Pale Lights - Book 2: Chapter 18

Song was the first back to the cottage.

She came in, wiped her boots and hung her cloak. Her musket was placed against the wall – until a proper weapons rack could be acquired – and she put away her powder in a bag she had hung from the wall for that very purpose. The sword belt joined the cloak as the last step, but for once putting away her affairs in an orderly matter brought no comfort. She felt… she wasn’t sure, in truth. Empty? Perhaps simply tired. It had been a long day.

The Tianxi made her way to the kitchen, trussed up her sleeves and got started on the evening meal. Chicken, rice and fresh tomatoes. No spices save salt, which was cheap and plentiful in Allazei. Her mother would have disowned her for a meal like this, but though it was simple fare the portions would be plentiful and it was not difficult to cook. It could serve as a placeholder. By the end of the week Song intended to begin a rotation so that responsibility for meals might not be entirely on her shoulders, alternating between the members of her brigade.

She had also been considering a chore sheet, considering the amount of work yet in need of doing. The cottage was still filthy, the library needed to be catalogued, the garden emptied of weeds, furniture needed to be bought and carried… the list went on. And though Song knew that when she was finished with the meal she should change into the work clothes she’d acquired in town and get to cleaning, the thought was frail. As if she were not certain of her own intentions, as if she were…

“I am not buckling,” Song hissed down at the pot of rice.

So there had been a setback. Colonel Cao had marked her a fool before her entire set of peers at Scholomance and her name would remain on that board until she erased her shame. That did not mean she would fail. It had been a lesson she must learn and the sting would only help her remember. The colonel was right, her approach had been lukewarm: she had neither hidden what she deduced to secure an advantage nor revealed it to everyone so she might earn gratitude.

The worst of both worlds: she well deserved the loss of a point.

Song set to preparing the chicken, carefully cutting and sprinkling with salt as she went. It went into an iron pot which was placed over the flame. Her distress, she decided, was only because she needed to purge the curse. She would ask Maryam to have a look tonight. It had not been long since the last purging, but it may be that Tolomontera – a great aether well, she had been told – made matters worse. Yet what she needed even more than that was a plan. A way forward, a way to rise.

Song did not anticipate her brigade would be too difficult to convince to take the trial, but that alone was not enough. She needed a way to redeem her reputation. A way to turn the tide, to catch up to… Her fingers clenched. Always behind, Nianzu had told her, slurring. You can’t fight fate, Song. No matter how we struggle, we’ll always end up behind. But what would he know?

“Should I follow you and disappear down a bottle, gege?” she bit out. “I won’t-”

It smelled burnt. Swallowing thickly, Song looked down and saw that in her fugue she had left the chicken unattended too long. The top was still pink, but when she flipped the cuts she saw they had charred stripes. The Tianxi swallowed. If she cut them out perhaps it wouldn’t show? No, they’ll still see I cut out parts. Perhaps if she sliced every piece in two, then – no, idiot, they would notice the quantity was too small. One of them would ask. They would know.

Hands shaking, tearing up like a fucking child, Song did the only rational thing she could: she put the pot off the fire, went outside with a shovel and dug a hole in a corner of the garden. She emptied the burnt chicken into it – she’d have to buy another to replace it from her own funds – and filled the hole. She had to hurry, they could be back anytime now. Song opened the windows to get rid of the smell and cleaned the iron pot before doing the recipe properly this time.

When her cabal began arriving one after the other, Song was ready. She welcomed them with a smile and a meal and her hand remained on the chisel as they all sat together and ate. Like a proper brigade, led by a proper captain.

“Would you mind if I closed the windows?” Angharad asked, polishing off the last of her rice. “It is getting rather chilly.”

Song’s hand twitched. The windows. Utter fool that she was, she had forgot to close the windows.

“I’ll do it,” she said, hurriedly rising to her feet.

Only she was sloppy in her haste, her knee caught the table and the shake tipped over a cup of water and – Abrascal caught it before it could spill. Her jaw clenched so tightly it hurt.

“Song,” Maryam slowly said, “are you-”

“Fine,” she bit out.

She strode to the windows and closed them abruptly. When she turned back towards the table it was to the sight of two concerned faces and Tristan Abrascal’s mask. And why wouldn’t they be concerned, when she was making a scene like a child throwing a tantrum? She forced herself to breathe out, smoothed out her tunic.

“My first covenant class did not go as I would have preferred,” Song said.

Some of the tension left the room. That was no achievement, when she had been the one to put it there.

“Mine either,” Maryam volunteered. “Our professor effectively washed his hands of me and I’ve been forced to make other arrangements.”

She made her way back to the table, carefully. As if her feet were made of porcelain.

“That is highly improper,” Angharad frowned, and Maryam tensed. “It is a professor’s duty to attend to all students as equally as they can.”

The Izvorica shot her a look and said nothing, which still a stark improvement over the entire last month. Song crossed her legs and sat on the floor again, back straight. She reached for her cup.

“I found a teacher and framed the Forty-Ninth’s patron for arson,” Abrascal casually said.

She choked on her mouthful of water, glaring at the thief since that timing had most definitely been deliberate. He smiled back innocently.

“Is that what Masks do?” Angharad hesitantly asked.

Meaning – is this otherwise dishonorable act permitted because it is your duty, and thus honorable in a different way? The Pereduri was not difficult to understand, once you grasped the tint of the spectacles she looked at the world through.

“You probably don’t want to ask too many questions about that,” Abrascal honestly replied. “Still, I can tell you I’ll be working at the Chimerical two afternoons a week. I’ll let you know the days as soon as I learn them.”

“My own afternoons will be filled four days out of five,” Angharad contributed. “Third day is to be a rest day.”

Maryam cleared her throat, earning glances.

“And how was your class?” she asked, sounding almost challenging.

“Six of us died,” Angharad replied.

Gods. The silence that put into place lasted until the plates and remains were taken away and Song brewed a pot of Someshwari tea. It was cheaper on Regnant Street than the Republican leaves, and with good reason – their tea was inferior in every way. Only Abrascal declined a cup. It was Song who broke the uncomfortable quiet.

“There is a price to the privileges of Stripe students,” she said.

She took out the trial bounty she had taken from the board, carefully folded, and set it down on the table. It made its way around, getting a raised eyebrow from Maryam and an interested look from Angharad. Abrascal was harder to read, but if she must she would peg him as thoughtful.

“It must be complete by next week or I will be sent away,” Song frankly told them. “Every Academy recommended is in the same situation.”

The only man among them snorted.

“Ouch, poor Forty-Ninth,” Abrascal said. “They’ll be stuck doing two.”

A fine argument for why few cabals would want two Stripes, and also for why no Academy recommended would want to command a cabal of leftovers. An incompetent brigade would not bring up your score high enough to pass by the year’s end, however eager they might be to obey you. Besides that, the way the thief had phrased his sentence was promising. It implied he was willing to participate, and Abrascal had been the most likely holdout in her mind.

“This is all we have to go on?” Maryam asked, staring at the paper.

She had been the last to receive it.

“It is.”

The Izvorica sighed, passing the bounty back to Song. She did not fold it again, and made a note to smoothen it out later tonight with weight pressing down on the sides.

“Well, I won’t turn away the coin,” Maryam said. “When did you have in mind?”

“Sixthday afternoon,” Song replied.

After the elective classes, though she would leave a wide margin of time to avoid possible inconveniences. She would have been more comfortable earlier in the week, but it was better to let her brigade settle in properly instead. They confirmed the split of coin and where in the city they would have to journey before they could be escorted to the trial – a place on the outskirts of Scholomance, which had them speculating the trial would be within the school.

The conversation soon trailed off. Maryam volunteered to wash the dishes, Angharad went out into the garden for her evening exercises – most nights she spent half an hour out there doing drills with her blade – but the surprise was when Tristan lingered at the table with her. Song had reason to remain, not being done with her tea, but he himself had none. Unless he wanted to speak with her, that was. The Tianxi cocked an eyebrow and waited.

“I need information,” the gray-eyed man said. “How can you see gods?”

Her heart clenched. She put down her cup of tea before it became visible there was a tremble to her fingers. Her hands went down onto her lap, hidden by the table.

“Pardon?” Song said.

“You can see contracts,” Abrascal elaborated. “But do you know of a way people could see gods?”

Not her, she realized with relief. He did not mean her. She kept her face smooth.

“I expect there are contracts out there that might allow this,” she said, mouth gone dry. “Why?”

He grimaced.

“All right, cards on the table,” he said. “Do you know of a way for devils to see gods?”

“Once annealed, devils become a fixed shape in the aether,” Song mused. “It may be that lets them sense gods, though outright sight seems a stretch.”

“Hage could see my patron god,” the thief flatly said. “Hear them, too.”

Song let out a low whistle. Her own god did not visit enough for this to be a risk, but it was useful to know.

“Thank you for the warning,” she said, inclining her head.

He hummed.

“Well, I suppose it’s not like I got nothing for it,” Abrascal said.

She sipped at her cup.

“No?”

“Hands are expressive,” he said. “Those with training, they often keep them out of sight when trying to hide something.”

As she had at the start of this conversation, damn her. Had she given herself away? The gray-eyed man studied her face, half-frowning.

“Well, there are things we don’t ask,” Tristan Abrascal said. “I’ll leave you to your tea, Song.”

He backed up from the table and rose to his feet even as her fingers clasped the side of the cup so hard her knuckles paled. He was not so smug as to wave her way before heading up the stairs, into that stargazing tower he had claimed as his bedroom, but it still felt like she had just been slapped in the face. Abrascal had no reason to keep her secrets. If he told the others… It could turn their entire year against her, the knowledge she could peer at their deepest secrets with nothing but a glance. Even those who cared nothing for the Dimming would-

“Easy now.”

Song sucked in a breath, finding there was hand on her shoulder. Maryam was half-kneeling at her side, arms wet with a sheen. She smelled like food scraps and wetness.

“Think of the sea,” the other woman said. “Tide comes in, tide goes out. Make yourself see it in your mind.”

She barely felt Maryam take the cup out of her hands and set it on the table, struggling to do ask asked.

“Match your breath to it,” the Izvorica murmured. “It comes in…”

Song breathed in.

“It goes out.”

By the time her heartbeat had settled, she did not dare to meet Maryam’s eyes.

“What did he say, Song?”

The tone was flinty.

“Little,” Song tiredly said. “It is-”

Staring down at the table, she sagged.

“I am, by score, now the last of the Stripe students,” she confessed. “I have failed you all.”

“I doubt that,” Maryam said, sitting down by her side. “What happened?”

The story tripped its way out of her, every word of it sounding like pathetic whining to her ears.

“That colonel sounds like a real bitch,” the Izvorica mused.

“Maryam,” Song hissed.

The pale-skinned girl shrugged.

“We agreed we’d be honest with each other, when we started this,” Maryam said. “So I’m being honest: that Cao woman sounds like a real bitch.”

“She’s a highly respected officer,” Song told her.

“Agree to disagree,” Maryam easily replied.

“The last time you used that sentence, you saddled our cabal with Tristan Abrascal,” Song muttered.

“And it’s been lovely having him,” she replied, then frowned. “Though he should have known better to prod you when you’re like this.”

Song straightened.

“I am not like anything,” she said.

Maryam said nothing, then sighed and passed a hand through her dark hair.

“The first I took a ship,” she said, “I wasn’t able to keep down a meal or sleep for three days straight.”

Song’s eyes snapped her way, the surprise plain on her face.

“They had to drug me,” the Izvorica said. “And I wasn’t much better when I woke from that. It took time before I learned I could close my eyes and not wake in chains, but before we docked I had learned. And no sailor on that ship ever mocked me for it.”

Maryam leaned in, squeezed her shoulder.

“Your ship is still out there on the black, Song,” she said. “But you’ll get there, I’m sure of it.”

She stayed there long after the Izvorica had left, until Angharad had returned from her exercises, sitting there along in the lamplight with a lick of cold tea at the bottom of her cup. Staring at the leaves mucking up at the bottom, the silver-eyed Tianxi wondered if this was how it had begun for her brothers.

And if one of her sisters would sit down, one day, and wonder if this was how it had begun for Song.

—

Their first class had taken place in an impressive lecture hall, but Saga took place in what could only be called a library.

The room was all tall stacks and chandeliers, filled with sets of tables fitting ten each. Only the library was near empty of books, with only a few stacks near the bottom filled with volumes. They were all copies of three books, which the professor insured were to be claimed once each per cabal. Professor Tenoch Sasan, still as disheveled as yesterday, had used much of the empty room to prop up large polished stone slates. After yesterday’s… eventfulness, Song found the professor’s assertion that his class would be more classical a relief.

“As a class, Saga will seem like the odd man out to many of you,” Professor Sasan said. “Compared to Warfare and Teratology, or even Mandate, I will concede that its direct use is less obvious.”

The man was a good speaker, Song thought. Engaging and easily heard.

“In practice, however, you will find that much of our work involved digging up the secrets of the past,” the professor said. “Vesper is riddled with the scars of old wars, with buried horrors and wonders. My charge in this class is not to teach a love of history – though if I can, I will – but to equip you to understand what you will encounter out in the world.”

He cleared his throat.

“You need to be able to tell Antediluvian ruins apart from those of the Second Empire,” Professor Sasan said. “To understand why Cathayan is spoken in some parts of the Someshwar, why realms bordering Izcalli share the same gods and customs while being estranged from the Grasshopper King’s rule.”

The professor grinned.

“You need to understand why Sacromonte remains one of the great powers of Vesper while commanding less than a tenth of the territory of even the smallest of its peer powers,” he said. “And while we can answer all these questions through the realities of the present, those answers will be incomplete – because the end of a trajectory cannot easily be understood without knowing its source.”

He marked the largest slate thrice.

“We look back, students, so that we might better understand what is ahead,” Professor Sasan said. “And despite the best efforts of time and men, there is much that was left behind for us to learn from.”

He opened his arms.

“Our history, as a rule, is divided into three periods. Who might give me the name of the very earliest?”

Tianxi history was divided into eleven periods so for once Song was entirely in the dark. Both Angharad and Abrascal were among those that raised their hand, however, and the latter was called on.

“Antiquity,” he said.

“Indeed,” Professor Sasan enthusiastically said. “As in all things historical naming an era is a contentious issue, but ‘Antiquity’ is the most common term used for the period beginning with the First Empire, the realm of the Antediluvians, and ending with Morn’s Arrival – that is, the wave of desperate refugees arriving in the wake of the First Empire’s destruction who founded Vesper as we know it.”

He filled in a line with the word Antiquity, then lowered his hand to the second.

“The second period is the Imperial Calendar,” the professor told them as he wrote the words, “so named for the way it broadly matches the span of the calendar used by the Lierganen Empire – though that calendar was, as we will cover, largely fantasy. It ends with the Second Empire itself. The most popular date used for this is the Thirteenth Betrayal. and as a scholar I must agree: it effectively ended Liergan as a state and unleashed the Succession Wars.”

The professor opened the question to the class again for the third period, and this time most raised their hand – Song included. It was an easy enough question, which a small Izcalli girl answered quietly enough she was twice asked to repeat.

“That is correct,” Professor Sasan said. “The third and most recent period is that of the Centennial Calendar, which began eight hundred and three years ago. Barring eventfulness, all of you will end your lives in the current century – that is, the Century of Smoke, which has only barely begun.”

After that opening the professor spent the better part of an hour getting the class to fill in the three periods with lesser stretches of times and great events – adding the Old Night, the Tumult, the Iscariot Accords – as he sorted through answers and explained what went on and what stayed off. As answers began to trail off, he eased them to the end of the exercise.

“While I would love to continue talking you ear off,” Professor Sasan said, “all of we general classes teachers are under instructions to give nothing more than a short introductory lecture this week – so that you might better settle into your covenant classes.”

He set down his chalk.

“Before dismissing you, however, I leave you with a thought and an assignment,” he continued. “History is partial, my students. It takes sides, damns and justifies, because we do and it us to who write it. Never confuse it for a cold science squabbling only with facts – and understand that the distinctions we draw within this discipline are not some ultimate truth but very much for our own won convenience.”

He gestured towards the great slate he had filled.

“Consider this,” Professor Sasan said. “These three periods of history, are they the sum whole of all that ever was in Vesper?”

A click of the tongue.

“Of course not,” he said. “This world existed before the Antediluvians came.”

Professor Sasan grinned.

“That is my assignment for you,” he said. “Crack open the books you’ve received and find me the answer to this question: what existed before the First Empire, and how do we call that distant era?”

—

After Professor Sasan’s jovial lecture, Song was not quite sure what to expect when the following morning saw the Thirteenth dragging themselves through the bowels of Scholomance to the buried crypt where they would be taught Teratology.

It had taken them a mere quarter hour to reach the Saga classroom once they’d entered Scholomance,, but this time it was easily twice as long to follow the spikes in the ground adorned with the yellow ribbons. Song watched the god of this place follow them from the corner of her eye as they passed through halls and hallways, a half-sunken chapel whose deep waters no one dared approach and finally circling stairway surrounded by a darkness that seemed to swallow all light.

“I will dare to hope Scholomance shuffles the journey to here next week,” Abrascal breathed out after they reached the bottom of the stairs. “That last part was unsettling.”

“I could do without the chimes in a wind that does not exist,” Maryam admitted.

“I am nearly certain I saw something moving under the water, back in that chapel,” Angharad grimaced.

“We are nearly there,” Song assured them.

The Teratology classroom, described to them as a crypt, lived up to the words. It was all arching stone and dim dampness, with lined up writing desks beneath oil lamps and walls covered with lemures stuffed or embalmed. Not only small ones, either, for a winged snake with exquisite rainbow-colored scales hung off the ceiling from one end of the room to another. The four of them claimed desks near the middle, where nothing loomed so close that Song would keeping looking back, and settled in. They were not the only ones unnerved by the journey to the classroom, or uneasily eyeing the jars and silhouettes on the walls. The crypt was more broad than long, and the front was a slightly raised stone dais where a desk had been placed. Their professor sat behind it.

He was a tall, slender man in his forties wearing an elaborate black tunic. Tianxi, his long black hair kept in an elaborate topknot held in place by a phoenix-shaped pin. Thin mustache and goatee were carefully styled, his eyes black as a beetle and almost as shiny. He watched the students enter impassively, sweeping to his feet only when the last had arrived.

“I am Professor Yun Kang, of the Peiling Society,” he announced, his voice smooth as velvet. “I will teach those of you capable the essentials of Teratology.”

Passing by his desk, he snatched a long baton of dark wood. It was polished enough to reflect lantern light.

“You will call me professor or sir,” Professor Kang informed them. “Anything else will see you ordered out of this room.”

He began striding across his low dais, forcing the students to follow him past pillars and the heads of their fellows.

“Teratology is the study of the monstrous,” he said. “That which has been changed by the touch of aether or Gloam, the lares and the lemures. It is the knowledge that will save your lives out in the dark, allow you to tell apart pithy and peril when encountered in service of the Watch.”

He scoffed.

“Scholars have dedicated their entire lives to Teratology and found this time to be all too short,” Professor Kang said. “My sole expectation of you as students is that most will learn the bare necessities and a handful of fortunate souls will rise to understand the sheer breadth of this discipline.”

The dark-haired man came to a stop.

“We have barely begun to plumb the depths of what exists beyond our small islands of Glare in this sea of darkness,” the professor said. “And the little we know shifts decade by decade, as the world does.”

Professor Kang strode across his stage, arms folded behind him.

“Teratology is an ever-changing field,” he lectured. “Not only must we follow the whims of nature and of the Ancients, but the foolishness of men can also change a land and fauna.”

The professor’s dark eyes swept through the desks, almost lazily. Song felt her stomach sink. There was something about that stare…

“Indeed, near the turn of the century an entire region that had been under regular Glare for centuries was condemned,” Professor Kang said. “Besides the colossal amount of death and ruin this caused, it is worth nothing that an entire scheme of fauna and flora was also irrevocably changed. Even should the Glare be returned, many of the changes will remain.”

He paused. Song swallowed.

“Can anyone name the region in question?”

A dozen hands went up, but Professor Kang did not so much as glance at them. Those dark eyes pinned her like a butterfly to a wall, and his lips quirked unpleasantly. A hand left his back and he pointed the baton directly at her.

“Captain Song Ren of the Thirteenth Brigade,” he said. “Answer the question.”

She breathed in.

“It is the Republic of Jigong,” Song replied with forced calm.

“Very good, very good,” he thinly smiled.

He turned away, making as if to stride across the stage again, but she knew better. A heartbeat later he had turned back towards her, tapping his baton against his chin pensively.

“Song, if you would,” Professor Kang idly said. “Would you happen to know what foolish, accursed family was responsible for the worst disaster Vesper has known since the peak of Succession Wars?”

She grit her teeth.

“The Ren family, sir,” she replied.

“Why, Song,” he said. “That happens to be your surname. Surely that is a coincidence.”

The silence in the hall was almost oppressive. Song sucked in a breath.

“Answer me, Ren,” Professor Kang coldly said. “Or walk out of this hall. I will not suffer disruptive students.”

“It is not a coincidence, sir,” she forced out.

“Ah, I do recall hearing something along those lines,” the dark-haired man idly said. “Your grandfather was the one responsible was he not? You are from the direct line of descent of the single worst traitor in the history of the Republics.”

She kept staring ahead.

“Ah,” he silkily said. “I understand. Such a famous girl, you must believe yourself above answering when your teacher addresses you.”

“I do not know what to say,” Song woodenly said.

“Understandable,” Professor Kang sighed. “I can only praise you for recognizing the utter worthlessness of any words you might utter.”

He tucked his hands behind him again.

“If you must inflict your presence on me, Ren, you will at least have the decency to never speak unless spoken to,” the professor said.

She swallowed.

“Yes, sir.”

He thinly smiled.

“I did not give you leave to speak,” he said. “This is your third and final warning.”

Humiliating as that had been, the stares that came after were worse. It felt like half the class was watching her face, some smirking and others contemptuous. The stares with pity in them burned the harshest.

“The teacher is in front,” Angharad coldly said when the student of her turned to her eye like an animal in a cage.

It shamed those closest to stop staring, but the attention only barely waned. And Professor Kang was watching it all from the front, just waiting for her to speak up and give him reason to cast her out. Once it became clear she would not give him the excuse, he chided her for distracting the class and announced that the entire first month of class would be dedicated to the study of what set apart lares and lemures from animals.

“Teratology is best understood not as a state or a catalogue but as a natural system,” Professor Kang said. “To best allow you to grasp this early in our time together, we will study a well-documented occurrence of such a system shifting.”

And as Song’s stomach sung, the professor went on to explain how for that entire first month they would study how the Dimming had changed the lands of Jigong, their fauna and flora and inhabitants. Every excruciating detail of the consequences of her grandfather’s sin, not only dragged out for everyone to see but studied and tested on. Only a hundred of the four hundred and three students of Scholomance were in this room, but she knew without a doubt that by the end of the day word would have spread through all Tolomontera. The Dimming and her family ties to it might as well been nailed to her forehead.

Captain Wen had warned her that one of the teachers had it out for her, had he not?

Well, Song had found him.