Pale Lights - Book 2: Chapter 13

They looked like ghostly vines, faint curls of smoke that were reaching hungry hands.

Song could see them creeping across the checkered, cracked floor of the entrance hall. The god was everywhere, blind hands tugging and pulling at the insides of Scholomance like a child at play – moving this and that, just itching to smash it all onto something that would scream. Hand on the chisel, she reminded herself. Fear would do her no good in this place. Fear never helped anywhere.

Hammered into the floor were metal spikes, each tied with a colored ribbon, and four paths unfolded deeper into the school. Two through the great hall whose massive span she could only glimpse in the distance, one going up a set of stairs to the right and the promised yellow-ribbon trail headed left. Lanterns hung from the ceiling, intricate pieces of silver and gold – and the matching light within came from flowers of the same tint, gently glowing.

“Don’t touch those lanterns,” Maryam warned. “Those flowers inside are fresfloren, light made into metal.”

“Dangerous?” Song asked.

“Eating a petal will turn your insides into a slurry of blood,” she said. “I am unsure what merely touching would do, but…”

“Best not to risk it,” Abrascal finished. “I hear you.”

“They are quite pretty, for something so deadly,” Angharad mused.

Song could hear another cabal approaching and she had no intention of lingering here so she took the lead and let the others fall in behind her. Save for the spikes and the lanterns, the hallway they took was little different from any other. The stonework was delicate and the pale gray stone of great quality, but aside from that Scholomance did not seem all that different from any other great edifice.

If you could ignore the vines of smoke slowly creeping in their wake, the god’s attention following them. Song forced herself not to look at it, or the red-dressed goddess by Abrascal’s side that feigned skipping along and taking in the sights in some sort of twisted game. She kept talking and pointing, no doubt filling the thief’s ears with dangerous secrets.

That he was not yet a Saint was almost as fearful a thing as if he had become one.

The Thirteenth passed several closed doors, a long window of clear but patterned glass that seemed to reveal an intricate crypt whose tombs were adorned with tortured, bejeweled effigies and two sets of stairs leading up to the story above. It was soon after the latter of these they found what must be the western lecture hall, for the last ribboned spike jutted out a mere few feet before wide open oaken doors. Song was the first to cross, abandoning the golden light behind for the clearer Glare burn inside.

The lecture hall was large and broadly circular, but that was not what drew the eye: it appeared to have no ceiling.

Tall, curving support beams of marble cut into an open view of firmament like slender rabbit’s ribs but Song knew this could not be true. There was a second story above, they had passed the stairs leading there on the way, and there was a roof above that level besides. The Glare-lit sky she beheld must thus be an illusion, which was equally impossible by simple virtue of the fact she beheld it at all.

Song Ren saw the truth of things. This, and only this, could she count on as the foundation of who she was.

Therefore the sky she was looking at, that dark expanse swept by the lights of the Grand Orrery, must be both impossible and true. She peeled open the contradiction like a riddle, concluding this: first, she was truly looking at the sky above Scholomance. Second, it was not possible for this to be the roof of the room she stood in and indeed it was not. Professor Tenoch had several times mentioned that the school shifted, so Song was merely looking at a ceiling of Scholomance, not the one originally belonging to this hall.

The god of this place had decided that yawning emptiness above was to be the ceiling to their first lesson.

Satisfied she had settled the matter within the bounds of her understanding, the Tianxi let her gaze move on from the expanse above. Three fourths of the hall were filled with long desks on descending platforms – each apt to sit four, with chairs to match – while the last fourth bore only the professor’s desk and a large writing slate set on wooden easel. At a glance there were thirty desks, more than were needed for the number of students, and no sign of the professor meant to teach the class.

They had their pick of the room, as their cabal had arrived early enough only three others preceded them. The Thirteenth earned a few curious glances, but no one seemed inclined to chat. Fourteen students, Song counted, five contractors among them. She suggested they claim desk on the right edge, near the middle of the rows, and was largely met with acquiescence – Angharad tried to argue for the front, but the others were lukewarm at the prospect.

Using her cabal’s movement to hide it Song took a longer look at the contracts present, catching glimpses of the golden letters unfolding above their heads. Two in Antigua, two in Umoya and one in Omeyetl – the Aztlan language she was least familiar with. She discarded that last attempt immediately, and her Antigua was better than her Umoya so she discarded those as well. Of the remaining two she was able to read some mention of… water-stepping, or perhaps walking on water? The other was about memory in some manner, but she could not look any longer without risking notice.

She slid into a seat at the left edge of the table, beside Angharad.

“There’s a peephole in the door,” Tristan noted.

Song’s gaze followed where his had gone, finding a thick wooden door opposite the one they had used to enter the hall. There were some decorative bronze castings on the wood, long gone green, and cleverly hidden within she caught the glint of light on glass.

“Odds are good the professor is looking at us through it,” she said. “Best we behave accordingly.”

The chairs were not particularly comfortable, the wood digging into her back, but it was not intolerable discomfort. It would serve to keep awake should she tire, at least. Song unpacked, preparing a stack of papers as well as a reed pen and an inkwell. No such instructions had been given, but it paid to be prepared. By the time she was done there was chatter in the hall, a large wave of students arriving all at once – and among them some faces she would not call familiar but recognized from description.

“Make room to draw,” she told Angharad, then glanced at the others. “Ready yourselves.”

The captain was not looking for them, or anyone in particular, but with so few seated it was only a matter of time until – Captain Tengfei Pan of the Forty-Ninth Brigade, whose foolishness meant the handsome face and neat Sanxing knot were wasted, let out a snarl at the sight of the seated Thirteenth. Or, more specifically, the sight of Tristan Abrascal on the table’s other edge.

“You,” the man snapped.

“Me?” Abrascal asked, sounding bemused.

Song did not need to look to know Abrascal was putting on an angelic smile. It was radiating off the thief like heat in a cold room. Five cabalists, she noted, two contracts among them – both on Tianxi men. The short, chubby one with the covered topknot was revealed to be called Huang Pan by his contract. A relation of the captain, or simply from the same region?

The other one, which Abrascal had pegged as a Skiritai, was named Muchen He. The text of his contract was short, which Song had learned to mean it was either markedly above or below average in effectiveness. Having a contract with loose terms meant you received what your god felt like giving you, which could vary significantly between individuals depending on the relationship.

Captain Tengfei stomped over angrily, followed by his cabal.

Song spared a heartbeat to consider the two she had skimmed over, the Lierganen girl called Ramona – Abrascal had clocked her as wanting to replace the captain, a fellow Stripe – and the nameless Malani girl who seemed remarkably capable of walking for someone who’d been crippled a mere two days ago. That one’s dark eyes kept straying to Abrascal, warring between fear and hatred. Someone had made an impression.

“You filthy sneak,” Captain Tengfei snarled. “You robbedus.”

Song’s contract had turned her eyes silver, but in truth it did not use them to work. While it only worked on what her eyes were ‘seeing’, it was a conceptual limit and not physical one. On the first hints she’d had of this as a child was that human eyes could only take in so many details at once while she had no such limitations. So Song breathed in and blinked once, languidly.

Then she took in the five people before her like a painting made in a heartbeat.

Ramona, fair-haired and scarred across the nose, was leaning in but her eye was on Tengfei and not the Thirteenth. She was waiting for an opportunity to cut in, to correct him. Muchen’s eyes had dipped slightly past Song, at the height Angharad’s sheathed saber should be. There was no wariness in his dark gaze, no flinch. He would not balk at a fight. Huang Pan was already flinching away, like a turtle trying to bury inside its shell, and was leaning back. The Malani? Leaning in, hands near a knife.

She wanted a fight, to bleed Tristan as he had bled her. Setting her off would be trivially easy.

Standing in front of them all Captain Tengfei Pan was not only angry, but angry enough that in his haste to loom over her he had wedged the table between the two of them – the angriest of them, she decided, but not actually prepared for a fight. Operating on feelings, not a plan.

Song breathed out, smiling, and ignored the other captain completely. She caught Ramona’s eye and cocked an eyebrow.

“You allow your man to speak on your behalf, captain?”

Cold, gleeful delight slid into that blue gaze.

“He still fancies himself captain, you see,” Ramona replied.

Another blink. Tengfei half a step back, unprepared for the flanking by an assumed ally. Muchen’s eyes slid away from Angharad, more worried about this than the Pereduri drawing. Which means either his judgment is mud or infighting is a real possibility.

“I am captain of this brigade,” Tengfei harshly said.

Song feigned surprise.

“Even after that botched ambush and allowing you to be stolen from?” she asked. “His leadership must be distinguished indeed.”

She cocked his head to the side.

“Unless he compensated you for causing the loss of funds.”

Ramona laughed cruelly.

“Now wouldn’t that be something. You going to do that, Teng?”

“Now is not the time,” Muchen cut in flatly.

Another blink. The Lierganen was shifting to face the tallest of the three Tianxi, and by far the most muscled. Wary of him, likely to bend if pressed. Should Muchen and Tengfei browbeat Ramona back into line, this would return to the original trajectory. Diversion, then. There was an obvious pressure point to us for it, and it would dovetail into an earlier weakness.

Song smiled at the yet nameless Malani, who’d barely even glanced at her teammates as they bickered.

“How is your leg, anyhow?” she asked. “I hear Lady Knot does good work, but surely a crippling cannot be cheaply bought off.”

The Malani’s face twisted and she drew the short sword at her side.

“Ya smug bitch,” she hissed. “Ya think just ‘cause we’re inside Scholomance I won’t-”

And now…

“Fara,” Captain Tengfei sharply said, “don’t-”

He had come to pick a fight but was not ready for it – and so would react to it being started on another’s terms by reflexively pulling back. ‘Fara’ turned to glare at her captain, and so the cabal was no longer split between Ramona and her opposition but between two factions. Now Tengfei Pan had a choice to make. Either he turned right around and forced a fight, in which case Song had her hand on her pistol and would shoot him in the stomach at the first sign of violence. Or he would decide that it was too risky to attack when his house was in disorder, swallow the humiliation and pull back for now.

Song saw the conflict in his eyes, the hesitation. How it only worsened his reputation in the eyes of his cabal. A bad decision made quickly was better than the finest decision made too late.

“Tengfei,” Huang nervously said. “We’re in a lecture hall, we shouldn’t make trouble.”

And that settled it, Song saw. Captain Tengfei sneered, straightening his back, and took the excuse his perhaps-kin had provided.

“This isn’t over,” Tengfei Pan said, “count the-”

It came from a dead angle. That was why Song did not see the pistol pointed at the side of the captain’s head until the last moment – when a finger pulled the trigger, the shot exploding in a billow of smoke. Utter surprise blanked her mind for a heartbeat, but she had not gone blind.

That was too little smoke.

A heartbeat later Tengfei Pan backed away coughing, the side of the head covered in soot as his cabal drew blades and pistols – even the trembling Huang. The man that’d just fired a blank, underpowdered shot at the captain of the Forty-Ninth idly pointed down the pistol and crossed his arms.

“Shoo,” Tupoc Xical said. “You’re boring me. If you’re going to get everyone’s hopes up, at least stab someone before flouncing off. This is just embarrassing.”

“I don’t know who you are,” Captain Tengfei said, “but if you think you can-”

“I just did,” the Izcalli replied, flashing perfect teeth. “Fight or flee, Forty-Nine. You’ve blown enough smoke for the day.”

Tengfei flicked a glance their way, his body tense as a spring. He knew, just like Song, that almost the entire class was now present and looking at them – some of them with weapons out from the noise, but most looking on like vultures awaiting a meal. If he backed down now, he was done. His reputation buried. If he did not back down, however…

Song calmly placed her pistol atop the table and the other Tianxi’s jaw clenched. Yes, if he fought now he was risking tangling with two cabals at once. The damage would be more than simply reputational. Tupoc was currently using the Forty-Ninth as a stepping stone for his Fourth’s reputation, so the Aztlan was sure to bleed them a little to make his point. And as Tengfei Pan kept hesitating, the death knell of his authority came when Muchen stepped forward.

“We are done here,” the dark-eyed man stated. “This is not the time or place.”

Song suspected that when talks were next had with the Forty-Ninth, she would be sitting across from Captain Ramona.

“Fine,” Captain Tengfei said, putting on a halfhearted sneer. “Come on, the air here has fouled.”

And as he stalked off angrily, his cabal following him in fits and starts as whispers bloomed across the lecture hall, Song was left with a situation that she was not strictly sure was an improvement.

“My friends,” Captain Tupoc Xical grinned. “What a great pleasure it is to see you again!”

His cabal had followed him, though they’d held back from the confrontation and were still holding back now. Song’s gaze swept through them quickly enough to confirm none held a contract, then settled on the Izcalli himself. The bastard had not changed a whit since the Dominion. Eerily symmetrical and pale-eyed, the too-perfect Aztlan sported no sign of ever having had an eye taken from him by Zenzele.

Not unexpected. A single term in Centzon – yekayotl – kept Song from grasping the fullness of Tupoc’s contract, but she knew that it was at its strongest when given time to work. More interesting was the question of what a nobody from no great family had done to attract the attention of the Grave-Given, one of the most famous gods of Izcalli.

“The implication that we are in any way friendly is the most insulting thing I have heard in some time,” Song replied after a short pause.

“I could give a whirl to beating that, if you’d like,” he affably replied.

Behind Song, whispers bloomed anew.

“The hundred-group is the same for all the general classes, right?” Abrascal asked.

“I believe it is,” Maryam grimly replied.

“Sigh,” the thief said, making a point of speaking the word instead of sighing.

Obnoxious as Abrascal was, he was right it was no pleasant turn to learn they would be stuck in the same room as Tupoc Xical five half-days a week. Such a punishment should follow a crime, at the very least. By the time Song’s attention fully returned to the wolf at the gate, Tupoc had ushered his cabal closer and begun introducing them. He’s pretending there are ties between our brigades, Song realized. The eyes of most the room were still on them.

“Alejandra Torrero, my second,” Tupoc said. “The rest, in succession-”

Song’s eyes slid over the small, scowling dark-haired Lierganen girl he had just introduced – a signifier, according to Abrascal – and onto the others.

“Bait.”

A nervous, bespectacled Someshwari. He had a fighter’s frame, she noted, but did not hold himself as one. It was not a kind thought, but Bait looked like a man who had all the willpower of a piece of soggy bread. No wonder Abrascal had cracked him in a matter of minutes.

“Expendable.”

A gloomy Malani boy with startling yellow eyes that would have leant him a fierce and wolflike look, if not for the way he kept staring at the ground. Contractor.

“Last and least, Acceptable Losses.”

A Tianxi girl with a heavily scarred face – the entire left half was burned, that eye a milky white. She let out a giggle at the introduction, baring crooked teeth. Song cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Condolences on your cabal,” she said in Cathayan.

The girl snorted back.

“Pity from a Ren?” she said, then spat on the ground. “This for that.”

Song let the insult wash over her. She had heard worst from countrymen and with less prompting. Unfortunately, she had forgot that not all her cabalists were so restrained.

“Your manners,” Angharad Tredegar coldly said, “are lacking.”

Song only half-glanced back, but it was enough to see the Pereduri had that dueling look in her eyes. We cannot be involved in two fights so quickly, Song thought. It will make us pariahs, too much trouble to associate with. That might well be what Tupoc was after, in truth. For all his swagger the man was rather canny.

“Now now, Lady Angharad,” Tupoc chided, “don’t go glaring at Acceptable Losses. I love her like my own child, until the moment it becomes moderately inconvenient to me for that to be true.”

And now Song needed to cut that off before the noblewoman was drawn into his pace and they were all made to dance on the palm the Izcalli’s hand. Attack, riposte.

“There are better ways to ask for a meeting, Captain Tupoc,” Song said, raising her voice enough the nearest tables would be able to overhear. “Despite your reckless behavior on the Dominion, we would have heard you out for old time’s sake.”

A hard glint entered Tupoc’s eyes as they slid off Angharad and moved to her. It won’t be that easy to burn all our bridges and force us to bargain with you for alliance, Xical, she thought. This was not the Dominion and while Tupoc was no smaller a fish the pond had grown a great deal larger. The other captain opened his mouth, but his reply was cut off by the sound of a door being opened.

The hall went silent in an instant, a reluctant Tupoc shepherding his cabal to the table behind the Thirteenth’s – unfortunate – as the woman likely to be their professor closed the door behind her and strode past her desk.

She was Someshwari, in her early thirties and unusually tall. Close to six feet, by Song’s reckoning. Straight-backed and tanned, the watchwoman was in the coat of a combat uniform and that did not appear to be a mere pretension: there was a hollow in the professor’s right cheek that must be a scar from getting shot, pulling up the side of her lip slightly. Her dark hair was kept in a crown braid and she had a pistol at her hip, elegant gold loop earrings the sole concession to coquettishness.

Calm black eyes swept the room, finding the students within seated and silent, and gave a pleased nod.

“My name is Kavita Iyengar,” she said, the Antigua accentless. “So long as I teach in Scholomance, you may refer to me as Professor Iyengar or ma’am.”

Turning, she took a piece of chalk from atop her desk and moved up to the writing slate on the easel.

“First, allow me to speak plainly: there is no such thing as a ‘Mandate’ field of studies,” Professor Iyengar said, writing the word on the slate. “It is merely a useful way of naming what you are to be taught here, which is not a coherent corpus of learning.”

She turned a steady look on them, the scarred cheek pulling up the corner of her lip into something almost a smirk.

“This class is not merely an introduction to the workings of the Watch but a study of what the Watch is and what purposes it serves in Vesper,” she said. “This will involve history, statecraft, law and commerce as well as rote memorization. On the last of these you will be tested every two months by assignment.”

The professor’s voice was as stern as her demeanor, Song thought. Unless she missed her mark it was trained, and she herself trained in oration. That bearing was too martial for her to be Arthashastra, so the easy guess was Academian.

“Given that many of you will have ties to the Watch, you may question what my qualifications are to teach you in this regard,” Professor Iyengar said.

Song found not a hint of that in the room. The professor was not someone whose mien invited backtalk.

“I was, until three months ago, commodore to the second squadron of the Garrison’s eastern fleet,” Professor Iyengar said, and that got a few gasps.

Someone on the other side of the hall exclaimed ‘Iron Tigers’, which got even more gasps. The professor ignored them. Song did not know that name, but the rank was impressive. A commodore was a flag officer – the lowest of them, true, but Professor Iyengar was still young for such a rank. She must have distinguished herself greatly, and she was almost sure to be an Academy graduate.

Uncle Zhuge had told her that Stripes always promoted each other when they could, an unseen thread of fellowship running across both the Garrison and the free companies.

“My assigned duties were to hunt rampant gods and track pirate flotillas back to their lairs,” Professor Iyengar informed that. “As a result of their exercise, I have fought in two wars and negotiated six treaties on behalf of the Conclave with the nations of the Riven Coast – be they ruled by men or hollows.”

Impressive, Song mused, though the ‘nations’ of the Riven Coast were hardly worth such a grand word. That stripe of coast to the east of Sacromonte was an ever-shifting patchwork of petty kingdoms and pirate havens, the distinction between them often narrow.

“Earlier in my career, I spent two years serving on the staff of our ambassador to Old Saraya and distinguished myself sufficiently to be recommended to the Academy and graduate with commendations.”

Impossibly, the professor straightened further and folded her hands behind her back.

“Should any of you deem these qualifications insufficient, speak now.”

Utter silence answered her. Humorlessly, the professor nodded.

“Then we will begin,” Professor Iyengar said. “I have been instructed that today is not to be a full class, merely an introduction to the subject matter, and though this seems to me unnecessary the decision is not mine to make.”

She stepped back closer to the slate, chalk still in hand.

“I will ask you all, then, a simple question. Any of you wishing to answer it may raise your hand, and when called on will provide their name and brigade before elaborating.”

Song cocked an eyebrow. That smacked of a trap.

“What is the Watch for?” Professor Iyengar asked.

There was some tittering but the Tianxi did not join in it. Simple questions were always the most difficult to answer, because they required you to define the building blocks of the concepts every other mode of understanding was made of. Fortunately, this time Song had the inside track.

She refrained from raising her hand, knowing that immediately giving out the correct answer would both run against the instructor’s purpose and position her as a teacher’s pet besides. Instead, as a dozen hands went up she leaned back into her seat and began discreetly counting contracts. The distraction serve to keep her curiosity under wraps.

The professor called on a dark-skinned boy in front.

“Kasigo Njezi, Twenty-Third Brigade,” he smoothly said, then cleared his throat. “The Watch’s purpose is twofold. To protect Vesper from the Old Night, the threat without, and the unchecked gifts of spirits, the threat within.”

It had the cadence of words recited to it, which their professor soon confirmed.

“That is the exact line the Conclave likes to answer my question with,” Professor Iyengar acknowledged. “It is the answer you will be expected to give out there in the world, certainly, so mark it well.”

She turned a stern gaze on them.

“It is also incorrect.”

The dark-skinned boy bit his lip, displeased. Song spared some attention for the exchange, but mostly she kept up the count. She was nearly halfway done. It would have been faster, but she had paused to make certain she was not mistaken and someone had truly struck a bargain with a god named the Tail-Puller.

“At any time, somewhere in the vicinity of six tenths of the Watch is in the employ of nations great and small,” the professor informed them. “It has been centuries since more watchmen than not dedicated their days to old gods and forbidden contracts.”

She paused.

“Knowing this, can you still maintain the assertion that our true mandate is what you described?”

Kasigo Njezi did not answer, which was answer enough.

“Try again,” Professor Iyengar addressed the room.

Song did not raise her hand, instead finishing the last row and her count with it. There were ninety-eight students in the lecture hall, and of these twenty-seven had contracts. Roughly a fourth, which held to the proportion she had marked out in the streets of Port Allazei. Among students, anyhow. The local garrison held truer to the realities of Vesper beyond this isle, barely any contracted in it.

With three of its four members being contractors the Thirteenth was above average in its proportion of god-gifted to not, but it was notthe most stacked in this regard. Song had picked out a cabal of six whose every member held a contract, a brigade she would ardently strive against ever being at odds with. Even the least of contracts could be dangerous in clever hands.

A second student was called on, a Lierganen with long dark hair on the other side of the teaching hall.

“Cressida Barboza, Nineteenth Brigade,” she said.

Song’s eyes narrowed. Abrascal had reported to her that Bait, Tupoc’s erstwhile spy, had been brought into the party by a ‘Lady Cressida’ of the Nineteen Brigade. The hard, hatchet-faced girl she was looking should be that very one. By the way Abrascal leaned in further down the table, he’d caught on as well.

“No contract,” Song whispered just loudly enough for him to hear.

He let out a sigh of relief, nodding in thanks.

“The Watch,” Cressida Barboza said, “are ratcatchers.”

That set half the class to murmuring until the professor quelled them with a look.

“Continue,” she ordered.

“We are meant to cull the numbers of hollows and lemures before they can become a threat,” Cressida said. “When we do not, kingdoms fall.”

The professor studied the girl for a moment.

“Lusitanian, are you?” she finally asked.

“Yes,” Cressida bitterly replied.

“You are not wrong,” Professor Iyengar told her. “Preventing cults and lemures from growing enough to become a risk is the most important reason the free companies of the Watch exist.”

She then stepped away, hands behind her back once more.

“The free companies, however, are not the whole of our order. If the whole of our mandate is the culling, Cressida, why does the Garrison exist?” Professor Iyengar asked.

Cressida scowled.

“To allow for multiple free companies to take the field together when there are threats too great for a single one,” she said.

The professor shook her head.

“If that were true, the Watch would be a loose alliance of mercenary bands,” Professor Iyengar said. “Yet the Garrison numbers between half and a third of the Watch, depending on the leaning of the decade.”

Professor Iyengar turned to address the hall at large.

“There are practical reasons for our order to exist beyond the need for hands to spill the blood that keeps the cogs of civilization greased.”

The Lierganen looked unconvinced, but she bowed her head in concession. With a gesture, the professor opened the question to the class again. Song raised her hand this time, but it was an Izcalli boy out in the back that was picked. He had to raise his voice to be heard but not by much. The hall’s acoustics were impressive.

“Patli Cuateco, Brigade Thirty-Six,” he announced in accented Antigua. “The purpose of the Watch is to preserve the know-how of deicide, to ensure that a force capable of killing the old god always stands ready to fight.”

“Closer,” Professor Iyengar praised. “You are correct that the Watch exists because of the limitations of nations, which have to allocate their limited resources to purposes other than our work, but what lies under our black cloaks is not so unique. Every great power of Vesper trains and fields soldiers to do the what the Watch does.”

There were some disbelieving murmurs. The professor cocked an eyebrow.

“The Crocodile Society of Izcalli,” she listed. “The Lefthand House of Malan, the Savituri orders of Someshwar and Tianxia’s endless gaggle of chivalrous sects. All are taught how to hunt cults and gods, doing so supported by the treasury of rulers to one degree or another. Make no mistake – the Watch is better at its trade than anyone else in Vesper, but we hold no monopoly.”

Song frowned. It was true that wuxia sects sent their disciples into the countryside to gather experience by slaying evil and protecting the innocent, which often meant facing off against wicked cults and their patron gods. It was equally true that the individual republics had close relations with the larger sects based in their lands, relations that included funding and permissions.

She had never considered those two facts put together, or that the sect traditions might have a purpose beyond the stated one. An outside perspective could help open one’s mind to the truth, she reminded herself. This time when the professor opened the question to the class again, only a few raised their hand. Song was one of them and to her pleasure found herself called on.

“Song Ren, Thirteenth Brigade,” she announced. “The Watch exists to enforce the Iscariot Accords.”

Dozens of gazes stayed on her, expecting addition and elaboration, but Song simply leaned back in her seat. None was needed. To her surprise, Professor Iyengar laughed – the sound more akin to a gunshot than anything mirthful.

“That is factually true,” the professor said.

Song straightened with pride.

“And the closest to accurate I have heard today.”

Her face shuttered. Closest? It was the plain truth, as told to her. Professor Iyengar’s eyes slid off her as she turned to address the hall at large.

“If Kagiso’s answer earlier was the Conclave’s favorite line, then Song just gave me the Academy’s. It is, to the word, what officers are taught there.”

As it should be, coming straight of Uncle Zhuge’s mouth. Was Professor Iyengar not a Stripe as well? The tall woman shrugged.

“You are all, however, students of Scholomance,” Professor Iyengar said. “Your perspective cannot be so narrow and Song’s answer is very much that.”

The Tianxi’s face tightened as the professor turned back to her.

“Tell me true, Song Ren,” she said. “If tomorrow the Grasshopper King refused to let us enforce the Iscariot Accords within his lands, would the Watch have the power to go against his will?”

Song’s face was stiff as she shook her head. The king of Izcalli had a great army – the greatest in Vesper, should the Someshwar not be stirred to unity – and a wealthy land under him. The Watch could not hope to beat him through either steel or gold.

“No,” she forced out.

“No,” Professor Iyengar agreed. “The Lunkulu Crisis, back in the Century of Accord, made our limitations clear. When faced with the real prospect of going to war with the Kingdom of Malan, the Watch was forced to bargain regardless of being in the right.”

Song knew only the bare bones of that incident, which had never come to fighting and so rarely warranted more than passing mention in histories. The High Queen of Malan’s purges of country gods had begun tensions, she remembered, along with her outlawing foresight contracts in her kingdom. To decree such a thing had been solely the Watch’s prerogative under the Iscariot Accords. Song recalled that when threatened with sanctions, the Queen Perpetual had in turned threatened to turn several free companies to her service and found her own rival Watch.

“Make no mistake,” the professor said. “By tradition the Watch is counted as one of the great powers of Vesper, sometimes even a successor state in its own right, but in truth it would be hard-pressed to win a war against any of them. We cannot enforce our will by force on peer powers, and often not even lesser ones.”

The Someshwari swept the class with her gaze.

“So what is the Watch for, then?” she repeated once more.

This time no hands went up. She had exhausted the boldness of those present, Song included.

“The simple answer to a complicated truth,” Professor Iyengar said, “is that we exist to be neutral.”

She stepped away from the tables, returning to her writing slate. There, after erasing the word Mandate, she drew a quick, sharp outline that Song and any other Tianxi in the room had no difficulty in recognizing. It was northern Tianxia, more or less. Two republics, mountains and beyond the passes the wolves of east and west: Someshwar and Izcalli.

“Allow me to use as an example one of the most recent large-scale wars of Vesper,” Professor Iyengar said. “I will speak to you now of the invasion of Caishen by the raja of Kuril, known as the Kuril Dance to some and the Long Burn to others.”

A dance to Someshwari, who in their distant palaces thought it all a game. The Long Burn to Song’s people, who had seen much of Caishen’s precious fields and rice farms turned into an ash-strewn graveyard for a decade and a half. Professor Iyengar traced two lines, one leading from the raj of Kuril into northern Caishen and another from the eastern borderlands of Izcalli into the same republic’s left flank.

Two simple strokes of chalk to represent a bogged down invasion by Kuril followed by a horde of Izcalli sunflower lords charging it to loot, enslave and set aflame.

“Over the span of the war, the main theater of battle proved to be the northern half of the territory of the Republic of Caishen,” the professor said, encircling the region. “Can anyone here tell me why?”

Two dozen hands went up. Song had not turned to see who was picked to answer, so she was surprised by the voice.

“Captain Tupoc Xical, Fourth Brigade.”

She resisted the urge to turn and look at him.

“Izcalli forces attempted to push into the core regions of Caishen but never managed to break the defensive line at Hanshan, forcing the offensive to push contest the northern flatlands instead.”

Xical spoke plainly and without taunt or untruth, but the simple description still had Song clenching her jaw.

Hanshan lilies bloom only red

liars that do not bring but bury

I dream of powder-song dirges

and blood like fresh dew

It was said that to speak Shaoqing Mao’s famous poem in a Caishen tea parlor was sure to bring at least one old man to tears. More soldiers had died storming and holding the slopes of Hanshan fortress than there had been land to bury them, and the tales claimed had been so many corpses in the river the Izcalli had used them like a ford.

“Correct. That led to a situation where three states with broad parity of means and men contested the same region, resulting in the northern flatlands changing hands so often between the belligerents that they effectively became lawless for over a decade,” Professor Iyengar said, tone matte-of-fact.

You are Watch, Song reminded herself. The Watch does not take sides.

“The mountain chains between Caishen and Kuril are riddled with hollow tribes,” the professor continued, “so the chaos inevitably resulted in the empowerment of cults even as the local gods began going rampant.”

Lesser gods were fragile, Song new, not yet fully set in their nature. They could go mad from having their shrines trampled or their followers slain, sometimes even simply from them taking to death a littletoo well. The ensuing madness – rampancy, the Watch called it – saw them turn on the living viciously.

“Now,” Professor Iyengar said, “the cultists raids and escalating rampancies were a gain to no belligerent involved. Yet to suppress these activities would have required either heavy garrisoning, or the halt offensive action until their possessions could be consolidated.”

The professor folded her arms behind her back.

“What would have been the rational answer, in this situation?”

Hands went up again and a familiar face was called on.

“Muchen He, Forty-Ninth Brigade,” the perhaps-Skiritai said. “They should have brokered a truce and purged their held territories of cults and rampant gods.”

His contract was Cathayan, but extremely old-fashioned. Song itched to jot it down to read properly later, but it would be too obvious and Tupoc would be watching from behind her.

“Yes,” Professor Iyengar approvingly said. “That would have been the right decision. What happened, instead, was that whenever an attempt was made to take a defensive posture it was immediately punished by the other belligerents.”

The Someshwari wrinkled her nose in disgust.

“There are even alleged occasions of cults being armed to they would undermine the opposition.”

Song was not surprised to hear it. Tianxia’s neighbors had long ago grown adept at using the tensions between the Republics to their advantage, that they would extend such policies to hollow cults was simply the natural extension of the practice.

“The very notion of truce or even just consolidation became toxic to mention,” Professor Iyengar told them, “which leads us to the incident that tipped over the vase: Kuril troops shelled an old temple, releasing a god of the Old Night bound there by the Second Empire.”

She marked the slate with chalk, though to Song’s eye in the wrong region. She had been given to understand it was closer to the western borders.

“The Mist Serpent was sealed along with a horde of its finest bound servants, rapidly overwhelming the troops present and displaying the very reason Liergan saw fit to seal it: its ability to seize the unworthy dead and press them into service.”

Song could almost feel the hall wincing.

“The situation turned disastrous in a matter of weeks,” Professor Iyengar said. “Yet no belligerent withdrew, as such a defeat would mean facing grave consequences at home.”

Song was unfamiliar with the ruling circles of Caishen, but she suspected a general tacitly ceding half the republic’s holdings to the enemy would be publicly executed after a brisk formality of a trial. Tianxia had not lost significant territory since the end of the Cathayan Wars and to suggest anything to the contrary would be… ill received.

“All three powers wanted an end to the war,” the professor said, “but none of them could afford to call it.”

She set down the chalk on her desk.

“What happened after?”

Hands went up. Song did not pay attention to the boy called on, save that his name sounded Someshwari.

“The Watch stepped in, invoked the Iscariot Accords and forced a truce in Caishen until the Mist Serpent was slain and its servants released to the Circle.”

Professor Iyengar nodded.

“Indeed,” she said. “Which leads me to my point.”

She eyed them all seriously.

“The Watch could have easily forced the Izcalli border lords, the Caishen militia or the raja of Kurin to withdraw from the region if they did not wish to – much less all three forces at once. But they did retreat when called on to, because they already desired to do so.”

And so the Watch had been a mere pretext, the professor was implying.

“The Watch’s position as a neutral, otherwise uninvolved power allowed the belligerents to retreat without losing face, each claiming at home that they would have prevailed if the war continued,” Professor Iyengar continued. “We were, in that sense, an excuse for them to act in a manner they already wanted to.”

The professor smiled, the mocking tilt of her lips pulling further.

“I can almost hear the doubt,” she said. “How you tell yourselves we must be more than an excuse, surely, that all those ships and guns and fortresses must amount to something greater. So I invite you to consider some facts.”

The smiled went away.

“The Kuril Dance was the bloodiest war of the last fifty years involving great powers,” Professor Iyengar said. “It lasted for two decades and filled over a hundred thousand graves.”

And too few of those belonging to soldiers, Song thought.

“Now consider this: more soldiers died in the first two weeks of the Succession Wars than over the entire span of the entire Kuril Dance.”

The answering silence was resounding.

“The territory lost to the Gloam in the fall of Second Empire represents a number of souls broadly equal to the current population of Izcalli and the Imperial Someshwar added together,” the professor continued. “Children, the Watch exists because, when the great powers emerged from the red haze of war, they saw that the world around them had grown smaller.”

Such a harmless word for such a stark meaning. Smaller. Reduced. The Succession Wars had made the world less, permanently so.

“They saw the world needed ratcatchers,” Professor Iyengar said. “That it needed armed hands rooting out cults and hunting lemures that would not be stopped by borders. They saw that Vesper needed god-killers who would not be sent to die in petty battles, scholars who must be allowed to unearth truths uncomfortable to kings.”

The tall woman let that sink in for a moment, then broke the silence.

“The recognition of that need is called the Iscariot Accords.”

She was warming to her subject, Song thought, and she was not alone in that. She heard someone shift behind her, and was startled to see Tupoc leaning in with a fervent burning gaze.

“It is fitting that we are called blackcloaks,” Professor Iyengar said, “for the cloak matters most of all we wield. Not Signs or swords, not the ships or guns or burning secrets – few of these are unique to us, and in time none will be. The Watch exists because the great powers recognized that they cannot be trusted to enforce the Accords, either by themselves or on each other, and yet the Accords need to be enforced.”

The professor stood ramrod straight, but her dark eyes burned bright.

“We alone bear a black cloak, of all men and women, because it sets us apart. Because that is what the Watch is for: to stand apart, to be neutral.”

The professor gestured at them all.

“Over your years of wearing the black,” she said, “you will take sides. That is natural and inevitable – putting on the cloak does unmake the ties of roots and blood. But if you learn anything at all from your time in this hall, let it be this.”

Her gaze was all iron as she faced them.

“There is a line,” Kavita Iyengar said. “A watchman can take sides, but never the Watch. It is the sole poison our order cannot survive.”

Her lips pulled up in another mirthless smile.

“Do not ever forget that,” the professor warned them, “else the last thing you will ever hear is a Mask pulling the trigger.”

So ended the first lecture Song Ren was given at Scholomance.

—

After that striking end, a hush fell over the class.

Professor Iyengar ordered them to return next week with ink and paper enough to take notes, for the organization of the Watch would be covered in detail and those details would be tested on at a later date. Song kept an eye on the Forty-Ninth, but no threat came from there: they were out the door in moments, almost fleeing.

She had expected to be dealing with the Fourth, at least, but the lecture had left Tupoc with a strange a manic energy he seemed disinclined to turn on others for once. He exhorted his cabal to set out and prepare for their afternoon classes, handing Song an unpleasant reminder that the Izcalli was another Stripe recommendation and so she would be seeing him further.

Lovely.

With many students heading out the doors were clogged, leading the Thirteenth to elect staying behind. To discuss the lecture was only natural, and Song found she was not alone in disagreeing with some parts of what they had been told.

“It is the perspective of a high-ranking officer,” Song argued. “Someone who sees the situation from above – and only there.”

Abrascal nodded approvingly.

“Looking down puts on just as many blinders as looking up,” he agreed. “Mind you, that ominous little bit about the Masks seems true. It was implied to me the Krypteia is expected to deal with treachery within the ranks.”

Angharad stiffened. Upset, Song fondly thought, at the thought of any betrayal of the oaths they had all taken. The noblewoman was thoroughly reliable in such regards.

“I find it easy to believe that the Watch’s position as a broker between states is of paramount importance,” the dark-skinned woman said, forcefully changing the subject. “It explains why I have never heard of blackcloaks out in the colonies, despite the many savage spirits of those lands.”

It was said absent-mindedly, almost carelessly, and Song knew that no insult was meant. That did not mean none had been given – the look on Maryam’s face cold enough it would have made winter wince.

“As it happens I was recruited by an officer of the Watch out in the colonies, Tredegar,” Maryam snapped back. “As for savagery, the only kind I saw at work was that of the Malani.”

To her honor, the noblewoman’s contrition came quick and heartfelt.

“I meant no offense,” Angharad said.

That, however, had been a blunder.

“Then cease giving it, you fucking ass,” the Izvorica harshly retorted. “My patience has limits.”

Angharad visibly swallowed an answer, likely one involving how her own was stretched thin by Maryam’s constant barbs. Which was for the best, because while the blue-eyed signifier had rarely missed an opportunity for venom that venom was being kept at a boil by her the noblewoman’s constant small slights. Would their relationship have been cordial, should Angharad have more deftly navigated those waters? Outwardly, at least, Song believed it would have.

Maryam was polite to Zenzele Duma, who was just as lordly as Angharad and measurably more Malani. Part of that no doubt came from not having to continuously be in his presence, but Zenzele’s avoidance of any topics remotely related to colonies and slavery could not be hurting.

“There is no need for insults,” Angharad said through gritted teeth.

“That’s what I keep saying,” Maryam said. “Yet here we are, aren’t we?”

She grabbed her back and pushed forward, Angharad getting out of her way. Thank the gods for that, Song thought. Given their respective sizes and strength, had Maryam pushed into the Pereduri she would have been much more likely to bounce off than brush her aside. Angharad turned her gaze on them, almost pleading.

“Ill-done,” Abrascal simply said, grabbing his bag.

The thief traded a nod with her and followed after Maryam. Good, none of them should ever wander Scholomance alone. Song turned to Angharad with a sigh, which had the noblewoman’s jaw twitch with a suppressed wince. This one was on her head, the Tianxi decided, for not having taken the time to address the matter with Angharad yet. Given how full their time had been and the thaw she had thought she was witnessing Song had thought… no, an excuse. She had not made the time because she believed the situation under control.

That should be owned.

“Walk with me,” Song ordered.

Most of the lecture hall was gone by now, hurried out the door, so it was with little company that they returned to the pale gray halls and the path of stakes. Song still refrained from beginning the conversation until they were well out of Scholomance, back onto the great stony grounds. It was not difficult to find a bench tucked away near a faded bronze, Song inviting the noblewoman to sit while she remained standing.

“Abrascal was not wrong,” the captain said. “That was ill done of you.”

Angharad’s lips thinned.

“As I said, I meant no offense.”

“That is a foolish assertion, considering what you said,” she replied.

The noblewoman opened her mouth to speak, but was cut off by her captain’s raised hand.

“By your words, you implied that the land of her birth had no states in it,” Song said. “You then implied them to be savages.”

“Their spirits,” Angharad insisted. “I said their spirits are savage, not them. And it is true, Song. The tales I hear are chilling. Spirits that strangle all who come near their shore, serpents of flame whose whispers drive men to take their own lives and-”

Song leaned in.

“Are you certain, Angharad Tredegar, that you want to discuss dealings with savage gods?” she gently asked. “Holding the contract that you do?”

The other woman’s rising confidence crumpled. It had been an empty thing from the start.

“You have never been in Triglau – Izvorica – lands,” Song reminded her. “Your truths are all borrowed, and from men and women who have made a fortune out of clapping Maryam’s kin in irons.”

She hesitated, a heartbeat for it was a delicate subject.

“I do not know if House Tredegar ever traded in slaves-”

“No,” Angharad firmly said, then bit her lip. “But we shipped iron shackles and salted fish to Port Cadwyn that was meant for slave hulks.”

The Pereduri scowled.

“I know slavery is indecent, Song,” she said. “But the Izvorica do it to each other. I hear most slaves sold in the northern colonies are sold by the tribes themselves. Yet to hear her you would think Malani the sum of all evils for partaking in a trade that near every nation of Vesper practices.”

No one does it the way Malani do, Angharad, Song thought. She could have argued the point, laid it all out. How Malan’s practice of slavery was unprecedented: emptying towns, clapping entire tribes in iron and sending them in the western lands so they could toil until they died and their children toil after them. How even Izcalli granted rights to their serfs but the Malani shielded their slaves with no law, for why would any be needed when honor of their owner was the finest possible guarantee?

But that would have been losing themselves in the weeds, in the details of the argument. So instead she spoke another truth.

“I am a daughter of Tianxia, Angharad Tredegar,” Song Ren said. “Do you think to find sympathy in me for such evil? You forget who I am: all are free under Heaven.”

She met the noblewoman’s dark eyes, unflinching, as she spoke the words of the Feichu Tian

“If gods deny this, bury them beneath the river. If kings deny this, chop them in four quarters.”

Silver faced brown, unblinking.

“If slavers deny this, hang them with iron chains.”

Silence stretched between them. Angharad looked away first and Song released the breath she had been holding.

“You spoke carelessly to Maryam and have done so before,” she said. “She is not alone in finding this reprehensible – it does you no favors with either me or Abrascal.”

“Am I to lie, then?” Angharad bitterly said. “Praise her people with empty words, pretend they are not quarrelsome tribes hiding in hills at the end of the world?”

“If you cannot muster care for your own words,” Song flatly replied, “then silence will suffice. It is nothing less than what you ask of her.”

The other woman flinched. Twice struck in as many sentences. Song knew she had much used the stick today, and so she must adjust the approach lest this be remembered as nothing more than a browbeating.

“I expect there are brigades out there that will not require this of you,” the Tianxi said. “Should you wish to speak such words and opinions unchallenged, I can approach another captain for a trade on your behalf.”

She paused, shrugged.

“You are skilled and of good repute, it will not be difficult to find a taker.”

Angharad’s hackles rose like an angry cat’s. It would not have been the noblewoman’s natural inclination to leave, Song thought, but now that it had been framed as a failure to do so the prospect should be well and buried.

“I am capable of minding my own manners,” Angharad stiffly replied.

Vinegar first, now honey.

“That is a relief,” Song made herself admit. “Much of Abrascal rubs me the wrong way, so the tensions between you and Maryam have been a concern to me. I would not see our cabal break from within.”

The Pereduri was only too eager to change the subject to a weakness of Song’s, after the earlier exchange. Besides, now keeping the peace with Maryam was no longer just the noblewoman swallowing her words – it was a favor being done to Song, which Angharad would find much more palatable. She was willing to tolerate much more for the sake of others than she was for her own.

“I had noticed,” Angharad said. “Though I cannot bring myself to fully trust him, I must admit I have found him an agreeable fellow. Where lies the trouble?”

He’s a grenade with a lit fuse, Song could not say. One whose final explosion I cannot seem to predict the timing of.

“He is a competent but reckless man,” she said instead, choosing another truth, “whose actions I have only the barest influence over but whom I am and will remain responsible for. Worse, he has no intention of amending that behavior.”

‘Rat’ was an apt description, Song had often thought, for he took the authority much as the animal did. Behaving when there was light and attention on him, but returning to his tricks and plans without batting an eye the moment Song was no longer there to look at him. The Tianxi had no illusions of control over the thief: the moment she asked of him something he did not want to do, he would refuse. The authority of her captain’s rank simply did not weigh on the scales for Abrascal.

“Tristan has only known bad lords.”

Song blinked, returning her attention to Angharad.

“He does not respect authority because he has never known authority worth respecting,” the noblewoman said. “You act as if the part objected to is you, but it is not – it is the authority itself. That it is held by you is, I think, largely irrelevant to him.”

That was… it sounded reasonable, Song silently acknowledged. And though he should have been taught better as the pupil of a high-ranking watchwoman, his teacher was a Mask. Uncle Zhuge had opinions on their covenant, the kindest of which was ‘sometimes their existence is a necessary evil’. What was the solution, then? To show she was worthy of wielding authority? She was not sure how that would be done to a man of his background. It might well cross lines she was not willing to cross.

“I will think on that,” Song said. “My thanks.”

Angharad sighed, looking away.

“And I will think on what you have said,” she replied. “I would not allow myself to become the instrument of discord.”

It was start, Song thought, but talk would only get them so far. Angharad watching her tongue and Maryam holding back barbs would be the work of weeks, months. She needed mortar to bind the Thirteenth Brigade together, and that would require more practical reasons to come together.

A common enemy should serve fine, and it just happened that the world had seen fit to provide some for Song Ren to pick from.