants in his hair, from one of the trading houses who run the lucrative routes to the Far Coast. The Gundog Walking was supposed to acquire cargo beyond just what Iseult, ¨ªde and I were asked to collect, so it¡¯s hardly surprising to see one of the crew here in a Colt & Tumble warehouse. The last time I saw any of the sailors was before we ventured towards the Bloom, and the stubble he¡¯s accumulated in the days we¡¯ve been gone is dense and alarming. He runs his hand through his blonde hair, and it stays slicked back from the sweat coating his forehead.

    ¡°Good to see all of you. I take it this is your doing?¡±

    I nod, and take a moment to scan the room to figure out what he¡¯s talking about. The pyramid the porters are making, surely. ¡°It would seem that way.¡±

    ¡°Well good work! And about a week before we¡¯re set to sail, too. Can¡¯t believe they carry all of that by hand, either- heavy as sin, oleum. Not to mention dangerous.¡± I can¡¯t tell if this is some higher judgement about the Gundog Walking being used as a cargo hauler for five tonnes of highly explosive chemicals. Doesn¡¯t seem that way. Maybe he has a lot of faith in Captain Holofernes¡¯ judgement.

    I watch a porter, his wiry muscles taut under walnut skin, struggle to stack one of the simple hazel crates atop the pyramid his team has erected in the centre of the warehouse.

    ¡°Yes! Well, you know how Thalaami are. I suppose they¡¯re the oleum experts.¡±

    Heremon snickers. ¡°Right. Or they¡¯ve all got death wishes. Seems alright quality. Had some of our new crew look at it just now, after we chased off the Thalaamis.¡± He laughs again, a cruel noise that suddenly makes me feel much less friendly towards him. I say nothing further, and let the conversation dwindle to the point where he wanders off, to attend whatever duty sailors do when they are ashore. We dawdle for a few minutes, watching the Thalaami men finish stacking the oleum, and visit the captain.

    *

    Captain Holofernes must be in a good mood, because she employs precisely zero of her trademark venom when talking to us. Indeed, for the remaining week we are in Brixa Thalaam, we (although to be fair, I really mean ¨ªde) attracts no undue attention from the captain. She has enough on her plate, and is half-embedded in a world of city politics, dock taxation rates, and cargo accounting. I spend a fair few hours of time with her, though to be honest am not actually very useful, and not very interested in how she decides to spend her days. To be clear, it is unlikely the captain would be particularly keen on me hovering near her, and I leave her in peace well before she is forced to comment on my presence.

    The alternative is to stay with Iseult and ¨ªde, and to stick out like a sore thumb as the pair of them wade through the murky topic of charming the oleum. Within the first ten minutes of one of those conversations, a tactful yet significant distance away from the quiet pyramid of the stuff that has been erected in the centre of the warehouse, I found myself so comprehensively out of my depth that I excused myself to the restroom and never returned. We¡¯ve switched lodgings, to an inn significantly closer to the warehouse, and both women leave their room long before I do and return long after I¡¯ve retired to my own quarters. When they speak, it¡¯s in the technical-rich lingo of sigilry, and winding them away from the work is exhausting. At one point Iseult explains to me that their efforts consist of two main ideas- the first is to increase the potency and the stability of the oleum through magical means, as Evin Tumble requested. The latter is to do so in a way that is subtle, to force Colt & Tumble to involve her in any later ventures involving the oleum. Say what you will about Iseult, sometimes she is much better at manipulating social situations than you¡¯d expect, for a woman who hates talking to people.

    ¨ªde comes to life when she works. Otherwise, when I see her travelling or when we sit down to eat, she has is robbed of her curiosity and happiness. Whatever happened to her in the Bloom is continuing to take its toll on her. I am grateful for the oleum work, for it seems to keep her together. Even Iseult seems uncharacteristically sympathetic, and agrees to keep an eye on ¨ªde whenever I¡¯m not present.

    Several days pass, wherein I ricochet between being somewhat useless in the presence of Captain Holofernes, to entirely useless with Iseult and ¨ªde.

    After this miserable realisation, I spend the remainder of my time in Brixa Thalaam carousing with some deckhands from the Gundog Walking, which is far more enjoyable. The night before we leave is a pivotal one for the sigilists, who have completed their work: some sort of intricate and apparently fascinating sigilry, keyed specifically to this batch of oleum. Iseult knows me well enough not to go into the specifics when we discuss it the next day.

    I myself spend that night with the crew, steeped in the infectious and bittersweet fervour of a wild pack of sailors desperate to wring every inch of entertainment possible for their last night of shore leave. After the initial raucous raillery and rowdiness, I find myself in the company of only the most dedicated drinkers, and prowl with this listless party through the warm streets of Brixa Thalaam. We pass bars and lounges and pubs, and have enough Thalaami speakers with us to smooth ruffled feathers and avoid outrageous price gouging. At one point, this eruption flows past the tiny sailor¡¯s chapel, the only building in this entire city that is dedicated to the worship of any Saint other than Teneral. This sombre reminder seems to leach the joy out of the night, though it does not stop the procession. My night floats in jolly alcohol.

    We share a night and an early morning together, huddled as a loose and solemn gang. Not for warmth, or comfort, but to avoid the bleak reality of the solitary drinker. Too swathed in our own thoughts to connect with each other, too shameful to drink alone, we drift like tomb-candles through the steadily emptying streets.

    We sail the next day.

 Chapter 11: Sean

    Sean

    ¡°They¡¯re beautiful.¡±

    They really are. Pinches of sparkling cobalt, sulphur, caerulean. A floor of captive sunflecks. The voyage out of Brixa Thalaam is marked with an unexpected tang of regret, as if the twinkling stones that litter the sea bed are unhappy with our departure. We sail out of the docks, out of the neat buoy lanes that the Thalaami have permanently anchored in their waters. A cadre of b¨¬rlinn from Crowmere pass us on the way in, their sails tucked and their oars plunging deep into the twinkling waters of the bay. As the ships draw closer, the drone of the pipers at their bowsprits grows louder, and several of our crew stamp their feet and sing to the little fleet as it heaves its way to the docks. The enormous looming shadow of Saint Teneral briefly eclipses the sun as we slowly drift out of the port.

    ¨ªde stares down into the waters, enchanted. We say nothing, until the stones start to fade into the darkness of the sea, like stars before dawn. One by one, little by little, the miracle seabed wanes, until all we have is the yawning, vertigo-inducing depths of the water below. The Wraithwild falls away from the Gundog Walking, and we are fully alone now, a little sailing island with a gutful of loot and a pack of trailing gulls. I look away from the sea and turn to ¨ªde, who is staring at the massive statue of Brixa Thalaam¡¯s lonely Saint.

    ¡°I wonder if he actually looked like that.¡±

    It¡¯s not a bad question. Saint Teneral, cast in gold (or, as Iseult pointed out quietly, plated in a thin layer of it), has been depicted with the broad musculature of a stonecutter, and is handsome enough. I feel like making a joke, but am too worried about her mental state to risk making fun of her.

    ¡°I doubt it,¡± I hazard. ¡°Teneral was a pilgrim. He was probably a lot skinnier in real life.¡±

    Those dusty school hours pry their way back into my memory, and I scrape threadbare memories for any other wisdom that the monk-tutors of my youth tried to impress upon me. But that¡¯s the problem with the Saints. Sometimes it¡¯s impossible to tell what is a metaphor and what isn¡¯t. Maybe Saint Teneral wasn¡¯t even a man, and she¡¯s been misrepresented by a transcription error or some ancient sleight of hand.

    ¨ªde¡¯s arms used to be bound from finger to forearm. Now, luckily, she¡¯s just wearing a pair of light gloves. She¡¯s healing rapidly, and we no longer have to spend bitter minutes rewrapping her ruined, bloody palms. Miraculously, neither hand has succumbed to any sort of infection, though every scar and jag in her skin is outlined jarringly with the pitch-dark honey that has worked its way into her body.

    I try a soft question: ¡°How are you feeling?¡±

    She breathes deeply and sighs, then breaks her aimless stare and looks me dead in the face. Her expression is haggard. There are lines there that didn¡¯t exist three weeks ago. ¡°I¡¯m okay. Just not sleeping well.¡±

    The lull of the ship is hypnotic. We¡¯re compelled to look away from each other, and each settle on the horizon. The quiet stretches, as we are both content to simply watch the endless expanse before us. It¡¯s a long while before we talk again.

    ¡°Dreaming a lot.¡± She says, after a sailor¡¯s distant call breaks the tentative quiet.

    ¡°Is that bad?¡±

    She laughs, a bitter snicker that I haven¡¯t heard from her before. ¡°I don¡¯t know. There¡¯s surprisingly little in the Saint Listless¡¯ curriculum about how you¡¯re supposed to deal with the aftermath of being covered with talkative bees. When my mum gave me advice to be safe on the trip, she probably wasn¡¯t thinking about this. I think I¡¯ll be fine. Just tired.¡±

    Fair enough. I switch the topic, trying to make her feel better. ¡°What else did she say? Did she tell you to steer clear of the food? Or to watch out for Wraithwilders or Al Khazraj?¡±

    She smirks. ¡°Not really. My friends said to watch out for you,¡± I¡¯m about to protest, but she holds up her hands. ¡°Sorry. Not you in particular, just to be careful when travelling with strange men. I¡¯m sure they¡¯d like you. Also Ail¨ªn and Fionn were too busy telling me the beasts of the Wraithwild. My brothers,¡± she explains, after I cock my head. ¡°They¡¯re ten and eight. Exactly the right age where they learn about every possible monster from every corner of Calacar.¡±

    I consider this- she¡¯s mentioned her family before, of course ¡°And did your friends or your family give you any useful advice? Or just mostly sarcasm and stories of spooky monsters?¡±

    ¨ªde defocuses her eyes for a moment, like she¡¯s actually considering a response. ¡°Well, no. My family is nice. My friends are nice. I got rid of all that sort during my second year. But what¡¯s wrong with sarcasm? Iseult is sarcastic all the time.¡±

    This is somewhat true. Iseult spends most of her waking hours swinging between being needlessly sharp or needlessly blunt.

    ¡°Well¡­ fair. But in her defence, she doesn¡¯t use it to pretend to be droll. She¡¯s just sort of like that.¡±

    She makes a flat grunt of affirmation. Then she frowns, struck by a loose thought. ¡°Iseult doesn¡¯t seem that concerned. About me. She really cares about the work, though.¡±

    I wince. ¡°She cares more than you¡¯d think. She just doesn¡¯t show it.¡±

    She looks at me again, hesitantly, like she¡¯s trying hard to keep eye contact. ¡°But why not? Why is it sometimes she seems totally normal, then she just turns? I know she didn¡¯t like me when I met, but now I don¡¯t even know if she trusts me at all. Even after the last few weeks.¡±

    ¡°Look.¡± I pinch the bridge of my nose. ¡°It¡¯s like this. She¡¯s not¡­ you must have noticed. She¡¯s not that good with people.¡± Iseult¡¯s eyes widen slightly. Okay, maybe you didn¡¯t notice. ¡°Iseult is literally the best at what she does. But where she grew up? Bani Yathrib clan, right? Deep Wraithwild tribe. As in, saw-the-same-people-everyday-until-she-was-a-teenager deep. Not a lot of social exposure. And after what happened to her with her tribe, and then wandering to Ildathach, and the way that we treated her after the war- she doesn¡¯t always show affection. Or knows how to express it. But she does care about you. Believe me.¡±

    ¨ªde chews on her lip, and stumbles out a pair of questions she must¡¯ve been bottling for weeks. ¡°What actually happened to her family in the Wraithwild? And what happened to her in the Aergan?¡±

    The way she says it, in that tone. It¡¯s strange how the words have two meanings now: The Aergan. My home. But also that terrible Aergan, the sea of blood and grass. It¡¯s a little trick, to slice the word in two like that. And my blood begins to stir at the merest mention of the thing, a little simmering thing that cuts me.

    The Gundog Walking creaks its way to the horizon. Her first question is, of course, only Iseult¡¯s to answer. But at least I was there for the second. I crack my knuckles, and let the story topple out, five years old and as raw as it¡¯s ever been.

    *

    ¡°This? This is the vaunted foe of the War Hosts?¡±

    We are not all of Ildathach¡¯s army. Our main body is three days march from here, chasing what we thought was King Eric¡¯s isolated retinue. This, clearly, was a mistake, as the queen is here, in our midst. This parlay she has called is purely ceremonial. She¡¯s here to neither negotiate nor discuss our surrender. The War Chief of the Aergan is here to gloat.

    Even now, outside of this tent, one or all of our sigilists must be frantically trying to scry a message back to Ildathach. But those are one-way, calibrated to a known point, and given our course and our position this deep in the Aergan there is no guarantee such a message will be deliverable or understandable. A legible return message from the Chaplain¡¯s Office in Ildathach is astronomically unlikely. Not that it really matters, of course. In a day or two, it will be too late for us.

    Her bearing is harsh, her voice steeped in hate. Queen Olivia, now close to sixty years old, has never in her life been known for her subtlety. She¡¯s decided to address us in Irdcheol, and slugs confidently through her mispronunciations, maintaining the poetic style intrinsic to Aerinic. Aergan-dressed in a series of overlapping robes, only a beaten gold torc and a thin crown mark her as the royalty of a kingdom fifty times the area of Ildathach. Her haughtiness, though. The lines on her face. She is every inch a monarch, though she eschews the ostentatious baubles that would betray her nobility. A pair of glinting crimson roses flare on her torc. Her assistants, a scarred woman with a brawler¡¯s build and a slim man with a glimmering rose on his lapel, stand respectfully behind her. The bodyguard has a short shock of hair that barely reaches her ears, and is wearing the thickest sabatons I have ever seen. Her counterpart, the man, is watching affairs unfold with a dog-tired expression. He¡¯s dressed like a hedge-aesthete, and has bound his feet in cloth in lieu of actual boots.

    ¡°You,¡± she points at me, ignoring Colonel Fandh and her entourage. ¡°Idiot boy. You look Aerganite. Are you to die here with the rest of these fools?¡±

    I clear my throat before responding, in Irdcheol. ¡°My name is Sir Sean Whelan, your Majesty. Of Llancreg. I have the honour of serving the banner of-¡±

    She interrupts me with a lungful of cackling laughter. Her bodyguard smirks, though the man behind her does not react at all.

    ¡°Llancreg! Oh, ounceland child. Why fight for these miserable worms? Return to your home. I will spare you, lost son of the plains. Leave, and leave us to trample these piddling tyrants.¡±

    I retort with a shrug, and a line from one of my father¡¯s poems. ¡°He who rides a storm must be patient with where it takes him.¡± It¡¯s a good quip, though it makes no difference. I am bound by Llancreg¡¯s honour to serve Ildathach. Even if it means warring with my cousins.

    She titters, and her face flashes from sanguine to terrible as she returns to glowering at the Colonel, who is grinding her teeth. The queen¡¯s next words are spat out in disgust.

    ¡°This is the pinnacle of Ildathach civilisation? Recruiting children from your stolen territories, on the borders of my kingdom? He¡¯s barely old enough to shave, and you bring him here, to die? Perhaps my husband will find greater honour in the fearsome ruin he will visit upon your army to the north. I see nothing here but kidnappers and the walking dead.¡±

    Colonel Fandh opens her mouth, then shuts it. She opens it again, and says, firmly: ¡°You underestimate the city.¡±

    Our colonel lacks the wrath or the poetry of the queen. Her breastplate glitters under the baize weave of her cloak, which shifts as she leans heavily on one whale-spine leg. The original was lost to an infection decades ago. Both her hands lay on the sabres of her rank, resting on opposite hips. Colonel Fandh is a minor merchant¡¯s daughter, and against all odds clawed her way past the sneering aristocracy, through the ranks of the Ildathach army.

    For the first time in her career, she has blundered.

    The queen bays horribly. She crosses the tent floor in a flutter of agile steps, until she is face-to-face with the Colonel. The scent of sawdust and woad swells in her wake. Our entourage bristles as she glowers down at the shorter woman. To her credit, Colonel Fandh returns the favour, head raised to regard the queen. The venom from the Aerganite is palpable, disdain dripping from the words that she spits down upon the Colonel.

    ¡°Weak words, from an unburied corpse. Know this: in a day you and your underlings will be crow fodder. We are the divine maul of the Aergan. The orphan children of the Saints. Our hearts are proofed against cowardice, our souls are reeking in contempt. Your swords cannot harm us. Your fleeing legs will fail while our steps quicken. Your bodies will burst under our touch. Your skulls will be plucked from your pitiful, broken forms. The Host is here, and it cares not for the will of Ildathach.¡±

    One of the Colonel¡¯s wards, Major Caird steps forward, his eyes flashing. ¡°Your majesty, some respect is-¡°

    He is cut off by a curt look from the Colonel, and a mirthful, crazed glance from the queen. The royal Aergan bodyguard flexes her shoulders minutely, but keeps outside of striking distance. The queen herself says nothing, and after a long pause turns gracefully and makes to leave.

    The Aerganite detachment wheels in step with their queen, passing rapidly to the open tent flap and the waiting ranks of twenty of their painted knights. Her highness stops by me on the way out, and seizes my hand in hers. Her grip is strong, and I can feel the bones in her fingers as she wraps both hands around mine. ¡°A final offer, scion of Llancreg. Leave with us, and abandon the city-dwellers. Their blood is polluted. Even the crows will not peck at their tainted flesh, when we scatter their bodies across the grace.¡± Her accent shifts, and she finishes her words in our shared tongue, Aerinic. ¡°Idiot boy. Visiting hell upon these leeches will be a joy. If you stay with them, you will be minced into the dirt. Your mother will mourn you over an empty coffin.¡± She pauses, like she¡¯s just remembered something. ¡°You weren¡¯t entirely wrong. Now is a time of storms.¡±

    I say nothing, and elect to stare down at my hand to inspect the marks of where she gripped my hand, where her rings scuffed my own.

    They exit, and a potent silent stews in the tent even after the drumming hoofbeats of their cavalcade fades to nothing. They¡¯ll return to the main bulk of the Aerganite army- thirty thousand War Host riders, led by their queen, in their own country, against us: four thousand men and women, caught unaware and completely out of position. Out of place, tick-ridden and drained by days of marching, trapped in an open plain with nowhere to run. We have taken an immense strategic misstep, chasing what we thought was a weak detachment of clansmen, and tomorrow the Aergan will descend upon us.

    *

    The knight, on his stomach and suffering from an obviously broken leg, is barking bitter invectives at our gunner.

    She¡¯s obviously not from Ildathach, or even Yvreathe. Her face is bisected by an immense, swirling tattoo that starts at the corner of her lips and dyes her face black from ear to clavicle. I have seen her in the months before, of course. Our army is sizable, but not impossibly large. And a face like hers- stern, tanned, tattooed- she¡¯s hard to miss. I¡¯ve never actually spoken to her, before today.

    Unlike the rest of us, she¡¯s wearing a simple black robe which covers her from neck to ankle, bound tightly around her forearms and shins. It shrouds her totally, like bombazine. She¡¯s covered in black leather pouches- at her chest, at her stomach, at her groin, at her hips, on her thighs. This is my first time fighting beside her, the two of us standing on the makeshift wagon wall. Her jezail gouts fire and violet smoke every time she cracks it open to reload it, after ever four shots.

    I tighten my fingers around the ugly flail at my hip, and watch the knight¡¯s awful dying.

    The gunner¡¯s sneering composure has been dented by the punishing tide of the Aerganite assault. Boiled away by the arrows and the lances and the hoofbeats of the War Host knights, who crash endlessly against our section of the wagon fort. When the order had come in to form our supply carts and wagons into walls, and connect those walls to the companies on either side of ours, we¡¯d been bewildered, but obedient. When the following message had been run to us, to sacrifice all nonessential supplies and to build shooting platforms and walls atop those wagons, that confusion had curdled to anger. We did it anyway, and I had carried my share of scrap wood and rapidly nailed our barrels and crates into fortifications with the rest of the men and women in my company.

    Now the wisdom of the Colonel¡¯s orders is more obvious- the marauding surge of Aergan riders has been rebuffed multiple times by this unexpected, hastily-constructed fort. It stretches entirely around us in a shabby square, a mostly intact wall comprised of hundreds of yards of wagon-wood and canvas. Had we been in the open, the War Host knights would have ground us into the mud in the first charge.

    Missiles thud into the barrier, stubbling our section of the square. Bolts and sling bullets and arrows and, rarely, a flaming pillar from some Aerganite sigilist¡¯s knotwork. The last one set my teeth on edge, and it was by a Saint¡¯s grace that the screaming whip of fire detonated scarce yards short of our wall. We¡¯re steeped in the ghastly smell of the dead and the wounded.

    Our rickety wall stands between us and the gleaming plain of the knights, and it seems like scarcely any comfort at all when measured against the shrieking mass of riders and horses that the War Host have brought to bear. I think very little of our fortification, save for when we are ordered to sally to the weak spaces between the wagons and the wall to bring pikes and shields against the horde. Then, I am so wholly consumed by terror that the wall seems like the safest bastion imaginable.

    Outside, the grassy plain looks like it could be any corner of the Aergan. I could walk over that distant bluff and see lonely Llancreg. When the wind blows in, gleams of white and gold patter across the emerald field.

    The one Aerganite survivor of the last disastrous charge is prone, leg broken awfully, howling a long and warbling curse at a woman I don¡¯t know in a language I don¡¯t speak.

    Our gunner¡¯s face betrays an eroding composure. Whatever the knight is saying, it¡¯s certainly making an impact.

    We¡¯re insulated from the main thrust of the Aerganite army by this impromptu fortification. The ragged fort was almost entirely completed by the time the War Host realised what we were doing, and contains the entirety of our soldiers and camp followers. Our part of the wall is manned by a little company of a hundred men and women, an assortment of people from across Yvreathe who wouldn¡¯t fit into other units, and is under the control of Watch Captain Moran. I have been assigned to assist this detachment due to my standing as the scion of Llancreg, and have an ambiguous authority over much of the company. I¡¯m under no illusions that this command will survive prolonged contact with the War Host, and am making the most of it while I can.

    To our left is the bulk of our fighters, wearing worn but unmistakable uniforms of the Ildathach Constabulary. They are organised under Watch Captain Moran, who is younger than his station would suggest. He hides his inexperience with a sort of sullen momentousness, as if he believes if he scowls with enough conviction we will forget his age. The Watch Captain has the respect of his Constables, though it is not entirely certain how he attained it. When he addresses them, it is with the same taciturn surliness that he uses when he decides to speak with the rest of us.

    Though they lack squires or attendants, each Constable is armed with either a pike or a gorgeous Ildathach bow, and all carry a clutch of javelins. They have thus far devastated every wave of charging riders with disciplined waves of missiles. Their bottle-green greatcoats, as potent a symbol as Ildathach as the Dunaidh family crest, have become filthy with miles of marching.

    To our right, pacing behind the wagon wall and emerging en masse to shred attacking knights with slings and darts, is a clan of absurdly dressed warriors from Ys lead by old Chieftain Trahaearn. Of the two companies, the Ysian clansmen are dressed far more outlandishly, more colourful and flamboyant than even the painted Aerganites who have fallen against our walls. They brandish pikes as well, ungainly things topped with brightly-coloured bolts of cloth. Choice Ysian warriors brandish outrageous two-swords that are nearly as tall as they are. The Chieftain himself, clad in a foppish hat marked with the fulgid tailfeather on an alpha naemi, wears an iron breastplate which does not in any way draw attention from the crisp cream-and-blue stripes of his pantaloons or his shirt. He¡¯s roaring to his troops now, talking with his hands and his mouth simultaneously in that Ysian style. Unlike his counterpart leading the Constabulary, Chieftain Trahaearn enjoys small-talk a great deal, and is perhaps the most talented person I¡¯ve ever met at filling all possible silences with noise.

    Until today, our army had fought only outriders and skirmishers, and had been occasionally harried by missiles and gangs of hooting clansmen who would sweep from behind a hill or a copse to prey on unwary stragglers. Today we face a full War Host, thirty thousand men and women on horseback, wailing and gnashing and roaring against our little fort with a fury like the crush of the sea.

    This is the fifth wave, and the broken rider before us is the first to have made it inside of our section of the wall. The gunner, rapidly feeding another handful of bullets into the revolving cylinder of her absurdly long jezail, has blackened her hands and face with the endless fire she has unleashed into the onrushing horde. Hers is the only gun still sounding across the battlefield, and as the Aergan riders have thinned in numbers so has the pace of her weapon slowed. Four shots, then a thirty second pause as she spins a smoking drum out of the side of the thing, withdraws bullets from pouches about her person, and feeds them into the hungry mouths of her weapon.eager Our few other musketeers, peppered around the perimeter of the fort, have either been struck down or spent their weapons, one by one, and now stand with swords or polearms with the rest of the footmen.

    Arrows, stones, and bolts still pour from all sides of the fortification, pulling down humans and horses in gruesome waves. They still come, roaring and savage, still charge directly at our wall. I know why- to the Aerganites, the allure of silencing Ildathach¡¯s one remaining firearm must be irresistible. My cousins are eager to realise their honour, always.

    Most of our heaviest weaponry, the torsion-throwers purchased from Crowmere, take a day to assemble. Still, our engineers have managed to unpack smaller ballistae and mount them on the hill, and spent the first half an hour of the battle skewering knights and horses with immense fire-blackened bolts that far outranged the return fire from the War Host archers. They stopped firing some time ago; whether to save ammunition or for some less obvious reason, we are not sure.

    The knight dying before us is dyed blue from crown to shins, in the Aergan style. His wrinkled flesh is painted with a simple tessellating iconography of stylised yellow eyes. It¡¯s a recognisable iconography- clan Hyde. Distant relatives of mine. He had leapt, impossibly, over the entire wagon wall. He was carrying neither a lance nor a sword, but instead a short flashing spear which had caught in the arm of a fumbling Ysian yeoman named Angharad. I had shattered the Aerganite¡¯s legs with a backhand swipe of my flail when he had been momentarily distracted by the sight of our gunner.

    He¡¯s still spitefully hissing at her, but his words seem to be losing their potency. Her face has hardened, and she rises once again to the platform that allows her to see over the impromptu parapet. When she turns away from him, he looks at me instead, and twists his mouth in a hateful snarl. He must be twice my age.

    I silence him by splintering his chest with a wet whumpf.

    It takes me a moment to dislodge the flail from his shattered ribcage, and as do I rip the spear from his wiry grip. My own pike was torn from me earlier, when I misjudged the charge of a cackling knight and instead buried the weapon in the flank of his horse. With a single step up, I join our gunner, who is already sighting down the length of her absurdly long firearm. Even now, the wall smells like ox sweat.

    Before me spreads a charnel field of broken humans and horses, a senseless effigy to the bravery of the War Hosts. Men, women, beasts, some naked, many still moving, all painted and daubed in the garish patterns of the Aergan. A yeoman next to me interrupts my staring with a strangled grunt, and ducks behind the cover of the wagon frame. I frown and glance down at him, and my lack of survival reflex is rewarded by a shower of splinters which spall off of the inside of the wooden wall. A green-fletched arrow quivers an inch to the right of my thigh, its wicked point barely peeking through the solid Ildathach oak.

    Our gunner snarls, rests her gun on the wall, and retorts. The offending Aerganite falls, bow still clutched in her scrawny hands, the top half of her head missing. Her corpse bounces on the grass, foot still tangled in her stirrups as her panicked mare, daubed in yet more eyeball symbols of Clan Hyde, bolts back towards the bulk of the War Host.

    This dire vignette is repeating itself all around the other sections of the Ildathach wall. Screaming Aerganites fall and crash against Ildathach positions, leaping over or trampling their own dead and dying in their efforts to overrun our little fort. They¡¯ve already succeeded, at least twice- the second more devastatingly, when a clan of lightly-armoured swordsmen managed to entirely breach one section of the wagons, gleefully butchering the archers who had harried them during their insane charge. I watched their broadswords flash in the morning sun, and reap and reap until their faces and clothes were red with the blood of our fallen. Colonel Fandh, from her position at the centre of the fort, had dispatched half of our reserve footmen to fight them back. The tribe had retreated, chased by our reinforcements, hoisting scalps and looted weapons aloft as they sprinted back across the field. I¡¯d seen a horseless raider stumble after being struck by an arrow, and had cheered when a Gallowglass & Grimm mercenary spilled him open like a sack of wine.

    This first cohort of attackers comprises of lower cohorts of the Host: auxiliaries, tribes and clans who are either too small or too disgraced to join the main army, and who desperately attempt to curry favour with Queen Olivia. I would know, for I know all of these people by their colours and their heraldry. Now that the battle has started, the main force has encircled us entirely and is slowly coiling closer and closer, content to watch us struggle against the meagre force of their weakest riders.

    Eyes scarlet from the smoke of her weapon, the gunner lifts her head. ¡°They¡¯re slowing.¡±

    A light Wraithwild accent. I haven¡¯t heard her speak before. Even after half an hour of this slaughter, where ten or twenty of their knights might fall for the chance to kill one of our footmen, we¡¯ve barely made a dent in their numbers. The field of the wretched dying before us is a miniscule fraction of their total strength.

    Why stop now?

    I repeat my thought out loud. My companion scowls, but says nothing.

    Our section of the fort is a mess, but is not significantly damaged. The wall under us, and the ground a good distance behind, is pin-cushioned with arrows and sling bullets. In front of our wall, a stretch of bodies some hundred yards deep has turned the field into an abattoir. The casualties only increase in density as they grow closer to the fort. At the base of our wagons, our hastily dug trench is overflowing with a trampled slurry of mauled, broken bodies. Now that the constant thunder of hoofbeats has slowed, I can hear the cries of the wounded and the dying.

    I let my gaze drop from the killing field. Within the boundaries of our section, the knight I killed is the only enemy present. I gesture towards him, and the gunner follows my hand with smoke-reddened eyes. ¡°What did he say to you?¡±

    ¡°In Mutafasih,¡± she replies. ¡°Bani Yathrib language. He called me a,¡± she looks away for a moment, ¡°chalice¡­ maggot? And then he said I was a disgrace to my tribe. Amongst other things,¡± she pauses for a moment. ¡°Nothing I haven¡¯t heard before.¡±

    The smell hits me in the gulf of quiet left after the first attack. The War Hosts are shifting five hundred yards away, and the noise of their hoofbeats is dulled in the sodden Aergan morning. Even the moans of the wounded and the dying seem to have diminished, now that small numbers of Ildathach footmen from other companies are taking the opportunity to venture beyond the walls of the wagon fort and begin butchering and stealing from the bodies beyond. I hold up a hand as Lieutenant Murphy from the Ildathach Constables makes a move as if to vault the wagon wall to join in. She leans back with a face like thunder. No looting from us until the order is given from the Colonel. I look back at our gunner.

    ¡°I¡¯m Sean Whelan, by the way.¡±

    She regards my proffered hand carefully, and shakes it after shouldering her weapon. Her face and hands are stained gunpowder-black. She wipes her bloodshot eyes with the back of her sleeve, revealing a tanned, intense face. The darkness around her cheeks, jaw, and throat, of course, remains. ¡°Isr¨¡ Mahrin.¡±

    ¡°Iz-rah?¡±

    ¡°Isr¨¡¡±, she says forcefully. A frown flickers across her stern face, but she relaxes. ¡°Though you may call me Iseult Morrin.¡±

    I try to correct my pronunciation. ¡°Ok, Iz-rah Mohrin.¡±

    She rolls her eyes. I gesture towards her still-smoking weapon. ¡°It¡¯s a fine piece.¡±

    ¡°It is.¡±

    ¡°How does it work? Oleum? Sigilwork?¡± I try to scrape a conversation out of the awkwardness.

    She snorts, then frowns. ¡°Oh. You¡¯re serious. No, not oleum. Too crude, and too powerful for the job. Would blow out the,¡± she points at the mechanism near the trigger. ¡°Cylinder. But, yes, a type of sigilwork. Mine.¡±

    There¡¯s a piteous whine from beyond the wall. I peer over, scanning the bloody mess before me. A horse, a scarce ten yards out, on its side. It bays, appallingly, two of its legs broken at unnatural angles, its body mottled with gore and woad. Of its rider, there is no sign. There¡¯s a crumpling mound of dirt at its back where it has obviously scraped along the grass, and it trembles and cries in anguish. I point at it: ¡°Could you put that thing out of its misery?¡±

    She peers over the wagon wall, cautiously. ¡°The horse?¡±

    I nod. She locks eyes with me, and replies. ¡°Yes.¡±

    Her weapon hangs in her loose grip.

    I wait for her to do so, but she just looks at me and slowly tilts her head. The rest of the Constables around me are staring at her. The horse continues to whinny, pitifully. ¡°Would you¡­ please do that?¡±

    ¡°Oh.¡± She looks startled. ¡°I understand.¡±

    Five seconds later, it is done, the thundering gunshot splitting the post-fighting quiet. Even a few of the distant War Host seem to look up, curiously.

    The horse is dead. The softness returns.

    A flag emerges at the pole in the centre of the fort, to the throaty cheering of the soldiers. I leave the safety of the wagons, following Watch Captain Moran and the fleet-footed Ysians, ready to descend in this wolfing hour on what remains of the enemy, to butcher and loot and wait for the next attack.

    *

    I stand over the brain-shot horse that Iseult killed, and peer into its remaining eye. I expect some glimmer of meaning, something to stuff the empty hole in my heart and my gut.

    I see only a fat black fly, lapping contently at the rheumy eyeball.

    *

    The gunner thinks about my question for about five seconds before she replies. ¡°I am not sure.¡±

    Finally, hours after it first rose, the sun is beginning to warm our mildewed feet. We¡¯re still on the wagon walls, and it¡¯s inching slowly closer to midday. Our enemy has unexpectedly decided to grant us a respite, and have begun their next assault not by charging into our fort, but by sending a pack of riders to slowly circumnavigate our entire position. They are about twice as far away as our strongest bow will accurately reach, and are little wavering specks atop the waist-high grass of the plains. My companion, the gunner, has been exhausted by the constant fighting. I can see her skull through the bones on her face, see her eyes flit tiredly in sunken sockets.

    This group of Aergan knights is tiny, and the rest of their force is likely posturing or manoeuvring out of sight, behind any of the myriad hills that rise and fall softly in the miles around us. A hundred, at most, trot in single-file about four hundred yards from the edge of our fort. They have already circled us once, and are repeating the process, as if looking for an opening.

    A single desultory arrow twangs out from the section next to ours, arcing for a few seconds before plummeting down, scarcely reaching half of the distance to the riders. I hear a barked order and a commotion, but cannot see the culprit or his or her officer. It¡¯s understandable, though. After the bloodbath of the morning, this waiting, with the enemy close enough to hear, is awful.

    I shudder involuntarily with a momentary chill. My arms begin to prickle with goose bumps, despite the warmth of the sun. If the gunner doesn¡¯t know what they¡¯re doing, I¡¯m willing to chance a guess. ¡°Scouting a weakness, I think. Are you alright?¡±

    Iseult (and it is now most certainly Iseult, after she told me to stop butchering her actual name) frowns, the barrel of her improbably long gun resting across her shoulder. She hadn¡¯t joined us in our foray to pick what meagre goods we could from the hills of dead Aerganites. When we returned, she had been poking at her firearm with a bewildering array of brushes and oils. ¡°I¡¯m fine. Sigilwork. Hollowing.¡± She says that like I am supposed to understand what it means. ¡°The Host, though- surely they need no more scouting since the morning. They have suffered a few hundred casualties, at most. The vast majority of the knights in the attacks survived, and returned to the main Host. We could repel another wave like that, and the one afterwards. But they could launch scores and scores more, with the number of riders under the Queen¡¯s command.¡±

    She delivers this emotionlessly, and I feel a gnawing dread claw its way into the base of my gut. So many of those casualties were by her hand. At first it was ghastly, standing by her on the wagon wall, listening to the noise of her felling men and women and horses. Then it became routine. Now that I have had more time to think about it, I have returned to being fearful of this foreign woman. Fantastically grateful, however, that she¡¯s on our side.

    The distant parade of riders, a confusion of colours and designs, continues their slow, purposeful orbit. A wind blows through the prairie, bringing with it a swirl of patterns in the long grass. More quiet reminders of beautiful little Llancreg.

    Our ranks are silent. Occasionally I look back at our men and women in this little section of wall, sandwiched inside this strange impromptu box of wagons. The wounded have been moved to a hospital in the centre of our fort, and those remaining look, if anything mostly just curious. Some companies are doing their best to improve or alter their fortifications, using lessons they learned hastily from the morning¡¯s attack. Most of the Constabulary is busy sorting arrows and attending to their bows, and our Ysians are busy alternating between fixing their weapons and uniforms and staring at the distant parade of the Host.

    The air empties, the wind picks up, and there¡¯s a dryness to everything, a feeling of migraine-onset. One of our yeomen cracks a joke, and the laughter that follows is short and bitter. Why aren¡¯t they attacking? What is happening?

    A few quiet minutes later, a runner scampers through our lines and reaches me. He looks at me, and his eyes widen when he sees Iseult. He¡¯s breathing hard, and manages to wheeze out a message before sprinting to his next target. ¡°The Colonel wants to see you. The Aerganite and the Bani Yathrib. That¡¯s, uh, both of you.¡±

    He scampers off. Watch Captain Moran looks at us strangely, then shrugs. We turn and walk briskly to the centre of the fort. It does not take long.

    The Colonel¡¯s tent is about a tenth of the size of the hospital it squats beside. We pass a pair of hurrying, blood-spattered surgeons, and I see shapes moving behind the flimsy canvas of the hospital tents. The surgeons don¡¯t stand like the brusque sawbones of Llancreg- their fingernails are clean, and they hold themselves proudly. Both have stripped to their shirtsleeves, which have been rolled to their elbows, and both have blood-stiffened shirts and faces. One is holding a pail of ether-soaked sponges.

    There¡¯s a familiar tang in the air, of blood and corruption, accompanied by moans and quiet weeping. Until today, our army¡¯s surgeons have been concerned primarily with infection and various diseases- scrofula, grippe, cholera. Their constant obsession with cleanliness has drawn a fair share of snide remarks from the rest of the soldiers. Now they¡¯ve spent the intervening hours variously staunching bleeding, amputating limbs, and delivering Saintly mercies. A half dozen of our company have already been sent or carried to this part of the fort.

    Iseult doesn¡¯t react to them at all. The two of us stamp past the hospital, and I hold the Colonel¡¯s tent flap open for her to enter. There is no Ildathach-style politeness shuffle where she tries to wave me past first. She just walks in.

    The breeze follows us through the canvas door. Iseult and I enter, to join the Colonel¡¯s small coterie. The pair of us, bloodstained and sooty, stand amidst a small assembly of officers and staff. Most of the tent is bare, save for one wall, which is emblazoned with a massive crown-in-crucible, the familiar emblem of Ildathach¡¯s Dunaidh family.

    Nobody is exactly clean, after this many weeks on the move, but the division between the every-day stains and dirt of their uniforms and the absolute destruction of our own is stark. I am suddenly very conscious of the bloodstains on my clothes. Colonel Fandh glances briefly at the pair of us and then continues, obviously mid-conversation. She speaks directly at a large figure, who is bent over some sort of map. ¡°So your hypothesis is¡­?¡±

    Major Caird responds gruffly, directly. He¡¯s not monstrously large, but he has a presence and a way of furrowing his brow that suggests a tacit threat of violence. His tartan marks him from ounceland Caronek, and his delicate spectacles and shock of white hair somehow add, rather than detract from, his stern countenance. He unfolds himself from his stoop over the table and rests both hands on the pommel of his short sword, a stripe of crimson leather against the dark green wool of his coat. I notice about a second later that he¡¯s sheathed a bone-handled knife directly into one sock, just under his kilt. ¡°It is impossible to determine. We repelled the initial assault, though our line was breached in three places. The first was blunted, at some cost. The second caused casualties in our lines. The third,¡± he glances over at Iseult and me, ¡°was entirely ineffective.¡±

    He pauses, then turns to regard the sharply-dressed sigilist behind the Colonel.

    ¡°There are several possible explanations for their current behaviour. The first is that they are scouting, and are using sighting wards to inspect the damage from beyond our missile range.¡± The sigilist, Chief Sigilist Sheridan Afnysin, starts nodding. His hands and face are soot-free from the fighting, which is somewhat surprising because he¡¯s been proudly toting a combat harquebus for as long as we¡¯ve been in the Aergan. The glowing rose on his lapel bobs in time with his bouncing head. ¡°The second option,¡± the Major continues, ¡°is that they are posturing for an assault. This seems less likely due to two factors: the weather has continued to hold, and they have now completed several orbits. Therefore they must have enough information to mount an attack. The third is that this is simply an intimidation, or some Aergan ritual. Morale is fine, though our soldiers are uneasy. The fourth is, of course, that they are planning something that we cannot guess.¡±

    Here, the Major has admitted his potential ignorance. For a gentleman who keeps Ildathach company, this is unusual. Maybe it¡¯s a Caronek quirk. I want to offer my opinion, that this isn¡¯t any Aergan ritual that I am aware of, but I know better than to speak out of turn.

    A light wind blows through the tent, shaking and clapping the canvas walls. The Colonel folds her arms and looks as if she is about to talk. Iseult, astonishingly, speaks first.

    ¡°They¡¯re not using that type of sighting knotwork. At least, not to examine us or our fortifications.¡±

    All heads turn to her, this smoke-blackened foreigner. She meets their gawking imperiously. Chief Sigilist Sheridan frowns and speaks up. ¡°It is the opinion of the Ildathach sigilists that they are using some sort of ward in order to inspect us-¡°

    ¡°Yes,¡± Iseult replies, scratching the back of her head with her heavily tattooed trigger hand. ¡°They¡¯re absolutely writing some kind of charm. But you misunderstand.¡±

    Sheridan¡¯s voice quakes with barely-controlled anger when he responds. ¡°I think you will find it is quite unacceptable for you to speak to a gentleman of my stature like that, Miss Morrin.¡±

    Iseult replies, immediately. ¡°Perhaps, then, the gentleman should offer a suggestion worthy of his standing.¡±

    ¡°Mind your tongue, witch-¡° he¡¯s livid, and takes a step towards her. Normally I would stand by my new friend and defend her, though I¡¯m frozen with a curious and unexpected numbness, like the morning¡¯s fighting has totally quelled my heart. I expect one of the others in the tent to say something, or react in some way, but the entourage and the Colonel herself also seem content to watch. Perhaps they too have been jaded by the slaughter. The duty falls to me, fatigue or no.

    I try my best. ¡°I believe the gentleman will find that now is not the time to make enemies amongst friends. I¡¯m sure that there was no foul to his honour intended.¡± It¡¯s a good defusal, promptly ignored by both the gunner and the Chief Sigilist. Iseult moves against him, fearlessly, a foot shorter and vibrant with a dire focus. They¡¯re within a yard of each other, and he wraps his hand on his thin officer¡¯s sword. The wind snaps through the tent, blowing straggling hairs over her forehead.

    I pray, with all my being, that she will try to calm the situation.

    She speaks. ¡°You have a surprising number of triggers for a man who can¡¯t use his gun.¡±

    The sigilist¡¯s mouth drops open, and his hand curls around the pommel of his sword. He turns, furious, to the Colonel. ¡°Will you accept this disrespect from a foreigner? Or a common hedge w-¡°

    ¡°Enough, Chief Sigilist.¡± This time from Major Caird. A vein is clearly protruding from the side of his neck. ¡°We will all have our chance at honour, later. But we must survive until tomorrow. Miss Morrin has proven herself today, would you not agree, sir Whelan?¡±

    Thank the Saints. I reply quickly, not wanting to lose the opportunity to calm the tent. ¡°Yes, of course. From our barricade she executed enough knights that it lessened what would otherwise have been a potentially overwhelming attack.¡±

    Sheridan snarls, redirecting his bruised ego. Unable to find a soft target with Major Caird, he instead settles on me. ¡°And you, Aerganite, have experience with warfare? Your opinion on the state of battle is warranted? Will you lead us on the field tomorrow?¡±

    The man must be talented, or excruciatingly well connected, to have risen to the position of Chief Sigilist. But it¡¯s a strange thing to see this sort of biting comeback from a professional sigilist. I¡¯ve met a handful of knotworkers before. The vocation doesn¡¯t normally attract individuals who lack a certain amount of detachment. Like the vast majority of people, I was never able to come close to learning to meditate enough to form usable charms.

    ¡°There won¡¯t be a tomorrow, for us.¡± Iseult is staring at the thick, bleached canvas of the command tent as it snaps in the breeze. ¡°They¡¯re not using knotwork. They are knotwork. They¡¯re making a myth.¡±

    The sigilist laughs, mockingly. ¡°What Bani Yathrib lunacy is this?¡±

    Colonel Fandh speaks, holding up a single finger. ¡°Chief Sigilist Afnysin, you will be ejected from this tent if we are subject to another one of your outbursts. Do I make myself clear?¡±

    Hints of iron play out under her politeness, like muscles shifting under a jacket. Her hazel eyes narrow, the wrinkles of her face settling into long-engrained furrows.

    I am thunderstruck when it seems the Chief Sigilist¡¯s gall will lead him to speak against the Colonel, and am immensely relieved when he takes a step back, alternating odious scowls between Iseult and me. Sheridan¡¯s anger is one born of timidity, rather than heart.

    ¡°Please continue, Miss Mahrin.¡± The Colonel says her surname slightly differently, a mouthful of Bani Yathrib syllables. Iseult continues, eyes closed.

    ¡°Have you noticed the wind? The temperature? The sun is at midday, and yet it is just as brisk as the morning. It¡¯s abnormal. The Host is not parading some random perimeter around us. We know the queen is one of the most talented sigilists in Yvreathe. Perhaps on all of Calacar. They¡¯re starting a charm.¡±This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

    Major Caird¡¯s face pales. The room is split between nonchalance and confusion, and waits for the Colonel to consider this.

    ¡°A circle, with a square in the centre. This is the basis of a rune that every sigilist knows, a-¡° Sheridan, eager to retain face after being dismissed, interrupts her. ¡°A death charm.¡±

    Iseult rolls her eyes to the ceiling for a few heartbeats. She has balled her hands into fists. ¡°Yes. What I would call an emptiness configuration. The start of one, anyway. The horsemen are inscribing a circle. We have already made a comparatively tiny square, with the wagons. Once the queen is happy with the initial linework, she can begin completing the sigil.¡±

    ¡°She has a reputation,¡± our Colonel continues, flicking her eyes between Iseult and the Chief Sigilist. ¡°Is it warranted?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± the two say simultaneously, agreeing for the first time. Iseult boils noticeably, and speaks over Sheridan. ¡°Beyond warranted. The queen has a command of knotwork that exceeds that of any other individual¡¯s in Yvreathe, the Aergan, the Wraithwild, or Khazraj. Her talents are similar to what we see from the Tecuani on the Far Shore.¡± This sentence in particular ripples through the assorted officers.

    She continues. ¡°It is very hard to overstate the effect that Queen Olivia has had on sigilists all across the continent. You may know she wrote several essays on magic. You may not know that these are thousands of pages long, form the cornerstone of what we consider modern Yvreathan knotwork, and contain a handful of charms that are lethal for other sigilists to attempt. I have witnessed this event personally.

    ¡°The Queen has not penned a document in close to a decade. We do not know what she is capable of, but for my entire life she has been the only person capable of performing some of the magics that she herself invented. So yes. It is a warranted reputation.¡±

    The Colonel folds her arms. ¡°Very well. Concerning your hypothesis regarding the emptiness configuration- the death charm. I am aware, superficially, of the topic. My specialty is not in knotwork, so I appreciate your patience. But. This seems impossible. Is each horseman a sigilist? How are they maintaining their focus amongst so many of them? Surely each one cannot be talented enough to keep the work stable. And the dead, the earth that has already been trampled, surely this must be interfering with the charm itself? How are they ensuring that the knotwork is precise enough to activate correctly?¡±

    That same didactic, layered speech patterns as the Major.

    Iseult nods slowly along with his points, and again looks askance at the tent wall, deep in thought. ¡°All sigilists should be able to write an emptiness configuration. They have several uses, which is why the term death charm is not the preferred term outside of Yvreathe. It is unclear how they are doing it. And yet- it is happening. Each horseman doesn¡¯t need to understand the knotwork to form it, no more than a piece of chalk or a knife needs to have a sigilist¡¯s mind. They¡¯re the queen¡¯s writing tools, and she¡¯s preparing and visualising the sigil, using their bodies to write it. There are configurations that can be arranged so that the magic starts as soon as enough of the charm is made, without the need for an activation rune. As long as the sigilist herself is focused enough, it¡¯s theoretically possible¡­¡±

    A few of the officers, Colonel Fandh included, are frowning at this revelation. I¡¯m glad that I¡¯m not the only person in the tent who is out of his depth. My knowledge of the subject is purely second-hand. Not even academic, as the officers¡¯ likely is. There are sigilists in Llancreg, of course, but I proved to have no talent for that work as a child, and despite my father¡¯s disappointment, my mother was more than happy to have me learn other, more practical subjects.

    ¡°During the attacks, where they dedicated only a fraction of their forces. Maybe this was never about actually fighting us. She could have just been testing our formation, using the time to do the mathematics for the line weights and pattern configurations. She probably never intended to use this on us, now. It just fell into place for her. And she doesn¡¯t need to write a good sigil. Just enough to drive us out of the fort and into the fields for her knights.¡± I¡¯ve never heard of a sigil this size. But I know better than to underestimate the War Host- the stories surrounding Queen Olivia¡¯s skill as a sigilist have reached all corners of Yvreathe.

    I¡¯m glad when Major Caird speaks, because I have a similar question but am afraid to voice it. ¡°Pardon my ignorance, Miss Morrin. What precisely is an ¡®emptiness configuration¡¯?¡±

    ¡°Are you,¡± she pauses, and looks for a moment like she¡¯s struggling. ¡°Aware of a sun sigil?¡±

    ¡°Aye.¡± The Major says, flatly. We all do. It¡¯s an easy answer- perhaps Iseult can¡¯t exactly calibrate how ignorant we are to her in comparison.

    ¡°Well an emptiness configuration is the opposite of that. More precisely: cold, a killing force, a specific space of nothing. Sometimes all three at once. Hence emptiness configuration. Any knotwork-assisted cold is powered by them. Dangerous, but commonplace enough.¡±

    ¡°And still not possible. Not on this scale, not by a single sigilist. No individual would be capable of controlling the entire process.¡± This time from Colonel Fandh, to the quiet glee of the Chief Sigilist.

    ¡°Beyond the human cost, it¡¯s theoretically conceivable. But from a practical standpoint ¡­ you¡¯re right. The strain would be too high. At this scale there would be too interference from the horses, let alone the minds of the riders themselves. It would totally collapse the mind of the knotworker.¡±

    ¡°Then why would you offer such an outrageous suggestion?¡± Asks an officer, a captain whose name I cannot recall. Behind the Colonel, Sheridan is silently beaming.

    ¡°When the Tecuani annihilated a fifth of your city with a charm from half the world away, do you think your contemporaries a century ago complained that they didn¡¯t understand how?¡±

    The wind flaps the tent walls. A tent peg has come loose outside, and one of the walls has opened very slightly in the breeze. No further counterarguments are offered.

    ¡°The charm is being built around the square of this fort, with us in the centre,¡± the Colonel intones, levelly. ¡°We cannot rearrange the fort, because we will be attacked instantly. We cannot leave, because we will be cut to ribbons. So what do you suggest we do?¡±

    Iseult breathes for a few moments, all eyes on her. She looks up, sharply, and frowns. ¡°I do not know.¡±

    *

    The impossible charm is well underway now. There is no arguing with Iseult¡¯s idea, for the effects are undeniable. To complete the glyph¡¯s curving geometries, the Aergan riders now occasionally stray into missile range, dismounting from their horses and trampling grass and soil in precise, muddy lines. Unnatural cold has gripped the field, and temperatures have been slowly dropping for the last hour.

    Uncommonly, one of our arrows or bolts takes a knight to the ground. Those stricken bodies are promptly recovered by other Aerganites, eager to prevent interference with the hundred-yard geometries of the glyph. Under Iseult¡¯s recommendation, we have started to send parties outside of the protection of the wagons, to carve our own simple counter-charms into the dirt and cast Aergan corpses in disarrayed configurations around our fort. The War Host, unable to simply charge us, has responded by sending out bowmen in precise arrangements to loose arrows into our ranks.

    It is a strange way to fight a war. Iseult was right: the charm itself doesn¡¯t need to be particularly good. Just crude enough to freeze us out, or to bring a wind that will drive us from the fort. She¡¯s fairly certain from the lines she can read that the queen is not able to carve the sort of rune which will invite sightless, boiling death onto everything within the circle. Nor will the Aerganites be able to remove the air itself from around us. That¡¯s a nice thing, at least. I¡¯m also not sure why the entire Host doesn¡¯t simply attack us- clan honours must demand another pack of knights be assembled to attack our walls by now. Perhaps the queen isn¡¯t willing to take those kind of losses, and has elected to use magic rather than spearpoints to butcher every one of us.

    ¡°I still don¡¯t understand how she¡¯s doing it,¡± Iseult mutters, darkly.

    ¡°Well that¡¯s worrying, because you¡¯re the most talented sigilist we have.¡±

    She cracks a smile at that. ¡°This would¡¯ve been easier if you¡¯d just stabbed her in the heart when she came to gloat.¡±

    The thought had literally not occurred to me. I can¡¯t tell if Iseult is joking, or if she would actually consider assassination a legitimate option. Her face softens, returns back to its neutral semi-scowl.

    ¡°What I said, in the tent. About what the Tecuani did to your city during the Calamity. There¡¯s so much we don¡¯t know about knotwork. There¡¯s even more that you Yvreathans and Al Khazraj don¡¯t either. To assume that she¡¯s bound by our understanding of magic- that¡¯s folly. It doesn¡¯t matter that a glyph of this power should pulp her brain like a rotting apple. It¡¯s happening.¡±

    ¡°Our city,¡± I reply.

    ¡°I beg your pardon?¡±

    ¡°Our city. You said your. I¡¯m not from Ildathach either. Yet we¡¯re both fighting for her.¡±

    She considers this point, then sighs severely.

    ¡°Strange how that works out. The western Aerganite tribes¡­ they¡¯re much closer to my people than to Ildathach¡¯s. But, fine. Our city. Mildewed and polluted and filthy. Though you are the one who is betraying your relatives, Aerganite.¡±

    I want to ask her why she¡¯s here. But now is not the time.

    She shivers. Our part of the fort, my men and women, are restless. Twenty minutes ago, I had asked Iseult to quietly execute one of the War Host who was straying within a hundred yards of our wall. The knight¡¯s head was bent down to stare at his feet, fixated on carving a precise meandering pattern with his footsteps. The fighters from Ys had cheered when the man jerked upright, shot through with a jezail bullet. Iseult had spun the chamber of her weapon, sighted again, and done the same to a woman even further distant, her barrel burning with faint violet smoke. That momentary happiness, however, had died down. Now, shuddering occasionally in the steadily freezing air, the misery has returned.

    ¡°It doesn¡¯t make sense. Knotwork this imprecise shouldn¡¯t be able to manifest, at this scale. Or any scale. You can¡¯t just make glyphs without immense precision. Not that it makes a difference. We can¡¯t leave the circle, or they¡¯ll butcher us. We can¡¯t stay here, or we¡¯ll freeze to death.¡±

    ¡°Isn¡¯t there some kind of counter-charm you can work?¡±

    She shakes her head. ¡°Not if me and all the other sigilists tried. That¡¯s not exactly how it works. Could definitely shoot the queen in the head though. That would solve the problem. That is,¡± she pauses, and looks concerned, ¡°if she¡¯s the one who¡¯s actually doing this.¡±

    Queen Olivia has been noticeably absent from the battlefield. War Host tribes aren¡¯t unified by pipes or drums, so there have been no tell-tale music of her entourage, not in the way that Ildathach companies would be. But Aergan clans each have their own idiosyncrasies, and the queen¡¯s compatriots should be decorated in the royal heraldry of her clan. Of all the riders we have seen today, none have belonged to the queen¡¯s family. But she must be there, somewhere, watching.

    *

    ¡°We¡¯re walking out.¡±

    It¡¯s not a question. The runner shivers as he delivers the message to Watch Captain Moran: even the air has begun to thin, and the cold has burrowed into us all. Terrible, coiling frost, in the guts and the lungs. Terrible not because of the temperature, which is bearable, but because of the implication that we are being culled by an enemy that we cannot touch. It is an almost intolerable weight.

    We are nothing, if not enduring. And now we will make our escape.

    The waiting is the worst. Two hours of sniping at our enemy, reducing their numbers by the handful as they construct the intricate charm around us. This has had no actual effect on the Aergan horde. It is impossible to make out the precise shape of the sigil, but the curves and lines that have been gouged into the mud are unmistakable. As is the freezing death that descends upon us.

    In the air, we can now see where the charm ends, where the air becomes thick and warm, a wall that rises from the edge of the great circle the Host has engraved around us. Breathing reminds of the frozen weeks I spent climbing mountains near Ys. Behind me, our footmen shudder in the cold, steel mail rattling.

    Hands twist bitterly around spears. Bloodshot eyes set on the horizon. The Ildathach army, stricken with an inexplicable winter, is soon to march to its death. Our orders, courtesy of this runner, are simple.

    ¡°You are to form a schiltron with the thousand others on this quarter of the fort. Archers and gunners in the third row, pikes and shields in the first and second. We make a square and we march until we are out of the charm. Follow the Colonel¡¯s timing.¡±

    Iseult looks at me, when Watch Captain Moran and Chieftain Trahaearn begin fervently discussing the logistics of the manoeuvre. ¡°Schiltron?¡± She asks.

    ¡°Like a square,¡± I make a square gesture with my hands. Ysian hand-talking is contagious. ¡°Horses only like charging thin lines of soldiers. So we make a very compact shape, stuffed with walls of spears and pikes, and hope that we can shoot better than they can.¡±

    She makes a face. ¡°Does that work?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s similar to how we made the wagon fort. Except this time, we¡¯re the wagon. And we¡¯re going to try to move.¡±

    The soldiers around us are clearly unhappy. The Constabulary and the Ysian clansmen will cooperate well enough within their own groups, but have rarely marched, shoulder-to-shoulder, with each other. An infantry square is a hard enough thing, when braced in one position. To coordinate a movement across several hundred yards is unthinkable. Our pipers begin a long, slow drone, and our drummers try their best to keep us organised.

    We abandon the fort a few minutes later. There is no time to arrange ourselves any better.

    A great cheer arises from the distant Host as the first of our troops emerges from the wagon walls. We march over the dead, stamping their frosty corpses beneath our boots. More than a few have had their throats cut, no doubt by our looters as they pilfered the fallen of their paltry trinkets. The Aerganites hoot and celebrate at our flight. Only a handful of knights remain inside the circle, shivering as they carve the remaining flourishes of the charm.

    Our infantry square is a messy thing, one of four muzzy shapes that slowly form, then begin to tromp to the edge of the circle. Directed by Watch Captain Moran, we plod towards the edge of the knot, three hundred yards away at most. If I were by myself, without the others, I could make the run in under sixty seconds. But we are so, so slow. This march will take minutes, locked as we are into a dense, unwieldy schiltron. If the Aerganites were to attack now, we would be caught, shivering, with no walls and no fortifications. They know this, and move to oblige.

    The Hosts begin to spread outside of the edge of the charm. Swells of men and horses, a river of seething bodies that moves to surround us, contain us, but leaves the perimeter of the great sigil untouched. Their shrieks of delight are audible at a great range, and the sight of the yelping current of riders, some of whom are wearing nothing and clutching only short spears, makes me murmur a prayer to the Saints. Our Constables are stone-faced and grim. Chieftain Trahaearn is ruminating with fiery tones, and the Ysians are, astonishingly, in good spirits. He looks over at me, points directly with a fat sword, and shouts something that I only catch a portion of: ¡­the splendour of glorious death, which is done only in the company of unflinching heroes¡­¡±

    There¡¯s a smell in the air, like something sweet. Warmth suddenly flickers through the abnormal cold, like the day is blinking.

    ¡°We¡¯re ruining the knotwork.¡± Iseult¡¯s voice has a tinge of mirth that is entirely unexpected. I realise with a start that she¡¯s right. The bootsteps of the four thousand men and women marching out of the centre of the glyph has done more damage to the charm than we achieved in the hours of trying to disrupt its workings from inside the fort.

    ¡°Sean,¡± she continues, suddenly urgent. ¡°It¡¯s enough to misconfigure the charm. She¡¯s going to have to come out.¡±

    Arrows begin to rain down on our square, and our men and women start to die. We have shields. They do not always work. A clanswoman from Ys stares dumbly as a broad arrowhead splits the weak wood of her shield and plunges directly through her forearm. Around us, bodies start to fall, and the screaming starts. The squares cannot stop. We either pull the dying with us or stamp them to death with prayers for forgiveness. We cannot yet return fire, not without stopping, and the arrows either clatter off shields or bury themselves in dirt and flesh.

    Queen Olivia emerges from the distant ranks of the War Host.

    It¡¯s enough of a sight that it almost paralyses our entire square. She, and the twenty or so others riding respectfully behind her, are not bedizened in the riotous paint of the rest of the Host. They are golden, radiant, sun-touched. Light flashes from glyphs on their armour, and their horses¡¯ armour, and the effect is almost blinding. A shining golden wedge, the herald of this sudden, terrible winter. At their head, the woman working to annihilate us. Her hands are raised. Her head is wreathed in a massive violet halo that is visible from hundreds of yards away.

    Iseult gasps. The man beside me stumbles, terrified. I keep him up, but our section of the schiltron is already losing cohesion.

    The Hosts, some of whom have already galloped around the perimeter of the charm so they are lurking behind our square, pincering it from every angle, notice our fear. Their cries and jeers rise even louder.

    Cold thunders down on us. The queen has increased her efforts, and Iseult gapes openly at the effort. ¡°Madness. I don¡¯t understand how she¡¯s still alive.¡±

    ¡°Can you shoot her?¡± Iseult shakes her head, and little shimmers of frost break on her braided hair. ¡°Not from this range. Believe me.¡±

    We continue marching forward, lockstep, and the bulk of the Host has already started to arrange itself at the exact position our square is moving towards. It is death, then- either inside the charm, of cold, or outside, where the wrath of the Host will smear us into the grass. Iseult keeps talking, trying to mask her fear. ¡°There are charms on these bullets that might be able to reach her. But I would need something of hers. Something she¡¯s touched.¡±

    Wait.

    I am so suddenly focused that I almost fall out of step with the square. ¡°Something like what?¡±

    She spins to looks at me, suddenly awake, eyes flashing in the cold. ¡°Like a possession. A cup. A pen. Preferably something she¡¯s put her hands or her mouth around. Can¡¯t be alive.¡± Hands tug at her, pulling her back into formation with the infantry square. She¡¯s staring wild-eyed at me, desperate for an answer.

    I stare down at my hands, and the dull brass of my family¡¯s ring.

    *

    ¡°You could have fucking said it sooner!¡±

    She has to shout, because true wrath has finally descended upon the Ildathach army. An unending storm of shrieking infernal Aerganites. Horses, terrified, culled by waves of arrows, bolts, and, rarely, bullets. The terrible sensation of bodies crashing into pikes, the weight of a thousand seconds of slaughter. Iseult is still firing, minutes later, having secreted a seemingly unlimited supply of scrimshawed bullets over her person. She¡¯s shooting and reloading at three times the pace she worked at in the morning.

    ¡°Well I didn¡¯t know!¡±

    My ring, my father¡¯s ring. Now singed and blackened, though, astonishingly, still wearable. Iseult had warned me it could be destroyed in the process, though at that moment I could not have cared less. She had taken it, done something with it. When she had opened her eyes, they had slipped at an angle that made me queasy, and she had blinked back tears until her irises were ringed in crackling amethyst. Her hands had moved smoothly around her weapon, and she had bolted from our barely-moving square to the field before us. The Constables beside us had thought her a coward, or a defector, but had stifled their cries when she dropped into a firing crouch.

    A second alter, I was beside her. She had slowed her breathing, and her tattooed finger had drifted glacially around the trigger guard of her gun. Her entire being was focused down that line, pointed at the queen. She had said, quietly: ¡°Say something.¡±

    ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°Say anything. Make it good. It¡¯s part of a counter-ritual.¡±

    I had thought for a moment, about what the queen had said in the tent, when we had met. Something my mother had said, too. I repeated it, in Aerinic. ¡°Now is a time of storms. So I bathe my hands in the thunder, and drown my heart in the tempest.¡±

    Words crackled like static on my tongue. She inhaled them, held her breath halfway. When she had fired, it was not the normal crack-whip of the jezail. She had been totally engulfed in violet smoke, and a shroud of the stuff enveloped both of us, deafened me entirely. For a moment, I saw her eyes shine like stars in that magic-drowned haze.

    Three heartbeats later, the queen, sun-sigils snuffed out, had tumbled from her horse. Regal no longer, just a corpse in a yellow coat. The cold had lifted, instantly, and a shockwave had detonated outwards from the edge of the charm¡¯s circle, hurling masses of flailing Aerganite bodies by the thousands, by the tens of thousands.

    Minutes later, after the survivors had regrouped, they started their revenge.

    The full fury of the War Hosts falls upon us. I am holding a pike, slick with horse blood, at a corner of our battered schiltron. One of our squares was collapsed in the first two minutes of fighting, its men and women either fleeing to the other formations or cut down by whooping knights. I do not know who was in its centre, but they too must have been executed, then ground into the grass. Our square had tightened, standing impossibly against the riders, a rock against a murderous sea.

    A rider, dismounted, runs at our line with his mouth wrenched open in a scream I cannot hear. He is followed by a troupe of his clansmen, and a cluster of knights further to his right, but he alone is leading a charge towards us as his fellow warriors stumble behind him. He is covered in wooden plates- not armour, but painted depictions of Aergan legends, of Saints and monsters from a thousand years ago. They clank and bounce with his sprint, and he descends upon us with hellish intent. An arrow catches him in the gut and he pauses, snarling, then begins a long, slow crawl towards our line. He is eclipsed by the horde of his fellows who pass over and around him.

    My mother used to keep a collection of wooden pictures just like his.

    Iseult sights, fires, and repeats, stopping every few moments to discharge and reload the cylinder of her weapon. My ears have long since accustomed to the thunderclap of her jezail. A horse collapses in the swelling wave, but the galloping animal is one of many, and the animal and its unlucky rider are trampled under her companions¡¯ hoofbeats. Another clan I do not recognise descends upon our square, weathering the killing storm of missiles that fly thick from our formation.

    It is bravery, and idiocy. The front of the charge begins to crumple as it strikes the wave of the dead. This in turn trips more horses, and throws or cripples more of the attackers. A handful break through, and are faced with a glittering wall of bloodstained Ildathach steel. Beside me, one of the Constabulary laughs ghoulishly as he pins an Aerganite through the gut with a pike, the confused knight slapping ineffectively at the weapon as it runs him through. The knight¡¯s shield, I notice with disgust, has two gnarled human hands nailed to it. Beside me, a pair of Ysians tighten their grips around swords almost as long as I am, and begin breathing deeply, rapidly, rhythmically. They will protect me if any rider bats the wall of pikes aside and comes close enough to try to break through the square. Chieftain Trahaearn died minutes ago, caught in the throat with an Aergan hunting arrow. His second-in-command extols the Ysians with stories of Saints and ancestors with a hoarse throat and a bloodshot remaining eye, scorning death and our foe.

    The fury of the War Host thickens the air, and it is in my mouth and my heart and I cannot, I will not, survive. This is the end of my life. Scarcely over twenty, in a meadow with no name, surrounded by men and women I do not know, butchered gleefully by my cousins. I am going to die. I am going to die in half an hour. This I decided twenty minutes ago, when the first rider reached our lines, when I watched him drop, formless, from a pair of javelins to the chest, and his horse slid through our square and maimed or killed at least five of us. I wouldn¡¯t even know how much time passed, if the Ysian clansmen didn¡¯t call out every two minute interval in some insane, tribal ritual. Every minute becomes clogged with centuries. Our remaining Constables have run out of arrows, and their long pikes quiver in their wavering hands.

    I don¡¯t want to die. I want to live. I want to live and I cannot run, because there are warriors behind me and beside me. Before every face of the square is the reaping mass of the Hosts, and already parts of our formation have been met by Aerganites, parts of other squares have crumbled. I reach and I stab and I feel like crying but I cannot, and I feel like stopping but I cannot, and the only thing that keeps us fastened to reality is the idiot timing of the Ysian shaman and the crack-crack-crack-crack of Iseult¡¯s weapon.

    I will die in five minutes, and the call ripples down the line to brace. Needless, I think, my hands cold and clammy around the fire-hardened wood of an Ildathach pike, one that I scavenged from a fallen Constable. We can see them coming, for they never stop coming, and now that we have almost depleted our javelins and our darts and our slings and our arrows they will come for us. My body will be gored by a gloating Aerganite, or broken under an unshod hoof, or perhaps I will simply be maimed and forgotten, and then my throat will be slit by the looting warriors of the Hosts. Now, in the tide of knights approaching, a naked Aergan woman chooses me, improbably, pointing directly at me from the charging wall of horses. Her axe is held high, and blood streaks down her chin, from scarlet teeth and tongue.

    The wall of horses draws closer, their hoofs threshing together. They ride so closely that every missile finds it mark, and every rider is a target, but their numbers barely thin, and I will die in three minutes, and again I am braced, waiting for the bulk of the animal that will grind my body into the mud, or the laughing knife that will bring my soul to the Saints.

    For every one of ours that is slain, by missiles or lances, we take more and more in return. The death of hundreds of Ildathach soldiers from the first broken square reminds us that there is no way out.

    *

    ¡°So she did actually kill the queen. I thought that maybe they made that part up, on her statue.¡±

    ¨ªde¡¯s voice shocks me out of the memory. It¡¯s started drizzling, and I realise with some surprise that I don¡¯t know precisely what to say, or why I started talking about this. She wanted to know about what happened to Iseult. Right. I finish the story.

    Yes, Isr¨¡ Mahrin became famous after the war. They didn¡¯t call her Isr¨¡, of course. Didn¡¯t use her real last name either. The sobriquet she adopted was used in the papers, and the plaques, and the monument in the upscale neighbourhood of Black Courts: Iseult Morrin, Gunner. No daguerreotypes were taken of her, either. Her official portrait was sanitised, a masterful woodcut that neglected her tattoos, shifted her features ever so gently to align with those of an Ildathach lady¡¯s. A saviour of the city.

    When the four thousand killed the queen, then spent a month limping back to Ildathach, it was a turning point in the war. Queen Olivia was always the lynchpin of the War Hosts. Beyond being the War Chief, she understood the fragile web of families that comprised the Host far better than her husband did. King Eric, the warrior, had a fraction of his wife¡¯s grace. Her death was the catalyst for ugly clan fragmentations to re-emerge.

    After withdrawing from the field, we battled the War Hosts again only once, and crushed them without having to strip our half-wrecked supply wagons for another fortification. We did not re-join the rest of the Ildathach army: we walked back to friendly territory, harried by increasingly desperate and disjointed Aergan outriders. For the first time in weeks, we were able to send out scouts and skirmishers far beyond the protection of our army, and I remember the feast from the first time one of our foraging parties had returned at the head of a herd of aurochs.

    My mother taught me that war was waged as a community, and that no individual could ever hope to change the course by herself or himself. But I saw a woman who did it. I saw her heroism. And then I waited in the aftermath, after we finally made it back to the city. After they piled praise on the Colonel, after they paid Iseult and then dismissed her. She had visited me, a month later, uncomfortable in a stiff Ildathach court dress. I had had no idea how she knew where I lived. But we had sat together, and had coffee, and it had taken me twenty minutes to realise that she was absurdly, deeply drunk. She hadn¡¯t cried, I remember that. She hadn¡¯t cried and she wasn¡¯t angry.

    She¡¯d brought up, afterwards, if it bothered me that I had fought against my cousins, for a city that wasn¡¯t my own. At the time, of course it hadn¡¯t.

    Getting sucked into memories again. I look at ¨ªde, flattening my emotions. ¡°Yes. That¡¯s why she¡¯s famous.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure what kind of person can kill royalty. But I¡¯d believe Iseult can do it.¡±

    I think about this for a moment, and can¡¯t think of anything clever to say. ¡°Queens die just as easily as soldiers.¡±

    I¡¯ve left out the hard parts. The disease, mostly. None of the stories that I heard from my mother, none of what was written in the books, talked about how we¡¯d lose so many men and women to coughs and fevers. Very few even discussed the way we¡¯d have to pile bodies into pits, in sheltered little places about the Aergan. How we¡¯d beseech the Saints and built monuments to protect those who had passed. Ildathach keeps a trail of standing stones and cairns that cuts halfway through the Aergan.

    ¡°But¡­ why didn¡¯t you chase down the remnants of the War Hosts? Why leave some of the knights alive?¡±

    An uncomfortable question. ¡°You don¡¯t just¡­ murder people. You know that Saint Mantis liturgy? ¡®To a fleeing enemy, you build bridges of gold¡¯. What would killing more Aerganites accomplish? We were trying to end the war, and cutting off the head of the War Host was much more effective than trying to kill the body. We actually helped a lot of the clans escape, by pretending to chase off the weaker ones. If we¡¯d wasted time trying to chase down one specific family, it might¡¯ve given the others a chance to reunite.¡±

    She scoffs. ¡°So we let them live. And then it all ended peacefully.¡±

    The planks beneath us creak, shrinking in the steadily cooling waters north of Crowmere. I wonder how much of ¨ªde¡¯s curriculum was edited by the censors of the Chaplain¡¯s Office. In the months after the war ended, I was gently reminded by Dour House agents at two separate social events that I was speaking rather forthrightly about the events.

    ¡°Well, you were alive during the war. What do you think?¡±

    She looks over the choppy waters and grips the bullet necklace Iseult gave her between a thumb and forefinger. The explanation she offers could have been lifted directly from Ildathach¡¯s newspapers: ¡°After we quashed the Aergan rebels, they wanted to end the fighting. The four thousand heroes and the rest of the army came home, Chaplain Dunaidh made King Eric accept our mercy, and it¡¯s been peaceful ever since. There are a lot of Aerganites, but the Ildathach army is too strong, and things have been peaceful ever since. These days we¡¯re the strongest city in Yvreathe. Probably on the entire continent¡±

    Pride buoys every word. A sailor calls out a boisterous joke near the bowsprit, and is rewarded with a snickering chorus from her shipmates. I choose my next sentence with care. ¡°Have you ever seen an Aerganite in Ildathach?¡±

    ¨ªde frowns. ¡°I beg your pardon?¡±

    ¡°When was the last time you saw someone from the Aergan? Did you have any classmates in Saint Listless¡¯ College from the plains?¡±

    ¡°Well¡­ when I was younger, I had two or three Aerganite classmates in the Ragged School. And obviously you see Aerganites in the city. I mean, you¡¯re in the city.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s been five years since the end of the war. There are probably four times as many people in the Aergan than in Ildathach and all the ouncelands surrounding her. Surely enough time for more Aerganites to make their way to the city. So where are they?¡±

    ¡°They¡¯re,¡± she waves her free hand, shirt cuff catching the saltwater spindrift. ¡°Not. Uh. They¡¯re not interested, in. You know.¡±

    She winds down her sentence after she meets my eye. I gently cut her off.

    ¡°Llancreg is on the border. Right on top of the Dolerite Rag that separates the Aergan from the east of Yvreathe. So most Aerganites who visit Ildathach come through our territory. A lot of them go further east, to the city. And a lot come back, the same way.

    ¡°You know what Ildathach used to do to Aergan renegades? Before the war? Do you know what crucibling is?¡± She probably does, but I keep going anyway. ¡°You have a sigilist make a quick-burning fire charm, mount it on top of an iron crown, and place it on a prisoner¡¯s head. Then you activate it.¡±

    I saw a crucibling once, as a child. A favourite tool of the Dunaidh family, echoing their livery and the literal smelting of the last king of Ildathach¡¯s crown. The justice of the city, meted out on a minor noble of the Aergan. The rebelling Aerganite was my mother¡¯s long-distant kin, but I had never met him before. There wasn¡¯t even any screaming. Just a flash, a heartbeat blast of heat and sound, the soft thud of the halo landing on a pile of smouldering ash. His charred forearms and hands were the only parts of him left, save the rising plume of corpse-ash, and the Ildathach Constabulary had left them for his weeping family to recover. My mother had boiled with anger, for weeks, but never, ever spoke about it.

    ¨ªde frowns, then whips out a response, her pride fuelling her anger. ¡°But what did the Aerganites do to start the war? Nailed Ildathach families to trees! You can¡¯t honestly say that you support that, that, that savagery. And also,¡± she spews out the next point without hesitation, because she¡¯s just thought of it, ¡°why fight for Ildathach, if you hate the city so much?¡±

    The Aergan clans that murdered and mutilated their Ildathach administrators wouldn¡¯t have used nails when they impaled those men and women to trees. That amount of iron would be worth too much to the more distant clans. I decide not to correct her, on that.

    ¡°Ildathach doesn¡¯t like competition. Llancreg is an ounceland, and we¡¯ve sworn fealty to the city since before the Dunaidh family took over. The city hasn¡¯t really lost a fight in over a century, since the Tecuani and the Calamity. My deliverance to the army was part of that fealty, along with the spirals we pay in taxes. But we are one of just two ouncelands in the Aergan who are allowed to rule ourselves. No other Aerganite under Ildathach command has been allowed to rise up in social ranking enough to govern their own territories in two centuries. You ever wonder why the first thing the Aerganites did was murder every single Ildathach governor in the plains? That maybe there might have been a reason for the war beyond ¡®savagery¡¯?¡±

    She doesn¡¯t say anything. Drizzle patters gently on the planking.

    ¡°I¡¯m not trying to be cruel. Ildathach demands peace. When it can, it enforces that peace upon its territories with extreme, focused violence. The army and the Constables and the Dour House and so on. But you know the Saint Gramarye scripture about empathy being more important than knowledge? He wasn¡¯t wrong. Ildathach doesn¡¯t care about the people in its territories. It cares about their loyalty, and it has a lot of practice dealing with dissent.

    ¡°The last time I was at Saint Listless¡¯, I had the pleasure of attending a dinner hosted by the College, which invited a few veterans to join a discussion regarding the ¡®Aergan problem¡¯. One of the doctors argued against the thesis that a Major had presented, that Aerganites were simply too barbaric to be as productive as other Yvreathans.¡± ¨ªde adopts a sympathetic frown as she listens. ¡°Obviously I didn¡¯t bring any attention to my own heritage, and most people can¡¯t tell from my appearance, so his opinions were untethered from the politeness he¡¯d adopt in mixed company. Anyway, the professor pointed out that it¡¯s not necessarily that Aerganite culture is uneducated or barbaric. It¡¯s that our Aerinic, our language, is wrong. That we don¡¯t have enough words for rational concepts. That Aerinic is only good for myths, and is without useful knowledge, and is primarily used to generate fanciful legends and falsehoods.

    ¡°These are the people that are supposedly supporting Aerganites. The other half just wants to use the law and the military to kill anyone who dares disturb the peace of Ildathach. So that¡¯s how the nicer strata of Ildathach sees us. We¡¯re not barbaric animals, we simply don¡¯t understand the benefits of science and civility, and need to be brought to heel. Like children. Small wonder you don¡¯t see many of us in the city, where even our allies think we have to be herded and cared for. Most of my countrymen can¡¯t even get work, save for the jobs that are dirty or dangerous enough that you don¡¯t think about them.

    ¡°These ¡®supporters¡¯- they genuinely think they¡¯re supporting us. But they¡¯re the same people who call street urchins ¡®throne dust¡¯. Same people who gave medals to the casualties of the four thousand but left them to wither without purpose. We¡¯re just not real, to them. That¡¯s why they can explain us away in a sentence or two.¡±

    She rubs her face with one hand, scrunching her eyes shut. A few days ago, I could¡¯ve guessed what she¡¯d say next. But since the bees and the honey in the Bloom, it¡¯s like she¡¯s a different person entirely.

    ¡°So you killed your own cousins.¡± She could¡¯ve said it like an insult, but elects to drip it into the conversation like a lecturer would. ¡°And now you have to live with it. That betrayal. But you had to do it, because of the agreements that your ancestors in Llancreg passed onto you.¡±

    ¡°Did I?¡±

    The look she gives me is ancient, and piteous. I almost step back. A sailor marches behind us, bootsteps heavy on the planking. He thrusts his head between ours, breath stinking, and his oilskin poncho grinds damp sea-spray into my clothes when he throws his arms around us both.

    ¡°Alright, you two? Probably best to get below. Weather¡¯s coming in.¡±

    I turn, and see the great anvil clouds of an impending storm. The Gundog Walking rides a particularly dismal swell, and we retire to our cabin, where this conversation is too large and too heavy to fit. I am worried that ¨ªde might be the type of person to take a disagreement personally, but in this respect she is much more similar to me than to Iseult. Within the hour I am teaching her to play back-gammon, and we team up to make fun of Iseult when she arrives and insists that the game is actually called tawleh. Our colleague, who is exactly the type of person to take this sort of ribbing seriously, is on the cusp of an angry sulk before we soften the raillery and invite her to play instead.

    *

    Our voyage is interrupted by neither monsters nor storms, and as the Gundog Walking wallows into Yvreathan territory, old ¨ªde begins to re-emerge. It doesn¡¯t bother me that Iseult keeps mostly to herself- at least with Iseult it¡¯s expected. After our talk about the war, I was unable to pry any more conversations out of our young sigilist- by the second day, I had stopped annoying her with attempts at little amiable chats.

    Her revitalisation doesn¡¯t come courtesy of Iseult or me. A passing comment from Mate Morvyn had done it- some sailor¡¯s complaint about the calculations of parallax and refraction that allowed our crew to calculate the ship¡¯s location. A few hours later, ¨ªde had emerged from the pilot¡¯s cabin, beaming, and has since spent her hours with the ship¡¯s navigators, discussing lunar distance and learning how to use a sextant. I know better than to meddle. I¡¯m just happy to watch her become her old self again.

    Days later, as we draw closer and closer to Ildathach, a crew of sailors lead by deckhand Haerviu break from their normal duties to deploy a huge, curving net behind the Gundog Walking. It does not appear to slow the ship at all, and they genially decline my attempts to help. This answers a question I had had since stepping foot on the ship the first time- why are we not eating fish all the time?

    For whatever unknowable reason, our first voyage out involved no fishing at all. I know, because I was waiting for it. The entire trip, I half expected to see sailors on the deck with rods and tackle dotted about the deck, pulling food from the ocean daily. This never happened. Instead our fish rations were damp and putrid things, stored in a separate and uniquely vile fish room in the hold. Most of the sailors tended to pick only tentatively at these meals, and I heard dark murmurings on more than one occasion that eating the fish would cause all manner of diseases.

    The net was cast behind us, and my interest was immediately peaked. I asked one of the sailors why we didn¡¯t drag the thing behind us constantly, and she looked at me like I was particularly stupid. Apparently there aren¡¯t actually that many fish in the deep ocean, which sounds utterly ridiculous. We¡¯re supposed to wait until we¡¯re at this specific zone, closer to shore, in a band just far enough from Ildathach to avoid average fishermen but close enough to expect a catch.

    A few hours later, when the net is hauled back in, I¡¯m staggered at the bounty. A fraction of the catch is immediately sent to the sickroom, via the loblolly boy, who flinches behind his great armfuls of still-flopping roundfish. The work pauses for a moment, and the sailors are concerned we¡¯ve caught something unfortunate, but their anxiety bleeds into joy when a skate that must weigh over two hundred pounds is hauled into view above the waves. Their efforts redouble as they bring the massive catch, a colossus crowned in other, smaller fish, into view. It flops sadly from the net and is promptly clubbed to death by a brawny deckhand, who then carries its corpse downstairs, accompanied by a gaggle of assistant sailors.

    Dinner that day is superb. Even the captain joins the rest of the crew in the galley, and with uncharacteristic praise declares the meal adequate. Much to my joy, and to the smirking satisfaction of several sailors on deck, ¨ªde asks to continue her sword fighting lessons. She¡¯s certainly less bashful about it than she was when we started.

    We sight the Ildathach docks around seven in the evening, the sun still high above the horizon. Most of the ships are trading cogs like us, with a handful of pleasure craft speckled into the sea traffic. The only point of interest, which we drift quietly by on the way to the Grand Quay, is a bustling, gore-streaked brigantine. She¡¯s overburdened by an immense haul that must take up a third of her entire deckspace- one great, hulking head, industriously being sawn in half by a pack of sailors wielding lumberjack tools. They look up and wave from their bloody work, and we float past them pleasantly despite the barrels of ichor that coat the other vessel, its crew, and the water around her. ¨ªde pales at the sight. Iseult and I watch, arms crossed, as the sailors happily undergo their grim rendering of the monster. She turns to look at me, just for a moment, and I know what she¡¯s thinking. The smell of iron. The impossible fountains of gore. Our time in the Aergan.

    Everyone knows that every whale is different, so the monstrous cranium in front of me is familiar in only vague terms of bulk and outline. It is a titan, probably several dozen tonnes, and its skin is mostly a sort of oily, mottled black. Its blunt features, shaped like an enormous hammer and the length of four or five men, twitches and lolls as the whalers hack at its neck with machetes and tree saws. The crew moves with shoeless heron steps over the gut-wet deck. A handful are simply watching, hands curled around boarding pikes and spades, lest some parasite or sea-spawn erupt from the cooling flesh. The rest are working with an intense fervour, breaking the great corpse into two pieces, to be loaded off the ship by a rickety, blood-streaked crane.

    Beside the vessel is the whale¡¯s body, chained almost skin-to-hull with the ship that slew it. The colossal prize is easily the length of the ship, even after its decapitation. A contraption spooled out from the hull has been hooked deep into the leviathan¡¯s flanks, and two crewmembers step walk over the rolling beast as great chunks of blubber are heaved slowly from its flanks. The whalers, each armed with pike-length spades, walk over the corpse like it¡¯s a treadmill. Fat is quarried slowly from the body, pulled in rubbery ribbons. Some bulky contraption is used on deck to pack the ropes of fat and oil into the ship¡¯s hold, and thick gouts of vile smoke pour from her chimneys, fuelling whatever industry is being conducted within her hull.

    The whale¡¯s face is strangely serene, considering the grisly operation that the sailors are enacting upon it. They pick its carcass apart, industrious crimson ants moving across and within the great shape. A great lolling tongue emerges snakelike from its open jaws: a good sign, what sailors call a ¡®liar whale¡¯. Its miniscule, goat-like eyes, black against the slightly lighter lustre of its skin, stare blankly off to either side of its colossal head. Like a butchered cow. Like a broken horse.

    Judging from its size, the animal must be from beyond the Torment, from those frigid waters that gird the continent on all sides. Maybe the crew chased it through the frost wall, into the steadily colder seas, hunting the beast as it fled to the safety of those freezing depths. Maybe they barely retained the nerve to plunge into the Torment itself, risking frostbite or madness in the ocean past the storm halo.

    No matter what sacrifices were made by the whaler, the worth of her prize is immense. Beyond the valuable coils of incarnagris that the whale is almost certainly carrying in its guts, the by-products of a catch this size are significant. Fat, meat, bones, eggs. Pearls, if they¡¯re lucky. The captain, wherever he or she is, must be ecstatic. I scan the deck, but cannot see where the lucky captain might be. Indeed, I have spent so long staring at the great dead whale that I had not noticed the obvious hole where two of the ship¡¯s whaling boats should be kept.

    I can barely make out the name of the ship as we finally slide past her, aiming for a further dock. The words Lucky Lucky Potshot are barely visible beneath a river of blood that stains her signage scarlet. The whalers finish their surgery with a shout, and I turn just in time to see one of them stagger back, sprayed with a geyser of luminous cyan liquid. Some hidden fluid, pressurised within an obscured organ buried in the mountain of dead flesh. A hush takes the crew, who abruptly cease their singing and their labour and gawk at the stricken sailor. Iseult draws a breath through clenched teeth.

    All whales are different.

    The sailor flails horribly, and gives a single barking yelp of fear. We watch, transfixed, and wonder if she will be dissolved, or spontaneously frozen, or transmogrified into some insane grotesquery.

    Nothing happens. The Gundog Walking glides serenely towards her allotted berth in the Grand Quay, and the splashed sailor is slowly obscured from my view by the gigantic bulk of the now-bisected whale. The nervous laughter from her decks, and the cheers from our own, let me know that nothing abhorrent has yet befallen the woman.

    ¡°It¡¯s good that your Saints blessed the land and the waters of Yvreathe,¡± Iseult comments drily, when the water around our ship is no longer a swamp of salted gore. ¡°Because I¡¯m not convinced your people have done much good for either.¡±

    ¡°Why are they butchering it so close to the harbour?¡± There is no confidence in ¨ªde¡¯s trembling question.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± I say, truthfully. ¡°I¡¯ve never seen anything like this before.¡±

    ¡°Because it cursed the ship,¡± spits a deckhand behind us, eyes flashing. ¡°Sloppy work from the harpooners. Probably didn¡¯t expect it to use knotwork against them. Captain¡¯s probably belowdecks, puking up saltwater. Or cutting off his own fingers. Needs a strong knotworker to undo a whale¡¯s curse.¡±

    He looks over at Iseult, who stares at a whaler as he hacks at the leviathan¡¯s twitching, blood-soaked tongue.

    *

    ¡°What¡¯s taking so long?¡± Iseult asks, impatiently. One of the deckhands looks at her strangely, then at me, then shrugs. The captain, however, heard the complaint. Everyone else on the deck is silent. Now that I think about it, on open water, with this level of quiet, it¡¯s possible the inspectors heard us too.

    First mate Ceinfryn has rowed out with a small compliment of sailors to meet with Ildathach¡¯s dock inspectors. It¡¯s quite unlike the experience we faced at Brixa Thalaam, where mooring the boat was more of a greeting than an actual inspection. Here, the sour-faced inspectors, scarcely fifteen yards from us and all clad in the thick green overcoats of the Ildathach Constabulary, are conducting a series of tense and bitter arguments with the first mate. Ceinfryn is now presenting a long list of documents from an oilskin folio, and flicks through the sheaves with practiced gestures. The captain behind us rumbles a response to Iseult¡¯s complaint.

    ¡°They¡¯re waiting for you to mature enough to be patient, Wraithwilder.¡±

    Iseult spins irritably, but the captain doesn¡¯t humour her at all. Even Iseult won¡¯t clash with too solid a target without reason, and arguing with the captain is like staring into the sun.

    Eventually, the first mate rows back, holding the folio aloft. I see she is also holding a letter, stamped with a Dunaidh family emblem- a throne turned to firewood. The sailors cheer. Even the captain smiles. There is a restrained pattering of movement from the sailors around us, and minutes later the Gundog Walking settles gently into a berth.

    Stepping from the gangplank back onto the brickwork of the Grand Quay is a strange feeling. For some reason, the voyage out to Brixa Thalaam didn''t particularly affect my constitution, beside the initial bouts of seasickness. The trip back, though, after our time within the Bloom, has inflicted a far more severe sort of malaise upon me. I step woozily onto the bricks of the Quay for a few moments to regain my footing, like my week away from the ground has made it reject me.

    Iseult had immediately pushed to the front of our little group, and is the first of us off the boat. She looks like she''s been struck with the same nausea I have, because she marches neatly down the gangway, walks about fifty feet in a straight line towards a wall, and then pirouettes and leans heavily against it. I follow her, and when I¡¯m halfway to her I turn to see ¨ªde disembark peacefully in my wake, held up by a gang of sailors who have shoved in front of her. She appears to be entirely immune to this disconcerting land-sickness.

    Disembarking rapidly from the Gundog Walking proves to be unnecessary, because we still have to wait for the oleum to be unloaded. Were that the sole reason the ship went to Brixa Thalaam, the entire process might only take a few minutes. As it were, she has a significant quantity of cargo due for various Colt & Tumble warehouses. Sailors work tirelessly at the boat¡¯s grinding capstan, unloading an unending stream of loot in the form of various boxes, crates, and barrels. Piles of the stuff are and carried overhead by a reinforced cargo crane.

    The sailors, some of whom have already completed their portion of the complex thrashings of rope and muscle that stabilises a vessel like the Gundog Walking, are able to start help unloading the ship. A crew of longshoremen and dock workers, some of whom trade greetings and insults with the sailors, mill around the dock, waiting for their goods or for further instructions.

    Thus, our personal cargo arrives half an hour later, nestled between a frankly bewildering away of Wraithwild freight. Our oleum, still in their original hazel boxes, shares a platform with caged, panicking pigs.

    Unlike the brutal butchery of the whaler we floated by earlier, the ship¡¯s contents are divided into a hundred smaller units, most of which are of varying dimensions and weights. The process of unloading is surprisingly complex, though there¡¯s obviously a rhythm to it, and we wait patiently for the neat hazel boxes which contain our oleum. Five tonnes of the stuff, divided into a large number of straw-packed crates, are over several trips hoisted onto a lifting platform and deposited neatly on the docks. They join a growing mound of other cargoes, some of which is already being taken away by men and women in Colt & Tumble carts.

    ¨ªde makes a move to our boxes as soon as the swarm of workers moves away from it, but I put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. We watch, quietly, as the rest of the cargo is unloaded over the course of about an hour. Sailors heave coarse woven ropes, their back muscles straining under their skin. The cargo platform sways in the afternoon breeze, placing goods in a convoluted but undeniably efficient pattern. It is exhausting work, and only when the last of the cargo is cleared from the Gundog Walking¡¯s excavated hold do the smiles start, and the sailors aboard the ship begin singing. The crew on shore joins in, those with tasks to perform doing so under their breath or through gritted teeth. When the job seems nearly complete, first mate Ceinfryn appears near the bowsprit with some bagpipes and accompanies the singing with a Caronek shanty, much to the amusement of the workers around us.

    After the last of the crates have been hoisted, and the cargo platform returned to its berth, Captain Holofernes nods to her first mate (who is halfway through a spirited dancing song, but hurriedly winds down as the captain leaves the ship) and descends down to the docks as well. She scans the cargo, occasionally running a hand over a crate and barking an order to whoever is standing near her. At one point, the dockworker in charge of a shipment begins to argue with her, and she simply grinds him down in three loud, incomprehensible sentences. He chooses, perhaps wisely, not to challenge her, and wanders off to salve his pride and inflict some proportionate retribution upon his underlings.

    She seems satisfied until she comes across our cargo, whereupon her head snaps up to us and she makes meaningful eye contact. A heartbeat passes, and I realise that she is not going to come to us. I peel myself away from the wall, leaving Iseult and ¨ªde behind.

    "Sir Whelan," that unblinking, needlessly potent stare. I''m fine with it. Well. Mostly fine.

    "I trust that you will be able to take this cargo to its," and she taps the nameplate of the crate with a pair of rough fingers, "rightful destination?" I make a show of peering at the address, though I have read it so many times I have memorised it. The address had already been etched into a thin layer of iron that was nailed to each crate, engraved into the metal with the careful script of a foreigner writing in the Irdcheol alphabet.

    I place my hand confidently on the thigh-high box. "We''ll take care of it. I think those are for us." Here I nod my head at the quintet of carts lurking in the shade of the docks, three bored drivers talking to each other beneath the brickwork and a simple cloth canopy.

    "You''d think right. It was a pleasure working with you, Sir Whelan. We''ll see each other again."

    Honestly, I expected a more titanically vulgar farewell, but I am absolutely not going to test my luck by pointing that out. We shake hands, and that is that. Our drivers seem unhappy to be asked to work after hours of idle waiting, but soon enough we are loaded and headed to the Colt & Tumble address. Originally they had requested that we take separate cabs to the site, but it was cheaper and easier simply to bribe them to let us sit in the back. They¡¯ll have to return to the Grand Quay anyway, and only about a third of the total load of oleum fits in these carts. Iseult swings lithely into the first open cart, but I grab ¨ªde and pull her to the last wagon in the queue. She grins when she realises why: this redolent cart is the one that¡¯s been packed with the coffee beans.

    When we finally trundle out of the docks, the street dogs watch us without stirring, too lazy even to bark. Just before we exit Jejune, we are delayed by a platoon of green-coated Constables. Ugly forms under their green coats betray barely-concealed weapons. I ask the driver what the hold-up is- he turns to look at me levelly, and doesn¡¯t bother responding.

    Our little one-sided chat is immediately interrupted by ¨ªde, who makes a surprised sort of squawk as a flock of pigeons erupts suddenly by her place in the wagon. She laughs, sheepishly, and the carts start moving again only a minute or two later.

    *

    I wasn''t at all expecting Evin to actually be present at the warehouse, and when I feel his bearlike hand wrap itself around my shoulder I startle.

    He definitely felt that, so to save face I turn it into a show, and hold my hand up to my heart after spinning theatrically on one heel.

    "Evin Tumble!" I announce, with the brightest timbre I can manage.

    His handsome face is almost manic with friendliness. Those coffin-coloured eyes bore into me.

    "Sean Whelan!"

    "Evin... Tumble." I shake his free hand with my own, and match his wide smile. No fat, wet handshake from him. The shoulder-rattling strength of a professional socialite.

    Come to think of it, I''m not entirely sure why I¡¯m bothering to play this out. He knows what I''m doing, with the pathological friendliness. I know what he''s doing, also with the pathological friendliness. Most importantly, I know that he knows, and vice versa, so this social preening solely for the benefit of the others. ¨ªde, definitely. Iseult, maybe.

    Perhaps also for his clerk, then, who until Evin made his appearance was performing her duties with the deliberate slowness of a worker who knows precisely the minimum speed she can operate at without getting into trouble.

    Our smiles must be catching, because only Iseult has a neutral face. The clerk looks like she might actually sprain a muscle in her face with the sudden onset of cheerfulness.

    "Iseult Morrin!¡± Evin continues. ¡°And of course, the young ¨ªde Ceallaigh... so good to finally meet you in person!"

    Evin drops my hand and brings the full force of his personality to bear on ¨ªde. His eyes dart momentarily to her scarred, honey-dyed hands. I forgot that the two of them have never actually been in the same room before. She looks so slight, against his brawn.

    ¡°It¡¯s good to see you as well, Sir Evin,¡± ¨ªde says, roughly halfway between timid and casual.

    He laughs, from the gut.

    "Sir Evin! It''s got a nice ring to it. Just Evin will do, for now. Not all of us have," and here he taps me, firmly, on the upper arm. "Noble blood! Though I do like the thought. Sir. Evin. We can¡¯t all be peers though. Not like our modest friend Sir Sean over here, eh! I bet that was a surprise, learning you were travelling with a proper Aergan baron!"

    Well, there goes that secret. Inwardly I¡¯m wincing. I purposefully look only at him, and give an affable smirk.

    I¡¯m listening for it, and I¡¯m fairly certain I can hear the sound of ¨ªde¡¯s eyebrows reaching their maximum altitude, and a tiny plunk as her lips part in surprise.

    Evin¡¯s gaze drifts away from her and pans generally across the walls of the Colt & Tumble office. It¡¯s a very tasteful place. Dark blues, dark woods, gold accents. The subtle wallpaper is a particularly nice touch, and the empty fireplace is done in that classical ironmongery that you don¡¯t find in newer buildings. His head stops rotating at about a ninety degree angle to where he started, and he takes a moment to appreciate the Colt & Tumble seal, grey on black and massively oversized, which sits unframed between a pair of windows.

    He snaps back into the conversation, his eyes reigniting with some of their normal lustre.

    "I see here that you''ve delivered the oleum! Simply grand. To our humble employee here, Miss, Miss..." He squints meaningfully at the Colt & Tumble employee.

    The clerk, who up until this point has simply been tangent to the discussion, stammers out her name in the form of a question: "M-McConnell?"

    "Miss McConnell! Who will- now that she has tallied and checked the various weights, qualities, and other accoutrements that are of course essential to receiving precious goods such as these, and are doubtlessly part of the true lifeblood that keeps Colt & Tumble in the very highest, loftiest cohorts of Ildathach companies- now leave the room."

    She does so, gratefully, at a scurry.

    Evin nods, satisfied, once she closes the door. He claps once, jovially.

    "Capital! Simply, simply capital. One step closer to cracking that that fucking moon in half.¡± His voice catches harshly, then thaws rapidly.

    ¡°Now, about your payment. It''s-¡±

    Iseult, for the first time, contributes to the conversation. "Yes?"

    He pats his vest pockets theatrically. Evin removed his coat when he entered, and his vest is cut tightly across the musculature of his chest and back. If there¡¯s a wallet in there, it must be exceptionally thin. "It''s... ah, it must be... ah¡­"

    I watch the thunderclouds start to descend upon Iseult''s face.

    Evin twitches suddenly, his movements animated and jerky. I can see the muscles strain against his dress shirt, and he taps the tabletop impatiently for a few heartbeats. Seemingly, he comes to the culmination of some internal debate, and begins rummaging through the drawers of the clerk''s desk. ¨ªde shifts, uncomfortably. Iseult¡¯s anger is paused, at least for now, by this unexpected turn. One of his legs splays out as he tries to fold his frame down to reach the bottom parts of the desk; I can see the heel of his shoe has been worn down by half an inch at least.

    "Must be in here somewhere, must be," he mutters under his breath. I don''t say anything, and look away politely as he begins to paw through, then discard, the clerk''s files. He hums a little ditty to Saint Anchor as he pillages his own employee¡¯s desk. Documents and ledgers appear on her desk, haphazardly. Reports, written in neat columns, piled on top of each other. Folders, paperweights, a simple silver letter opener. Evin Tumble mutters darkly at a drawer, which appears to be stuck. I pointedly do not acknowledge this behaviour, though Iseult and ¨ªde are both staring at him, appalled.

    Evin curses, grunts, and there is a sound of cracking wood and the tinkle of what must be a delicate lock mechanism, now bouncing in pieces off of the wooden floorboards of the office. He gives a little harumph of triumph and draws several sable, oilskin sacks out of the desk.

    "Ah! Ahah! Yes, indeed. Thank you for your time and effort, Miss Morrin and company. As promised, I have for you," He opens one of the bags, and rapidly counts a sheaf of bills. "Nine thousand spirals! As guaranteed by contract! Let none say that Colt & Tumble does not pay its contractors, eh!"

    Iseult folds her arms.

    "Mister Tumble. The amount is nineteen thousand spirals."

    His demeanour changes, for this first time. A flicker of doubt careens across his face.

    "Are you quite sure, madam?"

    She nods. "I have the contract here."

    "Ah! Well!" He recovers, "Of course! Nineteen thousand. You are quite right. Quite right."

    Eventually, he extracts the remaining cash from the various oilskins that belonged to the clerk. None of us say anything as he hands Iseult a handful of notes and coins. She counts it, slowly and purposefully, and Evin is visibly anxious during the process. When she finishes, she shakes his hand.

    "Thank you for the payment, Mister Tumble."

    He grins ferociously.

    "Thank you, Miss Morrin! Now, I have one more item to discuss with you."

    She pauses from the task of placing the currency into various pouches upon and within her coat.

    "Yes?"

    "Things have become a bit more complex in the last three weeks, since I saw you." This is a minor understatement, if he''s pillaging the petty cash reserves of his own accountants to pay us. "The oleum is, of course, a tremendous help. But we''ve been discussing things with the Wine Party. Not with all of them, of course. Just the ones we''ve hired as consultants. And they have some ideas that you may be able to assist with. The pay for your assistance now will be double what I just gave you, if you start tomorrow."

    Iseult finishes sorting the notes and coins, which have now disappeared about her person. She folds her arms, and Evin continues.

    "The work is in Ildathach this time! Don''t worry. I''m not sending you back to the Wraithwild. Or," and he laughs a single, contemptuous note, "Cabochon. No, it''s more in line with your usual work. Sigils. Knotwork. You know."

    He looks at her, gestures vaguely towards the brooch that she''s wearing, the one that she''s had time to rework after her time in the wilderness. It shines gently on her chest, like a ruby. He returns his hand to the back of the chair beside him, seemingly disconnected from the rest of his body. It flitters across the wood gently, fingers flaring, picking out some unheard rhythm, some harpsichord flutter. His other hand remains in his pocket, and he remains in this reverie for long enough for an awkwardness to sprout within the room. A few seconds after it does he looks up, startled, and ceases his musings.

    Evin sparks his hand from the chair back and again locks eyes with ¨ªde. She looks away, bashfully, and the exchange sparks another monologue.

    "It''s not difficult! I promise. We can write a contract again, if you wish. Actually, I insist we do. All I''d like for you to do is meet our consultant. The Professor O¡¯Tierney. Or, ex-professor. Sabbatical? I never understand this academic talk. Or the technical stuff. He¡¯s been faced with some setbacks on the project. Meet the good professor, help him solve this problem, and the money is yours. He¡¯s staying on Wine Party grounds. But he might not be working for them directly. Keeps going on in these letters about ''unusual knotwork'' and can''t explain it to me in simple language. But, I wrote back, ¡®what about Iseult Morrin? You know what they say about her¡¯."

    Her face is entirely neutral. "No, what do they say about me?"

    "They say, they say, you''re, uh, you''re good. Very good! Very good indeed."

    Iseult does that thing she does, where she stares at someone and tries to make them talk again. I hope she realises that that procedure doesn''t work on a man like Evin Tumble, who could gladly fill the rest of the year with an uninterrupted monologue.

    "Alright. We''ll do it."

    He looks almost as surprised at her response as I am. "Oh! Grand! Marvelous! Of course! As if there was every any doubt. Well then, Miss Morrin. If you''d be so kind as to speak with the good professor. I believe you''ll find him at this address."

    He reaches out to the pile of documents that he''s upended on the clerk¡¯s desk, and snatches one at random. He slips a pencil out of his pocket, then scrutinises the notes on the front side. Shrugging, he turns the piece of paper over and scrawls out what is presumably an address in a rapid, scurrying sort of script. He folds the paper and passes it to Iseult.

    "And with that! Ladies! Gentleman," and I catch his twinkling smile, "I will bid you farewell. Lots of things to keep up with, lots of things. Do let me know if you can help with the professor. He does have so many ideas, and I understand about, oh, none of them. Good writer though. Tremendous stuff."

    With that, and with a flourish as he picks up the coat he''s hung on the stand beside the door, he leaves the room.

    We all share a look. Iseult takes a miniscule notebook from one of her chest pockets, and unfolds the address that Tumble has provided her. She stares at it for a few seconds, then reproduces it inside of her own journal. I can see that he¡¯s written just two words. With that, she unfolds the original note and places it back on the pile of detritus that Evin has built on the clerk''s desk.

    I clear my throat. "Perhaps we should depart."

    The three of us shuffle awkwardly out of the room. ¨ªde looks at the sad pile of documents on the desk once, piteously, before I usher her out and shut the door gently behind us.

    Just as we¡¯re leaving the warehouse, just as we make it under the solid doorframe of the Colt & Tumble doors, we hear a haunted, barely muffled shriek erupt from somewhere above and behind us. The clerk discovering her workplace. We leave the warehouse briskly, turning neatly into an intersecting street, then another, passing ragged tents that have been propped against a panoply of mismatched wooden buildings.

    We¡¯re far enough from the warehouse, and the potentially homicidal rage of clerk McConnell, that we can pause. Just as we¡¯re about to stop, Iseult points at a slick of horse dung that ¨ªde is about to step on, and she freezes mid-step. I offer my hand, and ¨ªde stares at me with a look that is a few steps between incredulity and veneration.

    ¡°You didn¡¯t tell me you were a baron.¡±

    I look at the flimsy blanket-tents nearby, wondering who in the street is listening. Iseult smirks and looks behind us, scanning just in case the clerk has somehow managed to track us. It doesn¡¯t seem likely. But you can never tell with some people, and today I¡¯d rather not be stabbed by a furious, pencil-wielding accountant. As to ¨ªde¡¯s wonder, Evin has outed me, so I suppose there¡¯s no point in keeping it quiet now. ¡°I¡¯m the son of C¨®n¨¢n and Luella Whelan, of Llancreg. My sister is the current baroness Whelan. Which means yes. I¡¯m a baron. Although I have not been back since,¡± the war. I haven¡¯t been back since the war. ¡°Since, since, some time.¡±

    She stares at me with a growing expression of awe. ¡°I¡¯ve never met a baron before.¡±

    ¡°Please, don¡¯t.¡± It would be best to stamp this down. ¡°There¡¯s a reason why it hasn¡¯t come up.¡± I look over at Iseult, fumbling for help, but she¡¯s busy enjoying the exchange. ¡°It doesn¡¯t change anything.¡±

    ¨ªde nods, agreeable, obviously not convinced. ¡°Okay. Wow. Nothing has changed. I won¡¯t bring it up. But also- if you¡¯re a baron, why¡­¡° she sees my expression. ¡°Okay, yes. Doesn¡¯t change anything. If Ail¨ªn and Fionn knew¡­¡±

    I don¡¯t mention anything about her not telling her brothers, because it almost certainly will make no difference. We walk on in complete silence for ten more minutes. ¨ªde seems like she¡¯s about to actually detonate with questions.

    Our path takes us to a brick bridge I¡¯ve never seen before, one of the many that crosses the old ground-level sewage canals that eventually feed into the Ilda. The Chaplain has promised that by this time next year, the entire city would be raised, and the sewers would run under, rather than through, the streets. Iseult moves to cross the bridge, then stops, foot hanging just above the stonework. She turns at looks at both of us.

    ¡°I don¡¯t trust Tumble.¡±

    Unsurprising. Iseult doesn¡¯t trust anyone. I shrug, then respond. ¡°Why not?¡±

    ¡°Because he¡¯s either unhinged or hiding something. He¡¯s barely pretending to be polite. He wants this too much.¡±

    He is undoubtedly hiding something. I¡¯ve rubbed shoulders with his sort before: we revolve through the same social circles, after all. I stare at the brackish water of this little canal, at its rainbow sheen of effluent. ¡°Being a little unusual isn¡¯t a crime. You¡¯re right, though. I have no doubt he¡¯s hiding something. Everyone is hiding something.¡±

    ¨ªde doesn¡¯t say anything. Iseult ignores her anyway. ¡°So you don¡¯t trust him either?¡±

    I shake my head. ¡°I don¡¯t distrust him, if that¡¯s what you¡¯re asking. I¡¯ve met a hundred Tumbles before, here and there, over the years. He¡¯s strange, he¡¯s driven. But he doesn¡¯t seem like he¡¯s actively trying to trick us. And for the amount of money that he¡¯s just offered you, I think a little bit of eccentricity can be tolerated.¡±

    Iseult rolls her eyes. ¡°Yes, it would be far too uncouth to let madness interfere with revenue.¡± She wheels to ¨ªde, hunting for an ally.

    The younger sigilist speaks quietly. ¡°I¡¯m not sure. He does seem strange. But not stranger than most. I¡¯ve met odder professors.¡±

    Thus rebuffed on two fronts, Iseult grimaces, turns, and crosses the bridge. It¡¯s hard to tell with Iseult¡¯s suspicions, because she¡¯s distrustful of everyone, all the time. Misanthropy isn¡¯t my default state, and while Tumble is certainly peculiar, I don¡¯t think he¡¯s necessarily malicious. I mull her point as we walk further and further, eventually bidding both of them farewell and peeling away to walk home.

 Chapter 12: é“†de

    ¨ªde

    It¡¯s been four days. Sean and Iseult left me with no method of contacting them, which I realised only about six hours after a goodbye hug from Sean and a thin-lipped nod from Iseult. With no further direction from my friends, and no immediate engagements at Saint Listless¡¯, I decided to spend the remainder of my day with my family. A pair of drunkards were shoving each other in the street in front of my mother¡¯s tenement. After waiting for them to lose interest, I made my way inside.

    Fionn¡¯s broken his nose, somehow. This doesn¡¯t at all dent his enthusiasm, and both of the boys harried me for an hour until my mother returned, exhausted, from her manufactory shift. She¡¯d almost had a heart attack when she saw my hands.

    ¡°Had a bit of a scare,¡± she mentioned, when the boys were sent to bed. ¡°Some Aerganite boys in the dosshouse thought they had scarlet fever. Then Ail¨ªn started running a fever. Lymph nodes like little walnuts. Started as soon as you left, then went away when you came back.¡±

    She hugged me tightly. ¡°Don¡¯t go anywhere soon, my heart.¡±

    I visit them every day.

    How in the world are Sean and Iseult planning to get in touch? Mister Tumble had mentioned speaking with Professor O¡¯Tierney, who was at the Wine Party? Or Saint Listless¡¯? I should¡¯ve paid better attention during the conversation. I¡¯ve never even heard of a ¡®Professor O¡¯Tierney¡¯ at Saint Listless¡¯. I stare up at the sculpted ceiling of my little cubicle, thinking.

    This situation seems unusual. But everything seems unusual. Even my hands seem unusual. Our voyage back from Brixa Thalaam had done wonders for my shredded palms and fingers. No more half hours spent gingerly pulling off cloth bandages glued to raw, barely-healing flesh. By the time we entered Ildathach waters, I¡¯d eschewed the task entirely, and the rippling, honey-stained scars had earned me a tiny measure of respect from the crew. They tingle, now. My mother hadn¡¯t pressed the issue, when she saw them, but I could tell she was worried. My brothers thought the honey-furrows were incredible.

    It¡¯s been four days. Is this it? Am I just going to be cast aside, after those whirlwind weeks?

    My bed is a comfort, and it is closer to midday than sunrise before I leave it. I sink gingerly into the creaking floorboards of my cubicle in the Lugrough Club. Miss O¡¯Keefe is unlikely to be on the prowl for errant souls at this time of day, but it doesn¡¯t make sense to attract attention. She had been uncharacteristically warm when I¡¯d returned, plying me for information on my travels and doting over my scarred hands. Now, half a week later, she¡¯s returned to her normal landlady self, and I am just as likely to attract her ire as any of the other girls lodging at the Club are.

    What surprises me most is that all of my things were exactly where I¡¯d left them. I¡¯d secured my cubicle, of course, though the impressive-looking locks of the Club wouldn¡¯t be an impenetrable deterrent to any particularly determined snooper. Still, upon my return, I had found that nothing had been moved, stolen, or otherwise mucked about with. Again, surprising. Miss O¡¯Keefe¡¯s wrath is terrible, but not always the perfect impediment she fancies it is.

    My mouth has felt tender for weeks now, right as I wake up, as if I¡¯ve been sipping boiling coffee. I creep on the outsides of my feet, and slowly extract a dress and underclothes from my dresser. Hopefully, the bells clanging in the nearby chapel of Saint Birdcage help hide the noise of my rummaging.

    Catching her attention at this point would not be catastrophic, though it may herald certain condemnatory consequences. There are only so many lectures or patient sighs that I can take to heart. I¡¯ve had time to develop a resistance to Miss O¡¯Keefe¡¯s judgement over the last three years in the Lugrough Club. Other than Miss Deirdre Gaw, who is a fellow student at Saint Listless¡¯, I am the Club¡¯s longest-reigning tenant.

    It¡¯s hard to believe that I was gone for over three weeks. But now that I¡¯m back, and the rhythm of the city is syncopating me into another normal day, it¡¯s like I was never gone at all. There are only two differences between my life now and my life then. The first is the exhausting and predictable reactions to the stories that I have to repeat to every one of my neighbours. The second is the bullet necklace that Iseult gave me. I have memorised the configurations completely, and have no doubt I could engrave it on a marble or a bullet entirely by memory. Three dimensional knotwork. Shapes and curves that don¡¯t match any sigil I¡¯ve ever seen. I spent so long begging for access to the College¡¯s scrimshawed knotwork. Now an actual Bani Yathrib has fallen, almost literally, into my lap.

    None of the other girls really understand why this gift is so important to me, though they are polite enough when I show it to them. Most seem much more excited about my hand scars and the Wraithwild and the company I kept, and are (in my opinion) shockingly uncurious about the ocean or the complexity of the knotworking that Iseult and I created in Brixa Thalaam. Even when I mentioned my work for Colt & Tumble, the only attentive response I got was from Blair Malloch, who said that she knew an acquaintance who had just sold a painting to Wynne Colt. No questions at all about the strange, fervent Mister Tumble. Or anything else interesting.

    I am bored of their questions, bored of the food, and bored of how quickly the world has decided to move on from my adventure.

    Three weeks abroad have made my life in Ildathach seem much smaller than it was before I left. When Iseult had given me the envelope with my share of the money, I had been ecstatic, and promised myself I would save it as much as possible. My room has become gently filling with the things I could not previously afford. Books, mostly.

    Today, at my mother¡¯s suggestion, I have decided to go to Saint Listless¡¯ and discuss the situation with professor Finneces and professor Gallagher. I cannot spend another day doing nothing, just reading and sketching three-dimensional knots and waiting. There has to be more than sitting at my desk, patiently hoping, watching the street traffic and the occasional relocated house trundling slowly down the thoroughfare outside of the Lugrough Club. I have been patient with Sean and Iseult for half a week, so it is time to take matters into-

    A knock on my door, with no words. I know Miss O¡¯Keefe¡¯s knock.

    How is it that the floorboards in my cubicle are so squeaky, when the ones in the hallway are fitted to allow such stealthy footsteps? How can a sixty year old woman creep quietly down a hallway without me noticing? How does she even know I¡¯m in my room?

    ¡°¨ªde! ¨ªde Ceallaigh! I know you¡¯re in there.¡± How?! ¡°There¡¯s a foreign lady asking for you outside! And a,¡± and here she spits out a single noun, muffled through the thin wood of my door, suffused with the disapproving judgement of a certain type of woman, ¡°gentleman. I thought perhaps this morning you had some sort of visitor, given your whispers during the early hours. I of course believe that you would never invite a man into this house, and that if I were to open this door at this very second I would of course not find someone attempting to squirrel themselves out of a window, or under a bed, or into a wardrobe¡­¡±

    ¡°Miss O¡¯Keefe! A moment, please!¡± I rush to fully dress myself. Her assessment that I have just gotten out of bed, combined with her contempt at this deduction, is well communicated in the yawning silence that follows. She didn¡¯t even mention Iseult¡¯s tattoos. Just Sean¡¯s gender.

    I pull my dress over my head, and wonder what precisely she meant about ¡®whispers during the early hours¡¯.

    When I unlock my bedroom, I regard the squat, white-haired woman before me with a forced serenity that she dismisses instantly. ¡°Up so late?¡± She inquires, totally in my head. ¡°What were you up to last night that kept you in bed for so long?¡± She indignantly and imaginarily intones. Her eyes track behind me, settling with inaudible judgement on the books that have sprouted like mushrooms in my quarters.

    ¡°Will you keep them waiting?¡± That sentence she actually says out loud. Tardiness is a major sin for Miss O¡¯Keefe. ¡°I know you¡¯ve been in foreign lands, Miss Ceallaigh, but there aren¡¯t two versions of manners, one for the Wraithwild and one for here.¡±

    My shoes aren¡¯t on quite right, so I tarry with the heel of my left foot. This spurs another bout of silent judgement from my landlady. When I feel suitably prepared, I follow her down the narrow staircase of the Club, and make my way to the front door, where Iseult and Sean have presumably been asked to wait. We walk at her pace, which is somewhere between ladylike and glacial. On the way, I pass rows upon rows of painted wooden doors. Cubicles for the other women who rent a space from Miss O¡¯Keefe.

    The foyer is tidy, with an unlit, dusty chandelier at least twice my age and handsome, herringboned floors. It is by far the most attractive part of the Club- it and a similarly charming reception area, stuffed with chintz, wherein Miss O¡¯Keefe meets and sympathises with working women who are looking to rent a space in the city. The meeting room lives a double life as a sales office as well, for behind several heavily locked cabinets lie vials of quinine, ether, anodyne, and digitalis, which Miss O¡¯Keefe sells (legally, I¡¯m repeatedly told, even when I don¡¯t ask) to supplement what must be an already significant income from our rent. It¡¯s not a bad place, the Lugrough Club. Just not where I thought I¡¯d spend three years of my life.

    Our footsteps synchronise as we make our way to the front door. It swings open to reveal a stern looking woman with a half-tattooed face and a large, friendly man in a shamrock-green coat.

    I expected a bearhug from Sean, but he just smiles tightly and inclines his head respectfully. I¡¯m glad- if there were any contact between us, the judgement from Miss O¡¯Keefe, who is now behind me and doing her best to singe my ears with her disapproving stare, would be too great. Iseult raises her eyebrows fractionally. Sean speaks first, in an unfamiliarly stuffy baritone. ¡°We request your assistance, Sigilist Ceallaigh. Our client has need of your particular expertise.¡±

    The formality legitimately leaves me startled. It¡¯s like he¡¯s a different person.

    His eyebrow waggle is immensely subtle, and likely unnoticed by my landlady. Oh, I see. I decide to play along. ¡°Of course, Sir Whelan. If you would excuse me for a moment, I can gather my notes and join you.¡±

    I do so, then return to the front door, then leave the Lugrough Club. Two minutes later, when we are a safe distance from Miss O¡¯Keefe, Sean wraps one of his tree bough arms around my shoulder. I feel a thunderbolt of anxiety as I fear that Miss O¡¯Keefe may still be watching us through echolocation or some other arcane means, then relax when I realise how absurd that would be. Sean releases me, then speaks. ¡°Nice one. How have you been?¡±

    He smells like orchids, and the weave of his coat is rough against my face. ¡°Thank you for being subtle,¡± I reply.

    Sean feigns offence. ¡°Me? I am only ever the subtlest of men. A paragon of stealth. A master sneaker.¡±

    We share a grin, which does not spread to Iseult. A sudden thought intrudes. ¡°How¡­ did you know where I live?¡±

    He glances at her, and she at me, and she shrugs. Sean squints conspiratorially, then holds his hands up. ¡°She does it to me as well. Bani Yahtrib magic. Don¡¯t ask questions. I didn¡¯t realise you lived in Rustmeat, though. I wouldn¡¯t mind spending a bit more time in the area.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m glad you didn¡¯t,¡± I snort. ¡°Any longer and Miss O¡¯Keefe might¡¯ve invited you in for some anchovy toast.¡±

    He looks pained. ¡°I actually quite like anchovy toast.¡±

    Of course he does. Also, that particular threat is a weak one, because I am not sure what precisely Miss O¡¯Keefe would make of the pair of them, if she knew who they were. Sean looks skywards, wistfully, and trundles through another thought. ¡°Seeing as we¡¯re in Rustmeat, when was the last time you were at Scannell¡¯s?¡±

    I frown. ¡°No, what is that?¡±

    He gapes at me. ¡°Scannell¡¯s? You¡¯ve never been! You¡¯re three streets over!¡± This might actually be real, rather than feigned, astonishment. ¡°Well it¡¯s settled. We¡¯re going. Have you never even seen the sign?¡±

    It¡¯s only been a few days, but I¡¯ve already forgotten how quickly they both walk. We weave past a street florist, who is currently re-packing his cart. The smell hits me a moment later, and I realise a horse has relieved itself directly beside his wares. We skirt this unpleasantness and troop over the Rustmeat macadam. ¡°I don¡¯t know, I don¡¯t get out much.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll say. Saints. You two,¡± and here he wags a finger that alternates accusingly between Iseult and I, ¡°are just like each other.¡±

    Iseult makes that flat indifferent face she always does. She somehow looks smaller than before. With a start, I realise why: no gun.

    *

    Scannell¡¯s, as it turns out, is a club. An actual club. And it¡¯s four streets over, not three, squatting underneath half a dozen massive black sky bridges which link the granite-clad buildings on both sides of the street. The street doors are titanic, a story tall at least, and bound in thick strips of cast iron. We pass through a smaller wicket gate, cut directly into the huge wooden doors, and I am instantly reminded of when I met these two in the Tarnish Minister, in that I am out of my depth and underdressed.

    We are brought to a dining room, which is gorgeous, and catch up over a lunch consisting of small plates of bacon and cheese. They¡¯ve been busier than I have- Sean has slotted back into his normal job, which is still teaching people how to murder other people. Iseult has been chasing down an official contract for Evin¡¯s request, which I¡¯ve now been informed is now in formal, written form, and therefore actually legitimate work. She¡¯s also been verifying the research required with her contacts. I realise, over about twenty minutes, that I¡¯ve only been invited today because despite Mister Tumble¡¯s insistence, and the address he wrote down for Iseult, Professor O¡¯Tierney is not actually at the Wine Party. He is at Saint Listless¡¯, and is not giving Iseult an audience.

    The conversation pauses and I also learn that the bacon and cheese is not technically a meal, and is merely the first in an onslaught of dishes. Once again, Sean has commandeered the lunch, and orders our food with a militaristic organisation and certainty. I don¡¯t actually know half of the things he is saying, though certain individual phrases such as ¡°lamb, pudding, coffee¡± jut like icebergs from his flood of orders.

    This ocean of food dampens our conversation somewhat, and gives me time to think. The first plate to arrive, which the waiter calls slake and Sean refers to as laverbread, is accompanied by a plate of sliced fried sausages as thick as my wrist. I have never even heard of it before, and poke tentatively at the salted green ooze on my plate. Iseult and I pick politely at the dishes as they arrive, and say very little as Sean ploughs through each course. Still on the cusp of gentlemanly, though I get the impression that he is consciously demonstrating as much restraint as he can.

    As with before, I reach the point where I say I am full, then am actually full, then at a state of incredible discomfort. Perhaps Iseult has significant practice resisting Sean¡¯s grandmotherly habit of extreme force-feeding, but I do not, and eventually the meal reaches a zenith where I start refusing dishes not out of politeness, but because I feel like I will actually die if I eat any more. Hot drinks are eventually served, and I ask Iseult if this is actually the last course when Sean is distracted by a passing acquaintance. It is, she assures me, and a spike of outrage boils inside me when I see a waiter approaching our table with some sort of chocolate dessert. He swerves at the last moment, to deliver it to a table two spots over, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

    Sean¡¯s food habits are terrifying. He will consume seemingly everything, save the delicate cup of pale brown liquid that has been placed before him. ¡°I do apologise, I simply don¡¯t like it at all,¡± he complains.

    I take a sip. ¡°I think it¡¯s quite good,¡± I retort, truthfully.

    He frowns, peering down at the thin fluid in his cup. ¡°I¡¯ve had this once before, at Birch¡¯s. It¡¯s made from boiled leaves. They drink it in Cabochon.¡± Sean purses his lips in distaste.

    I¡¯m enjoying the feeling of wrapping both of my hands around the warmth of the cup, and unexpectedly find both the desire and the courage to argue with him. ¡°Actually, I do rather like it! Though perhaps some sugar would cut the bitterness? Or milk?¡±

    ¡°Expensive tastes,¡± Iseult murmurs.

    Sean makes a gagging noise, then looks sideways at Iseult, who says nothing more. She sips gently from her cup, then stares at both of us for a few seconds. She speaks again, drily and precisely. ¡°It¡¯s nice.¡±

    He throws his hands up, leans back to seize the attention of a waiter, and orders a cup of hot cocoa (also from Cabochon, though apparently beans are less offensive to Sean than leaves are) for himself.

    When the last of the plates are taken away, and all that remains on the dining table are a constellation of drained glasses, the serious talk returns. Iseult shows no signs of being damaged by the meal, which is remarkable. Sean is animated as well: he finishes his drink, then orders another. I am apparently alone in attempting to not fall unconscious from the quantity of calories I¡¯ve just ingested.

    ¡°So,¡± Sean gesticulates, curling his other hand around a tiny coffee cup, ¡°we were saying.¡±

    As Mister Tumble mentioned in the warehouse, our contract has been extended to cover one more task. This isn¡¯t abnormal, explains Sean, as Colt & Tumble is apparently in a time of some coarse political manoeuvring, wherein their resources are sporadically and unexpectedly tied up in various points of friction with other companies. They are operating with the blessing of the Chaplain¡¯s Office, which is good, though they have apparently infuriated a whole host of major players in the Ildathach market, which is bad. The cannon is already being built, somewhere on an island up north called Inskoet. I¡¯ve never heard of it.

    Iseult has spent the better part of the week simultaneously verifying that our contract is bereft of snares (which it is), and checking if whatever web of contacts she has established can help in this task (they cannot). Hence, I have been pulled back into the fold. Sean arrives at this conclusion indirectly, and politely.

    A thought bubbles up, in a lull in the conversation. They only want you because you can help them with one part of the job. They didn¡¯t think about you otherwise. I force it back down, and feel guilty.

    A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

    Eventually the full scheme emerges, almost entirely courtesy of Sean. Iseult speaks rarely, and is content to let him flesh out the plan. It goes something like this:

    <ol>

    <li>Meet Professor O¡¯Tierney.</li>

    <li>Discuss the problem that Professor O¡¯Tierney and the Wine Party is having with charming the cannon¡¯s chamber and targeting apparatus.

    <ul>

    <li>Figure out what a cannon¡¯s chamber is, subtly, without embarrassing myself.</li>

    </ul>

    </li>

    <li>Finish the required knotwork.</li>

    <li>Travel to Colt & Tumble¡¯s gun, which is being assembled somewhere north, in the sea near the Torment.</li>

    <li>Attend the party where they shoot down the new moon.</li>

    </ol>

    They seem confident about this. At one point, Sean brings up that payment seems significantly more generous than expected, but Iseult interjects with a sharp tone which surprises both of us. I¡¯ll of course be paid a third, Sean says, and I notice that he doesn¡¯t look my way at all, despite addressing me.

    There¡¯s a pause, then Iseult nods curtly. ¡°We¡¯re going to Saint Listless¡¯ today to meet the professor. That is,¡± she gestures at me with an open hand. ¡°You and me. He¡¯s in a place called the ¡®Violet Manor¡¯, if you¡¯ve ever heard of it.¡±

    I swallow as the responsibility suddenly shifts from an abstracted job that they are taking care of, to something that is now on my shoulders. I nod enthusiastically. Of course I¡¯ve heard of it. There¡¯s five hundred students at Saint Listless¡¯, and every single one of us knows the stories about the Violet Manor. Deirdre Gaw swears that her professor spent an entire year dissecting a mummified Tecuani, down in the basement. I¡¯ve personally walked by it late at night, and heard a minute of soot-whispers from one of the Manor¡¯s many chimneys.

    Sean pays for the meal several minutes later, scoffing and waving off our attempts at contributing. I snatch a glimpse at the bill when he¡¯s not looking. The figure the waiter has written down is eye-watering.

    *

    Little iron chimes rustle at every corner of Saint Listless¡¯ shrine. I bow to the Saint¡¯s smiling bust, resisting the urge to recite the lewd rhyme that all students of the College know. Five yards beyond the statue looms the baroque entrance that splits the Violet Manor from the street. My companion, Saint-averse, is in the process of unlocking the gate¡¯s tremendous iron lock with a similarly oversized key.

    Iseult and I proceed inside of the grounds of inside Saint Listless¡¯ College, staring at the modest fa?ade of the Manor. Sean excused himself to some other appointment shortly after our lunch. On this north side of the College, we¡¯re closer to the area where the Chaplain has decided to expand Ildathach¡¯s sewer system on nearby Hackcloth Row, and crews have begun paving over one of the vile tributaries that cut through the centre of the city. The smell is shocking, wafted occasionally over in little staccato gusts. One sudden breeze whips through the plaza we¡¯re in, reminding me that summer is turning. We were only gone about a month, and yet the weather has shifted so quickly.

    It¡¯s odd. I¡¯ve been attending the College for three years, and have almost finished my studies, but have never actually been inside the Violet Manor. Nor has anyone I know. I know the rumours, of course, but I figured most of those were just the fevered imaginings of students with too much imagination or narcotics or spare time. There¡¯s no chance at all that anything that devilish, or haunted, or dangerous, within College grounds.

    Nonetheless, I am standing quite close to Iseult. As far as I¡¯m concerned, I¡¯ve done my part of the work, by finding out how to actually get inside of the Manor¡¯s fence. Because Iseult is Iseult, it hadn¡¯t occurred to her that the simplest way of getting inside was asking an aide in the Chancellor¡¯s office. It had taken me about a minute to explain our situation, and about ten seconds for him to produce a large iron key that would let us through those stern locked gates.

    Iseult had actually proposed waiting outside for someone to either enter or exit the Manor¡¯s grounds, but this method seemed quicker and less ridiculous.

    Either way, we have made progress. The space inside the fencing is not nearly as foreboding as I imagined it would be, given its reputation. That said, on the very front of the gate there is a small sign which reads:

    <table>

    <tbody>

    <tr>

    <td width="265">

    NO.

    THE VIOLET MANOR IS OUT OF BOUNDS.

    </td>

    </tr>

    </tbody>

    </table>

    Otherwise, the Manor seems like another classic Ildathach building, likely purchased and utilised by the College over a century ago. It¡¯s noticeably lower than the buildings around it- tactfully avoided by the crews that are busy raising the city, building by building.

    We enter the small plaza, and are now flanked on three sides by identical purple double-doors that seem unusually weathered. There are no signs, either literal or metaphorical, that give us an indicator of where to go. Indeed, the only interesting characteristic of the entire courtyard is a bearded man in a brown suit, his age somewhere between Iseult¡¯s and mine, who is currently perched on an uncomfortable looking stone bench. His dark red hair is drawn back in several braids, and is tamed with enough charms and bangles that he would blend in with some of the students I study with. He is eating a parchment-paper wrapped sandwich.

    I approach him, ignoring the little disapproving noise behind me as Iseult exhales just a bit harder than normal. The man, his eyes a watery blue and bisected by a very freckled, very squashed nose, watches me approach. He doesn¡¯t stop eating.

    ¡°Hello! Hello, sir. We,¡± I gesture backwards at Iseult without looking, ¡°have been sent by Colt & Tumble to work with Professor O¡¯Tierney. We¡¯re here to help him with a project that we¡¯ve been involved in for quite some time, and have been asked by our mutual employer to aid in any way we can.¡±

    The bravery I cultivated in the Wraithwild starts to leave me, when he doesn¡¯t immediately respond. Was this a mistake? He chews at me, thoughtfully. I feel like I need to speak again, but he holds up a hand, and I wait patiently for him to make his way through his mouthful. ¡°He¡¯s a she, by the by.¡± A thick Crowmere brogue.

    I frown. ¡°I beg your pardon?¡±

    ¡°Professor O¡¯Tierney is a she. Moira O¡¯Tierney. Also, I¡¯m Arthur. Professor Arthur MacAomalain. Alchemical Engineer.¡±

    He half-rises from his bench and offers a hand, and I shake it gratefully. I¡¯ve actually heard of Professor MacAomalain before, from my friends. The professor stuffs the remainder of the sandwich into his mouth, then takes a moment to fold the parchment paper into a precise triangle. Satisfied, he pockets the paper, brushes the crumbs from his trousers, and unfolds himself from the bench, limb by limb.

    He¡¯s much taller than he first appeared. The professor focuses over my shoulder, and I hear Iseult¡¯s light footsteps behind me. There¡¯s a strange moment where his gaze flickers minutely down, then stays there, like he¡¯s staring directly at her chin.

    After tilting his head respectfully to Iseult, he speaks again. ¡°Absolutely, I can take you to Professor O¡¯Tierney. We¡¯re working on the project together, you know. Her more so than me, because she doesn¡¯t have to actually teach. But we do all share the same employer. And you, miss, have the look of a Saint Listless¡¯ student.¡± That last sentence was directed at me. He takes a few seconds to crack his knuckles, repeatedly, working the same joints from multiple angles.

    When he speaks again, he says a phrase that I don¡¯t follow at all, until I realise he¡¯s not speaking Irdcheol. Iseult says something in slow, cautious reply, to which he looses a longer, more rapid sentence. She, astonishingly, laughs, then says two words and steps in front of me. They shake hands, briefly, and then the professor leads us to the door closest to where he was eating his lunch.

    Iseult and I share a glance- before I spoke with the professor, we had wagered on which of the identical doors we should knock on. Neither of us had settled on this one. I lean over to her, while the professor works the battered lock with a complex-looking key.

    ¡°What did he say?¡± I murmur.

    ¡°He¡¯s Mutafasih.¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s Bani Yathrib?¡±

    ¡°What? No, he¡¯s from Crowmere. But he¡¯s Mutafasih. He speaks Mutafasih well. Probably reads it, based on how long he stared at my face.¡±

    ¡°I thought that Mutafasih was the language?¡±

    She steps forward, face drawn into the slightest irritation. ¡°It is. Mutafasih is the name of the language. And speakers are called Mutafasih.¡±

    ¡°So does that mean that you¡¯re Mutafasih?¡±

    She rolls her eyes. ¡°Mutafasiha. But yes.¡±

    When the door unlocks, it does so with an audible chunk-pang noise. Our guide steps through, holding it open for us, beckoning us with the other hand. I sneak a look into the frame on the way in, and am taken aback at the complexity and quantity of unlocked bolts which secure the door. When the professor closes it behind us, it settles with a palpable weight. One twisted handle later, and the entire doorway secures itself, rivet-tight, against the walls.

    I¡¯m not sure what to expect, inside the Manor. Again- I¡¯ve heard the stories, passed around by gossiping students. But they seem ridiculous. I expect there¡¯s nothing outrageously dangerous, of course, but neither alchemy nor sigilry is entirely without risk. There are certain sinister accoutrements that I¡¯m hoping for. Uprooted standing stones. Suits of armour. Bizarre taxonomy. Bitter, imperious portraits of Saint Listless¡¯ staff, stretching back decades or even centuries.

    But no. Our guide leads us through a long corridor, interspersed by neat little numbered doors. No foyer, no doorman, nothing. The floorboards are worn, and painted black, and have likely shifted and warped over time. Everything seems disappointingly normal. We follow the professor into the winding depths of the Manor, passing dozens of these simple white doors, unevenly and asymmetrically spaced around the corridor.

    Iseult steps on a loose plank, and it squeals loudly in protest. She peer down, raising an eyebrow.

    Occasionally, the rest of the building creaks or murmurs. Not, frustratingly, in a way that suggests some immense vat of rare chemicals or the presence of some domesticated beast. I catch a whiff of something migraine-inducing when we cross the threshold of an unmarked door. We descend, at some point, down a narrow white staircase.

    The Manor spills over a tremendous amount of underground space. I imagined we would reach the end of the wing by now, but we keep walking, deeper into the oil-lit labyrinth, over a significantly larger space than I expected. At one point I hear the sound of shuffling paper from behind yet another unremarkable white door, but there are no portentous noises, no abrupt changes in temperature, no taste of static in the air. I nearly run into our guide when he stops by door 60, functionally identical to all the others, which he unlocks smoothly before holding it open and gesturing for us to enter.

    We¡¯re greeted, immediately, by an argument.

    This room, which is long and narrow and could fit thirty or forty students if the need arose, is under-occupied. Mounds of academic trappings are stacked on three different wall-mounted desks, and a massive armoured box the size of a four-posted bed occupies a fraction of another. Echoing voices, courtesy of a couple arguing in the centre of the room, highlight its emptiness. Neither spare us a glance when we enter.

    One, a woman, has shucked her coat so as not to powder it with the chalk that now coats the sleeves of her sensible blue blouse. A sigilist¡¯s rose shines in the discarded blazer¡¯s lapel. She has a mane of loosely contained grey hair, and is gesticulating forcefully with a stick of consecrated chalk. The other, a rotund man of roughly her height, is dark-haired and balding, and is dressed in the same style of suit as Professor MacAomalain. He¡¯s using a massive ledger as a ward, holding it open with both hands, and has raised his voice to the same disagreeable octave that she has. The pair, brassy and venomous, are flanked by chalkboards, reams of paper, schematics, pots, and alembics. I recognise a shape beside the hulking iron box- one of the oleum-filled crates we acquired from Brixa Thalaam.

    ¡°The theory is sound, Hatim. It is your engineering that is wrong, because the configurations are designed perfectly based on the thresholds that you have presented.¡±

    The woman refutes the man¡¯s ledger with a contemptuous air-scribble of her chalk, the point a mere inch from the orderly Khazraj script written in his book. He bays a note of outrage, then slams the ledger shut and retreats back to a chalkboard several yards distant. He begins to angrily remove a dense section of calculations. Iseult leans in and seems like she¡¯s about to say something to me, then thinks better of it.

    Across from this pair, piled with various scholarly detritus and each occupying a third of the available wall space, sit three handsome desks. Each is uniquely unkempt. The one furthest from us is ringed in a shocking number of unshelved books, which combined form a knee-high wall, demarcating the desk from the rest of the room.

    I recognise more unorthodox sun-sigil drafts on a chalkboard adjacent to one of the tables, and the blackboard closest to me is lousy with alchemical formulae.

    Professor MacAomalain coughs. Neither of the seething two bothers to look at us.

    ¡°Moira, Hatim, you have some visitors.¡± No response. ¡°May I introduce Miss ¨ªde Ceallaigh,¡± again, nothing, ¡°and Miss Iseult Morrin.¡±

    That, at least, gets a quick glance up from both of them. The man, Mister Hatim, flicks his attention over Iseult¡¯s face, then looks unabashedly down to the tattoos about her hands. Professor O¡¯Tierney looks over at us warily, then returns to sketching a design into a notebook, having exchanged her chalk for a pen. ¡°Yes?¡±

    Iseult steps forward, and I gratefully stifle the respectful introduction I was a few seconds away from trying. ¡°We¡¯re here on behalf of Colt & Tumble,¡± she declares.

    Professor O¡¯Tierney regards my friend neutrally, staring not at her tattoos but at the glowing red charm that burns on Iseult¡¯s lapel. ¡°On behalf of Colt & Tumble for what purpose?¡±

    ¡°Doing your job, presumably.¡±

    I draw my breath in through my teeth. Mister Hatim scowls. ¡°Are you the Iseult Morrin?¡±

    She focuses her frosty attention on him. ¡°Yes.¡±

    He snorts. ¡°You don¡¯t look like your portrait.¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t look like much of anything.¡±

    He seems like he¡¯s about to swallow his tongue. I wince. Why does she always do this?

    Professor MacAomalain pipes up, smoothing ruffled feathers, ¡°Colt & Tumble told us a week ago that we should expect contractor help. We¡¯re not paying independently for this. And they¡¯re here to help.¡±

    ¡°We are the ones who supplied the oleum,¡± Iseult adds.

    Professor O¡¯Tierney gives us a few moments more of neutral scrutiny. She seems not at all concerned with Mister Hatim, who is quietly bubbling, faced with not one but two consecutive insults. When she speaks, she does so with a deliberate certainty, like she¡¯s weighing each word carefully.

    ¡°Do you know what we are trying to do, here?¡±

    For the first time, Iseult looks at me. Not in confusion, or in contempt, but with a different expression that I don¡¯t recognise. I keep my mouth shut, and let her talk.

    ¡°Broadly, to help shoot down the moon. As to what you¡¯re attempting to accomplish with that,¡± she points to the ornate knotwork that has been sketched onto a nearby blackboard, ¡°or that,¡± and here moves her hand to the armoured tank, lurking in the corner of the room, ¡°we are not sure.¡±

    That pronoun brings the attention of all three of them unto me. I keep composed, consciously imitating Iseult¡¯s own neutral face. My palms have started sweating.

    ¡°And you, Miss Ceallaigh¡± the professor flicks her focus to me. ¡°What is your background?¡±

    ¡°Sigilwork. Ma¡¯am. I¡¯m a, a student at Saint Listless¡¯.¡± Both the professor and Mister Hatim ratchet their eyebrows very slightly.

    Iseult folds her arms. ¡°And she has been assisting me with my knotwork.¡±

    There¡¯s a pause.

    ¡°Well,¡± the professor says- after I beat down every piece of me that says to be speak up, and be polite or helpful or deferential- ¡°perhaps we should go over the basics. And then the specifics. Hatim. I¡¯m going to start the coffee. Would you mind clearing a space for us to chat?¡±

    I expected Mister Hatim to be more quarrelsome. He instead accepts, with a shrug, like his anger has a five-second half life. When he begins clearing the table in the centre of the room, he asks Iseult a quiet question, in another language. She replies in turn, and I breathe out fully.

    Professor MacAomalain speaks quietly, just to Iseult and me. ¡°Colt & Tumble have made a rather interesting mess of things. But this should be rather fun. Do take a seat, Moira does brew an excellent coffee.¡±

    *

    She actually doesn¡¯t, but I¡¯m not about to disrupt this ice-thin peace by pointing that out. The coffee arrives with a polite selection of pastries, which are mostly stale. As Sean is not here, the food remains untouched.

    Our conversation more than makes up for the refreshments. I¡¯ve never witnessed anything like it. If this were a lecture, I would have my notebook out, and would not have taken my pencil off the page for the last hour. Nobody else is writing things down, so I refrain, though am agonisingly aware of the monstrous levels of detail I will inevitably forget. We are here to help them with the oleum, which I had imagined they¡¯d use as some sort of explosive propellant. The actual idea they have, which is both insane and marvellous, is far more interesting. It is explained to us over stops-and-starts, little winding tangents and summaries, sometimes reinforced by hard data plucked from various journals and notebooks scattered about the room.

    Burning all the oleum at once in order to fire the shell is, according to both alchemists, an insane idea, due to a number of reasons. The first is the difficulty in forging a cannon powerful enough to resist that hellish energy, which they assure me (after showing me some calculations which pleasingly match the ones I did in Brixa Thalaam) is unreasonably difficult. The second is building the explosive shell, which would also need to be strong enough to withstand those forces. This wouldn¡¯t normally be an issue, but Colt & Tumble and the Wine Party have demanded that the shell be inscribed or linked with a type of delicate targeting apparatus that will allow it to actually seek the ¡°Heart of the Moon¡±. Whether or not this is a metaphor or a literal heart is beyond me, and I don¡¯t want to reveal myself to be ignorant by asking. Iseult seems to find this task doable, and grunts understandingly as they explain the idea to her. I, attempting to maintain my disguise as her able colleague, mimic her nodding. She mentions that she should be able to help with the targeting array, though what that properly entails has yet to be fleshed out.

    So, instead of using the oleum as some sort of immense explosive, the Violet Manor has a different proposal. Professor O¡¯Tierney¡¯s explanation, which is delivered with the pleasing rhythm of a practiced lecturer, is as follows.

    Bleeding the energy into a sigil and then releasing that power in calculated doses, therefore accelerating the shell over stages, dramatically reduces the load on all parts of the system- so much so that it easily allows for the construction of a cannon using certain modern metallurgical methods. Releasing sigil energy is straightforward: it¡¯s what Iseult did to drive away the d¡¯hain in the Bloom. Releasing the energy at a steady rate is also possible, though tricky. I myself could probably figure out how to configure a charm sized to fit the gun. The problem lies in loading that knotwork with as much energy as possible. Enter our two alchemical engineers.

    Mister Hatim¡¯s tank, the heavy squat thing which takes up a fifth of the floorspace and lends the room an ominous atmosphere, contains a machine devoted to continuously detonating trace amounts of oleum within a controlled chamber. The force from that detonation is translated to a charmed apparatus which feeds the energy created directly into a death-charm, which in turn greedily sucks in that power and stores it, keyed for eventual release. Oleum fire, fed into stable sigilwork over a period of hours or even days, ready to be released in precise and hellish increments via various knotwork control mechanisms. Secondary machines, one inscribed with simple knotwork, deal with the inevitable physical waste products of this undertaking- mostly smoke and a minute quantity of undetonated oleum. Eventually, all of this effluent and vapour is fed through a colossal black pipe, which punctures the ceiling through a hole enveloped by rags and metal bracketing.

    I would¡¯ve assumed the engineering work was in a theoretical phase, until the alchemists levered one of the hinged panels of the cast-iron tank open, revealing a mess of pipes, tubes, and one immense wheel. Given the price and scarcity of oleum in the city, I¡¯m shocked that the College would even allow them to build this prototype in the first place. Saint Listless¡¯ hasn¡¯t even built something as simple as a harquebus since the war, let alone an even hungrier device. Maybe that¡¯s part of why the professors are happy with Iseult- it¡¯s not like her jezail has to burn oleum to work.

    The whole procedure takes a tremendous amount of oxygen, and a stable source of fire. Also, our oleum appears to not work at all with their current designs. When Iseult tells them what we did in Brixa Thalaam, the way we purified the chemicals by vaporising and separating them, then increased their volatility with oxygenates and purpose-made greydust, it caused such a frenzy of action from the engineers that I initially mistook their enthusiasm for anger.

    Half an hour later, after the apparatus had roared to life, we were able to turn our attention to the true bulk of the work: sigilry. Completing this element of the job takes us another fortnight.

    *

    I¡¯ve read the same page at least twice now, and both times the words have trickled out of my brain immediately. My retention has vanished, and for the last two minutes I have been quietly humming the first few measures of a Caronek melody that I heard weeks ago.

    A break is good. When I partnered with Iseult back in Brixa Thalaam, I was mortified at the way that she drowned herself in the work. She never stopped. I remember orbiting her, in the Colt & Tumble warehouse, then occasionally stopping and drinking coffee or stretching or socialising. Iseult barely moved, or when she did it was with the sort of purpose that inevitably ended with her in the same spot, now armed with notes or a new pencil.

    Luckily, the staff of the Violet Manor operate at my pace, so occasionally I find myself in the company of the others. Our breaks synchronise sporadically, and we have little chats while resting for a few minutes before returning to the knotwork.

    Over the last few days, I¡¯ve run into Professor MacAomalain, who has insisted I call him Arthur, the most. He¡¯s genial, and has a love of coffee and art in small places. Most of his work is insulated from ours, as the labour that he and Mister Hatim are completing is less theoretical and more practical. It¡¯s also outrageously loud, when they test the roaring machine they¡¯ve built. Iseult and Professor O¡¯Tierney don¡¯t seem to mind at all, so I am forced to pretend that the deafening contraption doesn¡¯t bother me.

    Occasionally, one of them will disappear for an hour or a day and return with a tube of some sort, or a box containing a widget the size of my thumb. They find this work tremendously exciting, and on the days where the pair of them are stripped down to their undershirts and arms-deep in mechanical grime and oleum residue, they seem the happiest. Arthur has a great deal of knowledge on a great deal of subjects, and is generally happy to discuss any topic at hand whenever I run into him in the coffee room adjacent to our workspace. His explanations often result in trails of sooty black handprints that meander over our shared tables, chairs, and mugs.

    The professor is from an almost identical background as I am, but a few years my elder- after his family migrated to Ildathach as workhouse labourers, he was enrolled in one of the Chaplain¡¯s Ragged Schools, then ended up with a scholarship to Saint Listless¡¯. He¡¯s also spent time in the Wraithwild, on a merchant¡¯s caravan that departed from Brixa Thalaam and travelled on to Cotton Castle and greater Khazraj. I ask him if that¡¯s where he had met Mister Hatim, but he¡¯d just laughed and said no. Our Al Khazraj engineer was hired at Professor O¡¯Tierney¡¯s behest, and is apparently specialist in both high pressure fluid control and clockmaking.

    Mister Hatim is less gregarious, and has fortified himself with the aloofness that academics use when forced to interact with students. His actual relation to Saint Listless¡¯ seems tenuous- I thought he was a particularly gifted student until I brought this up to Iseult. She¡¯d dismissed this idea, and had answered with a hypothesis of her own: ¡°Wine Party¡±.

    At one point during the second day we¡¯d worked together, he¡¯d walked past me in the corridor holding an intricately-worked piece of metal.

    ¡°What is that?¡± I¡¯d asked him.

    ¡°It¡¯s an experimental oleum compression apparatus,¡± he¡¯d replied, drily, barely looking up from the device or breaking stride.

    ¡°What does it do?¡±

    ¡°It is an experimental apparatus for compressing oleum.¡±

    This leaves Professor O¡¯Tierney, who I actually spend much of my time working with. She¡¯s draped in the same authority that Iseult is, but wears it differently. She¡¯s more patient, for one. And she¡¯s actually happy to take a coffee break, every few hours.

    After explaining the task at hand, Professor O¡¯Tierney and I ended up synchronising quickly into a team of two. We spend days testing configurations that will best retain power generated by the machine that Arthur and Mister Hatim are building. It¡¯s a lot of mathematics, followed by a fair amount of actual sigilwork, followed by hours upon hours of experimentation. I¡¯ve stopped flinching whenever we turn the machine on, and have stopped calculating the number of spirals we spend every time we start incinerating oleum.

    But it¡¯s sensible. And elucidating. Iseult phases in, at odd times and with a tremendous enthusiasm, when she has not barricaded herself behind a wall of notes and esoterica in an attempt to hash out the targeting array for the cannon. This is not a metaphor- she has constructed a little fort out of a handful of paper screens, acquired by our hosts from somewhere else in the Violet Manor. If the professors or Mister Hatim are concerned by the shack that has sprouted in their workspace, they don¡¯t say anything. It wouldn¡¯t make a difference, anyway: Iseult tends to make non-negotiable requests.

    I don¡¯t ever enter her impromptu room, but I do note that she seems to bring in a great amount of chisels and ink, and leaves every night with her notes secured in her rucksack. I¡¯d asked her the second day if she¡¯d needed my help, but she¡¯d shaken her head, and mentioned something about ¡®narrative harnesses¡¯.

    So the days blur by. Halfway through the week, Arthur taps me on the shoulder and asks me a jargon-drenched sentence about the knotwork that Iseult and I performed on the oleum in Brixa Thalaam. He¡¯s totally focused on the job, his face unfamiliarly solemn, and it takes me a moment to think about the parameters he¡¯s enquiring about. I answer as best as I can, visualising the configurations we designed back in the warehouse. Satisfied with my response, his face flits back to its normal warmth.

    His next comment takes me by surprise: ¡°Impressive. Like a blind prostitute.¡±

    I nearly fumble the pencil I¡¯m sketching with. ¡°I¡¯m terribly sorry?¡±

    ¡°Like a blind prostitute. As in, I have to hand it to you.¡± He grins, lopsidedly.

    It took me longer than I¡¯d like to admit to get that, and even then I only realised it was a joke after the normally humourless Mister Hatim started snickering.

    On the fifth day, I am part of a minor miracle. Iseult and I had briefly argued about the nature of a specific piece of knotwork. I remember it perfectly. An innocuous variation on a La R¨¦n configuration, a circle of knots around a knot, which we were experimenting with here to stabilise the energy flow from the oleum ignition. The reasoning was straightforward: by better stabilising the burn rate, we would be able to harness a greater variety in the sigils in the targeting array for longer, and thus enable greater precision for the shot. Iseult¡¯s mistake was simple, because she had assumed that Professor O¡¯Tierney has used a conventional sigil structure for the preceding work. Iseult had calculated five permutations within the La R¨¦n ring, when there should in fact be eleven.

    I had told her this, and she had frowned and explained, slowly like I was an idiot, why it should be five.

    I had in turn pointed out that, mathematically, it would have to be eleven, and referred back to the work that Professor O¡¯Tierney had done on her board. Iseult had looked down at her notes, then squinted at the chalkboard, then nodded curtly.

    I had expected a celebration. I expected had an apology. I had expected the ceiling of the room to pull open, and for Saint Listless himself to float in on a cloud, sunlight-clad, and deliver unto me a chorus of praise and a blessing of silver.

    I was clearly right, and Iseult was clearly wrong.

    This had never happened before.

    Instead, she had ignored the problem with a snort and had pressed on, after making a single modification in her notes. I was cheated of my prize, and had debated pressing the issue, before regaining my manners and burying my nose in my work again. Before we pack up at the end of the day, I catch her studying me- she looks away right when I glance over at her.

    Every night, I either take a landau or walk to my mother¡¯s flat- it¡¯s late, but still light enough outside to be safe. Sometimes I¡¯ll arrive late enough that Ail¨ªn and Fionn are both asleep already. Once, my mother woke me up from where I¡¯d fallen asleep at her dining table, now room-temperature stew set out for the two of us. She¡¯d seemed worried, and had asked me if I¡¯d had bad dreams, why I was muttering in my sleep.

    She hated it when I brought gifts, and fussed over me accordingly. They¡¯ve all failed to notice that I¡¯ve secreted two thirds of the spirals that Colt & Tumble paid us in a box under the boy¡¯s bed.

 Chapter 13: Iseult

    Iseult

    The potency of the Violet Manor plays over my hair and fingertips. Over the last week, I¡¯ve felt the static build in my bones. I know what artefacts are kept in this little fortress. The secrets that rest or live behind armoured chambers. Why the people of Saint Listless¡¯ College would allow ¨ªde and me inside is unfathomable. I long to steal away one day, to try to break open one of the closed and undoubtedly armoured doors we walk by every day on our way to our workshop.

    If the rest of the Manor has anywhere near the density of curiosities present just in Room 60, I could spend my life going through them. A quaint little academic front for the more subtle arms of the Chaplain¡¯s Office, hiding a platoon of researchers and a trove of stolen artefacts that could be rivalled only by the Wine Party vaults. No wonder the work teams weren¡¯t allowed to raise this building. Screwjacks might reveal the treasures they¡¯ve buried under the street. Things that are better left in the dark.

    After what happened to her in the Bloom, ¨ªde Ceallaigh might belong here as well. I try not to think about what the engineers, sawbones, and sigilists that haunt this house would do to her if they knew what had hidden itself in her head.

    If I cannot explore the Manor, I can at least watch ¨ªde, and the secret that¡¯s been buried somewhere deep in her skull. Secret syllables from the Shorn Peak. The bees spoke to her, and I have been patient and I have waited for weeks to find the right time to tease those words from her. I¡¯ve struggled in this environment, with that prize so close, and fantasise throwing open the vault doors, to reveal saltlion skulls or Saintly relics or a whale prince or any of a hundred other oddities. This may be a test of some kind. Or a trap.

    Or a lure cast by Colt & Tumble.

    My family taught me a hunter¡¯s patience. But thoughts of ¨ªde and the Manor gnaw at me. What did the bees say to her?

    Resisting the urge to break into one of the other rooms of the Manor is already difficult enough. I have literally no idea how close an eye any of the staff are keeping on us. They¡¯ve weaved no unusual charms around us, of that I am certain. No sigils have been secreted on my person or my belongings. Whether this lack of security belies an insane confidence or an unimaginably unconcerned approach to safeguarding their valuables is beyond me. Of those two options, I¡¯m not sure which one concerns me more.

    It became clear from the first day that the greatest way to distract myself from the secrets of the Manor would be to conduct the work required. I can leave ¨ªde and Moira to work on the emptiness configuration. The targeting array, though, the shot at the heart of the moon, is far beyond what ¨ªde can accomplish. She¡¯s unusually gifted in standard Yvreathan knotwork, true, but for this type of work I¡¯ll have to employ tools and technologies beyond her and probably Moira¡¯s specialty.

    For days, I set yantras. I configure the tarot. The calculations and knots here are nothing like they would be for an emptiness configuration or a fire charm. These forms are secrets of the Wraithwild, and the loose knotwork that I scrawl upon papers and slates are a tiny portion of the actual work that has to be done, inside my head. The sigilists of Ildathach are talented, probably more talented than any Bani Yathrib, at physical knotwork. We use their charms as well- emptiness configurations to suck water out of the warming morning air, fire charms to cook where no wood grows. But this is the third-style sigil, beyond the science of the men and women of Yvreathe and Khazraj. Myth-harnessing.

    Even if someone were to snoop through my notes, they would be unable to remodel the system without cracking open my brain as well. I¡¯ve secluded myself in isolation, only a quarter-present in the room, and have emptied my thoughts to let the configurations flow in. I spend hours and hours staring at nothing, plucking strands of stories from the air and from the fringes of my awareness. It¡¯s dissimilar to the precision geometries required to write a sun-sigil or an emptiness configuration. More than anything else, it reminds me of the fugue-calm of target practice. Eventually, dream-like, I take up the largest of the chisels and begin.

    A half a day later, I hold in my hands a strip of curved metal no wider than my finger and no longer than my forearm. My fingers are worn grey from engraving the steel. When I crack my hands, every joint pops loudly.

    The thing in my hand is not carved with the familiar swirls or spirals of Yvreathan or Al Khazraj knotwork. It is something entirely different. I run my fingers along the delicate geometries, the asymmetries and clusters of bubble-like circles. One hundred and twenty eight of them, almost all of them measured in different diameters. Similar work decorates concealed parts of my jezail, the components I have to replace the most. The smallest could easily fit on a blade of grass. Conversely, we¡¯d need the length of a three-story building to fully contain the largest (luckily, only a portion of its perimeter is necessary for these purposes). The actual targeting array that the professors and by extension the Wine Party have requested for this cannon aren¡¯t so different than the ones I use in my own firearm. I don¡¯t tell them this, of course.

    My finger catches. I startle, and look down. A mistake. Beyond a normal mistake. A tolerance that will cause the energies here to misalign.

    This is not normal. I twitch with a deep self-loathing.

    Thinking too much about ¨ªde and the bees. Tired. Need practice. My contempt curdles into anger. Nothing else will be accomplished today. My notes are in disarray, from hours of subconscious perusal, and it takes me ten or fifteen minutes to reorganise everything. Everyone else has already gone home. Even the sun has set, and the sky is lit only by the aurora and the light of the real moon.

    *

    I get it the next day. And complete another part of the array a few hours later, a similar curved iron strip that slots delicately into the original. Piece by piece, day by day, I finish constructing the rudimentary cage before ¨ªde and Moira are done with their work. In their defence, I can work alone, because I already have all the measurements I need from the thick cannon blueprints and calculation ledgers that have been provided courtesy of the Wine Party. As long as the Wine Party, Colt & Tumble, the Violet Manor staff, or anyone else that Evin Tumble has seen fit to contract without oversight changes any parameters between now and when the gun is assembled, I¡¯ll be fine. I blink, and hours trickle through me like sand.

    Arthur and Hatim are remarkable engineers, and find myself far more interested in them and their marvellous device than I expected. Though I understand how it works, I am not actually sure why it works- despite Arthur¡¯s repeated assertions to the contrary, I¡¯m fairly certain I could not come close to fabricating any part of the machine. Perhaps most impressively, they have finished it with few charms or glyphs, save the knotwork necessary to manufacture each individual part. Both enjoy describing every aspect of their creation, though I suspect Hatim is simply happy to speak with someone who¡¯s not from Yvreathe.

    I still haven¡¯t managed to draw anything about the bees from ¨ªde. I can¡¯t figure out the best time to ask. Before the Bloom, when I thought she was simply chaff added by Evin Tumble to supplement our little jaunt to the Wraithwild, I hadn¡¯t paid attention to her. In Brixa Thalaam, I found her competency surprising, and welcome. Now I¡¯m wary of it, lest it be the symptom some deeper change that was wrought on her by the Wraithwild. She sprints through her work in bursts, ripping through calculations and drafts and experiments for an hour, then wastes time drinking coffee or chatting in the break room. I don¡¯t understand her at all.

    During one of these protracted breaks, I find myself sitting with the sigilists and Hatim around the threadbare coffee table in the break room adjacent. We have a half of a half of a sandwich each- Arthur had brought one from home, and had insisted we split it between the four of us. Moira had objected to him ripping them in half with a grease-streaked hand, and had cut and served the little meal herself. He¡¯s gone now, to pick up a new lunch from outside of the Violet Manor. We are not discussing the work at hand, so I sit, quietly, and they fill the silence with their chattering.

    Moira is fairly religious, though despite her affiliation with the College is not an adherent of Saint Listless. The conversation has bent, inexorably, into that quagmire. Hatim is from Khazraj, so his relationship with the Yvreathan Saints is fairly distant, and he has no preferred chapel in this city. ¨ªde has never really discussed her faith until now, save for our brief theological conversation on the Gundog Walking about the Bani Yathrib¡¯s relationship with the sun and the stars. Luckily, the professor does not press me on that topic, as her encyclopaedic command of religious literature is established after a few minutes of discussions. The competing liturgy and inter-faith relationships of the Saints is dizzyingly complex. I fade back in to the conversation as Arthur opens the door, paper-wrapped sandwich in hand, and to my dismay they¡¯re still discussing Saints.

    ¡°We have the same idea in Khazraj,¡± explains Hatim. He¡¯s speaking almost completely to ¨ªde, and I get the feeling he¡¯s previously engaged with Moira on this topic before and knows what snares to avoid. ¡°It rhymes as well. But not in Irdcheol. Something like,¡± and he looks at the ceiling, eyes fluttering as he translates the song. ¡°By a wound by a traitor by a¡­ choking? What¡¯s the word for,¡± and he stacks his fists and makes two twisting gestures.

    ¡°Crushing? Suffocating?¡± ¨ªde offers. Hatim squints, then bounces his head back and forth. He asks me if I know the translation, and looses an old word I¡¯m unfamiliar with. I shrug.Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!

    ¡°Constricting.¡± Moira offers. Hatim snaps his fingers, vocabulary established. ¡°Yes!¡± he continues, with rare enthusiasm. ¡°Constricting. Like a snake.¡±

    Al Khazraj do love their snakes. It¡¯s hardly surprising that the idea has worked itself into their mythologies.

    Arthur takes a seat next to me, with a smile. I nod politely at him. ¨ªde speaks next. ¡°So pretty similar to our Saints then. Except we say asphyxiating instead of constricting. And the murderer has to be a sibling, not a traitor. But same idea, the threefold death of Saints. Immortal to all deaths except for one complicated but inevitable one. ¡®And they felt knives as straw, and pestilence as sunlight, and no beast could pierce their skin.¡¯¡± She scratches the back of her head. ¡°Didn¡¯t know that we were so similar.¡±

    The alchemist nods, cracking all of his knuckles simultaneously. He says something in a flat, academic Irdcheol, like he¡¯s translating in his head: ¡°Poisonous beasts shall not approach them, knives will turn from their skins. Disease will find no purchase amongst their livers, time will slough from their hearts and leave them, eternal.¡± His diction shifts to its more familiar, colloquial form. ¡°From Mujhan il-Uz¨¡t. Al Khazraj Saint-poetry. In truth, not dissimilar to what you¡¯ll read in books or hear in hymns in Yvreathe. You¡¯ll actually find a lot of similarities between the scriptures.¡±

    The conversation lulls, and I feel a hook as my presence in the room starts to warp the conversation in a certain way. Perhaps if I ignore it they¡¯ll all move on. They think they¡¯re being subtle, but it¡¯s nothing I haven¡¯t been exposed to, a dozen times before. Khazraj has Saints. Yvreathe has Saints. Brixa Thalaam has just the one, Saint Teneral. And we, the Bani Yathrib, have none. Expectation congeals around me.

    Fine. I sigh, and break the tension. ¡°Everyone on Calacar has Saints. Even the Tecuani have Saints. It¡¯s just the Bani Yathrib who don¡¯t.¡±

    I expect some response. An exhalation from Hatim or ¨ªde, some proselytising from Moira. That doesn¡¯t happen. Instead, Moira leans in, and asks a question that sounds more rehearsed than spontaneous.

    ¡°Iseult, if you don¡¯t mind. Something I¡¯ve thought of. Have you considered the reflections between the way that we view the Saints and the way that the Bani Yathrib view the sun?¡±

    I mean, obviously, yes. It¡¯s a stupid question. The differences are greater than the similarities. No suns walked on Calacar¡¯s surface, bringing magic and cities. No stellar architecture clogs the landscapes of the continent. And, perhaps most importantly, stars die very rarely, and not to inevitable cursed deaths.

    ¡°Yes.¡±

    Her ears perk up. ¡°And what is the conclusion that you¡¯ve come to, after spending so many years in our city?¡±

    I look at her, trying to understand her motive. I am suddenly, and surprisingly, struck with how much I miss having Sean around. I could just offload this conversation onto him. She¡¯s still staring at me with that neutral, welcoming look, the same kind she probably uses on reluctant students.

    ¡°They¡¯re not the same.¡±

    Her eyebrows work their way up her forehead. ¡°But what makes you say that? Perhaps it was the sun that taught your people the other magic. The ones that the Saints didn¡¯t give the rest of us.¡±

    Indignation boils inside me, to have our religion reduced to this. If it¡¯s an insult, she¡¯s delivered it in a flat, academic¡¯s tone, to hide it. If not, perhaps she is truly ignorant of what she¡¯s saying. Her eyes give away nothing, no hint of purpose. I realise I have underestimated Moira O¡¯Tierney.

    ¡°No. There is a difference. The sun, the stars, they don¡¯t build. They don¡¯t talk. They just love us. And the rest of the universe, emphatically, does not. The Saints are for everyone else on the planet. They guided your peoples, invented the first knotworks, built their monuments, then died. Even the Tecuani have Saints, and they¡¯re not even human. Maybe their Saints overlap with yours. Maybe the Saints become something inhuman. Maybe that¡¯s why nobody can read their language.¡±

    I actually know almost nothing about the Tecuani Tetrad, the Saints of the Far Coast. But that¡¯s not really the point. I hope the coldness in my voice capsizes the conversation. Moira looks like she¡¯s loading another question, but I head her off before she can start. If she¡¯s willing to casually lace the conversation with blasphemies, I can do the same.

    ¡°Of course, the stars are still in the sky. That¡¯s another key difference. Of all the two hundred or so Saints, there¡¯s probably one left, correct?¡±

    ¨ªde actually makes a noise as she draws air in through clenched teeth. Even Mister Hatim seems surprised at the boldness of my question- I wonder if any of them fell for the bait of me pretending to be ignorant of what I¡¯ve just said. Arthur begins to speak smoothly to change the topic, but Moira holds up a hand, and looks at me with something like disappointment.

    ¡°You should be aware that what you¡¯ve just suggested, Iseult, is referred to in a theological framework as the Bloodless Heresy.¡± Again, that noise. ¨ªde seems shocked that we would even talk about the idea¡¯s name. I feign ignorance.

    ¡°Why is that?¡±

    Her fingers tap on the table, just once, in rapid sequence. ¡°To be very clear about this, it is the general opinion of most churches all across Calacar that there are, indeed, no living Saints.¡± Hatim¡¯s rapid nodding belies a sort of unexpected nervousness. ¡°But the idea that there might be a remaining Saint, even over a thousand years after the last sighting, is not original. More than one Saint has no recorded death. Records have been lost. They could have been altered, or forgotten. Also, all parts of the continent agree,¡± her hands flick towards Hatim, ¡°that every Saint was predisposed to die the same threefold death, though we quibble about the precise nature of that act. There are no disagreements, though, that that death must involve another Saint. So, if there were two Saints remaining, and one killed the other¡­¡±

    Then there would be nobody left to take the life of the last Saint. He or she would be doomed to die the threefold death, but could never actually do so.

    I actually did ask this question, innocently, four years prior. I was very, very lucky that the reaction wasn¡¯t violent. Discussing the Bloodless Heresy in Ildathach is profane. Judging by Hatim¡¯s reaction, the idea is hardly popular in Khazraj either. The professor spreads her hands wide, and shrugs.

    ¡°Of course, logical rules can¡¯t always be applied to saints. The threefold deaths are sometimes metaphorical. Perhaps the last Saints were compelled to construct an elaborate suicide pact. Or,¡± and here even her academic detachment skitters slightly, unable to entirely quell the sacrilege. ¡°Or perhaps there is a Saint, still on Calacar. Still wandering, perhaps, or imprisoned. What would it be like, to be unable to die from hunger or thirst, but to live forever? Perhaps to spend a millennia entombed in safe, undying stone?

    She¡¯s got a preacher¡¯s turn of phrase. I wonder if Moira studied at a church before she transferred to academia. She sounds too polished to be saying this off the cuff.

    ¡°Oh, and Iseult- Tecuani Saints do not overlap with our churches. Saints Sadist, Grandiose, Callous, and Remorseless are just translations they gave us. Misguided religious dross from an alien culture.¡±

    Arthur awkwardly shifts the conversation to new topics, and the snide remark I¡¯m loading fizzles to nothing. He¡¯s evidently passed some internal threshold of blasphemy. The others seem eager to move on. We discuss the Wraithwild, the d¡¯hain, and the uneventful voyage we took to Brixa Thalaam. I feel Moira¡¯s eyes flicker back to me throughout the rest of the break, resting just too long on my face, her mouth twitching just enough to be noticeable.

    I refuse to be drawn into this, and when we return to our work I don¡¯t acknowledge Moira at all, neither for the rest of the day or the day after.

    *

    Moira and ¨ªde do the bulk of the work with the emptiness configuration, and it is finalised five days later. This, combined with the targeting array I¡¯d previously completed and the alchemist¡¯s machine, means that the job is now almost done.

    This project¡¯s emptiness configuration is outrageously complex, but not the hardest sigil any of us have ever formed. Most of the work could be split into two distinct two obstacles- configuring the charm to harmonise with the machine that Hatim and Arthur had created, then making sure that the sigil could actually be written in stages. The former was a task that nobody in this room, and I suspect nobody on Calacar, has ever done before. The latter was simple enough, but time-consuming. Obviously we wouldn¡¯t deliver the whole, completed sigil to Colt & Tumble. Doing so would mean we¡¯d have to activate it sometime in advance, and almost certainly lose all its potency by the time the moon could be hunted. Rather, it would be delivered in an almost completed state, ready to be slotted together and activated when needed.

    Engineering device included, this entire apparatus is about four cubic yards in volume. Most of that is taken up by the strange, weird protrudings of the alchemists¡¯ device, which sprouts an oversized wheel and bafflingly-organised piping. The targeting array is the next bulkiest thing, a steel cage that is designed for the insane sixteen-inch calibre cannon that Colt & Tumble and the Wine Party has requested. Arthur helped me mount the thing in the cage, and Hatim had worked to make it as adjustable as possible, in case there are any deviances in the gun¡¯s design. I should certainly hope not. Moira had the tact not to gawk at the portions of sigilry that I¡¯ve had to leave visible, lest the obscuring process damage their workings. ¨ªde stares at them openly, and I have to make it very clear that although I do appreciate her waiting until we are alone to ask me about their intricacies, I will not explain them further.

    The girl has a knack for reaching correct conclusions from scraps or fragments of evidence. I have no interest in helping her understand the secrets of my knotwork further. Luckily, she complains that the glyphs make her head pound, so it does not become an issue.

    The two sigilists, for their part, have created three slates, which when combined correctly will meld themselves into the optimised emptiness configuration. They¡¯ve decided on a mixture of consecrated chalk and silver for the sigil itself, for stability. I can¡¯t blame them. I am shocked by the flawless quality of their work. Each two-foot square is covered in patterns with line weights that range from a half to a sixteenth of an inch. Although the basalt itself is shadowy grey, the density of the interlocking charms is such that all three components are almost entirely white. I know the purpose of each part of each slate, though some of the methodologies they¡¯ve employed I must admit I have never considered.

    ¨ªde looks shattered. The hollowing from writing the glyphs must have been immense.

    Ten days of labour, when combined together like this, seems disappointingly small. ¨ªde and I stare at it, left alone in this room for a moment after the alchemists have gone home and Moira has left to conduct some other minor task elsewhere in the Manor.

    ¨ªde speaks first, looking up from a three-dimensional knot she¡¯s idly sketching in one of her notebooks. ¡°Do you think this is going to work?¡±

    I wouldn¡¯t normally bother to respond to something like that, but find myself in a charitable mood. ¡°I have no idea.¡±

    That gets a reaction. ¨ªde¡¯s mouth actually sockets open, involuntarily, and she closes it quickly. I scramble, trying to be nicer. ¡°That is¡­ it will probably work.¡±

    Her surprise doesn¡¯t seem ameliorated. ¨ªde, startled, asks: ¡°What do you mean, probably?¡±

    ¡°Alright, perhaps I chose my words poorly.¡± Now I¡¯m flustered. ¡°I don¡¯t know that this is going to work, because nobody knows if this is going to work, because nobody has ever done this before.¡± She looks like she¡¯s about to interrupt, so I keep talking.

    ¡°But,¡± cutting her off, ¡°I don¡¯t think I could¡¯ve done this any other way. I¡¯ve checked my work. Is there anything else I could¡¯ve done? No. Is there anything else you could¡¯ve done? Anything new to test? Any calculations you didn¡¯t triple check?¡±

    ¨ªde frowns, and legitimately thinks about it. ¡°No.¡±

    ¡°So I¡¯m not worried.¡±

    She sputters for a moment. Her voice is on the verge of cracking. She rubs her face with both hands, then looks at me, face covered, over ink-stained fingernails. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Iseult. I¡¯ve just been sleeping badly. I¡¯m not focusing well, and I¡¯m paranoid I¡¯m making all these stupid mistakes. I¡¯m remembering things, but then when I do them- it¡¯s like it¡¯s not me. I¡¯m worried the sigils won¡¯t work. What if we supply this to Colt & Tumble and it doesn¡¯t work?¡±

    I try again. ¡°But you can¡¯t change anything, right? You¡¯ve done the best you can. We¡¯ve all done the best we can. There¡¯s no other configurations to do. There¡¯s no work that hasn¡¯t been reviewed. So if there¡¯s nothing to change, and no way to influence the result¡­ you can¡¯t really be worried about it. Or, at least, you shouldn¡¯t be.¡±

    She quietens down, mulling this over. I wrack my brain, trying to figure out what to say next. I wonder, insanely, if she¡¯s right to be worried, but immediately quash that thought. We stand in silence, just the pair of us in this great, cavernous room. I weigh in my head what to do next- whether I want to explore the Manor, or try to get ¨ªde to tell me what the bees told her.

    There must be some way to make her feel better. ¡°I¡¯ll tell you what. Why don¡¯t we celebrate? The work is complete. It looks well done. We can get a drink or two. I¡¯m sure you know some pubs nearby.¡±

    Her smile grows, and grows, vibrant and a shade short of maniacal. I did not expect this level of enthusiasm. Being nice may have been a mistake.

    Maybe it would¡¯ve been safer to try to break into another part of the Manor.

 Chapter 14: Sean

    Sean

    ¡°It¡¯s very simple, Sean, you blackguard, you oaf, you,¡± Sir Drustan Tilian does the theatrical frown of the amiable drunk, too far into the gin to finish his quip without stammering, ¡°you, you, uh, man.¡±

    He points woozily at the table, which is festooned in gamblers, all baying and jeering in sloppy chorus. Lady Keir, who returned to Ildathach three weeks ago from her hunting expedition in Ys, has taken a position at the baize-covered table opposite of her opponent, a gentleman I do not recognise. She¡¯s wearing a fashionable sleeveless silver tunic, and her wrists are wreathed in orchids. A dealer, the table¡¯s buffer zone and by far the most sober person in the room, lurks statue-still between them. He¡¯s dressed in a charming summer livery that clashes with his sombre countenance.

    Drustan returned from his expedition with Lady Keir with an unexpected bonus, for the expedition managed to bag not one but three gwylls. The last of those decapitated heads was sold at an auction in this very club earlier this afternoon, and now the Lady seems content to burn through all of her earnings at record pace. She¡¯s been back in the city for barely longer than I have, but over the last fortnight she has already spent all of the spirals she made from her other two trophies, and seems determined to spend the bounty from the third at breakneck pace.

    My friend has taken the original approach of not betting on the game itself, but rather on its competitors. This is scientifically safe, according to him, though I fear that someone rather more mathematically minded has informed him of the idea, and he is repeating it to me, misunderstood and second-hand. I¡¯m actually not familiar with the exact game the two are playing- some fashionable import from the Far Coast, played with jade and onyx tokens and rolled animal vertebrae. As far as I can tell, the most important single skill to the game is maximising resentful body language, and both players are virtuosos in this regard.

    ¡°You take the bet for one of the players, right? Your odds of winning are half,¡± The alcohol peals off of Drustan¡¯s lungs and into my face directly. I¡¯m not sure he¡¯s right, but I can¡¯t actually articulate why, because I¡¯ve also been drinking. Only a little. ¡°If you bet on one of them. My money is on Keir, of course.¡±

    No title. How informal, exactly, did they become on the trek?

    ¡°So if you have a half chance of winning, all you have to do is double your bet if you lose, right? And then if you lose twice in a row, you double that bet, and so on, until you eventually win, and in that way you never really lose your money.¡±

    This sounds like the calculus of the half-informed. I wish ¨ªde or Iseult were here, to check his maths, because I¡¯m on very thin ground here. I use all of my brainpower to mull this over, and try a critique: ¡°But then¡­ wouldn¡¯t you be down an amount equal to eight times your initial bet if you lost four times¡­?¡±

    He throws his hands in the air, spilling half of the gin in his glass over the rug. ¡°Yes, but what are the odds of that, eh? One in sixteen! For an eight times payout! I¡¯m telling you, you clodpate, it is a foregone thing.¡±

    I¡¯ll take his word for it.

    There¡¯s a bellowing from the crowd, which brings both of us back to the action. Lady Keir has lost, and stands, arms folded and face indignant as the other gentleman bows to his audience, his valet sweeping great armfuls of tokens into a velvet bag. One of the Vardon siblings, a young lady who must be ¨ªde¡¯s age, has both hands on the table and is saying something ferocious to the stony-faced dealer. Her sister is congratulating the winning gentleman, who at this point is drawing a jovial mass of ladies and gentleman from Lady Keir¡¯s side of the table.

    I slap Drustan¡¯s back. ¡°Bit of a shame then, that she¡¯s lost? How much are you down?¡±

    ¡°Oh, Sean. Sean Sean Sean. I¡¯m definitely,¡± he pats a chest pocket, then frowns and pats the other side of his blazer. ¡°Probably still up. You must have more faith in the system.¡±

    We walk together, his arm slung over my shoulder, though detach and then draw ourselves to more respectable poses as we enter the threshold of Lady Keir¡¯s social space. He greets her, formally, and claims she had an excellent match. Actual, genuine compassion- Drustan, despite his attempts at cultivating a scoundrel¡¯s reputation, is more of a charmer than a cad. I offer my condolences, which do nothing to alleviate her obvious sourness. The light of the room¡¯s low candles reflect off of her steel spectacles. She says something in a soft voice to Drustan, nods cordially at me, and leaves without a word.

    Now that this main event has concluded, the room has started to empty. There¡¯s a bar here, which held the attention of the club members while it lasted. We have sucked it entirely dry, and thus will inevitably filter back to the main bar located in the central hall of the Shellflower Club, which is both gorgeous and well stocked. We join the tail end of the mob, which has decreased very slightly in number as its members succumb to the cumulative effects of hours of carousing and alcohol and narcotics. On the trek back to the main hall, I watch a coated man spin off of the group while trying to button his jacket, and stumble to lean against a bust to Saint Gramarye. He almost ricocheted off of the enormous wall-mounted Chaplain¡¯s seal, barely avoiding toppling the crown-in-the-crucible motif. Now that would¡¯ve been interesting.

    ¡°How about you, you rascal,¡± Drustan pokes me in the ribs, speaking loudly enough to be overheard by the crowd immediately around us. ¡°I¡¯ve been told you¡¯ve been busy in the Wraithwild, just two weeks ago. With a Bani Yathrib tribeswoman and an Ildathach lady, no less, you utter reprobate. Though if I recall correctly, the former is highly allergic to fun.¡±

    It¡¯s easy to forget the number of people who know Iseult. She never talks about it.

    I don¡¯t need to look to know whose attention he¡¯s trying to get. Just as we cross the threshold to the new part of the club (the original building was cut almost exactly in two by the Calamity, and they¡¯ve kept the dividing line for some reason or another), a man and a woman move just within polite earshot. We troop down the stone corridor of the Shellflower Club, past glowering portraits of important club members and chic paintings of Khazraj landscapes. In this part of the building, which does tend to attract more louche crowds, the walls are more likely to be decorated with oleographs rather than actual paintings.

    Subtlety through obviousness. I¡¯ll play Drustan¡¯s game. ¡°Oh yes,¡± I reply bombastically. ¡°Almost a month abroad. Lovely place, the Wraithwild. Must respect client confidentiality and all that, so can¡¯t tell you why we were there,¡± I wink, outrageously. I hope it¡¯s audible. ¡°Or about the dayn we killed.¡± I¡¯m quite sure that was mispronounced, but I give it a shot anyway, trying to sound suitably foreign. Hopefully this pair doesn¡¯t speak any of the Wraithwild languages, and I can feign more exotic linguistic knowledge than I actually have. He replies, reeling the satellite couple towards us.

    ¡°A secret mission! And you killed a- a thing! And I suppose it didn¡¯t hurt, being out there in the wilderness, protecting two young ladies¡­¡± That last one, delivered with a trailing drip of innuendo.

    I give him a deadpan glare while delivering the next line, my expression entirely unmoored from the smarm in my voice. ¡°Oh, I wouldn¡¯t dare discuss that part of it.¡±

    *

    His name is Sulwyn, hers is Eirys, and after we have established that they are not romantically entwined through an initial barrage of questions and mild flirtations of compatibility, we decided to abandon the Shellflower Club for new territories. The party was still in a feverish state by the time we left. One of Lady Keir¡¯s entourage had shattered an immense, orchid-staffed vase in the main hall, and we made our exit in the ensuing brouhaha. Drustan had rallied and made the empty bravado of a drunk man defending someone else¡¯s honour: ¡°What ruffian did this?!¡±, but he has ended up so entangled with seducing Eirys that we pulled him from the Club easily enough.

    We spin out into the Ildathach evening. The aurora twists, sky-wide and furious, overhead.

    I¡¯m side by side with Sulwyn, easily pacing the meandering pair in front of us. He doesn¡¯t seem nearly as drunk as she does, nor am I to Drustan, so we form a sober rear-guard to the woozy couple that stumbles down the street ahead of us. The air outside is chillier than inside of the sweltering heat of the dance hall, but still comfortable. Sulwyn reaches over and brushes away an orchid petal that is stuck to my shoulder.

    Eirys whirls around, temporarily breaking free from Drustan with a riotous giggle. She laughs, truly laughs from her heart. ¡°We¡¯re going to The Sheep¡¯s Head in Hackcloth Row,¡± she blurts out.

    Not far from my flat. Did Drustan let something slip?

    A swirl of yellowing leaves scutters across the oil-lit streets. I¡¯m gripped with a sudden bolt of sober thought- surely it cannot yet be turning to autumn. We were only gone for a month, and yet the city changed so quickly. Selwyn lights a cigarette, and I watch the smoke leave his lips and trail upwards into the sky.

    My musing is interrupted by Drustan, who at this point is on that ambiguous teetering position between being quite drunk and being extremely drunk. He gives me a devilish look before spinning on one heel, towing Eirys behind him laughing, and makes down a side street to avoid the flow of sewage that has bubbled up in the main road ahead of us. He feigns disgust.

    ¡°Smells like an Ysian high street.¡±

    Eirys shoves him, hard. Playfully? ¡°Fuck off, Ildathacher.¡±

    ¡°Ah, yes, I do apologise, I forgot our company. No offence, of course. I do love your country and its distinct odours. All those butteries and cheeseries and,¡± he shuffles his hands, imitating Ysian hand gestures. ¡°Uh, milkeries.¡±

    The pair of Ysians, exasperated, throw their arms up simultaneously.

    We walk the twenty minutes to Hackcloth, and descend into The Sheep¡¯s Head. Literally descend- it¡¯s down a narrow flight of steps that squeezes Sulwyn¡¯s body against mine as we barely fit into the heavy, charred door that entirely insulates the place from the city outside. We walk through a cloud of liquorice-scent courtesy of the flowers above the door, great purple spikes that I think must be giant hyssops. Inside, under the street, the air is choked with the heady scents of tobacco and tigerleaf. Sulwyn grabs Eirys, and excuses himself, saying that he¡¯ll locate a table.

    ¡°So, what do you think?¡± Drustan asks me, sincerely. ¡°She seems¡­ yes.¡±

    It¡¯s loud. There¡¯s a woman ferociously playing a fiddle in the corner, and a man beside her belting out Crowmere dancing chants with a small group of drunk merchants. The entire bar would fit in a space half the size of the gambling room in the Shellflower Club. I lean forward and shout directly into my friend¡¯s ear.

    ¡°She does seem ¡®yes¡¯, Drustan. I think we should order from the bar, though, it doesn¡¯t appear that they have table service.¡±

    He manoeuvres like an overdressed iceberg, and I scan the room to see where our new friends have gotten to. My eyes are adapting to the nicotine fog. When we entered, I didn¡¯t notice the age of the people in the bar. Or the cut of their coats. Looks like mostly students. I swing my eyes across the room, looking at the muggy, packed alcoves. Our friends have somehow managed to secure a place embedded within a wall, not far from the door. The booth to their right is overflowing with a crowd of boisterous youths, much of which spills considerably onto the floor. They¡¯re young and animated, and one of them looks remarkably like ¨ªde. The booth to their left is mostly morose drinkers in that stage of the night where they-Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

    Wait.

    We lock eyes, and her face goes through about ten emotions, one after the other. Eventually, her eyes bolt wide open, and she slowly holds up her hand in quiet, astonished greeting. Her friends closest to her stare at her hand, then at her eyes, then to me, and then collapse into a circle of interrogation with her at the centre. She snaps her gaze away before snarling something back at them and turning bright red. Drustan follows my grin, and announces, ¡°I knew it! You dog! You rascal!¡±

    I pivot neatly to the bar and buy four beers from a surly Crowmeren girl who must be close to a decade younger than me. The whole round costs less than a single cocktail at the Shellflower Club. Thus armed, I pass a pint to Drustan, seize three for myself, and make my way to back to Sulwyn and Eirys. I set two drinks down, keep one, then hold up a finger and shout over the din. ¡°I¡¯ll be right back.¡±

    Sulwyn frowns, and Drustan waggles his eyebrows. Eirys looks contentedly at the pair of them and sets upon her glass like a woman dying of thirst.

    I pull myself together and slip over to ¨ªde¡¯s table.

    Definitely students. One hobbledehoy looks up at me blearily, his leg outside of the confines of the booth, and begins to swell, just at the cusp of belligerence. He turns to look at his friends, fumbling for support for the insult he¡¯s going to deliver unto me as I eclipse the table. When he notices that they are all staring at me, and ¨ªde is grinning, he breaks eye contact.

    ¡°Fancy seeing you here.¡±

    My line has to be delivered over a belting Crowmere shanty, so I time it in the instrumental just after the chorus. It lands. ¨ªde says something, when the pub erupts in applause, and I absolutely cannot make it out. She is bad at this. I debate squeezing myself in to the booth, then realise that I would crush a poor student underneath me if I tried. Instead, I give her a wink, then beckon her out.

    She¡¯s really bad at this, and plucks herself awkwardly over the scrum of legs and bodies that her fellows have created. When she eventually extracts herself from the pack, she embraces me in a sloppy hug. I can smell the beer on her breath. She steps on her tip toes and shouts into my ear. ¡°What are you doing here?¡±

    ¡°I could ask you the same thing.¡±

    She looks up at me with a glazed, happy expression. We¡¯re not at the same level of drunk. At least, I assume with her, it¡¯s alcohol. Looking at her eyes, she could be on something harder. Henbane, maybe. I look at her friends and give them the warmest smile I can muster, and am met with a pigeon¡¯s gallery of approval and indignation. I don¡¯t actually need to talk to her in front of her cohort, and lean down to speak to her. ¡°Let me introduce you to some friends of mine.¡±

    ¨ªde thinks she¡¯s discrete, but the look that passes between her and her friends is blindingly crass. I tilt my head towards our original booth, and take the corner with a grin. ¡°Hey, look who I found- ¡°

    I trail off. Sulwyn has vanished. I debate searching for him, and feel my mind split neatly into two different factions. Go find him, half of me says. Don¡¯t bother, the other half replies.

    The latter wins.

    Drustan and Eirys are wrapped in a very close conversation that I choose not to interrupt. Undeterred, I point to the front door, and ¨ªde follows me outside, up the tight stairwell.

    The street sounds dead. My ears are ringing, and my nose is clogged with nicotine. The craving strikes me, and I pat my jackets for a cigarillo, eventually finding a pair of loose ones in one of my chest pockets. I draw them out, and offer one to ¨ªde, knowing she will refuse.

    She takes it. I raise my eyebrows, then remember that I¡¯ve never actually seen drunk ¨ªde. Now to find the matches.

    ¨ªde stares at me for a moment, then looks up and to the side as if she¡¯s thinking. ¡°I could¡­ write a sun sigil¡­¡±

    Saints, she must be very drunk. Luckily I find a box, emblazoned in Scannell¡¯s colours, in my trouser pockets. I light both of us, and we list in the darkness outside of The Sheep¡¯s Head. It¡¯s the weekend, and the streets aren¡¯t totally empty. Warm oil light spills unevenly into the street, bathing us in a quiet orange. There¡¯s a gang of partygoers about ten yards away from us, carousing and smoking. We watch, quietly, as a muttering man urinates just below a sign proclaiming COMMIT NO NUISANCE.

    ¨ªde looks up at me and takes a strong drag, which doesn¡¯t send her wheezing.

    ¡°What are you doing here?¡± We ask the question simultaneously. I laugh, she grins, and I hold my hands up.

    ¡°Drustan- the, uh. The gentleman in the booth. He started talking to that woman, and she brought us here from a club we were at.¡± I omit mentioning Sulwyn. She nods, and looks like she¡¯s going to ask a further question. She doesn¡¯t, so I fill in the quiet. ¡°What are you doing out?¡±

    ¨ªde shrugs. ¡°We finished. Iseult did most of it. At the Violet Manor.¡±

    They finished! Iseult didn¡¯t bother to tell me. I don¡¯t think ¨ªde noticed my surprise.

    ¡°Did you tell Colt & Tumble? The launch date is set for a month from now.¡± A thought strikes me. ¡°Wait, is Iseult here?¡±

    Imagining Iseult in a place like The Sheep¡¯s Head, her choler compounded by the noise and the crowd and the roasting, tobacco-filled air, is hilarious.

    ¡°No,¡± ¨ªde says, and I feel very slightly let down. ¡°I mean, yes, Colt & Tumble is aware. I think. The Wine Party is aware. So Mister Tumble should now. But no, Iseult isn¡¯t here. She couldn¡¯t keep up with the drinking.¡±

    Iseult would never actually admit that. ¨ªde sees the look on my face. ¡°Alright, maybe she didn¡¯t phrase it the same way. But she said she had somewhere else to be. We talked for a few hours, then she left at about the same my friends,¡± she waves aimlessly at the stairs that lead down into the pub, ¡°showed up. An hour later, we relocated here. My friend knows the musicians.¡±

    A slab of soberness presses down on my eyeballs. Maybe it¡¯s being alone and outside. ¨ªde looks like she hasn¡¯t slept in a day or two. She stares off down the road, fixated on some distant point in the darkness. ¡°I think I understand a bit more about her now, to be honest. Second time doing that kind of work with her. How,¡± and here she pauses, like she¡¯s just thought of something. ¡°How old is she, anyway?¡±

    I¡¯m learning all sorts of things tonight. ¨ªde, drunk and impatient, actually interrupts me before I can speak. ¡°Thirty-three? Thirty-four?¡±

    ¡°I know a lot of women who have been thirty-three for years, you know.¡± It¡¯s an easy quip, but one she hasn¡¯t heard before. She laughs, a sort of raw tinkling, and looks me dead in the face. ¡°No, really.¡±

    I could probably tell her anything, and she wouldn¡¯t remember in the morning. I opt for the truth. ¡°I¡¯ve never actually asked her.¡±

    She nods, content, then careens off to a new topic. Very shortened attention span. ¡°So, let¡¯s talk about you.¡±

    Brick-subtle. She¡¯s staring at a point about half an inch under my nose. I was like her, at her age. ¡°What about me?¡±

    ¡°My friends in there,¡± she waves her hand. ¡°They think that we¡¯re¡­ you know.¡± I don¡¯t press the conversation, and instead nurse my cigarillo. Unbidden, she holds her own between her teeth, and makes a lewd hand gesture. I ignore this and retort. ¡°I noticed that they all seemed rather interested in me.¡±

    Her face is framed by a cloud of blue tobacco smoke. She cackles again. ¡°And why not? You¡¯re very, uh. You¡¯re. You¡¯re very gentleman. Noble family.¡±

    Saints preserve me. I debate being direct with her, and opt instead to tell her a different sort of truth, and steer the conversation somewhere else. ¡°Not much to say about them. I haven¡¯t seen my family since I left Llancreg. Coming up on six years now.¡±

    She peels away, somewhere between curious and frustrated. ¡°Why, what happened?¡±

    ¡°My mother died.¡±

    It¡¯s a cheap trick. A haymaker phrase, right to the chin. It sobers her temporarily, and her newfound smarm evaporates. ¡°Sean, I¡¯m really sorry.¡±

    Speaking about my mother, invoking her like this, it always dredges up the memories. I remember, when I was a child, she took me aside after a meeting between my parents and a representative from Ildathach. She¡¯d cursed, quietly, before telling me about the city-people, and how their politeness was a reflex, and rarely from the heart. At the time, she¡¯d delivered it with portentous tones, but it wasn¡¯t until years after I¡¯d moved to the city where I finally understood what she meant. That observation applies now. How much of ¨ªde¡¯s concern, right now, is sincere? Unmoored by the involuntary civility that the city cultivated in her? Does she feel anything, deeply, about me?

    What would my mother think of this?

    This melancholy is misplaced. I¡¯m being unfair to ¨ªde. Of course she¡¯s being earnest. Her empathy is practically always set to overflow.

    I wave my hand dismissively. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t tell you if I didn¡¯t want to talk about it,¡± I can see her about to talk, so I hastily plough on. ¡°The Sir Sean Whelan business with Evin Tumble- that¡¯s true. The Whelans are the noble family of ounceland Llancreg. Not a noble family. The noble family. As in, the landed gentry. For two centuries. We¡¯re right on the Dolerite Rag, right between the Aergan to the west and Ildathach to the east. My father is from Llancreg, and my mother is from the Aergan. Clan Huxley. One of the reasons I think Colt & Tumble is happy enough that Iseult asked me to join. Evin¡¯s from Crowmere, but the other partner, Wynne Colt? She¡¯s half Aerganite, from her mother¡¯s side. Same as me. Probably why everyone in our mutual social circles is a little wary of her.

    ¡°So, yes. I am the first son. Two sisters, both younger. My father wanted me to grow up a normal son of a baron. Nothing stuck. Don¡¯t have the mindset for it. Poetry, governance, sigilry. Art. Music. Not my cup of coffee.¡±

    I shrug, and take deep drag. This isn¡¯t a planned speech, but ¨ªde is enraptured.

    ¡°My mother though. She saw right away what to do with me. So, around eight, she taught me what she learned as a child. And that. That is me. I learned to talk from my dad. But the fighting and the riding and the shooting and the navigating and the living in the wild- we used to drive him mad. He¡¯s not an angry person, not at all. But the number of nights I spent outside, in the woods and the plains. Great nights. Lovely nights. Would always dread coming back, because he¡¯d be sick with worry.

    ¡°Anyway. Dad gave up on me at sixteen. Not gave up gave up. But realised that maybe he didn¡¯t want his son, who read too slowly and took about three times longer to do sums than his daughter, to inherit stewardship of Llancreg. Not like I wanted the role anyway.

    ¡°Llancreg¡¯s a vassal of Ildathach, has been since before the Calamity. Pay the ounce of gold every year, although obviously that¡¯s become more ceremonial over time. So when the call came out that Ildathach was looking to recruit for a war in the Aergan¡­ I left. And I joined the city, and fought my cousins and half my family, and when we returned victorious to Ildathach I got a letter which said my mother had died of river disease. She¡¯d had it her whole life, and it finally caught up to her. The thing is,¡± completely unexpected tears. I bite them down. ¡°I didn¡¯t know. We marched within a dozen miles of Llancreg, but I couldn¡¯t get permission to leave, when I¡¯d requested. We didn¡¯t know how far the Aerganites had gotten to Ildathach, if we¡¯d meet a group of knights along the way. I could¡¯ve seen her, one last time. And by the time I returned, and I found out¡­¡±

    I hold the cigarillo between thumb and forefinger. It¡¯s been drawn down so low it¡¯s singing my skin.

    ¡°Anyway. That¡¯s me. Poorest peer in Ildathach. Killed my mother¡¯s kin, for no reason other than wanderlust and a now wavering sense of liege-honour. Live beneath a perfumery in Quillton. Teach a handful of professionals and bored aristocrats how to fight. Didn¡¯t go back, even for my mother¡¯s funeral. Won¡¯t go back. Can¡¯t bring myself to do it.¡±

    She looks dazed, and takes a moment to collect herself. I wonder how much of this she¡¯ll remember tomorrow. ¨ªde raises a boot, a handsome new thing made of scarlet leather, and grinds the remnant of her cigarillo into the flagstones.

    I¡¯m not sure what to expect. She wraps her hands around my chest and hugs me, tightly.

    Sometimes I forget that the most appropriate thing to do is to be quiet. We stay there for a few heartbeats. When she breaks the embrace, she looks up wide-eyed. ¨ªde Ceallaigh, na?ve and hungry, a savant and an actual, genuinely nice person. Just on the cusp of rising to her tip-toes.

    A quiet trickle of time.

    It is shattered, immediately, by two separate events. The first is that she breaks her eye contact and very politely throws up onto the street, which is equal measures surprising and unpropitious. The second is a cry from behind us.

    ¡°Ah-HAH!¡±

    Various shapes have emerged from The Sheep¡¯s Head over the last few minutes. The last batch of exiting revellers, who has only now come into view, includes Drustan- though Eirys is not in tow. He announces himself with a bibulous snicker. The fact that he has actually survived the onslaught of alcohol and narcotics he has stuffed into his body over the last six hours is honestly mind-boggling. ¨ªde turns redder, for the shapes include more than just Drustan. He has with him a gaggle of ¨ªde¡¯s friends, and he points at me with the brave smugness of a man with a handful of aces. ¡°I knew you had it in you! Sir Sean! You scallywag! You raconteur, you, you,¡± he snaps his fingers distractedly a few times, and one of ¨ªde¡¯s friends murmurs something to him, ¡°you, oh very well done indeed, you malingerer.¡±

    I debate deflating him by pointing out that he had entered the establishment with a different woman, but I am very much grateful that I can escape from ¨ªde¡¯s embrace. To be honest, embarrassing ¨ªde is both entertaining and significantly easier than dealing with my emotions. ¡°We were just talking, Sir Drustan.¡±

    ¡°Just talking! Ohoh! To a, and I really must say, a rather stunningly attractive young student! How did you manage this miracle? She¡¯s beautiful! And yet you, Sean, have a face like a loaf of bread! Made by a particularly ugly baker!¡± ¨ªde is simultaneously trying to implode her own head with embarrassment and fumble for a suitable riposte. She has no chance of slotting in a rebuttal, because Drustan is very good at this. ¡°Is that what they are calling it these days? Perhaps I should try just talking to one of these other lovely students! I did not expect you to conduct such unpoetical business, you rogue.¡±

    People like Sulwyn and Eirys don¡¯t mean anything to Sir Drustan Tilian. They¡¯re gone, already, from his life. He¡¯s not a bad person, I don¡¯t dislike him by any means. I¡¯ve known him for a decade, since the days he used to cringe at creditors. In fact, I generally enjoy being pulled into the tornado of his charisma. Ildathach aristocracy, especially recently, now that the memory of losing any war is two generations dead, generally believes itself to be literally bred better than most. Many of our peers (more his peers, truth be told, because there are many in these circles who secretly sneer at my title) believe themselves to be intellectuals or poets or warriors. In truth, most are little reflections of each other- rebounded thoughts, delivered from the occasional original quip or observation, reflected on and on and on within circles until they are exhausted and threadbare, at the tip of a hundred tongues.

    Drustan is not one of these people. Or if he is, he¡¯s smart enough not to show it when he¡¯s around me, and I¡¯ve been his friend for years. He has enough humility to know when to fold, and when to admit that he is wrong.

    He is, however, incredibly talented at pretending that he is both learned and wise, mostly through the overwhelming magnetism of his bombast. This works in the vast majority of situations, except for this one, where he is intoxicated out of his mind and is conversing with actual academics.

    I recognise this glint in his eye. He¡¯s going through the motions of conversation, poised to interrupt and to argue, tricking the speaker into giving him some scrap of innuendo to pounce on. The crowd is expecting spectacle, but I decline to give him anything to chew on. I fold my arms, and his eyes glitter as he glides effortlessly on to the next stop of the evening.

    He takes command of our gaggle of students and opts to lead us to a new haunt, even though we must be closer to sunrise than to midnight. He loudly accuses me of corrupting Ildathach¡¯s youth, who should really be spending their time learning how to invent new forms of philosophy or geology. He gets into a spirited debate with ¨ªde, who appears sobered by our conversation or her vomiting or both. When he explains his betting system to ¨ªde, she points out that his methodology is nonsensical, and that if it were true he could get the same results by doubling his bet after winning instead of after losing, and uses terminology such as ¡°representativeness heuristics¡± and ¡°zero-sum¡±. Drustan, immediately seeing that he is on unequal intellectual footing, simply skirts her presumably sound arguments and begins making fun of her (¡®this lovely young lady is not merely ornamental, she¡¯s also a bookworm!¡¯, and so forth). He rallies her friends to his side. It¡¯s good natured. I think ¨ªde enjoys herself.

    ¡°I¡¯m going to order a three course meal,¡± Drustan declares, after securing a table for our roving gang at Fifty Fifth, despite the quiet judgement of the doormen. ¡°But each course shall be gin.¡±

    Shanties and ballads are butchered. Tabletops are danced upon.

    When the familiar gloom of alcohol begin to shut off the bits of me that enjoy company, I make my excuses and begin to stumble home, walking ¨ªde back to the Lugrough Club. She doesn¡¯t stare at my mouth this time, and I wonder if it¡¯s because she¡¯s figured it out or if the potential threat of her landlady¡¯s presence forces her into a more restrained mindset. The sun is coming up. If I¡¯m not careful, I¡¯ll run into Nan Murphy, up early to walk to the fish market and bring back stinking baskets to peddle in Quilton. I can¡¯t imagine the look she¡¯ll give me, or the burnt turf dust she¡¯ll try to sell me as a hangover remedy.

    I sneak down my empty street, then down again to the door of my flat. Neighbours avoided. I lock my deadbolts, detach my collar, throw the knife I carry under my belt onto the floor, and collapse face-first into my bed. I fall asleep with my clothes on, which has not happened for some time now.

 Chapter 15: é“†de

    ¨ªde

    The Gundog Walking leaves Ildathach with much the same grace that it did the first time. The hold is lighter, for one- no exotic cargo to trade this time. Just supplies, food animals, and the artefacts we built in the Violet Manor. We settle into the simple routines that we held on the previous voyages: sleeping, eating, watching the horizon. This second time, I find that my sense of wonder at the vastness of the sea has waned. There¡¯s a bloodless feeling to this voyage, like an ember has burned out. Even Captain Holofernes doesn¡¯t seem to register my presence.

    A portion of this sombre atmosphere is at least in part my fault. The sadness from leaving my family again clings to me like stale cigarillo smoke. My last night before the voyage, a day after I¡¯d seen Sean and his friends, I¡¯d spent the entire day with my family. I¡¯d woken up, chased the hangover away with a coffee and a finger of whisky, and went to my mother¡¯s flat to make lunch.

    My brothers had been less impressed, this time, by my destination. Brixa Thalaam was one thing: a foreign, impossible land they¡¯d heard about in school. But Inskoet, this little rock in the north sea that nobody has ever heard of, barely four days¡¯ sail from Ildathach or five from Crowmere- it seemed less exciting. They annihilated the food I¡¯d made for them, and I saw in them briefly something Sean-like. We¡¯d talked and talked until my mother came home, just as the sun was setting. I was helping Ail¨ªn with his sums when she¡¯d walked in, exhausted.

    She lit up at the sight of me, and we chatted over coffee long after we¡¯d sent my brothers, complaining, to sleep. I¡¯d made a little light sigil, a simple thing, to help illustrate a mathematics lesson to Ail¨ªn. It faltered and died before we stopped talking, and I hadn¡¯t left until well past midnight. Even now, I can smell the kitchen-scent in my hair- rags and sage and cardamom. Hours before I left their flat, I had already felt the swelling realisation that I¡¯d have to say goodbye to my family. They hadn¡¯t wanted me to leave, either.

    Now, back on the ocean, that lachrymose washes gently around me like, and I perch at the stern of the Gundog Walking and stare at Ildathach until it retreats under the horizon.

    We¡¯re staying belowdecks again, but have been moved to a different cabin due to some quirk of the passenger and cargo manifest. Our new quarters are just as cramped as they were on the first voyage, though now we are sporadically interrupted by a clanging, clunking noise. The first time this happened, Sean had gone to investigate, though he had not returned for hours. The second, he was sharpening a knife in the cabin and had looked up with a start. ¡°Bilge pumps!¡± He¡¯d said, obviously just remembering to inform us. Sean offered no further explanation, and went back to sniffing his runny nose and sharpening his already razor-edged knife.

    There¡¯s a bit of a stranger smell, something like salt and sulphur, as we sail further north. The sea near the Wraithwild was lusher, bluer, warmer. Here, I feel the cold in the evening of the second day, and the sailors have brought hardier coats to wear on deck. The temperature drops intensely as we crawl further and further away from Yvreathe, towards the Torment. Frigid gusts sweep across the deck of the ship by the end of the second day, and a swarm of something small and hungry, the only flying things for what must be at least a hundred miles, follows us for a few hours.

    Sailors keep an eye on them, and the horizon, and the depths of the darkening sea. I ask them what to look for, how I can help. Mostly their warnings are unhelpful, old superstitions of accidentally summoning a danger by naming it. One of the mates is kind enough to tell me, in low tones, to watch for any particularly curious packs of seals. Being followed by seals is expected, but if they take too close an interest in us, they¡¯re probably being led by a selkie. A bad omen, he explained, to get that kind of attention. I¡¯ve seen a nightmarish woodcut of one of those creatures: the bored eyes, human eyes, peering out of a blunt doglike face. The artist had captured something unnerving in that uncaring predator¡¯s stare. Dark and dead.

    I keep a lookout for seals, and see nothing but choppy waters and the occasional floating patch of noble rot.

    It''s four days to Inskoet, and on the third morning one of the sailors proposes an idea to alleviate the boredom. I¡¯m approached in the galley during breakfast, after finishing a rigid ship¡¯s biscuit and half a palmful of salted pork. Sean and Iseult are dining with the captain, so I am alone when the sailor approaches me.

    ¡°Are we taken?¡± I look up. The sailor is dressed in the coarse cloth of a rigger, though he¡¯s switched his bare feet for boots as the Gundog Walking has ploughed into colder northern waters. His face is earnest, and his skin is tattoo-free enough that he could not have been at sea for long. I¡¯ve seen him, scaling the masts of the ship, swapping filthy stories with the other crew just as I enter earshot. I squint, and try to recall his name. ¡°Sailor¡­ ¨®engus?¡±

    He looks surprised. ¡°Got it in one. You¡¯re ¨ªde, right?¡±

    I nod, though honestly it¡¯d be more professional of him to use my professional title- Sigilist. Technically, of course, I haven¡¯t yet graduated from Saint Listless¡¯. But they don¡¯t know that. I mop up the remnants of my meal with a stone-solid piece of biscuit, and do my best to look as respectable as possible.

    ¡°I¡¯ve got a, uh, proposition. And I think you can help.¡± He eyes me, warily. I raise my eyebrows, immediately interested. Sailors are, as a rule, outrageously superstitious. The sea is full of hidden portents, especially for the men and women who live on the waves. A misaligned star, a sudden unexpected change in the air, a pattern in the noble rot- I wonder what sort of problem ¨®engus is facing, and how he thinks I can help. Maybe he wants a reading, or a tattoo consultation. Or something personal, something to be charmed.

    ¡°It¡¯s about Sir Whelan.¡±

    Oh.

    He presses on. ¡°We¡¯ve been thinking. He¡¯s a big shot in Ildathach, right? Fought in the Aergan? Well, some of us think it¡¯d be great to pass the time with a friendly competition. On the deck, before dinner. Really get the excitement going, you know? Must be boring for the three of you, cooped up all day.¡±

    The ship lolls, gently, and I watch the galley¡¯s lighting sigil sway gently in its cage. I frown and steeple my fingers in what I hope is a thoughtful gesture. ¡°What kind of a competition?¡±

    He holds up his tar-stained hands, innocent. ¡°Nothing uncouth! Or dangerous! Just a friendly exhibition between him and some of the crew. Maybe he can teach us something about that,¡± and here his hands slice through the air, and he adopts the muscle-straining pose of an Ildathach warrior. ¡°Fighting style.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll, uh, I¡¯ll talk to him? Why don¡¯t you ask him yourself though?¡±

    He adopts a pained look. ¡°It¡¯s a bit different coming from us, y¡¯know? Kind of¡­ threatening! Don¡¯t really want that. Just tell him we¡¯ll set something up on the deck, an hour before the second dog watch. Could be fun!¡±

    ¨®engus slaps both of his thighs, and starts to rise. ¡°Right! Well, you tell Sir Whelan, and we¡¯ll have a go at it this evening. Sure as a Saint will die,¡± he blasphemes. ¡°Thanks ¨ªde!¡±

    No title, again. I watch ¨®engus¡¯ retreating back as he climbs the stair-ladder at the end of the galley, returning to the deck of the ship. Then, dutifully, I drop the tiny pewter plate back near the cook¡¯s table and go to find Sean.

    *

    His face drops when I ask him. That, I did not expect. ¡°When did he ask you?¡±

    In the pre-noon sun, with the light at his back, he doesn¡¯t look much like an Ildathach warrior. Swaddled beneath a scratchy black peacoat, his hands in his pockets, Sean looks, well, normal. He¡¯s leaning on the taffrail near the stern of the ship, out of the way of the general bustle of the deck. The furrows on his forehead deepen, and he folds his arms before continuing.

    ¡°Actually- it doesn¡¯t really matter. But also now the problem is these lot,¡± he grins winningly at someone behind me, and I turn to see a pair of sailors, ropes in hand, saunter by. His face drops back into seriousness as soon as they¡¯re out of earshot. ¡°Saw that you asked me. So now it¡¯s a bit awkward.¡±

    I¡¯m confused as to what the problem actually is. He just shakes his head slowly.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it. It¡¯s not actually a problem. The sailors want a go at the fighter, I¡¯m more than happy to give them a shot. But, in the future, just-¡°

    ¡°Just what?¡± I tilt my head, but don¡¯t say anything else. The aloofness is getting irritating.

    He sighs and shrugs, non-committal. ¡°Never mind. It¡¯s not your fault. I know you didn¡¯t mean it.¡±

    I could scream. I actually contemplate it, this time, cutting this condescension. I fold my arms and mirror his pose. ¡°Sean could you not treat me like a child for just one second?¡±

    He regards me for a moment, then frowns. ¡°Alright, let me flatten this out for you, then. There¡¯s two things you have to ask yourself. Why do they even want to fight at all? And why didn¡¯t they ask me directly? Could be a few things. Maybe they¡¯re bored. Maybe one of them lost a bet. Maybe, and here¡¯s what I think, maybe enough of them see the chance to inflate their egos by picking a fight with a soldier who is out of his element.¡±

    He fixes me with a hard stare, and continues in a patient deadpan.

    ¡°Beyond that, why would I say yes? I can only lose, right? Exhibition doesn¡¯t always mean some nice little demonstration. We¡¯re going to have a few rounds on the deck, maybe with more than a few people. And that means I¡¯m going to have to fight. More than once, until they tire me out and one of them gets lucky. And maybe, just maybe, I don¡¯t actually want to fight anyone today. Or most days, to make that perfectly clear.

    ¡°Beyond that, why ask you? Why not just approach me face-to-face? Well, maybe the crew had to draw straws and whoever it was was too cowardly to ask me. Or maybe they hoped you¡¯d ask me in public, on the deck, where other people could see. Because that shifts it from a friendly chat to something else. Now we have to think about me, as a gentleman, and the implication that this conversation has on my social standing.¡±

    I don¡¯t know what to say, and his expression thaws. A pit opens in my stomach.

    ¡°Look,¡± he holds up his hand, and for a moment I think he¡¯s going to place it on my shoulder. He does not. ¡°I know you didn¡¯t mean it with any ill intent. And I know you don¡¯t want anything bad to happen. So don¡¯t worry about it. I¡¯m being honest with you, it¡¯s not a big deal. I¡¯m not Iseult. I get it. Besides which,¡± a grin sweeps across his face, ending the conversation, ¡°maybe I¡¯m not going to lose.¡±

    *

    Exhibition, as I am rapidly learning, is a euphemism.

    Sean¡¯s first opponent is a wiry Ysian man with a flattened nose, and is gushing blood from his face and from a cut on his swelling lip. His bare chest is heaving. His torso is absolutely drenched in streaks of sweat and blood, rivulets which run over the burst of tattoos at his ribcage. They¡¯re both barefoot, though unlike his opponent Sean is dressed in a pair of smart blue breeches and a sleeveless shirt. I am extremely uncomfortable.

    The sailor¡¯s throat is thrumming with his heartbeat, snake-coil veins bulging under the ruddy skin of his neck and temples. The Sean I know is gone, replaced by this dead-eyed ghoul. I wonder if this is the Sean that Iseult met first, in the Aergan, and if the man I know is some lesser twin of the hateful creature before me. He meets his opponent, and eclipses him totally.

    By far the worst part is the noise. They¡¯re wearing gloves, thin things made of mangy leather. Sean is clenching a piece of moulded tree sap, an import from the Far Coast, between his teeth. His opponent is trying to do the same with a small rolled rag, which has by now turned almost scarlet. His sucking breaths leave his jaw wide open, so the rag has started to unfurl in his mouth.

    The sailor¡¯s hands are low, and Sean lashes down from above, slamming his fist into an exposed temple. He repeats the same punch, then the same again, and the sailor paws at Sean¡¯s fists in an attempt to defend himself. Even as the Gundog Walking rolls in the gentle sea, Sean balances himself to always be in front of his retreating opponent, always crashing against him. When the sailor¡¯s arms glue high to his forehead, warding against the blows, Sean kicks him on the inside of his leg. Stumbling, the sailor shuffles his leg, and earns a piston-kick to the chest. For a moment, the sailor rolls backwards and recovers in a sort of heaving crouch, and the two seem content in that heartbeat to simply stare at each other. He lashes out with a punch, aimed squarely at Sean¡¯s nose.

    I can hear the thud of the sailor¡¯s ribs compressing from the edge of the crowd. The crew was previously boisterous, though their merriment has diminished in the forty seconds or so that this fight has lasted. I have no idea how Sean is doing it, or what he is doing, but in the first few exchanges the skill difference between the two became clear. Now he has slowed from the onslaught he initially delivered, and is no longer raining down blows at a thundering pace. He is methodical and precise and awful. His expression is completely blank, cheeks marred only by a wide smear of the sailor¡¯s blood from when his opponent tried to pull him into a sort of lumbering wrestle.

    When the sailor ducks under one of Sean¡¯s punches, when he cannons his fist upwards with a shout, I realise that his exhaustion might have been a ruse. I can see the corded muscles in the sailor¡¯s feet, in his shoulders, and I watch in horror as the punch rips up at Sean¡¯s chin. Sean is simply not there. He has faded out of reach of the sailor, leaned his body in some minor way so that the punch doesn¡¯t land, could never have landed. With the same even expression he¡¯s been wearing the whole fight, Sean wraps a hand around the sailor¡¯s head, twists ever so slightly to rest one knee on the planking, and firmly seizes his opponent¡¯s ankle.

    The sailor yelps and flips over as Sean rips him off his feet, ramming hard into the deck. He fights wretchedly for air, failing breaths shallowly and spasmodically sawing from his blood-spattered lips. Sean kneels over him, and I imagine for one horrible second that he is about to begin mutilating the defenceless man. Instead, he wraps a thick hand around the sailor¡¯s head to keep it from hammering against the tarred wood of the deck, then rolls him over onto his side. A moment later he pries the bloody rag out of the sailor¡¯s mouth, saying something long and rhythmic. The crowd has stopped baying, now, and watch silently as the sailor¡¯s breathing normalises.

    Sean stands up, looks at the assorted crowd. He has the wide, open arms of a Saint. He is calm, soaked in blood and spit.

    The handful of sailors who had fancied themselves his potential opponents, four other stripped-down members of the crew, match his gaze but not his cruelty. Hate boils off of his voice when he speaks, in an unfamiliar, furious baritone.

    ¡°Anyone else?¡±

    The deck is quiet. The loblolly boy shoves his way through the press, and starts attending the battered sailor. No doubt the ship¡¯s doctor will arrive shortly. Perhaps he already made his way belowdecks, to prepare the little surgery near the bow of the Gundog Walking.

    Nobody responds. Sean shrugs, then pushes his way through the crowd. Several sailors rush to their bleeding friend, and most hastily make space for Sean, so he exits through an empty channel of murmuring crew members. He heads aft, and I follow. I have no idea where Iseult is. I didn¡¯t see her in the audience.

    None of the crew join us.

    He pauses, alone, at the barrels of saltwater that are always present on the rear decks. They¡¯re usually here, sloshing brine onto the deck, until occasionally they are cast on ropes behind the ship to be refilled by the ocean and hauled back aboard. Sean strips, shamelessly, and I look away quickly as he peels back first his shirt, then his breeches. Presumably, he washes himself, for when he speaks again he¡¯s redressed himself in the same clothes that he was just wearing. Salt water pools on the deck around his feet, mixing with bloody pink foam.

    ¡°What did you think?¡±

    His voice has yet to recover its friendly tone, which makes the sentence much worse. He studies me with the same unblinking stare that he was wearing when he brutalised the sailor. I scramble to say something clever, but in the moment I can think of nothing, and have no desire to say anything to this ghoul. Sean offers me a thin smile. I want my friend back.

    ¡°That¡¯s how I¡¯m going to get out of fighting the rest of them, by the way.¡±

    ¡°What is?¡±

    He waves, aimlessly, back towards the dispersing crowd. None of them have followed us. Plenty are looking at us, though.

    ¡°What I did back there. Taking his heart. It¡¯s something that I tell the people we train, but it¡¯s something you have to really practice to understand. You don¡¯t beat someone by just hitting them. It¡¯s about this,¡± a finger to his temple, ¡°and this,¡± and now to his heart. I notice, for the first time, that there¡¯s a mark on his cheekbone, a steadily reddening welt that he must¡¯ve picked up during the fight. I don¡¯t even remember seeing his opponent land a punch.

    The smile breaks on his face, and I see the old Sean start to re-emerge from the cracks. ¡°That guy was never the threat. It was her, Mate Morvyn.¡± She had been watching with the other combatants, all of her piercings removed. ¡°She was the ringleader. She wanted to use me to show off to the crew. Was going to wear me out with the other four, get me tired, then step in with me. That actually might have worked. So instead of playing her game, I brutalised her friend. Made her think that if she stepped in with me, I would break all of the bones in her face.¡±

    ¡°And would you?¡±

    He barks out a genuine, short laugh. ¡°Saints, no! Well, actually, maybe. I¡¯m tired, ¨ªde. That man was tough,¡± he massages the knuckles on his left hand, wincing. ¡°And they use such rubbish gloves! One more fight like that and I¡¯d be the one sucking wind on the floor.

    ¡°It¡¯s,¡± here he pauses and stares at the sea. I look as well, but see nothing. He continues, more slowly. ¡°It¡¯s not enough, just to fight. Most of the time it¡¯s better not to. When you get good at it, you want to solve all your problems by hitting them, which isn¡¯t normally a good idea. My dad told me that, ten years ago, but I didn¡¯t really understand that until recently. Not even after the war.¡±

    I ponder this, and he splashes his face with a handful of brackish saltwater.

    He looks at me strangely, and his eyes track slowly back to the horizon. ¡°I was never clever enough to take him that seriously. But then, maybe that¡¯s the point, that we can never learn any of the important lessons, unless they happen to us. Hopefully you¡¯ll be smarter than I am. Maybe his advice wasn¡¯t meant for a younger me. Maybe he knew it¡¯d take this long for me to figure it out.¡± He grins softly, the warm parts of his personality returning. ¡°But seriously, ¨ªde. That¡¯s the fight. The one you win in the heart. That¡¯s the one that matters.¡±

    Dead-faced Sean is gone. The man before me is my friend again, dripping saltwater onto the deck. He¡¯s sniffles, and submerges his entire head in the saltwater barrel. When he emerges, his rubs his face vigorously with his hands. ¡°I think in about half an hour I¡¯m going to have an unimaginable headache, so you might need to help me belowdecks in a bit.¡±

    ¡°I didn¡¯t even see you get hit!¡±

    He nods, winks. ¡°Like I said. Take the heart. That¡¯s the point.¡±

    *

    If there are any side-effects of the aborted fight event, I can¡¯t see any. The crew carries on like nothing happened, and even go out of their way to congratulate Sean when they see him. Of the battered sailor, there is no sign. As expected, Sean is jovial in his victory, and spends a great deal of time congratulating his opponent and pointing to the small bruise he¡¯s acquired on his face, or the way his knuckles alternate between angry blacks and purples. He doesn¡¯t actually retreat belowdecks, and if he¡¯s feeling any aftereffect from the fight he¡¯s concealing it perfectly.Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    When the whooping call goes out that another ship has been sighted, a tangible anxiety rankles the crew. I¡¯m on deck, watching small islands of noble rot drift across the empty sea, when I hear the sailor hanging on the rigging above. Further down the Gundog Walking, Mate Morvyn pulls out an Al Khazraj spyglass and focuses the cylinder on the bobbing shape on the stone-grey horizon. Half a minute later, Captain Holofernes strolls forward, coats billowing, and wraps her hands around the splintered railing.

    I don¡¯t precisely recognise the pattern that is scrawled across her eyepatch, but its potency is undeniable. Fire-charmed, obviously, but in a configuration or a combination of configurations that I¡¯m not familiar with. Half of the sigil is related somehow to magnetic fields. The other are a combination of burning and refining charms, presumably to warp the air in front of her and offer a sight far more potent than her baseline eyes can. It¡¯s inlaid in some matte material, not gold, not ivory, not incarnagris. Something lifeless, something that reflects the callous brutality of the ocean. The charm that¡¯s inlaid on that patch must¡¯ve cost hundreds of spirals.

    She squints at the ship-shaped smudge. We wait for a few breaths, before she barks out her order.

    ¡°Village Idiot. Ildathach ship. Fit a signalling tile.¡±

    One of the sailors sighs in relief and scurries away to retrieve the charm. I watch him pry the top off of a wooden box bolted to the mainmast, retrieving a charm that I recognise, because I wrote half a dozen of the things for the sailors during my down time. Nobody seems to notice his frowning uncertainty, save me.

    I pace towards him as he moves a grease pencil to the tile¡¯s edge, about a third of the way up. I pick up my pace.

    ¡°Wait, wait.¡±

    The deckhand looks up, but doesn¡¯t stop, and flips the tile over so he¡¯s not staring directly into it. The pencil is less than an inch away from activating the sigil.

    ¡°Wait!¡±

    He¡¯s about to make the mark. I¡¯m actually jogging, now, trying not to draw attention to his mistake while also making sure he doesn¡¯t erase several hours of careful sigilwork. The bird tattooed at his temples flexes as he grins at me, gap-toothed.

    ¡°Can I help you, ¨ªde?¡±

    I take a moment to compose myself, trying to harness some of Iseult¡¯s cool disdain when I gesture towards the tool in his hands. Just like ¨®engus, he didn¡¯t use my title. ¡°This is one of the new designs. You don¡¯t complete it like that. Or, you can, but it won¡¯t work nearly as well. Here.¡±

    He gives up the slate easily, and I flip it over to reveal its intricate geometries. Lighting charms are some of the most understood knotwork in Yvreathe, true, but I¡¯d be damned if I¡¯d waste my apprenticeship at Saint Listless¡¯ and inscribe something basic that any hedge-hexer could make.

    ¡°Look, for one thing you¡¯re holding it upside down. For two, there¡¯s a delay rune here,¡± I pluck the grease pencil from his hand and trace the air above the cluster of knots that I¡¯ve engraved on the right side of the sigil. ¡°And for three, you finish it like this.¡±

    I draw the pencil vertically down the tile, linking three circles from rim to rim before repeating the action, at half scale, with another group of knots to the right. I hand it back to him.

    ¡°You¡¯ve got about a minute and a half to mount that before it engages. It¡¯s also going to be brighter than the ones you¡¯ve been working with. Should burn a little hotter and longer as well.¡±

    He raises his eyebrows, then tilts his chin upwards in what I can only assume is a gesture of thanks. He scales the mast squirrel-quick. As I return to the taffrail, I notice that Captain Holofernes is staring at me, curiously. I absolutely do not meet her eye.

    The Village Idiot, which I can now see is a much larger ship that dwarfs the Gundog Walking, is sailing in the same direction as us. She¡¯s sidling slowly closer, by nature of our common destination, and is illuminated by her own knotwork lighting. Rapid semaphore flashes from the signalling platform mounted on her mast flicker across the empty sea. We send back our own responses- Captain Holofernes barks brief messages to a sailor, who then shouts them up the Gundog Walking¡¯s mast to our own signaller. Quiet strobes dart over miles of ocean, glinting off of slate-grey waves. At some point in the conversation, half the deck laughs at some joke from the Village Idiot. The signalling ends, for whatever reason, and we sail leisurely onwards, pacing our horizon-lodged cousin towards Inskoet.

    This ritual repeats with two, three then four other vessels as we draw closer to our destination. The density of ships is remarkable. On the first voyage, we spent two weeks at sea and never saw more than one ship at a time. Now, we¡¯ve built up a small squadron- the Village Idiot is by far the largest, for the remaining ships are yachts and smaller craft, ferrying dignitaries up to Inskoet. I am asleep when the island finally becomes close enough to spot, and by dawn it is it plainly visible, this strange little mountain that emerges from the waters a few dozen miles shy of the Torment.

    Inskoet is fog-shrouded, but savagely beautiful. Like most islands in northern waters, it is mostly formed from wild black stone, which fractures into razored configurations around its little coast. Complex arches and fissures erupt delicately from its frothing shoreline. The island proper, is much more solid- an immense black block that rises seemingly vertically out of the water, with few climbable slopes apparent. The harbour we are pointed at, marked not by warded buoys but by anchored ships, is situated at the bottom of one such trail. Life scrapes by on the blasted beaches, but becomes denser and more verdant higher up the cliffs. Great clouds of oilbirds and seagulls wheel about Inskoet, present in huge numbers and apparently bereft of natural predators. A verdant crown of grass and shrubs splits the dark island from the bruised sky. The vibrancy of the greenery is startling amidst the greys and the blacks.

    Even this far out, the changes that have been wrought on its geography are noticeable. Squat smokestacks puncture Inskoet¡¯s barren surface, thrusting skywards from little workshops and bunkhouses. I¡¯d never even heard of the island before Mister Tumble had mentioned it, and after searching through the library at Saint Listless¡¯ all I really discovered was that it was previously a useless, guano-sodden rock near the wobbling edge of the Torment. Now a harbour big enough for six ships has been blasted or constructed into the stone. There must be scores of men and women there! I crane my neck looking for the cannon, the moon-killer, but cannot see it.

    The Gundog Walking grumbles underfoot as it drifts into a loose formation with the other ships slowly gliding towards the port. Rumbling footsteps from the anxious crew bang and roll over her empty, cavernous hold. Half an hour of quiet jostling later, a sailor calls out.

    "Captain! Yacht approaching! Looks serious."

    He''s not joking. There¡¯s a black craft cutting towards us, from Inskoet, growing larger by the second. She''s quick. She''s not slowing down. Her own mast is crowned, insanely, with a halo of fire, a blossoming ring that looks like it belongs on an airship. There, on the deck- is that?

    It is. I''d recognise those broad shoulders and that frantic waving anywhere. Mister Tumble has come to greet us.

    *

    We sail to the dock, and the water around the Gundog Walking has that same low sparkling that it did the day we cast the fishing net on the way back from Brixa Thalaam. Mister Tumble¡¯s vessel, a slick little yacht called the Feist and Calico, cuts through the sea before us. It is presumably powered by that insane, tempered halo, which Iseult concurs looks exactly like an airship ring. The handful of crew on his boat are wearing hats, though Mister Tumble is not, and his hair is clearly being pulled skyward by the tug of that engine. There¡¯s something beautiful about the way the sun and the waves crash brutally against the shore. I mention this to Iseult, as we wait for the ship to be secured to its berth.

    ¡°The sea looks like the day they hauled that giant skate from the ocean, when we were coming back to Ildathach. Do you remember?¡±

    She looks at me strangely. ¡°No.¡±

    Oh. Well.

    The gun looms at the top of this exact hill. It¡¯s smaller than I expected, but is still intimidatingly large and easily the tallest structure on the island. A cathedral¡¯s spire, cast in steel, spiked at an angle into the rock of Inskoet. Feeder lines, pistons, steel braces, and a score of other contrivances twist around its bulk, then snake off into distant bunkers or chemical containers. There¡¯s a compartment, almost near the open barrel, which must be for Iseult¡¯s strangely-charmed targeting apparatus. Down the shaft, near the very bottom and the breech, should be a similar hollow for us to slot the glyphs we manufactured. A pair of railway tracks stretch for yards behind the iron hillock of its base, capped by tremendous metal breakers. I¡¯ve never seen anything like it.

    Our harbour is ringed entirely in a layer of sand so dark that I initially thought that, for whatever inscrutable engineering reason, Colt & Tumble had painted it black. It is dotted here and there with pebbles and fist-sized rocks, which share that same midnight lustre. The overall effect creates a strange trick of the eyes, as dark-clad men and women seem to merge with the landscape, highlighted only by the flashes of their hands and faces. A handful of rugged plants carve out bleak and hardy lives on the black beach. Mister Tumble, who welcomes us onto shore after first departing from his own vessel, seems completely unfazed by the terrain. He¡¯s dressed in gentleman¡¯s attire, and does not care at all about the mess of mud and dirt that cakes his shoes and the lower quarter of his trousers. I took Iseult¡¯s advice back in Ildathach and brought calf-high travelling boots, and am glad to have done so. Even Sean has shucked his dress shoes, and is dressed at a halfway point between a ranger and a coffee-shop socialite. He¡¯s stopped sniffing, and has chosen to now blow his nose into an actual kerchief.

    The handful of other people on this street have taken similar practical precautions against the island muck, and Mister Tumble¡¯s desire to continue to dress as an Ildathach gentleman makes him a unique figure amidst the more pragmatic men and women of Inskoet. He takes the time to shake hands and greet every person who is even remotely near him, and summons a handful from across the street simply by shouting their names and gesturing affably. After rapidly directing his aide to lead Captain Holofernes and her crew to their accommodations, he¡¯d neatly cleaved us from the mass of sailors and marched us up the hill, towards the cannon.

    Theoretically, at the very least Professor O¡¯Tierney from the Violet Manor should also be on Inskoet, though perhaps she has not arrived yet. Neither Iseult nor I have been asked to help with the firing sequence, and it¡¯s unlikely that the Wine Party will be able to activate the cannon without one of the three of us. I hope she¡¯s here. It would be good to see her and the alchemists.

    Mister Tumble waves us forward after enthusiastically greeting the last group of passers-by. "Come! Come! Miss Colt awaits! She is very excited to meet you. And I''m very excited to pay you!" He laughs at this remark, slapping Sean hard on the back. His other hand remains in his coat, sheltered from the occasional brisk breeze. Iseult rolls her eyes, when she knows Mister Tumble isn¡¯t looking.

    He leads us uphill to a single-story cabin, a utilitarian collection of reinforced fungalboard planking that looks significantly older than the rest of the building we¡¯ve seen along the way. I¡¯m out of breath by the time we make it to the front door. The black hill is steep. Years of salted breeze have stripped large swathes of the cabin¡¯s paint, and it creaks and bows under our weight as we make our way up the short steps and onto the raised veranda.

    We¡¯re ushered through a simple, unlocked door. Sean cracks a quiet joke to Mister Tumble, and is rewarded with a hearty guffaw and a tremendous, spine-shaking back slap. The corridor is narrow and claustrophobic, with no lanterns or lighting wards. My surprise, and its accompanying little bout of anxiety, are tempered by how relaxed Sean and Iseult seem to be.

    Actually, now that I know her better and really understand what to look for, I notice that Iseult¡¯s shoulders are tensed, her hands gently curled.

    Where is he taking us?

    We make our way to the very end of the dark, damp hall, and our host opens a squeaky, unguarded door. Once again- no lock. No staff. He beams at me, ushers us through with a flourish, and I¡¯m greeted by an improbable sight.

    Thus far the building has been constructed with the thoughtful pragmatism of a surveyor¡¯s post. Its walls are thick, and its windows small, and it could easily be used as a bunker instead of an office. This room, then, is dislocated. White floorboards, visible only at the fringes of an immense Al Khazraj rug, sweep across the entire hall-like expanse. The far wall, which must be two thirds of the width of the entire building, has been plastered floor to ceiling with paintings. Landscapes from across the continent, from Yvreathe to Khazraj. A splash of more exotic colorations, Far Coast vistas. Many of the canvases are taller than I am.

    It¡¯s mesmerising. No maps, no portraits, just waves and cliffs and trees and meadows. Occasionally, a view of the sea: fleets of ships with beautiful, startling sails, glistening under gorgeous skies. Even Iseult seems impressed.

    Placed at the centre of this immense wall of paintings is a wooden desk. Placed at the centre of this desk is a woman.

    She doesn''t move when we enter; her hand hovers over an open notebook, delicately tracing the air above the page. An aide, dressed all in black, is standing at a corner of the desk. He is stooped over what might be a pair of topographical maps, each held down by a separate hand. A single orchid in a slim black vase marks a halfway point between them. He looks up as we enter, and regards us coldly. As soon as Mister Tumble sweeps into the room, he bends down and speaks into the woman¡¯s ear.

    Although I¡¯ve been told that Wynne Colt possesses a peculiar gravity in certain social circles within Yvreathe, I¡¯d personally never heard of her before becoming involved with Colt & Tumble. Her hair is cropped at chin-level, brown-black and just barely touching a dark-patterned ribbon fastened around her neck. She¡¯s wearing a simple white blouse, her left shirt-sleeve and hand smudged by hours of penwork. Behind her, affixed to various hooks, are the remainder of her outfit: a jacket, benthic blue and chased in gold, a cerise length of cloth to be affixed at her waist, and a fashionable, shortened cavalry sabre.

    She reaches the bottom of the page and taps the paper in satisfaction. She still hasn''t looked up yet. This doesn¡¯t prevent her from speaking to us. Or, rather, at us.

    ¡°The only delay for the entire Inskoet Gun construction has been from a Crowmere vessel, the Hitherto Charming, which apparently lost a small portion of her cargo when it struck a submarine rotberg. It was carrying nonessential supplies, the loss of which put us approximately a week behind schedule.¡± From behind me, I hear a snort of disgust from Mister Tumble. Miss Colt continues:

    "Things are, therefore, proceeding quite well. This particular endeavour has been in motion for some months. You''ve been invited to assist us at the end of a rather interesting time for us at Colt & Tumble. Admittedly, and I must say this is in contrast to my own professional philosophies, you''ve been integrated more intimately with our workings than a normal contractor would be. Still, you have succeeded in the tasks we¡¯ve employed you for, and for that I am grateful. Your reward."

    Her scrivener sweeps forward and withdraws a key the size of a thumbnail from inside of his coat pocket. He walks smartly to a steel safe and extracts a heavy black envelope. Catlike, he pads to our side of the room before handing it to Iseult. She accepts it, respectfully, and says nothing.

    Wait. That''s it?

    Even Mister Tumble is uncharacteristically quiet. Miss Colt glances up at us for the first time and raises an eyebrow. Her look is a combination of bored and dreamlike, and her gaze wanders, rather than flicks, between us.

    "Yes?"

    Questions foam up, unbidden. I clench my jaw to tamp to them down. Where to start? What¡¯s the point? Why a huge cannon? Why don¡¯t we have this kind of weapon in Ildathach? Why not use airships? Why here, so far north of the continent? What was the debt she acquired with ¨¡breen il Kutrib, doing whatever it is she did in the Wraithwild?

    I am appalled by my own inability to speak. In the end, it is Iseult who saves me, when she clears her throat. Sean reaches sideways, almost delicately, and touches a fingertip to her sleeve. Iseult shrugs him off, irked.

    ¡°What is this really about?¡± She asks.

    Blessed relief.

    Miss Colt sighs. Iseult has her full attention now, and her black-clad assistant quietly rolls his charts into a pair of matching leather cases. The boredom leeches from Miss Colt¡¯s face, and her expression sharpens as she regards Iseult with a steadily increasing interest.

    Her scrutiny reminds me of Captain Holofernes¡¯, without the impression of rancour. She makes a sort of mirror with Iseult, and I realise with a start the similarities between both women- not in physical appearance, but perhaps in force of personality.

    "I must admit, I do try not to humour contractors. Not as a matter of offence, of course. It¡¯s just always fully explaining myself to everyone would occupy a surprisingly large portion of my time. But it has been rather a long day. If you¡¯ll suffer me to answer your question with a question of my own, I think I can illuminate things a bit further for you.¡± She speaks with that sort of portentous Ildathach elegance, the smooth idiolect that Sean employs when he¡¯s not talking to us.

    ¡°Please, indulge me," her eyes narrow, "what do you think is the greatest threat to Ildathach? The city, her ouncelands, her territories. All of it."

    That takes me by surprise. Sean speaks first, rummaging to regain some semblance of control of the conversation. His answer comes out confidently.

    ¡°Al Khazraj.¡±

    She gives him a stare that¡¯s splashed, very lightly, with pity. Her eyes lock with mine, and I do my best to try to blend into the floor. Now she flicks her gaze back to Iseult, who says nothing. Faced with a wrong answer and two abstentions, she sighs and continues talking.

    "The Far Coast," Miss Colt says, and here her face shifts. Lamplight, clean and stark, darkens the shadows on her face.

    "Cabochon. Have you ever been?¡± She pauses, looking for a reaction. ¡°No, I thought not. It¡¯s not really our city, you understand. The Tecuani, they let us keep it, partly for their amusement but mostly for the livestock we sell to them. There are few prey animals left for them to eat, you see, save turkeys and crocodiles. But the city could be taken away at a moment. I have been meeting with the cats and their slaves for the last two decades. No matter what you hear from the Ildathach gentry,¡± her eyes travel to regard both Sean and Mister Tumble, ¡°they are not afraid of us.

    ¡°When the War Hosts gathered in the Aergan and marched against us, we defeated them. I know that you¡± her hand drifts up, and bounces between Iseult and Sean, ¡°are aware of why- not the individuals, or the technology, or whatever else is in vogue these days to extoll the Chaplain or the aristocracy. Rather, the organisation. The ability to place those men and women where they needed to be, and to give them everything they need to fulfil their duty. It¡¯s a lesson that our city learned after centuries of conflict with Ys and Crowmere and Caronek and the Khazraj states. It¡¯s a lesson that we¡¯ll have to employ again, when war visits this continent, in the coming decades. Human wars are understandable. A vile science. But we do have some practice.

    ¡°The Tecuani,¡± she spits the word like an insult. ¡°They broke us. First they slaughtered us in Cabochon, when we thought they were just unusually clever animals. Then they summoned the Calamity on Ildathach, forced us to sign their slapdash, idiot treaty as an afterthought, and let us keep our city in the jungle for their own merriment. We thought we could kill them with swords and knotwork, and they slaughtered us. The worst part is, if they were human, they would have crushed us so completely that Ildathach would be theirs to take. Tecuani banners would fly over the Chaplain¡¯s Office. Their slave gangs would clog our streets. But they couldn¡¯t be bothered. We were defeated and humiliated by an enemy that is so carefree it doesn¡¯t even realise how easily it could¡¯ve ground us to dust. Or, worse, perhaps they did understand, and they decided not to, on a whim.

    ¡°There¡¯s something in the dirt of the Far Coast that doesn¡¯t exist here. We see glimmers of something similar at the Shorn Peak, where the world bends beyond our knowledge of science or magic. The Far Coast is home to natural laws so far beyond our understanding of sigilwork that we have no shred of protection against them. The Tecuani know this, they utilise these aberrations, but we are just as ignorant as we were when we first met them. You understand this, yes? The Calamity happened not because of some great effort from their part, not because of some titanic wartime project. They did it on impulse, because they know things and have tools that we cannot comprehend. We hashed out a peace not because of the threat of our military, but because of the brevity of the attention span of a mob of animals we barely understand.

    ¡°Every citizen of Ildathach has an obligation to our people. That is what this is about. We built a gun the size of a Saint¡¯s spire. Fed it gorgeous new explosives. Crowned it in magic. Why? Despite what you may have been told, we could have designed new balloons. Calculated wind, transit vectors, floated explosives to the new moon. It¡¯s theoretically possible. But what''s the point? Does using old technologies teach us at all about the hidden laws of the world? Do you know what kind of advances we''ve made here? Metal that takes that kind of blast, sigils that can tune ammunition to hunt specific parts of the stone. The Wine Party modified that barrel in a way that, as far as their experiments suggest, burns magnetism as an accelerant!

    "This is our duty. Advance or die. I will not wait while Ildathach¡¯s preening politics limps us to impotence, until those vile cats have a change of heart and disappear us beneath another Calamity. The Dunaidh Family has forgotten its obligations to its people, so we shall fulfil those tasks for them. We can¡¯t defeat the cats with magic, not yet. But I am doing what I know, in any way I can, and I pray that it will be enough for when Tecuani eyes refocus on Ildathach."

    The monologue ends. My compatriots are stilled. Sean, ashen-faced, says nothing. Iseult is smiling.

    "Oh," Miss Colt¡¯s head tilts up, and her eyes fixate on the ceiling. "Also, our daguerreotypes very strongly suggest that the quantity of material in the moon is sufficient to entirely crash the commodities market of Ildathach and Crowmere combined. Not our intention, you understand. But, after we kill and strip that moon, we''ll be very, very rich."

    She turns her head to ask her aide something quietly, and gets a single sentence reply. Her hand snakes down under the desk, withdraws a worn green leather ledger. She cracks it open and peers down at the pages. "Second round safety tests show no signs of failure, as of eight hours ago. Installing your equipment should realistically take only twelve hours of actual labour, which means we''ll be concluded with safety checks and cleared to fire in, oh, six days?"

    I jump, almost out of my boots, as the silence behind me erupts in a loud exclamation. Mister Tumble is here, has been here the whole time. I¡¯d almost forgotten. He¡¯s never been quiet for longer than a minute or two.

    "Preposterous! Ridiculous! Absolutely not! We launch tomorrow!"

    One stomping footstep and he is beside me, furious energy shivering from his frame. You don¡¯t notice his bulk until it becomes potentially threatening. His breakneck posture is diminished by his pocketed hands, like he¡¯s consciously trying to control his anger.

    Nobody says anything. Nobody speaks. Mister Tumble and Miss Colt don''t look away from each other. The black-clad assistant''s aloofness has dissipated, and he almost imperceptibly shifts his weight to his back foot. My palms start sweating.

    She speaks first. Doesn''t blink, doesn''t break her stare. "I suppose that we will be suited for a launch in two days¡¯ time, after this equipment has been installed and the second round of safety checks has been completed. You can imagine we are all," the next word comes out with a certain deliberateness, "thrilled, to see the gun in action."

    Poor assistant. The only thing moving in the room are his eyes, flicking between the two of them like a metronome.

    *

    Compared to the cramped room in the Gundog Walking, the lodgings we¡¯ve been given on Inskoet are palatial. There¡¯s a lot of real estate available on a mostly uninhabited island, when you¡¯re not hemmed in by bilge pumps and tarred planking. For all its bulk, Colt & Tumble¡¯s harbours, bunkhouses, and the moon-killing gun itself cover scarcely a fifth of the surface of Inskoet.

    During the walk to the cabin, Mister Tumble spent an unbroken five minutes apologising for the state of the lodgings. His thunderclap rage dissipated as soon as he stepped out of Miss Colt¡¯s building. When describing our quarters, he painted a fairly dismal picture of a packed workhouse cabin, or a shared room the size of an under-stairs wardrobe. I didn¡¯t mind particularly, of course, and said as much as we tromped through the muddy road. My room in the Lugrough Club is scarcely larger than the cabin that we stayed in on the ship, and I shared a room with my mother for my entire life until I received the scholarship from Saint Listless¡¯.

    We¡¯ve actually been allocated a chateau with three private bedrooms, each larger than the cabin we shared on the ship. Mister Tumble¡¯s dire warnings of the size and quality of our lodgings were so vivid and remorseful that I thought he lead us up to this massive building as a joke. After he unlocked the front door tossed the keys to Sean, he had again apologised, head bowed.

    The space is massive, and immaculate. There aren¡¯t even any moths.

    Sean assures Mister Tumble that the lodgings are absolutely terrific, and I notice his eyebrow twitch just slightly when Iseult says that she could do with some food from the manager¡¯s rations. After Mister Tumble departed, in a storm of promises about the bounty of food he (or a trusted confidant) would return with, Sean had watched his retreating frame and turned, flabbergasted, to Iseult.

    She just shrugged. ¡°I just wanted to see if that would work.¡±

    It even smells clean, which is no small feat for a log cabin built on a hill on a remote island. Sean shakes his head, bemused, then gestures out the window, past the heavy wooden shutters.

    ¡°Aren¡¯t you worried he¡¯s going to poison the food?¡± he asks, half-grinning.

    ¡°You can¡¯t possibly trust him,¡± Iseult snarls back, mirthless.

    ¡°Fine, Saints, fine. Probably wouldn¡¯t have the time, anyway.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not convinced he sleeps.¡±

    She says it like she¡¯s shutting a book. Sean looks pained, then shrugs. That genial armour returns.

    ¡°You know that this place,¡± he twirls a finger to indicate all of Inskoet, ¡°originally used to be just a solid mass of birds and guano?¡±

    I did not. I say this.

    ¡°It¡¯s true. Ten, twenty years ago. One of the first things Colt & Tumble ever did as a company. This would be back in the day, when Wynne Colt¡¯s dad was running everything. Scraped together enough money for a little trip up north on a hare-brained search for an island of gold near the Torment. An island, sadly, that doesn¡¯t exist. Basically bankrupted the entire clan. They sighted Inskoet, moored here, and realised that the island was effectively just a solid mountain of faeces.¡±

    Uncharacteristically, Iseult laughs. ¡°Sounds disgusting. Can¡¯t imagine any Ildathach nobility wading through waist-deep bird shit.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve seen the drawings. Try three stories of bird shit. Turns out he found the place right when some alchemist in Crowmere realised that certain types of guano could be chemically treated, cheaply, into almost perfect fertiliser. Wynne Colt¡¯s dad expected to sail back to Ildathach in disgrace. A decade later, after they¡¯d scraped the entire island clean¡­ well there¡¯s a reason why Colt & Tumble had enough money to get into mining. And now here we are. They donated the land to Ildathach, after looting it. Very magnanimous. But nobody really cares what happens, this far away from the continent and the major sea lanes.¡±

    I glance again out of the window, at the rich greenery that swells around us and the iron-grey sea beyond. I try to imagine it all under a glacier of bird droppings, and shudder at the thought. Iseult, apparently arrives at the same conclusion, and makes an expression like she¡¯s just smelled something foul.

    ¡°So if you don¡¯t think he¡¯s planning something dangerous, surely you have to admit that that business was abnormal.¡±

    There¡¯s no reason for her to elaborate on that point further. We all saw the way that Mister Tumble rose against Miss Colt. I felt the wrath ringing off of him when she suggested a delay in the timeline. Sean closes his eyes and leans back, his chair creaking as his weight shifts.

    ¡°I don¡¯t disagree. I¡¯m not convinced he¡¯s doing something inherently evil. I just think he¡¯s¡­ strange. Obsessed. I cannot imagine him performing something devilish, for no reason.¡±

    Iseult scowls. ¡°Then you are a fool.¡±

    His eyes are still closed, and he frowns. There¡¯s a moment as if he¡¯s about to say something, but he thinks better of it. Iseult, hackles still raised, focuses instead on me. ¡°And you, ¨ªde?¡±

    I pretend to make a show of considering it, and look down at the traceries of black scars on my hands. In truth, I¡¯ve been thinking about it nonstop ever since I felt the crackle in the Colt & Tumble office. It takes me longer than I expected to figure out how to articulate my response.

    ¡°I don¡¯t think I have enough information,¡± I see Iseult start to swell in anger, so finish as quickly as possible. ¡°I certainly believe Mister Tumble is acting strangely.¡± She deflates, ever so slightly.

    ¡°But also, I¡¯m not sure what else to do. The contract is over. They have the equipment, built to the specifications they requested. We¡¯ve been paid. But it¡¯s not like we can leave, because no boats will be leaving before the hunting day. If we trust them or not, they¡¯re going to hunt the moon. And unless we put forth the payment to charter a boat back to Ildathach, and find a captain here who is willing to miss the show we¡¯re going to be here when they do it. Plus, Sean mentioned that the guest list seemed exceptionally notable. I don¡¯t think even Colt & Tumble could get away with doing anything outrageously dangerous, with so many people watching.¡±

    Iseult, miraculously, is actually considering my words. No retort. No barbs. No insults or counter-arguments or any of that, nothing. Sean¡¯s eyes are open, and he¡¯s staring blankly at the ceiling. He speaks dreamily, like he¡¯s remembering something.

    ¡°Wynne Colt is an interesting woman. She enjoys both art and explosives. Has a bit of a thing for moments of glory, I suppose.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s quite poignant,¡± says Iseult, respectfully.

    ¡°Ah, well. To be honest I stole that from a friend of mine. Drustan Tilian, who I believe you both know.¡±

    I can actually hear Iseult roll her eyes. ¡°Drustan Tilian is a cretinous, vacuous rake. He is a staph infection of a person.¡±

    ¡°Yes, and you just called him remarkably poignant. He still asks about you, by the way.¡±

    We sit in a good-natured silence until a thunderous pounding at the front door jolts us out of our seats. Evin Tumble, returning. He has in his possession a large basket of victuals that he passes reverently to Iseult. He politely and comprehensively declines our invitation to dine together (Sean and I¡¯s invitation, at least). When he marches briskly back out of the front door of the lodgings, I watch him from a shuttered window. He does not abandon his blistering pace until he disappears, some hundred yard further uphill, behind some other building.

    When I turn to report this to Sean, he is already in the process of wolfing down a slab of smoked fish he has unwrapped from the hamper. He¡¯s already eating something else while he¡¯s already eating, and has extracted a boiled north sea crab from the depths of this remarkable basket, and alternates between breaking its steaming remnants into edible chunks and devouring forkfuls of fish. I join him, for there is something about his zest for food which fully draws the attention of my stomach and ignites my own hunger.

    Iseult plucks an apple from the basket, then slowly and methodically eats the entire thing- core included.

    In the evening we retire to our private rooms. Before saying goodnight, Iseult makes a quip about not having to listen to me talk in my sleep anymore. It takes me hours to fall asleep, after hearing that.

 Chapter 16: Sean

    Sean

    Two days pass, slower than expected. I spend my time bouncing between ¨ªde and Iseult and the various echelons of the Ildathach upper crust that have started to trickle north to Inskoet. Evin has done something rather curious, in his rush to advance the actual day we hunt the moon. In Ildathach, Colt & Tumble has claimed the moon will be shot down on date about a week from now, rather than this new aggressive timeline that Wynne Colt has agreed to. The end result is that only the more bored, adventurous, or punctual members of Ildathach¡¯s aristocracy are likely to be here on the actual firing date. Such an oversight is surprising, and unexpected.

    Iseult isn¡¯t done, isn¡¯t willing to let go of her suspicions. Every day, she spends at least an hour studying the great moon-cannon from afar. She¡¯s realised that I sincerely do not believe that Evin is up to anything overwhelmingly nefarious, and has decided to shift this mistrust onto his partner.

    ¡°Do you believe what Colt told us?¡± She asks, when we¡¯re putting on our coats to join ¨ªde for lunch. ¡°About the cats of the Far Coast?¡±

    This is shakier ground, I think. I¡¯ll concede that Colt & Tumble are hiding something, potentially a great deal of somethings, I just don¡¯t believe that these machinations will create problems for specifically us. But the idea that Colt is driven through some sort of cultural grudge against the Tecuani- that is a bit harder to swallow.

    Conversely, the profit motive does seem rather neatly predictable. So maybe this is all just about some deep sense of hate.

    My ring catches on the inside of my coat, and I shuffle and push my hand through the sleeve. ¡°Sorry Iseult. I¡¯m not actually sure on that one. But no, I¡¯m not sure that Wynne Colt really wants to spend probably millions of spirals to shoot down a flying mountain, just because she thinks that it will give Ildathach some edge on some future showdown with the Tecuani. Why? What do you think?¡±

    She looks at me like I¡¯m stupid. I¡¯ve seen it a hundred times before, and remain unruffled. She doesn¡¯t even need to speak; not only does she not trust Evin Tumble, she doesn¡¯t trust anything even tangentially related to him, Wynne Colt included.

    I wonder where I fit in this her judgement of people¡¯s motives and honesty. I know I must be in there somewhere. Hopefully on the ¡®honest¡¯ side.

    After lunch, which is a two-course affair of salt fish and roasted gulls, I leave ¨ªde and Iseult as they set about some small sigilry in Iseult¡¯s cabin. Something to do with a tarot reading, ¡®for calibration¡¯. I know better than to ask for a more thorough explanation, and walk out to green, blustery Inskoet. At the top of our hill looms the gun, which seems far too spindly for the job we¡¯re expecting of it. This far north, the sun is so swaddled by cloud cover that the weapon¡¯s skeletal frame is obscured by foggy shadows, even at mid-day. The weapon is attended by a handful of slow-moving figures, tiny against its cheerless silhouette.

    I wonder why we couldn¡¯t have this sort of thing in Ildathach proper. Would¡¯ve made the Aergan uprisings a bit different. I fold my arms and feel the salt breeze ruffle my hair, watching a great oilbird flock wheel slowly above the cannon.

    A precise cough eventually jolts me back to attention. I turn and spy a group of Ildathach gentry who are, in the politest way possible, staring at me. Like all of us, save Evin Tumble, they have hybridised their aristocratic garb with more pragmatic footwear. Of the trio, I recognise two: Lady O¡¯Conchobar and her husband. The third is unfamiliar.

    I wave, make my way to them, and crash into their chat like a tree falling. Thus ingratiated (the third man¡¯s name is Benen Tilian, and he is indeed a cousin of Drustan¡¯s), we make our way down the slope to Inskoet¡¯s one functioning social hall.

    It¡¯s a cyclical thing, then- I¡¯m useless for knotwork, so opt instead to join or indeed create a party where there was none prior. This is the third time it¡¯s happened, since being reunited with Iseult and meeting ¨ªde.

    *

    There were lamps. So many lamps. Oilbirds are cheap and plentiful on Inskoet, and oil presses were one of the first things Colt & Tumble built when it started constructing this little industrial outpost. It¡¯s a charming effect, to be constantly bathed in warm amber, and to be surrounded by merry Ildathach socialites. An excellent use of an evening. At the beginning, before we make significant headway into the gallons of alcohol that have been brought to the island, there is food. Haggis with a whisky sauce. Seaweed mayonnaise, coarse bread, braised pig cheeks.

    ¡°Another drink, perhaps?¡±

    I glance down, surprised at my empty glass. Ildathach¡¯s jolly whisky has spread even here, to chilly Inskoet.

    Evin Tumble himself appeared, for only half an hour, at some point before midnight. I remember that despite the fact that I resisted drinking at the beginning of the party, by the end I have once again fallen into that slick and easy rhythm. I meet and wheel with dozens of men and women. My conversations are loud and reflexive. I can recall none of them.

    I return to the cabin alone, to the idiot calling of morning gulls, having appeared at the front door without remembering precisely how I got there. There¡¯s a lonely ship leaving the harbour, lit by sun-sigils and a single warm oil lamp. Who precisely would leave Inskoet now, a day before the shot?

    And then it is the day that we kill the moon, and I nurse my hangover and my cold and elect this time to stay close to my actual friends.

    *

    According to Captain Holofernes, who explained this concept to me with a certain unnecessary density of innuendo, Inskoet itself is a fairly interesting geographical oddity. It¡¯s obviously the tip of a mountain that¡¯s somehow sprouted out of the ocean, and is slightly warmer than basically everything else around it. Normally, the seabed around the coast will dip very gently before plunging, abruptly, into the frightful abyss of the deep ocean. Not so with Inskoet, where we can sail a quarter of the way to the horizon and still weigh anchor. A nice little quirk of the sea, and actually useful for what we¡¯re accomplishing today.

    Also according to Captain Holofernes, when the sea is quiet like this, and when all of our best predictors suggest that no storm is likely, it¡¯s possible for a group of ships to anchor themselves in close proximity and lash themselves together, creating a massive floating raft that is comprised of all manner of different sized vessels. The ships still flex, still rub and groan against each other, and great pains have been taken to protect their hulls from wear.

    I¡¯m not entirely sure how ships work, so I have no idea what the technical term for this gigantic raft is. But it seems to be working quite well. Captain Holofernes is happy, at least, and I know better than to potentially jeopardise the situation with further questions. The last time I saw her, she had been caustically berating a hapless pair of Ildathach aristocrats who had made some probably trivial misstep aboard the Gundog Walking. She¡¯d winked at me as I¡¯d climbed up the temporary ladder to the centre of this raft of lashed-together ships, and had returned to what I understand now to be one of her favourite hobbies: abusing various hapless peoples who have made the mistake of wandering onto her vessel. I leave earshot just as she begins a particularly withering diatribe at an aghast Ildathach Countess, which begins with the phrase ¡®You aimless, thimble-rigged scrimshanker...¡¯.

    We¡¯re aboard the Village Idiot, by far the largest vessel in our little armada. Her deck is busy with a swelling collection of Colt & Tumble workers, Ildathach bourgeoisie, and a handful of more exotic aristocrats from the Wraithwild and Khazraj. This crowd spills onto several other vessels too, and I watch as sailors on the Gundog Walking grumble and shove their way through the new arrivals. I myself have chosen not to wear the clothes of an Ildathach gentleman- mostly to avoid highlighting myself amongst the crowd, and minimising the risk of having to speak with anyone from last night. The physical side effects of the partying are mostly gone, though the sea is not helping my nausea. Sadly, the sense of regret spawned by the drinking has not yet begun to decay. I blow my nose into a handkerchief, and take a swig of the absurdly thick potion that I prepared to blunt the force of my hangover. A modification of a Nan Murphy special: molasses, salt, burnt earth, and whisky.

    The Village Idiot is an older ship, battered by years of salt and sea worms. She¡¯s been lashed to three other ships- our own Gundog Walking, a merchant vessel called the Summerlong, and a small, slick clipper dubbed I Prefer the Grave. This little boat, captained by a talkative captain by the name of Fiachra, hosts a single Al Khazraj dignitary from the Hubal Queendom. Captain Fiachra does his best to maintain a mysterious air while shooing various civilians from his own deck, directing them instead to the rest of the armada. Behind us, on the other side of the Summerlong, lurks the Feist and Calico, Evin¡¯s personal yacht.

    I notice more than one sailor stare apprehensively at the currently powered-down halo that hovers above the boat¡¯s single mast. Another sleek black yacht, on the far side of the raft and almost diametrically opposite to Evin¡¯s, also sports an inert flame wreath. That must be Wynne Colt¡¯s.

    After spending only a few weeks on the Gundog Walking, I find myself able to pick out a surprising number of differences between the Village Idiot and Captain Holofernes¡¯ ship. Size, of course, but also the configuration of the rigging and the demeanour of the crew. The sailors on this vessel, greater in number though more uniform in appearance than the crew I¡¯m used to, had laughed when one of the Ildathach aristocrats scurried up one of the masts to watch from the Village Idiot¡¯s crow¡¯s nest. Up that high, even lashed together in this wide creaking raft, the sea-sickness for anyone but a sailor would be unbearable. I can imagine the dilemma she¡¯s in, hemmed in by pride on one side and horrendous queasiness on the other.

    The crew¡¯s schadenfreude will certainly not be sated, however, because there¡¯s no chance at all she¡¯ll vomit in sight of anyone. In fact, it¡¯s far more likely that the main victim of this event will be the unlucky sailor who inspects the crow¡¯s nest after the socialite hastily makes her escape down the rigging.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

    We all look east, eyes locked on Inskoet, but the dark island is almost lost in the sleek dimness of the ocean. It¡¯s mid-afternoon, yet the dismal waters in the north sea blend with the leaden sky and the overall effect smudges Colt & Tumble¡¯s outpost against the horizon. Even her crown of greenery is surprisingly difficult to make out from this distance. Without the merry oil lamps of the buildings, or the crown of seabirds that perpetually circles the island, it¡¯d be near impossible to spot.

    There¡¯s a small murmur from the crowd when the first immense beacon activates on Inskoet, creating a visible pillar of light even during the day. Three others are eventually ignited, and begin dragging like fingers across the sky. Workers on the island must find them near blinding. Iseult leans over to inform ¨ªde and me that the lights have certain interestingly charmed properties. Each has a fiery chemical core of lime, harmonised with alchemical mixtures and a series of Al Khazraj optical lenses and light sigils. She and ¨ªde didn¡¯t work on them directly, but the technology is something that is apparently quite impressive.

    Even these ferociously burning lamps have limits. The light columns eventually dissipate to nothingness as they stab into the afternoon sky, all converging at the same nexus, midway to the horizon and several miles overhead. A scarce minute after the last judders and locks into place, the new moon begins to peek over the horizon, almost invisible against the sky. I would not have spotted it were it not from the whooping call from a sailor in the rigging overhead. All heads turn to follow that outstretched finger.

    The crowd is getting thicker. A knot of chattering tourists beside us murmur their discontent as a sailor pushes her way through them. ¨ªde looks over, then back to Iseult. ¡°Clear the space,¡± she murmurs to Iseult. Iseult stares at her, then at the sailor who is making his way towards her, and doesn¡¯t move. The crewmember pushes her way through the group of tourists and takes one look at Iseult before exhaling forcefully and squeezing around her.

    I¡¯ve checked: Drustan Tilian is not present in the milling crowd of socialites. He¡¯d mentioned he¡¯d had some important event or another. Come to think of it, Lady Keir is noticeably missing as well- oh. I have just now put two and two together.

    Our bobbing crowd is spread over several ships and is host to a dozen fashions, and at least two hundred men and women from all over the continent. Through the thickening canopy of hats and fascinators, I can see one magnificent incandescent feather the length of a man¡¯s arm, jutting up proudly from a tiny woman with last year¡¯s bowler hat. At least one representative from the Cabochon government of Far Shore then: what an interesting voyage that must have been. Colt & Tumble has spread word of the event very wide indeed. She is enveloped by the crowd, meeting and laughing with curious men and women from all over the continent. Eventually all I can see is the foot-long feather secured to her hat, a little flitting brilliance that darts quickly throughout the crowd.

    Before us, about fifteen yards away, the crowd parts. I spy a familiar face, one that I haven¡¯t seen since the end of the Aergan skirmishes. He¡¯s aged significantly, as if for him the intervening years have been packed into with a spare decade or two. Last I saw him, he was glaring daggers at me at the Chaplain¡¯s banquet, the welcoming celebration for the heroes of the four thousand. Chief Sigilist Sheridan Afnysin, magician-aide to Colonel Fandh. The glowing brooch on his lapel is gorgeous. I don¡¯t remember the spray of red across his nose, the first telltale of dipsomania. I do remember his attitude, for the distaste he sinks onto Iseult and me is near identical to what he employed on us half a decade ago.

    It¡¯s strange. When I first met Sheridan, I was awed by his rank and the reputation of his office. Now, five years later, I cannot bring myself to even acknowledge the man. He¡¯s drifted closer, obviously aware of us and close enough to speak. He ignores ¨ªde entirely, attempting to bring down Iseult with a withering glare. We could exchange greetings, if we wanted to.

    He says nothing, baiting us. Sheridan was arrogant in the Aergan. He is apparently still arrogant, but also he appears to be the sort who does not easily learn lessons, because Iseult is entirely immune to awkward silences. The violence of his scowl is ignored, until it wilts. The next time the crowd swells between us, he is nowhere to be seen.

    ¨ªde gives us a lopsided look, then shrugs. I¡¯ve already told her about our previous experience with the Chief Sigilist. At least now she can put a face to the name.

    Over an hour, the deck of the Village Idiot reaches its maximum capacity, and the raft swells with more and more carefully-secured ships. All seem to avoid connecting themselves with the airship-crowned vessels that must belong to Evin and Wynne, so from this higher deck I can see that the boats have arranged themselves into a sort of fat hourglass configuration.

    After the tenth introduction, another round of handshaking and introducing and loud conversations, I feel a tug at my coat sleeve from ¨ªde. She¡¯s wearing her best dress, which is adequate, though not precisely stylish. Her shoes are much the same. A white scarf protects her from the worst of the spindrift, pinned in place by Iseult¡¯s necklace. The little iron ball earrings she¡¯s wearing pair well with the Bani Yahtrib bullets at her throat.

    Iseult, conversely, has done little to change her clothes to match the occasion. Only her sigilist¡¯s brooch and her lack of firearm distinguish her outfit now from her outfit in the Wraithwild- her black boots still bear the scratches and dents they acquired in the Bloom. Her headscarf is draped around her shoulders, revealing the ink on her throat and face. Ildathach¡¯s socialites are polite enough not to stare openly.

    I can see yet more acquaintances circle through the crowd around me, all talking and performing and delivering the ritual chit-chat of the Ildathach socialite. ¨ªde tugs on my sleeve again, and I look down at her before I accidentally lock eyes with someone else I know.

    ¡°How do you remember all of their names?¡± She asks, urgently.

    I pause. ¡°I beg your pardon?¡±

    Iseult, Saints bless her, actually laughs. ¡°We do all the heavy lifting with the knotwork, ¨ªde. But Sean does all the heavy lifting with talking to people. Don¡¯t upset the balance, and don¡¯t worry about it, unless you¡¯d rather do his job.¡±

    I wink at ¨ªde. ¡°Where I¡¯m from, it¡¯s called being nice.¡± Ildathachers are always happy to chat- especially as I¡¯ve been out of the social scene for a month, on a proper adventure. It¡¯s funny how people seem to always be friendlier when they don¡¯t see you for some time. We idly chat for a few more minutes, until there¡¯s a little thrum in the crowd as we begin to slowly fixate our attention on one man.

    Evin Tumble stands on a small stage near the bowsprit of the Village Idiot, freshly hewn by the ship¡¯s sullen carpenter. The difficult job of distilling a boisterous mob into a respectful audience has been thrust upon him, and he¡¯s absolutely loving it. He¡¯s making a grand job of it too, and we are all inevitably pulled into his orbit. Arms held high in cruciform, face shining, he looks more like a shaman than an executive. Men, women, aristocrats, workers, sailors, dignitaries, ambassadors- they scutter about him in droves, fawning and congratulatory, a still figure amidst a storm. His partner, now shorn of her aide, is behind him, quietly watching. I get the impression that Wynne Colt is happy to excuse herself of showmanship. Reminds me of Iseult and me, to be honest. His voice raises, like a tide.

    That booming voice. He could¡¯ve been Ildathach¡¯s greatest preacher. "Ladies! Gentlemen!" Cheers from the crowd. ¡°Today is the day! Six long months! Some of you have been with us since the beginning, some for only a few weeks now. But no matter! Before me and before the Saints, you are all part of something bigger here. Something delightful! Something beyond ambition! Something perfect." He draws a fat brass pistol from his pocket, points it skyward. His face is drenched in elation.

    I¡¯m an idiot and am still staring directly at him, so the flare blinds me, a shocking blue star that bolts skyward then falls, feather-slow, far above. After blinking away the searing afterimages, I squint and see that the armada has been flooded in harsh cobalt shadows. Wynne Colt pivots first, neatly, and Evin Tumble follows suit. I crane forward, looking at this new blue star and the crowd, trying to figure out what has just happened

    Hushed conversations ripple through the throng. We wait, and wait.

    Evin¡¯s smile has fossilised, but his eyes gleam like wine. The new moon is halfway up the horizon, tracked by the ponderous limelights on Inskoet.

    There! We all see it at once, no reason to point. A pinprick of light from the island, a tiny flare and a quiet puff that from this distance seems comically small. From the mountain rises a dark dot, barely visible against the grey afternoon clouds.

    The shell streaks upwards, barely visible, until it detonates in a spray of violet that expands over a fraction of the sky the size of my hand. It leaps and splashes like sea spray, a cloud of burning air that expands and diffuses from a tight sphere into a cloud of roiling violet. It reminds me of the aurora, or of lights on choppy waves. From that initial cloud emerges the projectile in its second form: it¡¯s white, roseate.

    Arcing. A heartbeat later and the earsplitting thunderclap from the cannon firing washes over the ship. I screw my eyes shut, involuntarily.

    The molten bullet bursts upwards, pulling with it a tail of scorching smoke. The cloud shivers, unable to keep pace with the shot, and soon the comet is alone, turning gently towards the new moon. Its ponderous target barely moves at all, unaware of the blistering shot below. Colt & Tumble¡¯s bullet races, obscenely quickly, reaching across the entire sky. I can clearly see Iseult¡¯s handiwork. The same techniques as her sharpshooting, reworked on a hundred-fold scale.

    Inskoet¡¯s stabbing limelights start to sputter. The expanding amethyst fog from the bullet activation has brushed against the island, and the muted fire from the immense searchlights is dyed purple. I want to ask Iseult if that is supposed to happen, but I can¡¯t tear my eyes away from the sky. Nobody can. There is nothing but the shot, which has stopped its slow turning and is now hurtling in a straight line towards its stately prey.

    The crowd gasps as the comet detonates against the moon, an explosion that throws a labyrinthine tangle of hitherto unnoticeable designs on the underside of the moon¡¯s skin into obvious relief. The impact rocks the moon, and it lists from side to side, huge fragments of regolith detonating off of its flanks. Great gouts of rock and debris start sloughing away from its bulk, dropping with what must be terrible speed towards the ocean below.

    I feel the impact deep in my stomach.

    ?

    It didn''t work. The moon is still going.

    ?

    Finally, the audience talks again. Not loudly. Neither Evin nor Wynne have spoken, and both are simply staring at the moon, serene on the little stage at the bow of the Village Idiot. The crowd grows louder. They have to, because they¡¯ve noticed the spreading mist from the shell burst has now started to creep towards our raft.

    Murmurs swell to exclamations. The feather-adorned Far Coast representative points openly, bobbing in frenetic motion, and more than a handful of heads in the crowd are beginning to pivot, concerned at Evin. The fog creeps closer. His smile is beatific. I see Wynne frown, then slowly look at her partner.

    Again- again! A dark pinprick hurtles up from the Inskoet gun, and just as before blossoms into a wave of treacle-thick smoke. The crowd is silent, this time. ¨ªde clutches the railing, mouth agape. Once more, a comet emerges from the fog cloud, razing the tortured air just as the first one did. This time I pull myself from the sight, and lock eyes with Iseult. When the second thunderous boom from the cannon washes over us, she doesn¡¯t even flinch.

    I¡¯ve never before seen her look so uncertain.

    She glances back, and her mouth closes back into a hard-set frown as she begins to speak. Before she can say a word, the moon is struck again.

    The first impact must have shattered an immense section of the moon¡¯s interior. There¡¯s barely even an explosion as the second shot, curving shallowly, slams headlong into the rock. It snuffs out, burrowing. But we feel it, all the same. We all feel something. Dislocation. The shell emerges, burning white, from the far side of the moon. It blasts into the afternoon sky and dims, quietly, until it can no longer be seen against the drowned light of the afternoon. The expanding cloud residue from the first shot is fifty yards from the armada, flowing feather-light and inescapable towards us.

    Strangely, the shot dislodges one of my own memories. Something that Evin told me last night, over cups of dry gin. The hard part of this whole operation, he posited, would not be generating enough force to crack the moon. He had enough ¡°little helpers¡±, as he called them, to deal with that. Pragmatically, the problem would be the result of the moon actually hitting the planet. Colt & Tumble would have to somehow mitigate the resulting tidal wave, which would obliterate an enormous swathe of whatever coast was even remotely near the impact site. He claimed this type of impact had happened before, more than once, and he had promised to show me slides and images of islands around the continent, shorn of life. Even the Bay of Grace at Ys, he pointed out, was suspiciously circular.

    His solution was, or is, somewhat unbelievable. He wanted to calculate a way of dropping the moon so it would fall into a vortex.

    ¡°Some vortices could swallow the Shorn Peak, we think. Nobody¡¯s seen the bottom of one of those things! Well, almost nobody,¡± he¡¯d said, conspiratorially. ¡°We heard some very interesting stories from a group of Al Khazraj, and their submarine experiments. Vortices don¡¯t follow normal rules. But the trick is to map them as well as possible, because if we find one that¡¯s just the right size...¡±

    Shouting snaps me out of the memories. I can¡¯t believe it.

    The shimmering violet mist from the first shot is almost upon us. But through it- through it we can see the moon. There¡¯s no sound, of course. Not yet. But something is wrong with it. It¡¯s been cored, run through, and it¡¯s shedding boulders the size of blockhouses. We can clearly see that it is beyond listing, now, and is absolutely falling, asymmetrically, plummeting in a tumbling sweep towards the horizon.

    I can make out the dark guts of the rock, revealed by the cannon fire. Coiled and dismal forms that are shrouded in the darkness of the moon¡¯s falling bulk and the onrushing amethyst smoke. The moon¡¯s flesh is confusing, punctuated by fractal edges that must be hundreds of yards across. The beacons on Inskoet sputter again, the light flickering and foggy. Only one still turns, trying to track the murdered thing.

    Tongues of flame blast from the moon. Defences? Ruptured furnaces? Moon-blood? The inferno dwarfs the Inskoet lights, burning hotter than any summer sun. Each pillar begins sliding, questing. Searching for the weapon that wounded it. They thunder into the sea, angling into a single scouring column that boils and seethes with hellish intent. It is lashing back as it dies, and plummets into a colossal veil of vaporised water. Inskoet somehow remains unscathed.

    We never see the moon touch the water, and are bathed in the fog from the first shot. I stare at Evin and Wynne, notice that he is fumbling with his pockets and she is shouting something at him, livid. The last thing I think, really think, before the cloud rushes over me is how truly beautiful the moonfall is.

 Chapter 17: Iseult

    Iseult

    What-

    My horizon heaves once to the left, then to the right, and then completely vertically. It takes me a moment to realise that this is because I am lying sideways on the deck of the Village Idiot, salted planking grating my cheeks and eyelashes.

    I can''t move. I''m trying to, of course, trying to roll, or push myself upright. My body flops, like it¡¯s crushed under sand, and after thrashing madly I manage only the barest twitch of my eyelids. I feel nothing from the neck down.

    What did they do?

    I wonder, momentarily, if I''m dead. Or dreaming. For a moment, all I am aware of is the pressure of the deck on my face and the gentle swaying of the ship. Ships. My thoughts are clogged with splinters. I can¡¯t be dead. Being dead shouldn¡¯t taste like wood.

    Nearest to me lies a sailor, face up, his eyes open but unfocused and unblinking. At the corner of my vision I can see Sean, curled into a foetal position, similarly still. Of ¨ªde, there is no sign, and for whatever reason that is the thought that crashes me back into proper consciousness, like snapping yourself out of a knotwork meditation. I scream and scream, and no words come out. Agonising paralysation. My soul has been severed from my body.

    I bite down my panic, and empty myself. I try visualising a sigil. Anything. It doesn¡¯t matter. Anything to sharpen me back in control. If I could steady my breathing, I would try to do so. All that I am is condensed into an edge: my focus and the thundering in my ears.

    What did they do to my knotwork?

    As I am struggling to empty my thoughts, to flush my panic and control my quivering body, I notice a huge, dark shape looming over Sean. It''s familiar.

    Tumble.

    He''s standing. The rest of us were stricken by the shockwave, and he alone is standing. He stoops down over Sean, mutters something to his prone form before prodding him in the back with a smart black shoe. Sean doesn¡¯t move when Evin reaches down and shakes Sean''s shoulders, before returning to his full height. I pause my futile attempts at mental knotwork as he makes his way over to me.

    His face is warped to the very limit of recognisability. Lust. Contempt. Impatience. When he bends over he just mercilessly stares into my eyes, searching for something. He says something to me, and it is only then that I realise that I am completely deaf.

    Evin frowns, and his lips move again. I struggle to spit out a rebuttal, but all I can manage is a croaking exhale and a facial twitch. He rolls his eyes and stands up, but not after patting me condescendingly on the cheek. My churning fury grants me only the faintest flutter of my fingers as he steps over me and disappears.

    Time is slippery. I try counting my heartbeats, but abruptly remember that I¡¯ve just tried that, and immediately forgot the count. Eventually, my anger gives me control of my arms. They move, bloodless and clumsy, and I drag myself upright, just in time for the second wave of violet to overtake the armada, disconnecting me again from my body.

    A perversion has been woven into my knotwork. The aftermath of the second shot takes the deck, but I¡¯m better prepared for it this time. I¡¯m better prepared, this time. It takes only two hundred heartbeats for me to sit up, and I fight every second to stoke the rage in my heart.

    I turn to find ¨ªde a few paces behind me, her eyes tear-rimmed and quivering. Her mouth is moving, so quickly that only its articulation makes me think it¡¯s anything other than a seizure or brain damage. The deafening ringing in my ears prevents me from actually hearing what she¡¯s saying. A few moments later, I realise she¡¯s mouthing a repetition- and a brief one, at that. Two syllables. She has landed awkwardly, her shoulder wrenched awkwardly, and I drag myself over to her and attempt to shift her to a recovery position. I cannot tell if her eyes flicker to me with gratitude or from reflex.

    The deck is a stage of immense, terrible carnage. Colt & Tumble''s work has felled sailors and guests alike, and I am the only stirring figure in this field of stricken bodies. It¡¯s horrible, like the mound of the dead and the dying after our battle against the War Hosts. Bodies, some leaking blood into the holystoned boards of the ship''s deck, are strewn everywhere.

    Of Evin Tumble himself, there is no sign. I crawl over to Sean, elbows dragging painfully across the wood, and I notice for the first time the feeling from my knees and shins as I scrape them over the splintered deck of the Village Idiot. A good sign.

    By the time I reach him, Sean is stirring too, and I pray that he still has his senses. I do not know how Tumble has cut down the people aboard the ship- some hidden knotwork below the decks of the ship? Ridiculous. The targeting apparatus should produce some waste magic, yes, but it should not have made whatever it was that overtook the raft. The by-product curdles around us, still a diffuse fog, and I can taste a sweet static when I lick my lips. But no matter what modifications the Wine Party or Colt & Tumble or whomever made to my designs, I know that they couldn¡¯t have been able to alter the gun or the bullet to paralyse an audience like this.

    When I roll Sean onto his back, his eyes lock with mine, and he sighs out a tiny double-gasp that could be my name, or a grunt of pain. Pinpricks fill my limbs as the life returns to them, nerves sparkling painfully courtesy of my surging hatred.

    Evin. Tumble. My hands ache. I want my gun.

    I''m resting my head on Sean''s chest, and I start when I feel his hand grope clumsily to my back, then to the back of my hair. I feel another vibration, and for a split second wonder if the Inskoet gun has fired yet again. Sean is speaking.

    I lean back and stare at his beleaguered face. He mouths the words, and I try to follow along. The ringing in my ears dies, a little bit. When he repeats himself a third time, I hear it, accompanied by the tortured creaking of the ships and the lapping of the waves.

    "...you''re okay?"

    The feeling in my knees returns at the same time as my lungs, and I hack up a brief and bitter laugh. Am I okay. What an arsehole.

    When Sean taught me several years ago how to carry a wounded soldier, I never thought I''d actually have to do it. Especially not to him. My legs aren¡¯t fully recovered, but I don¡¯t have much of a choice. I struggle with his bulk, try to configure his prone weight and his cofferdam-chest across my shoulders. I realise, then, that although it''s theoretically possible to carry a man almost twice the size of me across my back, actually getting him off the planking is going to be impossible.

    I am the only thing moving on the deck of the ship. Sean taps me on the back just as I am about to try something more acrobatic to get him upright. He speaks again, his voice hoarse.

    "Where¡¯s ¨ªde?"

    I pause my attempts to muscle him upright. I point to where I last saw her, and we take a long moment to focus on her. Me, squatting beside Sean, and him, propped up in my arms, legs still useless and folded. ¨ªde is where I left her, eyes closed, muttering. I can see a few other shapes starting to stir amongst the deathly stillness of the bodies.

    When Sean finally gets to his feet, woozily, we cling to each other as if either of us has the strength to save the other. I begin to stagger back towards ¨ªde, but stop as he pauses for a moment, bends almost double, then jerks upright. He stabilises with a grim expression, and gestures with an inarticulate hand towards the sky. I squint, but cannot see whatever he is pointing at. I wonder if there¡¯s something wrong with my vision.

    "Front platform... ¨®engus..."

    I realise what he means. The front platform of the Gundog Walking, halfway up the mast, should have had a sailor on it. But now the entirety of the ship¡¯s webwork rigging is empty.

    I wonder if ¨®engus had been on his sighting platform when the cloud engulfed us. I wonder if he had fallen from it, either to snap his bones on the deck of the ship or to sink, waterlogged, into the ocean below. I shudder and pray he was not fully awake when either of those happened.

    Evin. Tumble.

    By the time we stagger to ¨ªde, she¡¯s breathing. Wheezing, yes, but has at least she¡¯s recovering. She¡¯s whispering something, and I drop my ear to her mouth. Incomprehensible glossolalia. Two short syllables, both of which make me shudder involuntarily. Her teeth are bloody. Sean and I drop to either side of her- Sean to his knees, me to a splayed slump as my legs give out under me. We wrap ¨ªde in our arms and haul her to standing, most of her weight resting on Sean''s chest. He holds her and talks in her ear, and it is a minor miracle that she remains standing when we pull her to her feet. The syllables stop draining from her mouth, replaced with bloody spittle.

    She looks confused when we begin talking to her. I pantomime deafness, and a look of horror washes over her. I backtrack hastily, trying to reassure her with flailing hand gestures that her deafness would pass. Hopefully.

    We sway in time with the waves, each standing only by the support of the others.

    For whatever reason, when Captain Holofernes speaks from behind me, I can hear her with almost perfect clarity.

    "Where. The fuck. Is he."

    Her swagger is somehow still intact, like it''s such a fundamental part of her that it returned with her breathing and her heartbeat. Blood leaks from a wound behind her eyepatch, and she''s resorted to leaning heavily and somehow imperiously on a gunwhale.

    ¨ªde speaks, shockingly quiet. She can barely raise her voice above the groans of the wood and the wounded.

    "He must''ve gone to find the moon. His ship is gone."

    She¡¯s right. The Feist and Calico has vanished.

    The captain nods, closes her one good eye, and grimaces. Her grip tightens around the railing, and her face turns as white as her knuckles. For a moment, I expect her to collapse, and Sean and I make stutter-steps steps towards her simultaneously. Her eye snaps open, and she tries her best to nail both of us to the deck with her stare.

    "We''ll take hers."

    Sean nods, but I don¡¯t understand. "Who''s?"

    Bless her, the captain grins.

    "Wynne Colt''s. Time to see what those dogfucking airship rings can do.¡±

    *

    It makes sense. ¨ªde, at some point, had memorised the coordinates of the nearest vortex to us from little chats she¡¯s had on Inskoet with Colt & Tumble¡¯s gaggle of engineers and alchemists. A side effect of her general anxiety, which she abated through quietly studying anything she could. Captain Holofernes knows the location, and confirms the name of the whirlpool: Corr Vreackan. She¡¯s able to scrape together enough of her crew from the wreckage of the raft to man this tiny vessel, leaving the Gundog Walking and the rest of the sailors in the hands of her barely-mobile first mate. By her approximations, made with a hunch and a pair of shattered clocks, she reckons that approximately twenty minutes to half an hour have passed since the moonfall.

    The captain¡¯s trademark venom has disappeared, now that we have a concrete task to accomplish. I am unable to explain what happened to the armada in greater detail, but I am in no rush to incriminate myself with my actual theory. The longer I think about it, the more sense it makes- Evin Tumble, somehow, made modifications to the targeting array that I supplied his company. It is nonsensical, because there is no sigil on Calacar that can paralyse hundreds of people and leave one man untouched. But it is the best guess I have. My work, my work, was intentionally perverted and altered to make the cloud that felled the raft.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    ¨ªde offers her own interpretations, when I am unable to answer the captain. Her story grows in strength as it continues, like hearing it is growing her own confidence. She posits that the sigil that she made with Moira O¡¯Tierney in the Violet Manor had been combined with another hostile glyph, inserted afterwards to supplement the magic that the two of them had developed. I must admit, that this is not an outrageous suggestion: several elements of the grand glyph that they wrote had elements and configurations that were optimised and specialised by the professor beyond degrees that I could untease. When she finishes, she offers a follow-up supposition: that Colt & Tumble have cracked the Wine Party¡¯s monopoly on engine halos, and have written and now field tested new, exotic knotworks. But the counterargument to both points is simple: the colouration of the aftermath. Violets so potent that you stopped seeing them. Narrative harnessing.

    As he has no academic contributions, Sean busies himself by scrounging a cavalry sabre from a prone aristocrat and hacking off the mooring ropes that attach Wynne Colt¡¯s yacht to the rest of the raft. I stumble to the Gundog Walking and retrieve my jezail, which I had wrapped in oilcloth and secreted aboard the captain¡¯s ship yesterday just in case. I hurriedly check its body for damage, satisfied that it has survived whatever just happened to us. It¡¯s unloaded, of course. I feel naked, with only twelve bullets on me.

    Colt has named the yacht the Oxenfree, and Captain Holofernes gives us all roughly ten seconds to familiarise ourselves with whatever we could before walking with a rooster¡¯s strut to the pilot¡¯s cabin. She slaps the top of the cabin¡¯s engraved doorway with a look of utmost glee. Although the captain is no aeronaut, and has no practise with engine halos, she is not deterred in the slightest as she seizes the controls of the yacht.

    The wide, fiery crown that floats several feet above the ship''s mast sparks into life, and everyone on deck either jumps or fails to conceal their apprehension, or both. For the entire time the Oxenfree was docked with the armada, the halo had been a dead thing, a six-foot wide ring of solid crimson that, perhaps once an hour, flared a tiny peal of smoke or sparks. Pressure release. The complex sigilwork of the halo, a Wine Party special, thrums into life.

    I have no idea how the rings work, because as with every airship engine, the sigils responsible for powering the halos and the forces they summon in the air above the ships are welded into armoured steel crates somewhere inaccessible within the hold. All I know is that everyone¡¯s hair, save those sailors who served on airships and have kept their own hairstyles trimmed, has started drifting gently upward. I draw my headscarf from around my neck and secure it around my head.

    Whatever interface exists in the cabin is no match for the captain¡¯s fervour. The ring is now entirely wreathed in fire, and the ship has begun a brutal, chopping drive through the sea. ¨ªde is with her, in that little pilot¡¯s cabin, along with a navigator from the Gundog Walking. Together, they work rapidly to confirm the Oxenfree¡¯s bearing and destination with a bevy of tools and charts.

    Her acceleration is monstrous, but expected. What comes as a surprise is that once we reach a pace that is somewhat faster than anything we accomplished abord the Gundog Walking, we do not seem to stop accelerating. The Oxenfree blasts over waves, pitching forwards and backwards as she crosses the ocean. Her entire hull vibrates as she crushes forward, stern now clearly raised, and the noise of the steam and the fire and the constant slamming pulse of the water trying to break the ship in half is almost unbearable. The pull of the distortion generated by the airship ring is undeniable, and I feel lighter than I should, pulled regularly upwards, like a compass needle to an unseen pole. We aren¡¯t riding with the ocean. We¡¯re ploughing through it.

    By the time Captain Holofernes stops accelerating, we must be crossing thirty five knots or more. The ship barrels over waves, uncaring, bucking us about the deck in the tumult. Sean¡¯s face is a mask of glee and terror, matching the expressions of the sailors still outside of the yacht¡¯s cabin. Steam roils before us, the Oxenfree slams through the water, pulled forward by inexplicable gravity of the engine ring. Anyone with an uncovered head has their hair pulled at a forty-five degree angle towards the boiling bow of the ship. Sean and I retreat to the railings beside the pilot¡¯s cabin, as if proximity to the control panels will shield us from whatever catastrophe will be unleashed if the ring explodes. Or implodes. Or fires off at unspeakable velocity into the horizon. I¡¯m not sure what happens to a sea ship with a catastrophic ring failure. For all I know it¡¯ll spin straight down through the ship and crucible us all.

    The captain continues working whatever delicate touch she has on the baroque machinery within the pilot¡¯s cabin. She calls out loudly to another sailor, who has roped herself to the mast directly beneath the roaring halo. I know her face, but we have never spoken. The two women speak in clipped, unfamiliar sentences that might as well be another language, and I can feel the captain¡¯s adjustments through the ship¡¯s hull underfoot. It¡¯s all I can do to keep my composure as the Oxenfree flexes and groans under the strain. The heat belching from the blazing engine ring is close to unbearable.

    If I grip this railing any harder I will break either it or my hands.

    Eventually, I retreat inside to the small navigator¡¯s room behind the pilot''s cabin. I hope that this confined space will inoculate me against the tremendous, horrible rocking of the ship as it cannons through the waves. It does not. Nauseous and wide-eyed, I peer out through the enormous plated windows at the head of the pilot¡¯s cabin. The bowsprit of the Oxenfree is pointing down at a sharp angle, almost daggering into the water. One other sailor in the cramped room shares my look of alarm, and the others on deck never seem to stray far from a railing or the quivering trunk of the mast. Sean is still on deck, but has made his way forward and is almost hugging the mast, laughing like a madman.

    Behind me, calculating the route, stand ¨ªde and one of the crew. They have recovered a navigator¡¯s chart from the ship''s scroll cases, and have set it out carefully on the table inside of the cabin, weighing it down with whatever detritus they could scavenge. Occasionally, one of their hands darts out to stabilise the map as the ship ricochets off of an aggressive wave. The sailor barks some esoteric question to the captain, and the two banter rapidly in a blend of colloquialisms, technical terms, and, from Captain Holofernes, extreme pejoratives. Satisfied, the captain moves her grip to a bank of small brass levers, and adjusts two of them.

    Thus it is that Sean, ¨ªde and I, along with a skeleton crew of the Gundog Walking, have stolen a yacht to chase Evin Tumble across the northern sea. This close to the Torment, we''d normally be ready to don sealskins or furs, though Captain Holofernes'' aggressive treatment of the ship''s halo has bathed the entire deck in a dry, shocking heat.

    Forty minutes, comes the call from the sailor beside ¨ªde, who has just finished double checking a quick series of calculations. At this speed, forty minutes until we sight Corr Vreackan, and the moon, and our prey.

    *

    The Oxenfree thrashes madly, pushed to breaking as it pursues the man who killed the moon.

    Every sailor has fled the swamped bow, and the few that remain outside the cramped cabin, Sean included, have fixed themselves to railings via loops of loose rope. We are, all of us, welded to the same thirst.

    The Oxenfree is travelling at just over an estimated thirty three knots, running the ship to limits that we only discovered as the captain alternately experimented and wrestled with the knotworked controls. At one point, the mast had actually cracked as the captain attuned the ring just past some inscrutable threshold. Sean had thrown himself backwards, virtually stumbling uphill against the ship¡¯s tilt. The halo howled with a tempest-peal, spewing uncontrolled fire and a single crackling thunderbolt. A deep fissure instantly split the mast from deck to crown. It miraculously stayed in one piece. The entire cabin had fallen silent, watching with terror, waiting for the ship to bisect or explode or some horrible other alternative. It, fortunately, had not.

    The captain had grumbled about ¡°cack-handed academic engineers¡±, made a handful of adjustments, and is now paying extremely close attention to various pressure dials and charm-readings. One of the crew asks a neutral question, and the captain viciously insults him. After spending enough time with her, I recognise this venom as good-natured.

    Our ship''s captive halo still burns enormously, as Captain Holofernes has reduced only the barest required fraction of its potential power. She¡¯s gripped by an infectious madness that has now spread to all of us. Her dream of vengeance is mine, as well. I watch a particularly large wave overwhelm the front quarter of the Oxenfree, only to be swept, steaming, from the deck by our absurd velocity. I had stored my weapon with the drawer that contains all of our nautical charts, and wonder if it¡¯s secured against the bucking of the ship.

    Sean joins us, inside. His eyes are wide, his clothing damped by repeated sprays of quickly-evaporating seawater. But he¡¯s loving this. If I am fuelling myself with rage, and ¨ªde with a sort of hyper focused terror, Sean has decided to embrace an insane, desperate glee. None of us say anything, choosing instead to stare at the slate-grey sea as it struggles to contain the Oxenfree. A minute later, the captain swears, fiddling with a handle that by the knotwork surrounding it must in some way interact with the major charms either summoning or binding the halo. As one, the rest of us turn to her, wondering why we¡¯re slowing down. Even the sailors on deck notice, and begin peering back at the foggy windows of the pilot¡¯s cabin. I run a cursory, ignorant eye over the control instruments, searching for damage. I wonder once again if we''ve pushed the Oxenfree too hard.

    A few seconds after the captain had sighted it, we all notice the darkness on the horizon.

    It''s one thing to see it, in the sky. It was perverse enough to see it falling. But now that it''s here, outlined against the pewter sea, I am lost for words.

    It looks far, far larger than when it was in the sky. Only a fraction of its bulk is above the water- insanely, improbably, it must''ve landed precisely where Colt & Tumble wanted it, directly over the whirlpool. A fragment from heaven. The moon that we helped Tumble shoot.

    Less than fifteen minutes later it towers over us, and we are lost in its presence.

    Most crews, the captain mutters, would never be so idiotic as to sail close to a known vortex. They''re mapped, of course, but a sudden expansion or contraction of a whirlpool¡¯s throat is not unknown. And what might be a minor spasm for a whirlpool a mile across can easily destroy any ship idiotic enough to test its luck. But that is in a normal situation, not one where the vortex has been plugged by the corpse of a murdered mountain.

    So we sail closer, at a fraction of our initial speed, the Oxenfree''s fiery crown winding down from its hellish maximal output to something more like the gentle red halo it was wearing when it was still roped to Colt & Tumble''s armada. The moon, grey-faced and impassive, lurches into alarming focus as we draw nearer.

    Seeing the mountain swim in a spyglass does not prepare me for actually being in its presence. It''s big. It''s horrifically big. About half a mile from end to end, though it¡¯s shaped more like a potato than a sphere so its actual dimensions are difficult to discern. Either way, it''s titanic. The weight of the thing, the understanding that it came from the sky, slaughters Sean¡¯s glee. Its great marble flanks are leaking into the sea, surrounding the entire moon with a ring of alabaster mud that mixes with the seawater only reluctantly.

    Through the spyglass lens, we glean disquieting details. The entire skin of the moon is patterned in a series of breath-taking fractals that remind me of the delicate geometries of Al Khazraj. Some swell higher than cathedrals, eddies that could have been drawn using the Inskoet gun as a stylus. Yet the closer we get, the more we can see, until we are barely a hundred feet away and still more patterns become visible on the rock. Sean says they remind him of charms, and, astonishingly, he¡¯s right. Not the sigils of Yvreathe or Khazraj. Narrative harnesses. Where the snowy grey dust that covers the moon has sloughed away, either from the waves or from the impact of the thing against the ocean, spirals and familiar knotwork patterns are exposed in utterly alien configurations.

    We draw closer and closer to the hunted thing, and again the patterns evolve further and further into exhausting complexity. Even now, when we are almost near enough that I could throw a stone and strike its great grey skin, I cannot make out the full details of these fractal growths.

    ¡°Salt and maggots,¡± a sailor swears, making the handsign of Saint Gramarye.

    Only ¨ªde shares my wonder at the sigilry. Sean and the rest of the crew are busy scrutinising the shattered skin for a potential harbour. I suppose the captain is as well, but the way her hands dart up and down the control panel leads me to believe that controlling the Oxenfree, even at these speeds, is no simple task.

    The thermometer set into the wood beside the doorway starts dropping, noticeably.

    *

    There are deep places in the Wraithwild. Many have been carved by centuries of patient Bani Yathrib hands. Brixa Thalaam and her satellite towns tend to hug the coasts, stopping short of the intangible miles-deep perimeter around the Shorn Peak. Other major settlements lie on main roads, and rarely expand too far into the wilderness, wary of the weather and the things that make their home in the stranger corners of the Wraithwild. The land is untamed by Thalaami hands.

    It hasn¡¯t been tamed by the Bani Yathrib either, but marks have been left by generations of stonecutters and architects. Temples, observatories, not hewn from stone but cut in stone. Villages for communities fleeing the sun, the cold, the creatures of the Wraithwild, each other. Neat, carved tunnels that stretch for miles, never exposed to daylight. You can feel the patient history of the tribes in those old strata.

    For outsiders, who are shown these quiet places only rarely, the effect is humbling. Bani Yathrib internalise that understanding of uncaring aeons long before adulthood. This is why we spend so long familiarising ourselves with the inevitability of death, and the endless oblivion before and after life.

    Thus I find the new moon foreign, yet familiar. I itch with a cloying, skin-tight tension. I have to force myself to exhale, for the air is cold and drained.

    We hadn¡¯t completed a full encircling of the outside of the moon, when Captain Holofernes and ¨ªde had spotted something, simultaneously. I could barely make it out, even with their pointing fingers- a ghost of a wake, etched in the white slurry surrounding a small rent in the moon¡¯s surface. An impression of a passing- a route into the moon.

    The Oxenfree prowled slowly through this chasm. Evin Tumble is in this place, somewhere.

    Salt fills my heart, salt and cold. All around us, the ocean beats at the flesh of this great rock. We passed through the marble slurry that was bleeding off the moon¡¯s surface, but now that we are inside, now that we are drifting down this jarringly regular canal, regular salt water laps thirstily at broken places. After our initial thirty seconds in this cavernous darkness, Captain Holofernes swore and began to tug at her eyepatch. A moment later and the thing peeled off her face with a faint puff of violet dust, revealing a surprisingly normal eyeball underneath. She saw me staring, and turned to face me. Even in the darkness and the charnel lighting of the engine ring, I noticed what the patch was hiding- an eye, off-white and glossy, carved from a single Crowmere pearl. She had frowned at my staring, then looked back at the canal ahead. With her entire face revealed, the captain seems older than I expected. That sudden sense of weariness is much more worrying than her unfamiliar eyeball.

    Huge cracks, spilling writhing growths that look for all the world like chemical pipes, are flooded with sloshing waves. Every time I try to put a coherent image of this place together, I¡¯m thwarted by the water, and by the rocking of the ship, and by the hellish red glow of the barely-engaged engine ring. In this confined space, the roar of the halo at anything above the barest throttle is unbearable. Everything is bathed in flickers of crimson, every angle interrupted by the sway of the ocean. Secrets lie just beyond sight, unscrutinised. Tunnels skitter away at dizzying angles.

    We¡¯ve lit lanterns, but the Oxenfree isn¡¯t exactly designed for this sort of thing. There¡¯s hardly enough room to squeeze the hull through the moon¡¯s rocky guts. The Gundog Walking would not fit at all in here, and it would be impossible to use sails even on a yacht as small as ours. We¡¯re blessed by the choice to steal Wynne Colt¡¯s ship, but all the same I find myself startled by the haunting crimson shadows that her engine paints on the fractal rock around us. Water laps against the hull and against the walls, dripping in the echoing darkness.

    Fifteen slow minutes in the dreadful canal, fifteen minutes of praying that the engine ring doesn¡¯t bump against the walls, or that we ourselves don¡¯t scrape the hull on one of the crazed metal outgrowths that seem to sprout randomly from the moon-hall, we spot his black-clad craft. It¡¯s stomach-wrenchingly close, a suddenly lurching phantom that appears from behind a sharp tangle of wreckage. The oaths from the captain are mirrored a second later by her attendant sailors, one of whom is scant yards from the stern of the other yacht¡¯s transom. She leaps back, but her pointing finger and yelp of alarm are redundant. A moment¡¯s blaze from the engine halo, a sense of being pulled gently backwards, and we grind to a sloshing halt. Echoes from the ring and the blast of the ensuing steam reverberate through the claustrophobic dark.

    If he didn¡¯t know we were coming before, he knows now.

    Tumble¡¯s ship is unmanned. We discover this as, less than a minute later, Sean and another sailor greet us from its deck. I didn¡¯t see them leap from the Oxenfree, but it¡¯s certainly Sean¡¯s style. No cheeky grins or waves though, just the pair of them, grim faced, gripping weapons. Tumble¡¯s yacht, the Feist and Calico, is equipped with the same engine ring that crowns our own ship. He must¡¯ve been here for quite some time, as the halo has already run itself down to nothing more than a thin crimson circle. Now that we¡¯re beside his boat, midships-to-midships, I can spy a patch of unmoving darkness on the far side of the other vessel. No watery reflection. Solid land.

    Sean is gone already, possibly sweeping the craft a second time for any stowaways. Tumble¡¯s vessel, like ours, is a small cutting yacht, and after whatever happened after the gun was fired, it¡¯s unlikely he came with a significant crew. He might have piloted the boat entirely by himself- after all, captain Holofernes managed to do just that. I seize ¨ªde by the hand and pull her over the railing onto the deck of the Feist and Calico. Only two sailors from Captain Holoferne¡¯s skeleton crew join us. One passes a wicked cutlass to me. I shake my head, and gesture to the oilskin jezail in my hands. Nobody else thought to hide a weapon in case something like this happened. The sailor nods, then steps back, respectfully, as we turn to stare down the yacht¡¯s gangplank, into the bowels of the moon.

    Captain Holofernes is behind us. She doesn¡¯t try to get our attention, but starts talking, quietly, assuming we¡¯re paying attention.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know what happened, back on Inskoet. It must have been him. Or he must have known that would happen. What I do know is that he¡¯s here. He did this for a reason. Fuck that fanciful story about shooting this thing down just to mine it. There¡¯s something wrong with him. We¡¯re all part of this, and we¡¯re going to stop him.¡±

    The sailors behind her are nodding, solemnly. So is ¨ªde. The captain speaks again, her voice low and solid, cutting through the quiet lapping of the ocean against the walls of the moon.

    ¡°Flush out this rat. Or burn him to cinders. I do not care. He fooled me. Kill him or bring him back, so we can throw him in a coffin and weld it shut. We will be here, to protect the ship and prevent his escape. You must be knives,¡± she passes over all three of us with that intense stare, her strange eye gleaming under the red glow of the engine halo. ¡°For everyone has a throat to cut.¡±

    We nod, blessed. I walk down to the moon¡¯s surface, and turn to speak to ¨ªde.

 Chapter 18: é“†de

    ¨ªde

    ¡°Don¡¯t touch anything. Don¡¯t take anything. We don¡¯t know what he did to us, on the Village Idiot. He might be able to do it again here.¡±

    Iseult hisses the words into my ear as we descend from the gangplank of the Feist and Calico onto the moon. I can hear the heat of her breath as she pulls close and grips my bicep. Sean smiles humourlessly, and says nothing. This place has entirely snuffed his joy. I see he has removed his dress shoes.

    Ever since we breached the moon, I¡¯ve felt something in the top of my mind. Stray thoughts from nowhere. They rebound through my head, only to be immediately forgotten. Dreamlike.

    They are both armed. I am not. I cannot believe that Iseult actually brought a gun to the launch ceremony. Or that this whole time, she was right about Mister Tumble. Her jezail gleams evilly in the moon¡¯s dimness, and makes little oiled clicking noises as she works bullets into its worn and hungry cylinder. I debate returning to the Oxenfree to retrieve a weapon, but I¡¯m not sure what I would actually do with it. Just as I am about to make my way back up the gangplank, Sean cocks his head and hands me his little cavalry sabre, pulling a separate one, unsheathed and previously unnoticed, from the scarf wrapped around his waist. Even after the patient hours Sean spent teaching me aboard the deck of the Gundog Walking, I¡¯m not confident. A weapon still feels foreign in my hand.

    I have no pretensions at being a swordswoman. But I can, at least, remove my heels and walk silently.

    We¡¯re at the cusp of the meagre light from the Oxenfree¡¯s oil lamps and engine ring. I¡¯ve wrapped my shaking fingers around the sabre¡¯s hilt, for strength, and try to steady my breathing. My other hand is tangled around the bullet necklace that Iseult gave me.

    We emerge from the shadow cast by Evin Tumble¡¯s vessel, and the sailors on deck give us cautious waves. When Sean reaches the blurry edge of the light, just as he is about to walk further into the moon, he turns. He salutes both sailors, cutlass to forehead, then moves into a half-crouch, concealing the blade behind his back. It flashes in the light.

    No reflection for someone looking at him from the front.

    Iseult follows. She¡¯s clutching her long rifle, one-armed against her chest, and she traces her free hand on the wall of the moon¡¯s tunnel as she disappears into the darkness. Neither of them are audible over the tiny drips and sloshes of the ocean.

    Now or never, I suppose. I swoop in behind them, trying to emulate that soft, silent walk. We prowl quietly into the darkness.

    We¡¯re in the moon.

    We¡¯re in the moon.

    Holy Saints, we are in the moon.

    My head pounds with the beat of my fluttering heart. I¡¯m keyed in to any sound, to any thing I can sense.

    Walls, floor, ceiling. All invisible, in this darkness. Now that we¡¯re entirely out of sight of the ship, we¡¯re plunged into a blackness so total and so crushing that there is no difference if my eyes are closed or open. Only my feet slapping on the floor and my desperate grip on Iseult¡¯s jacket gives me any connection to something else in this dismal dark. While aboard the Oxenfree, it was obvious that parts of this mountain had been carved into regular channels and corridors. We¡¯d sailed through a rent in the moon¡¯s flank, but there had been tunnels that intersected at near-vertical angles to the water.

    This hallway is surprisingly comfortable, and set at a gentle incline that we easily scale. It¡¯s also obviously designed for someone (or something) human-sized. The walls are smooth. Outrageously smooth, like marble, like Saint bones. If it¡¯s anything like the corridors we saw on the way in, illuminated by flickering engine light and the soft yellow glare of oil lamps, it¡¯s clad in a slick, light material that¡¯s shines in a lustre somewhere in between stone and metal. Everything we saw was smooth and white, save for one corridor mounted directly above the Oxenfree¡¯s path. That one had been ruffled with some material that looked identical like frozen grey cloth. The rest of the tunnels had been almost featureless, save for the occasional regular straight line marked on the ceiling or wall. No sigilwork. At least, not any I¡¯m familiar with. It¡¯s impossible to make out anything in this darkness. I can¡¯t even see my hands.

    There¡¯s a faint dripping, coming from somewhere. Occasionally, a moan, like rock or metal being twisted, far distant. Once, just once, the entire moon shivers, and the vibration caused us all to stop involuntarily, every muscle tensed.

    We pause at a deep, regular opening in the tunnel wall. I know it¡¯s there, because Iseult seizes wrist hand and runs my fingers along the edge. Nobody speaks. After spending so long in the darkness, I can feel a space where Sean has stood up, and imagine that he is staring into the hole, wide-eyed, hungry for any form of light. Neither of them says anything.

    We start moving again, and I get no explanation as to why or what just happened. As I prowl past, I get a better feel of the opening. It is easily the width of a double door, and I can make out nothing in its yawning depths but a vertiginous awareness of cold and dread.

    I suddenly realise that I cannot actually see Iseult, so I may actually be clutching someone else¡¯s sleeve, some moon-ghoul who has seamlessly replaced my friend. My heartbeat thunders in my chest, and I wonder if this monster can hear it, wonder if even now it is planning to turn around and-

    No. Breathe. Breathe. My head is buzzing.

    My footsteps seem impossibly loud. Other than Iseult¡¯s sleeve, there is nothing around me to suggest anything is there. I don¡¯t think we¡¯ve deviated from a straight path. But how would I really know? How does Sean know where he¡¯s going? Does he, like the captain, possess some sigil-charmed sight? I doubt it. I must simply trust that he knows what he¡¯s doing, and that Iseult does as well.

    I have no way of knowing if Iseult is even holding onto Sean.

    You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

    Oh Saints. Why am I here.

    We shuffle further on, groping our way into that wretched nothing. The kind of darkness that starts to make you see things, little phantasms and coils of movement. The kind that you could lose yourself in, forever.

    Iseult slows, then stops. She tugs at me, and I grasp her wrist so tightly I hear her make a tiny, surprised sound in the back of her throat. We shuffle forwards, and I feel her twist her entire body over a long, straddling distance, like she¡¯s stepped over something. More importantly, now that she¡¯s out of the way, I can see the faintest flicker of light coming from something below. She¡¯s avoided a spot, on the floor, which I step widely over as well. I look down.

    The moon is torn at this spot. I can see a tiny thread of violet light, a beacon in the gloom, far beneath me. There¡¯s no chance I would fall down this tear, this ten-story hole that has punched its way through the floor, but an inexplicable unsteadiness slams through me. Iseult and Sean have made their way over the gap, and I can barely make out their shapes in the gloom. Losing my grip on her looses a panic within me, and it takes me a moment to realise that I can see both of their eyes, lit by the faint purple lighting, staring back at me.

    I look down again.

    The hole is deep. The ragged edges of whatever the moon is made out of are highlighted in the faint indigo light of a worming mass of what looks like intestines, spilling in a confused tangle, some fifty yards underneath us. I stare and stare at the mass, daring it to twitch or react. It sits, unmoving, lit by some internal alchemy. When I look back to my companions, I see only one set of eyes. Sean, I think.

    I swallow my fear and step over the little rent. I feel his hand close around my shoulder, and he pulls me forward, hugging me.

    ¡°There¡¯s a light ahead.¡±

    His voice in my ear is shockingly loud. Though he¡¯s speaking with the barest whisper, the quietest he can, his words ring my ears like a shout.

    In this darkness, that faint ghost of lamplight is a beacon. I can see it in my peripheral vision, and in the minute it takes for us to creep closer, I can see it clear as day. Mister Tumble is here.

    Or, as we creep closer, my gut running cold, maybe something else. Maybe there are people in the moon, as well. Maybe they also use oil lamps.

    Maybe they can see in the dark.

    Or maybe it¡¯s Mister Tumble.

    I¡¯m not sure which one I¡¯d rather deal with. We¡¯ve crept to the edge of the doorway.

    Sean pauses, straining. Lamplight is clearly visible from beyond the corner, so Sean does not peek his head around, does not silhouette himself. He simply stands there, both hands digging into the tunnel walls, his ears perked and his eyes closed. Iseult joins him, just shy of the wall, and I slip behind them, imitating their poses. I concentrate, hard. I¡¯m listening for- for what, exactly?

    There¡¯s almost certainly nothing in the room. Just a dim light. No sound but the almost imperceptible hiss of the oil lamp, merrily crackling. Iseult, with a heron¡¯s grace, is bringing her weapon to bear. She does it slowly, certainly, and in complete silence.

    Sean rushes around the corner, low, at a sprint. He¡¯s there one second, ready, and the next he has disappeared, exploded into the room. A beat later, there is a loud mechanical twang, followed by a thumping noise and a long, surprised-sounding gurgle. Iseult¡¯s body tenses, and she too takes the corner rapidly, ripping her rifle to a firing position in front of her and stepping in a wide arc through the hole in the tunnel. She¡¯s doing that thing with her hands, whatever mechanical ritual she does that turns the jezail from a lump of wood and metal into a killing machine.

    For several seconds, I can hear nothing. No shot. When I hear Mister Tumble¡¯s voice, it is all I can do to bite down the panic.

    ¡°You can come out, Sigilist Ceallaigh.¡±

    I screw my eyes shut, until I hear Iseult.

    ¡°It¡¯s alright, ¨ªde. I can handle this fucking cockroach. Help Sean.¡±

    I run my hand along the edge of the door, and emerge into the light. It¡¯s blinding, at first, even though we¡¯ve spent only a few minutes in the blackness.

    From what we¡¯ve seen so far of the moon, this small room is surprisingly small: a cube, perhaps ten yards a side. Soft oil-light spills just shy of its ceiling, so we are completely encircled by shadows. I hurry behind Iseult, who is currently rigid, her rage palpable, near the entrance way. She¡¯s in a firing posture, both hands ready, eyes locked on the man in front of her. Her prey, Evin Tumble, stands bolt upright on the far side of the room. One hand is thrust into his pocket, as if he¡¯s bored. The other is holding a small crossbow, an evil-looking thing made from iron and dark-painted wood. There¡¯s another at his feet, already used.

    I see Sean, crumpled over, reclining limply against the chamber wall. He looks at me lazily as I run to him in a pair of quick steps, expecting at any moment to be skewered with a crossbow bolt. Mister Tumble doesn¡¯t even twitch the weapon in my direction. Sean smiles weakly, both hands clutched around the shaft of a bolt that is embedded in his abdomen.

    ¡°Hi ¨ªde.¡±

    He rasps it out. I¡¯ve never seen him like this. His face looks wooden, and is already dripping with sweat.

    I hear Iseult¡¯s voice behind me. ¡°Evin. Tell me what is happening.¡±

    Her tone is pure, cold malice. I put my hands on Sean¡¯s shoulders and turn to look at Iseult. She¡¯s poised, feet set and hands tight around her jezail. The warm light of Mister Tumble¡¯s oil lamp does nothing to mask the seething hate on her face.

    ¡°This is over, Evin. Whatever you want, it¡¯s done. Whatever is wrong with you, it¡¯s finished. You are either coming back as prisoner or as a corpse, but that¡¯s your choice.¡±

    She¡¯s speaking slowly, in funeral tones.

    Mister Tumble responds, but not to her. ¡°Take care of Sean, ¨ªde.¡±

    That¡¯s all he says. He doesn¡¯t seem to even be registering her as a threat- when I glance over at Mister Tumble, he¡¯s looking straight at me. There¡¯s none of the ferocity I saw from Captain Holofernes, none of the malevolence that is evident in Iseult. He looks so¡­ unaffected. Like this entire situation is beneath him.

    For the first time since I set foot on the moon, I know what I¡¯m supposed to do. I bend over Sean, who grabs my wrist weakly with his free hand. His other is still clutching the crossbow bolt that has impaled him. Its black-feathered tail juts abominably out of his gut. There are tears in his eyes, and his face is sweaty and ragged. I hear a grating noise that puts my teeth on edge: the bolt has gone most of the way through him, and scrapes against the wall behind him as he shifts his weight.

    ¡°Break it,¡± he grunts. I fumble ineffectively for a moment, trying to wrap my hands around the slippery shaft. It¡¯s blood. It¡¯s his blood. His blood stains my hands now, too, and it is warm and wet and I can¡¯t do it. I can¡¯t do it without hurting him. Iseult and Mister Tumble are speaking, in breathy murmurs that I can¡¯t understand. Right now, Sean is my entire world, and he is dying.

    A sob starts bubbling in my throat. My friend is going to die. I¡¯m reminded of my time with the Swatch-Eater, when I couldn¡¯t climb, when I was saved only by Sean himself, hauling me up the rope. He saved me. He saved me, and I can¡¯t save him. Tears coil at the corner of my eyes. I¡¯m appalled by the dignity that has been stripped from him.

    ¡°Hello,¡± he croaks. Absurdly. He is trying to comfort me, even as he¡¯s dying. ¡°Break it. Please.¡±

    I can hear Mister Tumble saying something behind me, in quiet, polite tones. I can¡¯t understand him, because if I lose focus on Sean and the bolt then I will fall to pieces.

    He gasps when I finally grip the wood and bend it as hard as I can, and I feel the squirm of his guts vibrate through the shaft as it snaps. I am not going to panic. I am going to finish this. Sean¡¯s chest is heaving, and his eyes have opened wider, like he¡¯s just woken up. He looks at me, and blinks several times before speaking. ¡°Thanks for that.¡°

    I stifle an absurd, inappropriate laugh. ¡°Now push it through,¡± he finishes. Push it through what? Through- Oh. Through him.

    The conversation behind me ebbs. Mister Tumble speaking calmly, a soft fireplace cadence. It is insane. My friend is bleeding to death in my hands, and the two of them are talking, like students. Iseult interrupts him, cutting through his storyteller¡¯s timbre.

    ¡°Spare me the pious dribble. I¡¯m not from Yvreathe, I don¡¯t give a shit about the liturgy. You¡¯re either walking out with us, or I¡¯m going to core your fucking knees and drag you out myself.¡±

    I almost cut myself on the wicked blade of the bolt¡¯s head when I reach around Sean¡¯s soaking back. His breath saws and his body shakes horribly as I grip the bolt as hard as I can and pull the shaft through him. I finish the job with a wet squelch, and Sean doesn¡¯t stop shaking. He smiles, weakly.

    ¡°The words of Saint Anchor, actually. I don¡¯t want to hurt you, Iseult. I tried not to kill Sean,¡± Mister Tumble continues. There¡¯s an exhalation from Sean. The world¡¯s quietest cheer.

    ¡°I want you to help me, with this. I¡¯m sorry for deceiving you, and I¡¯m sorry for deceiving everyone else. But this is so much bigger than you. You cannot understand what this moon is. Why we called it here.¡±

    Why we called it here?

    ¡°No,¡± Iseult spits. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t be caught dead in the same grave as you, traitor. You are coming with us. You did something to my work. My knotwork.¡± I shuck my coat and tie it around Sean¡¯s wound, binding both sides with the thick cloth.

    ¡°That is what you¡¯re interested in? The way I altered your sigilry?¡± Mister Tumble laughs, genuinely surprised. ¡°Not the moon? Not what this place was made for? Or why I called it? Don¡¯t you want to understand why we are here?¡±

    ¡°No. You are coming,¡± and here her voice strains, slightly, as she dips the barrel of the rifle slightly, aiming at his knees. ¡°With us. I know people like you, Evin. You just want people like me to help you, to do whatever the fuck you want to. You wanted to use a storm in a bottle, and now that you¡¯ve let me out to do your work you just want to put me back in. Whatever you¡¯re trying to do to me, it¡¯s not going to work. Now drop the shit. We are leaving. This is your last warning.¡±

    That calm, uncaring grin. He opens his mouth. ¡°You cannot kill me, Isr¨¡ Mahrin. Surely you understand who-¡°

    She twitches the gun up, to point at his heart, and pulls the trigger.

 Chapter 19: Iseult and é“†de

    Iseult

    There¡¯s a click as the gun doesn¡¯t fire. Evin sags, like a great weight has left him.

    Impossible. I pull again, then again, and for a fourth time, cycling through every cylinder. Empty scraping sounds, a gun compelled to fail.

    Evin, for all his bluster, exhales audibly. His broad frame bounces with jittery laughter. ¡°You know, I never quite got used to that.¡±

    ¨ªde

    She surges forward, low and lupine. Her rifle has barely hit the floor when Iseult is face-to-face with Mister Tumble, closing the distance in half a breath. They¡¯ve been standing still for so long I flinch at her movement, and the speed of it takes both Mister Tumble and me by surprise. There¡¯s another twanging noise as he discharges his second crossbow, and the bolt sails wide and buries itself into the wall five or six feet to my left. Mister Tumble barks an alarm, then throws the weapon at her and rips his hand from his pocket to scrabble at something behind his back. By then Iseult is upon him, death gleaming in her bared teeth.

    I have watched Sean fight, of course. He was kind enough to practice with me on the ship, and taught me at the very least how to protect myself from punches, and kicks, and knees, and elbows, and swords, and spears, and being hit with chairs and such. But I had never seen Iseult like this, and the way that her knife flashes in the lamplight bears no semblance to Sean¡¯s movements. It¡¯s animalistic. Frenzied. The blade plunges, again and again, first down and then sideways and then over and over in stabs and slashes that send Mister Tumble skittering backwards, fleeing the knife. She flows with him, never stopping, and he too has procured a blade from somewhere, a fat Crowmere sword the length of his forearm. His huge, desperate slash makes her retreat as well, a hop that pauses the fight for the merest second before she leaps forward to attack again, hand and knife together, plunging into him.

    She finds her mark in his flesh- twice, three times. Her free hand rakes across his face, clawing at his eyes, drawing blood from the soft flesh of his cheeks. Blinded, roaring, he stabs and cuts with a dismembering strength, unable to find her body as she rips into him. He staggers, beleaguered, a bull slaughtered by a pack of wolves.

    It ends, when Iseult¡¯s knife lodges itself halfway into Mister Tumble¡¯s left hand. It must have cut to the bone, because she tries to pull back for another slash but his hand follows, pulling her off balance. He catches her, with a knee to the gut that folds her over. She releases her grip on the knife, which is still wedged, perversely, in the centre of his palm. Iseult totters backwards, bent halfway, and looks up just in time to be knocked off her feet by a crushing punch.

    ¡°No!¡± I shout. Mister Tumble looks at me, surprised, as if he¡¯s forgotten I exist. Blood streams down his face, pooling at his shirt collar. He holds his hand up, the ruined left one, and I see that the knife has dug completely into his flesh, halfway to his wrist, between his middle and ring finger. He seems not to notice.

    ¡°One moment, Sigilist.¡±

    He stamps hard on Iseult¡¯s left hand, crushing her wrist under his shoe. Then he makes a disapproving sigh and swings his sword down with the force of his whole body, like he¡¯s chopping a log.

    *

    Something is poking me in the side of the face.

    I am staring at nothing, and bolt upright with a start. When did I-

    Evin Tumble is looking at me, from across the little moon room. A hideous glimmer lights his eyes, and his mouth is tight and vile. Iseult is on the ground, cradling her left arm- cradling where her left arm used to be.

    ¡°Kill. Him.¡±

    Sean. Sean was poking me awake. The second time I¡¯ve faded out of consciousness today. He croaks it out, and there¡¯s no anger or venom in his voice. He sounds so distant. So tired. He tries to speak again, but it doesn¡¯t sound like words.

    I¡¯m tired. My head is buzzing, or sawing. Thoughts crash into each other, like there¡¯s too many to fit in my head.

    Iseult doesn¡¯t have an arm.

    I almost faint, again. Mister Tumble says something, and I realise he is repeating something that has taken me a moment to process.

    ¡°She never told you, did she?¡±

    Iseult doesn¡¯t have an arm.

    He seizes Iseult¡¯s shivering body with one hand, and hauls her upright by the throat. She sputters, and the emptiness where her forearm should be is monstrous. Iseult is suddenly so pale, wan in the lamplight, and the juxtaposition on her face between bloodless skin and dark ink renders her corpselike.

    Even now, even beaten and dismembered and dying, she spits out what sounds like a curse at Mister Tumble. He laughs, and tosses her down closer to the wall, where she topples over. She slips slowly back into a seated crouch, her vile glare sapping her entire strength. Her free hand is clutching the stump where her forearm used to be.

    I am rooted and horror-struck as I watch her suffer.

    ¡°¨ªde. She never told you why she lives in Ildathach. Away from her people.¡±

    You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

    Iseult gurgles something, then looks over at me. Her entire head lolls as she shifts her focus back to Mister Tumble. ¡°Fuck you, Evin.¡±

    Sean is, miraculously, still breathing. He¡¯s unresponsive as I clutch his wide chest, and his heartbeat is faint. But he¡¯s alive. A sheen of awful sweat coats his brow, and runs in rivulets down his face.

    ¡°Only¡­¡± Mister Tumble is still talking, adopting that preacher¡¯s voice, his words echoing from the vast stone around us. ¡°They¡¯re not really your people anymore, are they Isr¨¡?¡±

    I look up, still cradling Sean¡¯s bulk. Mister Tumble is looking straight at me, beaming, his eyes glossy. The warm light of the oil lamp gives his face the weathering of centuries. I shudder under that inhuman gaze.

    I shake my head, trying to focus. Stray thoughts scuttle over my eyes and my ears by the dozen.

    ¡°She thinks this whole thing is about her, but in truth- I could not care less about Iseult Morrin. Isr¨¡ Mahrin. She¡¯s a traitor, ¨ªde. That¡¯s what those marks on her face mean. They¡¯re not Bani Yahtrib knotwork, or myths, or whatever else she told you. They¡¯re a brand. Her tribe exiled her. In the old days, that would mean that this, this,¡± and here he turns and points at Iseult¡¯s crumpled body, ¡°criminal would¡¯ve died. But she slithered to Ildathach, sold herself as a mercenary, and managed to luck her way into the good grace of the Chaplain¡¯s Office. I know what you are. Worm. Witch. I have broken her, but how do you break a worm? Even when you cut it in pieces, it squirms and hides.¡±

    A juddering, weak snarl from Iseult. He wheels back to her, on one heel, and his peacoat spins with him. ¡°Is that a lie?¡±

    No response.

    ¡°Is it a lie?¡± His voice thunders in the confined space of the vault.

    ¡°You think I¡¯m broken, Evin?¡±

    I¡¯m shocked at the weakness in her voice. Iseult is slipping away, kept awake only by her hatred. ¡°Have you heard me crack?¡±

    She stops talking.

    ¡°¨ªde.¡± He¡¯s turned to me, arms wide.

    ¡°This is not what you expected. I understand. But sometimes, something you must realise, is that people like these use you because they know they can. You are young. You have never met this type of person. But Sean, and Iseult¡­ they fooled you. She is a criminal to her own people, who exiled her over a decade ago. And what is he? A man born in the Aergan, who fought against his own people? What does he actually do, save convince you of his worth?

    ¡°They fooled me, as well, as well as my company. They used you for their own purposes. They¡¯ll both live, I think. But now I need you, for the task I asked you to help with, so many months ago. You¡¯ve arrived at the end of a very, very long journey. From before we met. Before Colt & Tumble travelled to the Salting Bleaks. Before, in fact, you were born.

    ¡°You needn¡¯t worry, by the way. You did everything perfectly. It took very little to adapt the knotwork you provided- well, not your knotwork. But the knotwork that she gave me,¡± his crossbow flicks towards Iseult. ¡°Never really thought that someone else might know a few of the same tricks. Didn¡¯t consider how easy it might be to reconfigure her strange little sigil with my own counter-charm, change the parameters just ever so subtly. Quite an impressive change in result though, eh? Nobody on Calacar has managed anything like this for quite a few years now.¡±

    His hand has returned to his pocket. The other dabs sweat and blood from the wounds on his face and neck. I cannot believe how casual he is, in the aftermath of this awful butchery. His sword has been sheathed back in its place on the small of his back. Without the dark stains on his jacket where he wiped Iseult¡¯s blood from his weapon, or the knife-punctures which are now sodden with his own blood, I would never suspect what crimes he just committed. Could I kill him? When I speak, my own voice surprises me.

    ¡°Then why the ruse at Inskoet? Why this secrecy?¡±

    He¡¯s not even paying attention. He¡¯s dropped into a kneeling crouch, and is fiddling with the oil lamp in the centre of the room. It sputters for a moment, and he is brought into radiance when he opens the lamp to its full brightness.

    The oil lamp bathes the entire room in warm light, and I can clearly see what¡¯s marked on the opposite side of the chamber.

    The room is a cube. It is hewn from the same smooth, cold, white material of the rest of the moon. But, unlike the rest of the broken, shattered walls we ran by, or the snaking intestinal ruins we passed by on the Oxenfree, this room is decorated. This wall is engraved with an immense circle, floor-to-ceiling, packed with so many precise etchings it at first appears empty. Inside of this great ring, the wall is pockmarked, irregularly, with thousands upon thousands of dots. Some larger, some smaller, overlaid by great curves, some centred, some offset at seemingly random angles, some finger-wide, some hair-thin. A smear of denser pockmarks traces an arc that starts roughly a third of the way up one side of the circle and slashes down to a mirrored point on the other.

    And, at the very centre, hovering before a small circular hole, is something that looks very much like a three dimensional sigil. It¡¯s black. Blacker, perhaps, than the darkness we stalked through to get to the room. Black like a bee from the Bloom.

    I don¡¯t know when I let go of Sean. I¡¯m standing, shoulder-to-shoulder with Mister Tumble, and staring up at the shape floating scant inches from the exact centre of the circle. It¡¯s far too high for me to touch, but this close, under the warm flicker of the oil lamp I see its gnarled shape and find it familiar.

    The serene bobbing of the thing reminds of the lapping of the sea, or watching the swaying treetops in a Wraithwild morning. The longer I look at it, the longer the shapes in the circle seem to swirl about us, moving at the edges of my perception.

    ¡°That¡¯s why I wanted you specifically, of all the sigilists in Ildathach. This was never about them. I chose her randomly, in a chance encounter in a lounge. She recruited him. But you- I chose you specifically. I read your papers. Spoke with your professors. Only you could understand this.¡±

    A sculpture of bubbles, formed in dark stone, swirls of rock like foamy pigment. It can¡¯t be much bigger than my hand. But in that moment, I understand it. The mathematics, the material, everything. It is unbelievable. It¡¯s a sigil, compacted perfectly. Spread out, worked as normal knotwork, it would encompass this entire room. I drink it in. All of it.

    ¡°What are the designs on the walls? The lines and the dots?¡± An idea buzzes in from nowhere. ¡°Is this lunar knotwork?¡±

    Mister Tumble smiles. ¡°Stars.¡±

    It¡¯s a map of heaven. The epiphany blooms all at once, and a handful of familiar constellations swim into focus, interspersed between myriad alien ones. Stars. Of course. I am again struck by that deep sense of unbalancing. So focused on the floating sculpture that I ignored the pattern around it. This isn¡¯t just art. It¡¯s some sort of sigil, as well.

    Iseult gurgles quietly in the corner, shaking me from my reverie. I start to turn my head, and feel Mister Tumble¡¯s hand on my shoulder. He rests it casually, his thumb nearly touching my jaw. His other hand is still inside his coat pocket. My eyes start to judder, and I stagger back to face the star map and the sculpture.

    And Sean and Iseult.

    I protest: ¡°But my friends, they¡¯re-¡°

    ¡°They were never your friends. They were using you. But this is your work, ¨ªde. This is an art which is locked to me. But it¡¯s not beyond you. You shall live forever. Behind this wall, you will help expose the door of Saints.¡±

    The last ten minutes. Trauma. Realisation. Wonder. All roiling within me. Thoughts of killing Mister Tumble, thoughts of saving my friends, flit through my head on quick, flashing wings. They leave almost as soon as they arrive.

    And Sean and Iseult.

    Why can I not think properly?

    His voice is honeyed and gentle. His eyes are warm, and frozen, and ancient, and caring, and greedy. ¡°Do you think you can open it? There is so much beyond the door. Imagine feeling the wind between stars. Imagine dipping your fingertips in the sun. If you let me into that door- we can leave, ¨ªde.¡±

    I pause, look at him. His open expression, the kindness in his smile. The reassuring weight of his hand, the gentleman¡¯s confidence. He wants what¡¯s best for me. The knotwork floats before a perfect dark hole. It¡¯s a lock.

    A second passes. You could fit all of my life inside it. I stare at the floating sigil, and already I can tease meaning from its bubbling coils. It would not take long to attune myself to this miracle, to ignore Sean and Iseult, to open the door, to help Mister Tumble. Not long at all. And after I open this door and remove the seal and reveal the space behind, I will be so, so happy. Dreams burst on my tongue. I can do this. I will betray my friends. I will forget the past. I will abandon my family, and ascend into this moment.

    Coldness hums between the reverie.

    What was it they said in the Bloom? In dark and drowning places?

    I¡¯ve made up my mind.

    I nod to him, and he beams. But there¡¯s something happening to my head. I feel my thoughts of Sean and Iseult slip away, and I draw my feelings down to try to hollow myself, soak in the alien magic of this knotwork. There¡¯s just one petty thing, butting irritatingly inside me. Something that tastes of black oil, something with a hundred thousand scrabbling black legs.

    Carefully, slowly, I reach under the neckline of my dress and remove the clasp on the string of bullets that Iseult gave me. Mister Tumble watches, thoughtfully, as I take a single step backwards, framing him before the map of stars. With the grace and kindness of a Saint, I extend it out in front of me, palm up, pointing towards him.

    He frowns only slightly as I say the two syllables the bees taught me. The first with my voice, the second with my heart and all the thoughts that are crowding my skull.

    The bees weren¡¯t lying. I can feel my tongue and my hand beginning to char, and his ancient face twists in shock when Iseult¡¯s bullet tears through his open mouth and ricochets off the wall behind him.

 Chapter 20: Sean and é“†de

    Sean

    Help.

    Please help.

    ¨ªde

    I had to leave them, because I need the captain and her crew to save them.

    I had to leave them.

    I don¡¯t think about the look of betrayal on Iseult¡¯s face when I fled the room.

    I don¡¯t think about Sean¡¯s ragged chest, or his closed eyes.

    I don¡¯t think about the gory hole where the back of Mister Tumble¡¯s skull used to be, or the blood, or the way I am suddenly myself again now that he is dead.

    I don¡¯t think about the foreign ideas that skitter, uninvited, between my thoughts.

    I sprint through the abyss.

    When we entered this hall, this moon-maze, we trod carefully and quietly. I cover the same ground again, twice as fast, running through a blackness so absolute and so crushing that if I were to stop it would surely swallow me whole. My heaving breath echoes loudly through the neat passage, and it is that fact alone that convinces me I am still alive. I have to find the Oxenfree. I have to find help.

    The rent, the tiny fissure in the flesh of the moon that bled violet light- it¡¯s not here. I do not understand. I could not have taken a wrong turn because there were no wrong turns. It was a straight, inclined line.

    Don¡¯t panic. Sean told you not to panic.

    I panic.

    I sprint further, trying to see something. Anything. My breath, absurdly, lets me feel the space around me. I can hear the echoes change when I pass a kink in the path. I was not tracing the walls with my hands, because I did not think it necessary- now I slap my palms against the corridor, trying to convince myself I¡¯m still alive. It should not be possible for me to be lost. But I am lost.

    Both of my friends are going to die.

    I take a random turn. A stray thought tells me to do so, and lacking any other alternative I follow it, because at this point my instincts are better than succumbing to my fear. I am not on the path we started on. My bare feet slap loudly in the dark, on painful metal tiles.

    At first it is not obvious that there are people watching me. It takes me a moment to realise I can actually see them, flanking both sides of the corridor in neat, single-file.

    My eyes could not possibly adjust to this lack of light. I do not know why I can see, and yet- at the edge of my vision, in the deepest red imaginable, they are there. Stock-still, swollen. Limbs dangling like a marionettes¡¯. Not people, then. Something horrible, something person-shaped but wrong. Impossibly thick-fingered. Decapitated. I am shaking, from exhaustion and terror, and I have stopped running.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

    Cold, headless moon-men line every wall of this room, standing with a frigid patience. Dread pools in my chest and I am standing in front of one of these behemoth forms, easily six and a half feet tall and wider than any man. I dare it to move, panting wildly from exertion. It does not.

    I shove its chest.

    It still does not move. It is heavy. Tough and smooth, like ivory. Not people, then. Statues. The ring of its severed neck is too high for me to peer at. I dare not run a finger over that ruin.

    I don¡¯t have time for this. My friends are dying.

    Through this chamber, then into the next one at a breakneck pace, past row upon row of statues. There must be dozens, all hung neatly on hooks that protrude from the wall. It is nonsensical. Offerings, perhaps. Or sacrifices. I realise that there may be Saints in the sky, and they may be as cruel as some of the ones down here. Perhaps they demand these bloodless, decapitated bodies of gruesome men. Perhaps these bodies were Saints.

    The room is gone. My vision is not. I¡¯m seeing things that I could not, before- outlines, in crimson and deep, deep violet. I am also at the limit of my running, and my sight darkens, losing its lustre, fading to reds and blacks.

    I slow to a run, then to a torturous jog. My eyes are filling with scarlet. I¡¯ve never been this tired before, and all I want to do is curl into a ball and die. I see red swimming on the blank wall in front of me. I hear a crackling in my ears, and my blood splashes in my head like a lapping sea.

    I don¡¯t realise where I am until I hear the voices, calling in panicked Irdcheol.

    Iseult would laugh.

    I¡¯ve found the scarlet halo-light of the Oxenfree. A sailor seizes me about the arms as I collapse.

    *

    Captain Holofernes waits for approximately thirty seconds before she decides I have had enough rest. It is not solely a concern of physical exhaustion. My head is being pulled apart, separated like slow-cooked meat. I am still breathing, heaving. My feet are minced. She rests a hand on my shoulders.

    ¡°Get your shit together, girl. You look like you¡¯ve seen a Saint returning.¡±

    Our group, for it is now comprised of not just me but also the Captain and all but one of the Gundog Walking¡¯s skeleton crew, move rapidly through the darkness. I do not know how we will find the room with Sean and Iseult. I just know that we will.

    There is no rancour from the captain. She had directed the crew to collect arms and lights before I even finished my story, and had barked an order for medical supplies soon after, when I told her between wheezes what happened to Sean and Iseult. She didn¡¯t seem to care at all about the statue hall, and she seems entirely convinced that Mister Tumble had no accomplices. I had felt the knifelike focus of her full attention even through my exhaustion. After I¡¯d finished, she had pointed at the cutlass at her waist and asked if I thought it¡¯d work against moon people.

    She shrugs, before I can even answer this insane question. Maybe she read the look on my face. ¡°Can¡¯t hurt, though,¡± she mutters.

    Our first journey through these halls was patient and silent. Our second is loud and lethal. Equipped with enough weapons to murder a whale, the lantern-lit sailors rush through the moon hall. My own strange, temporary phantom-sight is gone. I see nothing beyond the lanterns¡¯ glow.

    We find the chasm in the floor. The sailors step over it. One does something to her lantern, slotting down little sliders so its radiance is shaped into a cone that streams solely out of one flat face. When she manoeuvres to shine the light down the hole, Captain Holofernes snarls back an order and the sailor immediately straightens and follows the rest of us.

    Time is hard, in the dark. It can¡¯t have been more than ten minutes since I left the room. We break into a sprint when we see oil-light glimmering at the end of this hallway.

    Iseult is standing over Sean, crushing the bicep of her ruined arm with her one remaining hand. The empty space where her forearm should be is sickening. She gurgles when we enter. I think she¡¯s speaking Mutafasih, until I really parse the syllables.

    ¡°Help me carry him.¡±

    The captain sends one of her men to Iseult, who does not bat him away as he pulls her aside and starts wrapping the nauseating stump of her arm. The rest of the sailors crowd around Sean, and curtly report his condition to the captain.

    ¡°Intestinal puncture. Might be a kidney as well. He¡¯s in shock.¡±

    They¡¯re efficient. A brace of sailors support Sean¡¯s limp torso as a third crushes cloth over both sides of his wound and a fourth wraps a length of bandage around his wide torso. I stare at Sean, ignoring everything else in the room. There¡¯s just so much blood.

    ¡°Get him up. We¡¯ll worry about blood poisoning later. Hey. ¨ªde. Iseult.¡±

    She snaps her fingers at me. I look away from Sean just as the sailors haul him to his feet, sharing his weight between the two largest crew. Iseult looks dreamily between the captain and me.

    ¡°Is there anything else in this room?¡±

    So much. There is so much.

    There is Mister Tumble¡¯s body.

    There is the sculpture, still floating, halfway up the star wall.

    There is what Mister Tumble called the door of the Saints.

    There is whatever lies beyond.

    ¡°Nothing important,¡± I say.

    Iseult begins to speak, but the captain overrides her, immediately barking orders to her crew. Quick-stepping sailors drag Sean out of the room almost as quickly as if they weren¡¯t carrying him at all.

    I am the second last to leave. Iseult, protesting gently, is being led down the hall by Captain Holofernes, who has clamped one sinewy hand around my friend¡¯s now bandaged arm. The sailor behind me is looking not at Mister Tumble¡¯s shattered corpse, nor the majesty of the moon¡¯s designs around him, but dead at me.

    He¡¯s making sure I don¡¯t do anything. I slink out, and the sailor nods, his forearms relaxing as he eases his grip around the base of his cutlass.

    I slip my hand into my coat, loosely cradling the thumb-sized sigil sculpture that I had already plucked from Mister Tumble¡¯s still-warm pocket.

 Chapter 21: Aftermath

    ¡°So it¡¯s gone.¡±

    She draws her mouth into a thin line. ¡°Yes.¡±

    ¡°And¡­ you¡¯re okay with that.¡±

    When Iseult shrugs, she does so with half of her body. Her left arm, bandaged at the stump just below her elbow, doesn¡¯t move.

    ¡°Not much I can do.¡±

    ¨ªde peers out solemnly, through uneven glass, into autumn. Half of the leaves in the city have started to turn, and the streets have become thick with sodden leaves. She¡¯s glad to be in Scannell¡¯s, where the fireplaces are blazing against the sudden, swinging chill. Her hearth in the Lugrough house was boarded up decades ago, and she has grown tired of sketching a stockpile of low-burn sun sigils for the lengthening nights.

    Her brothers are enjoying their new autumn cardigans, at least. Courtesy of her share from Colt & Tumble¡¯s final payment, back on Inskoet. Before things went wrong.

    They are once again in a pleasant room, surrounded by the agreeable trappings of old Ildathach. The cushions are deep. The walls are panelled with stained Aergan wood. Tastefully half-drawn curtains provide ample light, as does the small, happily crackling fireplace.

    Both women are seated with the false casualness of housecats, perched on comfortable armchairs. Both have cups of coffee, though ¨ªde has opted to mix hers with water, and sips from a traditional Yvreathan mug. Iseult, of course, rests her remaining hand on a saucer holding a tiny Bani Yahtrib glass. A pair of coarse garlic-sausage sandwiches lurks between the pair, untouched.

    The sigilist¡¯s brooch on Iseult¡¯s chest is a bright, fiery crimson. Like an engine halo.

    ¡°And how do you know that?¡±

    Iseult raises her eyebrows and follows ¨ªde¡¯s sight line before responding. ¡°Well, I mean, Corr Vreackan is hundreds of miles away, and I¡¯m here, minus a hand-¡°

    ¡°Not that.¡± ¨ªde cuts her off. The force of her tone warrants another eyebrow twitch from the older woman. ¡°How do you know it¡¯s gone.¡±

    ¡°Ah.¡± Iseult shifts in her chair and reaches, wincing, for her coffee cup. She settles back into the plush leather with a grimace.

    ¡°Two sources. The first, obviously, Captain Omarin Holofernes. Sailors do enjoy tales. Especially when they¡¯re the main characters. After we left, the privateers and navy ships took about a day to show up, only to find the entire moon anchored in place by strands of Noble rot. You know the stories about ships being marooned and enveloped by floating rotbergs? Nobody has ever documented that happening, until now.

    ¡°The Gundog Walking came back to Ildathach to put Sean and me in hospital. It resupplied, and immediately sailed back, part of a little fleet financed by the handful of people in Colt & Tumble who haven¡¯t yet been arrested. Half a week to sail here, half a week to get back out to the moon. Although we got to the moon basically immediately, it took a bit more time for any serious missions to be sent up to investigate. So sometime between when the last of the first arrivals left and the first of the official ships arrived, the entire thing vanished. Captain Holofernes sends her regards, by the way.¡±

    ¨ªde doesn¡¯t react, so Iseult continues. ¡°Also, I¡¯ve got a contact in northern Khazraj, and have been signalling to her for a few days now. The Principality of Dhahii has been experimenting with subnautical craft for the last several years. Underwater boats. They dispatched one of the reliable ones to investigate the ocean underneath where the moon was last seen.¡±

    Rain begins to patter gently on the windows.

    ¡°They expected to find the thing, coated in noble rot, plugging the vortex. But it¡¯s not there. Nothing¡¯s there. They can¡¯t reach the ocean floor, of course, but they should be able to find some trace of the moon. Nothing. Not even any rot left.¡±

    ¨ªde inhales forcefully.

    ¡°I know. Unusual. Corr Vreackan is totally gone, too.¡±

    Iseult closes her eyes and lets the noise of the rain and the fireplace suffuse her, like she¡¯s trying to clear her head. She takes a moment and sips on her drink, waiting for the caffeine to jitter her back to normalcy.

    ¡°Actually, it¡¯s not just that. Every vortex is gone. Every single mapped vortex in the seas from Khazraj to Yvreathe have vanished.¡±

    She lets this fact settle. Unable to explain it, and with no protests from ¨ªde, Iseult continues the story.

    ¡°I think I know what happened. Or, I have a piece of the story. We know Colt & Tumble did something in the Wraithwild, almost two years ago, around the Salting Bleaks. Turns out some very interested people in Khazraj have been looking into it, as well. They found an excavation site. Absolutely devastated landscape, couldn¡¯t tell if it was a crater or a mine. Everything, not just the equipment but the ground itself, had been burned. Colt & Tumble almost certainly found something. A few months after that, the moon showed up,¡±

    She pauses, slowly looking around the room. ¡°Well, actually, maybe they made the moon show up. Nobody to this day even knows why it appeared in the first place. But Colt & Tumble wanted it. I just can¡¯t figure out why.¡±If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    The younger sigilist tilts her head from side to side. ¡°Do you think Mister Tumble used what they found, in the Salting Bleaks? Maybe they dug up some strange Wraithwild science, or magic. Maybe that¡¯s how he was able to dupe so many people. Maybe that¡¯s how he convinced the three of us to help him.¡±

    Iseult¡¯s mouth drops open, very slightly. Her teeth are very white. ¡°That¡¯s certainly an interesting hypothesis. What makes you think that?¡±

    ¡°Oh, nothing,¡± ¨ªde lies, hastily. ¡°Just a thought.¡±

    The fireplace sparks in the silence.

    ¡°What about Sean?¡± ¨ªde eventually asks, changing the subject.

    Iseult doesn¡¯t open her eyes. ¡°He¡¯s alive. But not doing well. Secondary infection of the digestive tract. He¡¯s on laudanum, most of the time. The doctor tells me there¡¯s more than half a chance he¡¯ll make it.¡± Her eyes snap open. ¡°But when I visited him he wasn¡¯t himself. I actually met Brianna, on my way out of the hospital.¡±

    ¨ªde looks confused. ¡°Brianna?¡±

    ¡°Brianna Whelan? His sister. Younger sister. The older one is busy in Llancreg.¡±

    The young sigilist mulls this over, and looks slightly lost. She slumps, her free hand wedged into her coat pocket. ¡°I never actually knew her name. He didn¡¯t really talk about his family that much.¡±

    ¡°She wants to speak with you.¡±

    When ¨ªde replaces her coffee cup on the saucer, she does it too forcefully, betraying her anxiety. ¡°Why? What could she want with me?¡±

    A loud laugh explodes from a group on the far side of the room, and ¨ªde twitches at the sound. Iseult clears her throat. ¡°Well, closure, I suppose. I told her what I remember. But I¡¯m not sure I have all the details in order. It would be good for you to reach out to her. She wrote down the address of her lodgings for me.¡±

    Neither speak, and Iseult takes a folded square of paper from one of her chest pockets and slides it over the smooth tabletop.

    ¡°I hope he¡¯s alright,¡± ¨ªde says eventually, her voice cracked. ¡°I¡¯m glad we took him to Ildathach, but maybe he would¡¯ve been doing better in Crowmere. The doctors are- the doctors, they are, uhm.¡± She flinches, tears forming at the corner of her eyes.

    ¡°Hey. Don¡¯t,¡± Iseult seems to struggle with the words for a moment. ¡°Don¡¯t blame yourself. He knew what he was getting into.¡±

    ¨ªde Ceallaigh cries quietly, trying and failing to not let Iseult see. After half a minute, she wipes away her tears, bitterly. The coffee cup before her steams gently.

    ¡°Why don¡¯t you seem to care about him?¡±

    Iseult sits, thunderstruck at the question. ¨ªde looks up angrily at her, tears rimming her eyes. The air between the two thickens, and Iseult looks away.

    ¡°I care about him very much.¡±

    ¡°Then what the fuck is wrong with you? I try to get in to that hospital every day, and they won¡¯t let me, and you are allowed in, and you¡¯re spending that time elsewhere, instead of with him.¡±

    They could be reflections of each other, with those stares.

    ¡°You didn¡¯t ask me,¡± says the older woman, eventually.

    ¨ªde has matured meaningfully, over the course of her travels with Sean and Iseult. Her mother noticed it. The other lodgers at the Lugrough Club noticed it, as did her landlady. Her brothers didn¡¯t, but they are children, so they are excused. She has aged, more like leather than like wine. She can tell when someone is trying to misdirect her.

    ¡°I didn¡¯t ask you what,¡± she says, bulking her words into a flat demand rather than a question. Not in the mood for games, now.

    ¡°About what Tumble said about me, in the moon.¡±

    ¡°No,¡± says ¨ªde, still bristling. ¡°I was being polite. And we had other things to deal with. Just like we have to deal with Sean, now. So please get to the point.¡± Neither of them look at Iseult¡¯s missing arm.

    ¡°He wasn¡¯t completely wrong.

    ¡°When I was fifteen,¡± Iseult starts. ¡°I was a Bani Yathrib adult. I inherited very little save for a millennia of skills and the unyielding love of my tribe. It¡¯s difficult to explain this to you, in terms you understand. A fifth of Bani Yahtrib children do not make it to adulthood. It is a difficult life.

    ¡°My tribe taught me many things. How to survive in the darkest parts of the Wraithwild. I know that you have been told the Shorn Peak will kill you, if you see it. This is a lie. It lets us keep hidden places. I grew and learned under the Wraithwild skies, and I began to understand the heritage that my ancestors built for us. The love of the stars, and the great and lonely emptiness between them. The quiet meditation that must be undertaken to hollow yourself of desire. I carved notes in little stone places, just as my family has done so for centuries. I have read poems and theories that are old enough that the rock they are written on has begun to decay. I have read your poetry as well, and that of al Khazraj, and Brixa Thalaam, and even some Tecuani sonnets. My people are alone in the acceptance of the banality of our lives. We are the only people who do not worship the Saints. We have no buried desire to lust over immortality. Even their version, the broken immortality.¡±

    She pauses. Iseult is not naturally a story teller, and frowns, very slightly.

    ¡°But I am not a member of the Mahrin tribe, now. Officially. I call them my tribe, but they are not, because I was exiled when I was fifteen. You must understand, what it is, to live that way- to wander from place to place, over spaces so vast that they could normally only be travelled by animal or by boat. To walk through landscapes that change yearly, that might be desert or scrub or mountains, that might be a sea of cracked ash half the size of the Aergan. There is no arguing with the tribe. It lives and dies together. There is no dissent. Dissent means doubt, and doubt brings death. And I dissented.¡±

    She runs her hand through her hair in a tired gesture that ¨ªde has never seen her make.

    ¡°It was very simple. There was another tribe, another family. Thamaut tribe. Ghazw clansmen, merchant-raiders. There was no conflict between us, of course, because my tribe were predominantly philosophers. Our tribes, Thamaut and Mahrin, had a perfect respect for each other. Then I met a Thamaut my age. And then met him again and again, throughout the season.

    ¡°So, yes. My parents discovered this. This meant the tribes discovered it. And both of our peoples punished us, humiliated us. It could not be allowed, not yet. Perhaps not for years. Perhaps not ever. There was already a different marriage scheduled between the tribes, and these things have to be balanced very carefully.

    ¡°When we met again, and were discovered, the justice was simpler. I do not know what happened to him. But I was sent away, with my clothes and some water and a gun. Forever.¡±

    She exhales heavily. ¡°I never wanted to leave the Wraithwild, ¨ªde. I was made to leave. I didn¡¯t talk or cry, when they tattooed me,¡± she waves a hand in front of her face. ¡°It took hours. I never spoke to them again. Had I stayed, had I become the person the Mahrin tribe was trying to shape me into, who knows what would¡¯ve happened. I don¡¯t think I was wrong to do what I did. But I don¡¯t think my clan was wrong in their decision either.

    ¡°Back then, I had never been without a people. Brixa Thalaam was closer than Cotton Castle, so I spent a fortnight walking there, looking for a new clan. I didn¡¯t know any better. Seeing that many humans all at once almost stopped my heart. The first friends I made took the belongings I¡¯d scavenged from the wilderness, promised me a safe haven, and robbed me blind. I had just clothes and my gun, which I of course held in my arms when I slept. I walked to Ildathach, over the Aergan, through the plains. I lived outside the city, hunting simple prey. For months. When I joined the army, I did so with nothing but the skills my family had given me. It turns out that Bani Yathrib gunners are rare enough that I was noticed, and the military took me in for as long as I was useful. After the war, when I thought I had found a new family, the Ildathach government wanted nothing to do with me.

    ¡°I haven¡¯t seen my tribe in two decades. I don¡¯t even know who is still alive. My contacts in Khazraj once sent me a dossier of the Mahrin clan, from a company who¡¯d done an exhaustive study of their Bani Yathrib trading partners. I didn¡¯t recognise a handful of the names. Several I was looking for were missing.

    ¡°So you¡¯ll excuse me, sigilist, if I don¡¯t seem to be concerned about Sean. I care about Sean a great deal. More than you might ever understand. He is one of a very few number of men who has never expected anything from me. I have killed for him. I would do so again, without hesitation. But I am not the kind of person who lives life wearing her emotions openly. Truth be told, I have spent a great deal of my life wondering if I should keep living. So I will tell you this story once, then I will expect you to never, ever question my loyalty again.¡±

    ¨ªde apologises, folds her hands across her lap, and nods at a passing waiter. Iseult stares at the fireplace, as if incredulous of her own temerity. The afternoon drags on for half an hour more, and melts into a polite entente. They discuss a handful of more trivial matters: their health, their plans, the fate of Wynne Colt (fled to Cabochon, as far as anyone could tell).

    When Iseult excuses herself to leave, ¨ªde rises with her and shakes her remaining hand. They leave a small constellation of crumb-flecked plates and coffee cups in their wake. Neither mention how empty the table looks, without Sean to dictate the conditions of the meal. Iseult walks out alone, leaving ¨ªde to ponder in solitude.

    She sighs, stares out the window, and watches the black-robed figure of Iseult Morrin march away through the dreary autumn afternoon.

    ¨ªde Ceallaigh shushes the clamouring in her head. She releases her grip on the sigil sculpture in her pocket, and decides to visit her family.

 Epilogue

    Somewhere deep and disparate, in a castle with no walls, a quiet greeting ripples through fathomless water. The syllables are carried on tongues and hearts alike.

    ¡°Hello.¡±

    Her voice is rusted with salt and age. It spills forth from a dozen frigid, dysfunctional lips. She encircles the wrecked bauble with many, many, many skittering hands. The cousin inside must have summoned it. Tried to escape, or to chase their enemies. But now the bauble is down here, underneath the waves, where it was never meant to go. The faint smell of a Saint billows from its wounds.

    She forces a spire-sized arm, tonnes of worming algal muck given purpose and form, through one of the bauble¡¯s airlocks. It bifurcates and bifurcates again along barely-familiar pathways. Minutes pass until a tiny piece of it squirms through ruptured corridors and reaches her prize, brushing hair-thin fingertips over ruined flesh. The skull is wrecked, shot through, just as the bauble was. The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

    The loss is devastating. When she pulls the hallowed corpse from the bauble, she does so with inhuman delicacy and a Saintly reverence.

    It has been so long since she saw her kin. It has been a long time since she bothered to see anything. She witnesses the corpse with the blank, idiot gaping of abyssal eyes. She tastes it on needled-haired tongues. She inspects it using senses that are unknown to life above these depths.

    The Saint¡¯s body is ruined. Pressure and scavenging sea worms have rendered the features unrecognisable.

    Her hearts break. Patience is forced upon her, again. Perhaps another thousand year wait. Her recently-budded eyes defocus, already dying. She begins the pleasant process of fracturing her sentience, returning to the state that allowed her to survive when her cousins did not.

    Her mind, freed of a human body and spread over a country-sized web of neural-rot, almost completely dies.

    The body does not.

    Forty thousand long green fingers drift upwards, and wait.