Pale Lights - Book 2: Chapter 4

“Not here,” Song firmly said.

The watchwoman at the desk was leaning in, eyes bright at the prospect of gossip. Maryam would not have minded airing out Tredegar’s dirty little secrets, but it was not worth the fight with Song. There was nothing to gain there save the joy of spite.

Up the stairs they went, to a stone hallway with burnt orange carpets. She was charmed to notice little hopping rabbits were hidden in the patterns, frolicking about merrily. There were numbered doors alternating on each side of the hall and stairs leading up at the left end. It never failed to impress Maryam how skilled mornaric – the sailing peoples – were at building upwards. It must be because there were so very many of them in such small spaces, she mused.

Their room was at the right end of the hall, opposite the stairs. Number twenty-seven, though there could not be that many rooms in the hostel. Some kind of local superstition? Tristan unlocked the door and Maryam was amused to realize she had never noticed him taking one of the keys. Not that he would need it if he truly wanted to enter a room. He’d shown her his kit on the Fair Vistas, between the lockpicks and the skeleton key there was not much short of an aether lock that would ward him off.

The last in, Maryam closed the door behind her. Their room was spacious and clean: six beds, two rows of three against either wall, and for each row a dresser and washbasin. There was a wooden trunk at the end of every bed, a key laid atop it, and facing the street was a broad double window with open shutters. Orrery lights filtered in, coming to rest on a small writing desk stocked with ink and paper, and four unlit oil lamps hung from long iron rods nailed into the walls.

Maryam’s gaze lingered on the slice of silver light lingering atop the writing desk, sending out her nav to taste it. To her spirit-effigy the aether felt… clandestine. A light for thieves and secrets, for ambushes. Every false star of the Grand Orrery carried a will, an order, as if no two Ancients had been able to agree on what it was they were building. Shaking off the thought – and Tristan’s curious look – she slid her pack off her shoulder and let it slump to the ground.

Gods, but she was tired. Her every limb ached. Yet Maryam barely had a moment to roll her aching shoulders before Song turned to Tredegar.

“Kindly elaborate,” the Tianxi said. “What trouble are we in?”

We, Maryam marked. Song was all too eager to drag them all into the Malani’s entanglements. Tristan picked a bed by the windows, abandoning his pack on the floor and dropping down on the sheets. Maryam snatched up her bag and sat on the bed by his, keeping an eye on Tredegar – who was clearing her throat in embarrassment.

“I have been invited to an evening of light refreshments,” Angharad said.

“A grave peril indeed,” Tristan opined.

Maryam swallowed a grin. Ever quick to bite, her viper.

“Full retreat, every woman for herself,” she tacked on without missing a beat.

The Malani – Maryam would not refer to her as Pereduri in her thoughts so long as the girl called her Triglau, for she wasIzvorica and Triglau was a word whose meaning spanned a dozen peoples – narrowed her eyes at them. Stiff-backed, Tredegar passed her invitation to Song questing hand and the Tianxi studied it while the noblewoman deigned to explain her meaning to the rest of them.

“One those who invited me is a noble bearing a Malani name,” Tredegar said. “I have reason to suspect they would be a foe to me.”

Malani were dogs eating their own children, who were they not foes to? They would steal the lights from firmament itself to bejewel their High Queen’s crown, if they but had the reach. All eyes were on Tredegar, even Tristan bothering to sit up on his bed, but now the Malani hesitated. No blabbermouth when it came to her secrets, this one.

Maryam might have reluctantly approved of that, if those secrets were not likely to get them shot at.

“If we are to face your enemies with you,” Song gently said, “it is only reasonable for us to be told of their grudge and nature.”

Hand-holding, Maryam scorned. How gentle a touch this was compared to the Tianxi’s talk with her on the ship. No, that was unfair, the pale-skinned woman decided after a moment. Maryam had brandished her fists first and there was no kindness in a brawl. And most damning of all Song had read the Malani right, for she squared her jaw and got to unpacking her secrets. Maryam would argue with many things, but never victory.

“I belong to House Tredegar of Llanw Hall,” Tredegar said. “Mere months ago, it was butchered savagely and struck from the rolls of Malani nobility by the High Queen’s court.”

Maryam frowned. She had thought that the Duchy of Peredur had its own nobility, called ‘peers’ instead of ‘lords’, but did somewhat recall hearing of Pereduri nobles taking Malani names. Perhaps it was related.

“I know not why,” Tredegar said, jaw clenched, “only that they murdered my kin and parents and spared not even our servants. It was…”

Angharad Tredegar breathed in, breathed out. It would not take shovelwork to dig up this one’s pain. The Izvorica took no pleasure in her grief, but neither could she muster much pity for it. How many mothers and fathers had been butchered and bought on House Tredegar’s behalf, made into meat and cattle to pay for parties and roof tiles and pretty belt buckles? It was evil, what had been done to Angharad Tredegar.

But what of it, when evil had paid for the very boots she wore?

“I survived,” Tredegar continued, tone pained, “and thanks to preparations of my father and the help of an allied house I was able to flee Malan by ship. Assassins have pursued me since.”

A pause.

“The false Yaretzi confessed to having been hired for my murder.”

That revelation came as a surprise. Tredegar had not mentioned it the night when she slew her would-be killers. Maryam looked away, surprised by a pang of sympathy. She knew a thing or two about running ahead of Malani killers, starving and lost. When she looked back to the noblewoman she found her looking away, a faint look of shame on her face. She had missed something.

“Scholomance will not be so easy to infiltrate as the Dominion,” Song finally said. “And even should a student be suborned, killing is forbidden.”

“Abduction isn’t,” Tristan said.

The brown-haired man was still sitting cross-legged on his sheets, but for all the apparent looseness of his stance Maryam saw how his eyes revealed it a lie. They were calm, like a clock ticking on. She would not soon forget that night out by the raised stones, the way his hands had shaken but his eyes stayed unwavering as he spoke of buying his way out of the grave. You could trust a man like that, who rode fear without letting it ride him. It was the only kind of man you could trust, really.

“If I had to arrange it,” Tristan continued, “I’d have Lady Angharad dragged onto a ship and shot in the head the moment we crossed the Ring of Storms.”

Tredegar inclined her head at him, not offended in the slightest by what someone else might have taken a threat. Unsurprising. Malani never gave their word without thinking of ten ways to break it without staining that pile of loopholes they called honor. Still, in staring at the horizon those two had missed the pebble in the boot. Maryam cleared her throat, rising to her feet.

“It’s not a trap,” she said

Tredegar frowned even as the blue-eyed woman went to lean back against the dresser.

“The book downstairs,” Maryam continued. “The one that watchwoman got your invitation from. It had a few more invites tucked in, didn’t it?”

“It did,” Song immediately agreed.

After a moment Tredegar nodded in agreement.

“I bet if we go down and look, all of these will have different names,” she said. “I’d even bet that if we went to one of the other hostels – the Emerald Vaults, Song?”

The Tianxi inclined her head, arms folded.

“If we go to the Emerald Vaults, their ledger in front will have the same set of invitations wedged in,” Maryam said. “The hosts will have them everywhere. There’s no telling where students would be sent to sleep after getting here, so the surest way to reach them is to have those letters waiting in front. Likely they invited all the nobleborn students and you made the list.”

“Then you offer a silver or two for passing word your invitation was received and you’re sure to learn of it on the quick,” Tristan mused. “It’s a sensible method.”

And one that needed no servants to work, just coin. Tredegar bit the inside of her cheek, looking sour. Disapproving of how close it sounded to bribery, Maryam guessed.

“The blackcloak did say I was lucky to arrive in time,” the Malani finally acknowledged. “That implies the evening has been planned for some time and there would not have been much time to scheme between receiving news of my survival on the Dominion and our arrival here.”

The frown deepened.

“But how would they know of my coming, if not through my enemies?” she asked.

Naive, coming from a girl whose watchman uncle had padded every blackcloak pocket on the Dominion to help her survive. No one at Scholomance would be without patrons in the Watch. Even Maryam had one, though he was worlds away from the Trebian Sea and his influence accordingly thin.

“The same way I got on the Bluebell,” Song replied. “Connections in the Watch. I expect your being a mirror-dancer is on your record and that will draw attention. This might well be an attempt at forming ties – or even poaching – rather than anything more nefarious.”

It would have been pleasant to entertain the fantasy of Tredegar being traded for another cabalist – a Lierganen or Tianxi would be best, they tended to be the most tolerable – but Maryam knew better. Song would not allow it.

“I’d still say you pegged it right, Tredegar,” Tristan mused, stroking his beardless chin. “Maybe the ones throwing the party don’t want your head in a basket, but where there’s one noble there’s always more. If a Malani highborn arranged the party…”

“There will be more in attendance,” Tredegar said, fists clenching. “Almost certainly. I must decline attending, then.”

Maryam shook her head, the gesture drawing their eyes. She eased off the dresser, which she had felt begin tipping.

“It is better to siege than be besieged,” she quoted. “If you hole up behind your walls, your enemy is left master of the land.”

“A Triglau war manual?” Song asked, sounding curious.

“The words of a general,” Maryam said, meaning my mother.

Her eyes moved to find Tredegar’s.

“If your foe is as rich and powerful as you think, are they truly someone you can outlast?”

It had been a slower death, retreating to the hill-holds, but still a death. Mother had seen the truth of that even as the kings spoke of ceding Zarla’s Drift and all of Dubrik to the Malani, of abandoning the flat grounds where their muskets reigned to bleed them across the goat paths instead. They would tire of the raids and ambushes, the kings said, and either the mornaric would leave or the old trade would resume. Only the Malani had not tired, had not left. They had built forts, brought settlers and cannons and priests.

And when the kings finally grasped the Malani were there to stay it had been much, much too late.

Tredegar blinked in surprise, but slowly nodded. There was a tension there that made Maryam uncomfortable, for it was hard to name.

“Fancy,” Tristan drawled. “Back home, we just say that the best way to know what’s inside a beehive is to kick it.”

Maryam would have taken him at his word, if not for the sly glance he sent their captain after.

“That is not a Sacromontan saying,” Song flatly said.

“A Sacromontan is saying it,” Tristan said. “So, you know, by the transitive property of things-”

“That is a law of mathematics,” the Tianxi interrupted, sounding baffled. “How do you even know about-”

Bickering erupted, irritated on one end and gleeful the other, until it was cut right through. Tredegar had chuckled, at first, but it turned into a streak of laughter and then something deep from the belly. Maryam eyed the Malani warily, for the sound was less mirth and more a wound being lanced. She was purging, and when the last chuckles left Tredegar she looked exhausted. All eyes stayed on her.

“Apologies,” Tredegar said, voice hoarse. “I am… tired, I think.”

“It has been a long few weeks,” Maryam said, tone cautious. “For all of us.”

She sent out her nav, feeling out the Malani, but she felt no different from usual in the aether: a mind sharp and narrow, like a blade. Tredegar nodded something like thanks and Maryam’s jaw tightened. She did not want gratitude, not for such a small gesture.

It felt too much like being in the wrong.

Song, who had been leaning against the wall with folded arms since the talk began, suddenly pushed off. Her face was resolute.

“We all have stones hanging around our necks,” Song told them. “It is how we ended up on the Dominion of Lost Things in the first place. I will not pry at secrets – not even a captain can demand this – but threats that might trouble us all are a different matter.”

She paused, silver eyes sweeping through their cabal.

“Angharad has shared hers. It is time for the rest of us to do the same.”

“Are you to start, then?” Tristan idly said.

Too idly, Maryam thought. It was the kind of shallow cheer pulled over anger or irritation. Tristan Abrascal had spent most of life with only firmament above his head and nothing but his feet keeping death from catching up. It would not be anytime soon he stopped seeing a captain as anything but a hindrance to pay lip service to.

“If you would like,” Song evenly replied, not rising to the bait. “I am a Ren. We are responsible for what the Republics call the Dimming.”

Maryam had long been fascinated by tales of Tianxia, whose Luminaries sounded not unlike the work of the Ancients painting the highlands in wandering light. The Republics were a wealthy realm, she had read, because they lay under great mirror-conduits bathing hundreds of miles of towns and fields in golden light. As there were nine such Luminaries but ten republics, a lottery arranged which land would be left in the dark until the next draw.

But in the latter half of what mornaric called the Century of Sails, one of these Luminaries had been broken.

“Your family broke a ninth of Heaven, you once said to me,” Angharad quietly said.

Face blank as a porcelain mask, Song nodded.

“Chaoxiang Ren, my grandfather, made the decision that brought down the three-legged tower of the Republic of Jigong and broke a ninth of Heaven,” she continued, tone entirely without emotion. “Jigong has since been condemned to the dark as punishment and will forever remain so.”

She swallowed.

“All bearing the name Ren are reviled, regardless of relation to my line, but I am of direct descent,” she said. “My kin had to flee Jigong but hatred heeds no borders. My countrymen will sometimes seek to do me harm without greater reason than my name, and those of Jigong may well attempt to take my life outright.”

That legacy was half the reason they knew each other at all. The sheer novelty of her being warned off sitting with someone at the mess hall had been enough to ensure that Maryam would seek out the Tianxi eating alone in a corner and being treated like she had the plague. The Izvorica had spent a week at the Rookery, waiting for Captain Falade to have the time to appraise her obscuration and decide whether her patron’s recommendation would be accepted, only three days of which had overlapped with Song’s own stay on the fortress-island.

It had been enough for them to strike an alliance of sorts, if only because the way the other candidates waiting at the Rookery treated them made it plain they were short on potential associates. Silence hung in the wake of Song’s words, the severity of her words having made this feel all too real.

Tristan passed his hand through his hair and sighed.

“I have no knowledge of why I am being hunted,” he said, which Maryam suspected was actually true. “But I will say this: I am an orphan and not through happenstance. I will repay that favor tenfold to those responsible – and on that list is the name of a powerful infanzon. That pursuit may yet bring down enmity on our heads.”

That was more than she had expected him to say. Wise of him to steer clear of the name of Cerdan, given that Tredegar was not a fool incapable of basic addition, but sooner or later that would out. Still, by the approving look the Malani was sending him at the mention of bloody vengeance Maryam thought if he played that conversation right he might well end up without a sword in his belly. Tredegar was not a hypocrite in ways too obvious – she would not condemn someone’s revenge in the same breath she swore her own.

Eyes turned to Maryam, the last of the lot, and the blue-eyed woman worried her lip. She had secrets but none that came with foes and her ambitions would remain her own. She did, however, have a… situation.

“I have no great enemies, save what my color will earn me,” Maryam finally said. “But there may be a danger closer to home.”

The pale woman closed her hand into a fist, the wooden fingers she had been fitted with in Three Pines creaking. Half the time she forgot she had ever lost them, then she tried to flip a coin and it was as if she was the world’s worst bungler.

“There is something odd about my signifying,” Maryam admitted. “I have great facility with Autarchic Signs – the rarest and most difficult of the Arts – but struggle with even the simplest manifestations. That is…”

She trailed off.

“There is no such thing as a safe anomaly, in signifying,” she said. “It is a lit fuse whose length I do not know, and if I do not find the root of the trouble there is not telling what will happen when it reaches powder.”

That was the first lesson of signifying, the one every Navigator learned. There is no harmless way to use the Gloam. You have drunk poison and it will kill you: the only question left is how long it will take. Maryam knew it had to be the unusual nature of her obscuration that was responsible for her block, but it should not have – she breathed in, stilled her mind. Now was not the time and this was not the place. She would seek out the local chapterhouse and with it a Navigator’s guidance.

“In time,” Song spoke into the silence, “I hope that we will share details of contracts and Signs so that we might plan accordingly.”

Before anyone could add anything she raised a quelling hand.

“It is early days and we are yet strangers,” she said. “Such things should not be forced. Besides, we have a more urgent consideration.”

Silver eyes moved to Tredegar.

“If you would reconsider attending the evening, there are opportunities there,” she said. “This alleged gathering at Misery Square tomorrow is meant, I feel, for the late and the desperate. The skilled will already have formed cabals and attending such a soiree will reveal who the most influential of our rivals are to be. And regarding foes, it would be best to reveal them by…”

“Kicking the beehive?” Tredegar lightly suggested.

Tristan grinned her way, his pleasure matched by Song’s chagrined look. Maryam resented the Malani’s occasional wittiness, which made her harder to dislike.

“If you are to have enemies, it would be best to learn now and prepare to fight them,” Song pragmatically said. “In this I agree with Maryam – it is better to seek them out than to let them find us. That said, it would be imprudent to send you alone.”

Tredegar flicked the Izvorica’s way, then Tristan’s. A beat passed.

“We should bathe before attending,” the Malani told Song. “And see about getting a fresh uniform, at least.”

Maryam smiled even as Song’s lips thinned. The Tianxi seemed to enjoy it a great deal less when it was her being given accidental insults.

“I cannot be the one to go with you,” she stiffly said. “My name may well be barred from entry, and if it is not then other Tianxi might walk out in answer to my presence – more likely I will be asked to leave, and you would then stand alone.”

Tredegar frowned.

“I would be an entirely different sort of scandal,” Maryam idly said. “Unless, of course, you would ask me to attend as your slave.”

She eyed the Malani with a smile, skin-deep pleasantry, as that frown deepened.

“I would not,” Tredegar said.

“Wise,” she replied.

So not entirely senseless. Perhaps some hope should be allocated to Song’s promised efforts, though Maryam would not hold her breath. Their stare off was interrupted by a chuckle.

“Why yes, Lady Tredegar, it would please me to be your escort at this evening of refreshments,” Tristan drawled. “You do know how to make a man feel special.”

Tredegar cleared her throat.

“Your help would be most welcome,” she said.

“Don’t worry,” the gray-eyed man smiled. “You’ll hardly even notice I’m there.”

Maryam leaned his way.

“I could do with a spare cloak,” she whispered.

“Try to find out if there’s a pawnshop,” he whispered back, “and if they take silverware.”

“What was that?” Tredegar asked, eyes narrowed.

“He was wondering what to wear,” Maryam lied without batting an eye.

“I am not used to the company of nobles,” Tristan added, feigning shyness.

It was little like watching a cat slap a bowl off a table and then pretend it’d been just as surprised as you were.

“Let us find out what the possibilities are, then,” the noblewoman said. “Come, Tristan, the watchwoman downstairs should have some answers.”

The Sacromontan was quickly browbeaten into joining the expedition, looking back mournfully at his still-packed bag, but when he turned to glance at Maryam it was not sympathy she offered. Something with a hood, she silently mouthed. He rolled his eyes, Tredegar dragging him out shortly after, and Maryam was left to stand alone under Song’s disapproving stare.

“Maryam.”

“I will not apologize,” she gravely said, “for thriftiness.”

“Maryam.”

The Izvorica raised her hands defensively.

“I mean, why even have a thief if we don’t ask him to steal things?”

Song sighed.

“If the two of you end up in a goal,” she said, “I’ll leave you there until classes begin.”

That was fair, Maryam conceded.

—

After Maryam put away her clothes in her trunk – neatly, but not so neatly as Song’s meticulous smoothing and folding of everything she owned – she stayed kneeling by the bed, eyes closed. Her limbs ached, a dull throb that somehow urged her to both move and stay still.

“I was thinking of having a look around the port,” Song said. “Would you be interested?”

“I was thinking of napping,” Maryam said.

The Tianxi’s brow rose.

“Did you not on the ship?”

“I keep having dreams I don’t remember,” she admitted. “And when I wake up I’m more tired than when I went to sleep.”

“You need a Meadow,” Song flatly said. “The rings around your eyes have been getting worse.”

The Tianxi wasn’t right, but there were always rules around Meadows. Maryam would try rest in a proper bed first and simply seek guidance from a signifier. It might be something in the local aether that was affecting her like this.

“It was nowhere this bad on the Dominion,” Maryam said. “And I am less than fond of ships, it can’t have helped.”

A pause.

“I will leave you the room and the key, then,” Song said. “But you must tell me if your troubles persist.”

Maryam halfheartedly agreed, and within moments of being alone was lying on the bed. She rose only to close the shutters and then promptly buried her face in the pillow again.

When she woke groaning, a trail of sweat down her back and her heart pounding with dread, she was left to wish she had taken Song’s advice. She changed, wiping her face and neck clear in the washbasin first, and when she came down the stairs found it was no longer the same blackcloak at the desk. A little talking let her figure out that she had been sleeping for at least three hours, not that her aching body could tell.

She left the key at the desk for Song when she returned, then went to take her captain’s advice. The man at the desk gave her a direction for the Akelarre chapterhouse, though it was vague and he admitted never having gone himself. It proved little trouble, for a direction was enough: chapterhouses always had tall walls, enough they stood out from the buildings around them. Maryam had to wander around for a time, looks and whispers trailing her wherever she went, but a few minutes of walk to the west and she found what she was looking for.

Most chapterhouses were built the same way: a fat, stout square bastion whose sole entrance was at the end of a narrow ramp reaching halfway up the wall. It made getting anything in and out difficult, but the Guild cared for secrecy over practicality. The Navigators had not remained the leading practitioners of Gloam sorcery for five hundred years by being careless with their secrets. Here the structure was granite, and all the old houses around it had been pulled down into rubble as if to forbid cover.

Breathing out, Maryam set up the ramp and past the open gates of the chapterhouse.

There was no writing desk inside, no ledger or list – not even ink for a quill. Instead the square room, covered in obsidian tiles of subtly varying shades, counted a bench on either side and an open door past them. There was nothing at all to stop Maryam from going right through, save for the middle-aged man sitting with crossed legs on the left bench and reading a book. Lierganen, she saw by the skin, and while his hair was long and wild his beard was neatly cropped.

He did not look up as she entered, absent-mindedly turning a page.

The man was not wearing a cloak but he had a regular’s uniform, tunic and trousers and boots, and a small knife strapped at his side. No embroidered officer’s stylings on the shoulders, but Maryam went still as stone when her eyes found his left hand. The signet ring on his hand was silver. The Akelarre Guild had ranks, but the ones that mattered weren’t the ones you got on your clothes. Your signet ring was what told you where stood, and silver meant you were a Master within the Akelarre Guild.

No wonder the man wasn’t taking guarding the entrance seriously. If he had taken the time to prepare the room with Signs, he would be able to fry her mind without even bothering to look up from his book. Intrigued by what such a skilled signifier might be reading – a metaphysics study, perhaps, or some ancient book of lore – she risked a glance at the title emblazoned on the front. It was…

‘The Sunflower Lord’s Lady’.

Maryam let out a small sigh. A romance serial. One of those cheap and tawdry ones, too, which watchmen always seemed as eager to trade as liquor and gossip. At the sound of her disappointment, the man finally looked up from the page.

“Maryam Khaimov,” he said, dark eyes knowing. “Come for the Meadow?”

She blinked in surprise. Were there really so few Navigator students on the island that he would recognize her at – fool you, Khaimov. However many Navigators there might be, she would be the only Izvorica. Of course he had recognized her.

“For the night,” she agreed.

The man nodded.

“You know the rules,” the Master said, eyes already back on his book. “Barefingers get only one night every five days. And if you are to stay over, there will be no avoiding sitting with Captain Yue this time.”

Maryam’s brow rose.

“This time?”

The blackcloak’s eyes stopped moving across the page. He looked up, face gone serious as he watched her face for something. Whatever it was, he did not seem to find it.

“What is my name?” he asked.

“You never mentioned it,” Maryam flatly replied.

His lips thinned.

“I did,” the Master retorted. “When you visited for the first time, two hours ago.”

The blue-eyed woman froze.

“I,” she began, then swallowed. “I was sleeping in my room. I cannot have been here.”

Unless, of course, the Eclipse was coming early and she simply did not remember. It would be ridiculous, she had only obscured a single organ but… Ridiculous was not impossible, and her obscuration was unusual. The wild-haired man closed his book with a snap, rising to his feet.

“You need to have your obscuration assessed immediately,” he said. “Yue has the Meadow, follow me.”

Maryam swallowed, mouth gone dry, and meekly nodded. The man flicked a wrist behind them, Gloam running off the obsidian tiles in thick rivulets and forming into a Sign hanging in the open space of the chapterhouse gate. Not a Sign she knew, but Maryam could feel its malevolent pulsing without even calling on her nav.

“Come,” the man said. “And before either of us forgets-”

He caught her eye.

“My name is Baltasar Formosa. Remember it, as I will be your professor in the Akelarre classes.”

—

A Meadow was, against what would be the expectations of most outside these walls, exactly what the name implied: a small field of greenery with a stream running through it.

Most chapterhouses used flowers and herbs from the surrounding lands, and there was no true rule as to what must be within save that it must live and there must be water running through. Maryam had known some chapterhouses to turn their Meadows into medicinal herb gardens or to grow spices, but Captain Yue evidently preferred nature to run its course. The land here was prickly green grass and wildflowers, overgrown ferns crowding the edge of a small tinkling stream. The vines on the wall were digging into the stone, like fingers looking for weakness.

The only sign of order was the small mattresses laid down on both sides of the river, their sheets neatly made and their pillows in place. Maryam allowed herself a pang of longing at the sight but mastered herself, for she might have come to rest but now the purpose had changed. Professor Baltasar had led her briskly through the cramped halls of the chapterhouse and was now taking her straight to a woman sitting cross-legged in the grass.

Captain Yue hardly even looked thirty, though it could be hard to tell with Tianxi. She was broad of shoulder but slightly built, black hair pulled in a braid on the left side of her head – and half-hiding the nasty burn scars on her cheek and ear. Her black coat was open, revealing a billowy white shirt, and her boots had been carelessly tossed behind her. She breathed out, then opened curious brown eyes without needing to be told of their approach.

“Baltasar,” she said, voice smooth as silk. “You bring me our last errant pupil.”

The professor grunted.

“That remains to be seen,” he said. “She just told me she’s never seen me before. Apparently she was sleeping in her room when I saw earlier.”

Captain Yue cocked her head to the side and Maryam straightened beneath her gaze, not quite sure why she felt the need. She felt a tenseness in the air, a weight, but she did not dare send out her nav. The captain bore silver on her ring finger, she might well smother Maryam’s spirit-effigy without noticing. The older Navigator let out a hum.

“She’s not possessed,” Captain Yue finally said. “Have her emanations been varying on the way here?”

“Stable,” Professor Baltasar replied.

“Then you have brought me something interesting,” the Tianxi happily said. “Sit with me, Maryam. Let us find out if you have begun going mad.”

The tanned man leaned closer.

“Try not to interest her too much,” he whispered. “She is not malicious but her curiosity can be… callous.”

The Izvorica slowly nodded. The professor left with that warning, sparing the captain a nod which she airily dismissed. Maryam stood there a moment, awkward, before clearing her throat and sitting by the other woman as offered. Captain Yue offered her hand, which Maryam reluctantly took. Her stomach clenched.

“Loosen up,” the captain said. “Do not take the reins of your logos even if you do not move it.”

She breathed in, breathed out, and then Captain Yue’s nav – the logos, Navigators called it – was under her skin. It was like a cat’s tongue, rough and warm, as it rose up her arm examining every inch. Up to the shoulders, then the head where she lingered long, then down the other arm and the rest of the body down to the sole of her feet. When Captain Yue finally withdrew Maryam was left feeling raw, like an exposed nerve.

“Nothing has breached containment,” Captain Yue informed her. “Your brain will soon be fully obscured so I would begin considering which organ will follow, but there is nothing that would cause a sudden onset of mania.”

Maryam let out a slow, relieved breath.

“It is quite fascinating, seeing someone who began with their brains,” the Tianxi mused. “It’s not unique, of course, but that you did it before puberty without going violently insane is most impressive.”

The Izvorica closed her mouth, biting down on the reply that it was the tradition in the land of her birth and her mother had done the same. She had been warned not to attract this one’s interest.

“Your dossier mentions a block when it comes to manifestations,” Captain Yue continued. “How do you do with Didactics?”

“I cannot get them to work at all,” Maryam admitted, then defensively added, “but I have had some successes with Acumenals.”

The Tianxi hummed.

“It will be difficult to tell whether you have mangled your logos somehow or there is a mental element to your difficulties until you have begun obscuring a second organ,” Yue said. “Have you planned your journey in that regard?”

Journey, that was that the Guild called it. A pretty word, but its real meaning was ‘death’. Gloam was a poison that would kill you, sooner or later, drive you mad and hollow you out. Only the ancient practitioners that had founded the Akelarre Guild had discovered the process of obscuration, and it had changed everything. Simply using Gloam spread the damage all over your body, slowly saturating with few external signs until a sudden onset of mania.

To obscure, however, was to saturate a single part of her your body with the Gloam.

Not only did confining it to a single organ somehow allow a signifier to concentrate much more of the Gloam inside it than should be possible, it also yielded a stark improvement in manipulation capacity – and, depending on where had been obscured, some affinity with a part of the Arts. Maryam had obscured her brain, which would help her with Autarchic Signs. Those confined within the signifier, with an emphasis on the mind.

Most Navigators never obscured their brain. It was difficult, dangerous and rumored to lead to… instabilities, especially if done early in one’s career. And of course it was, for Maryam’s teacher had never hidden from her what obscuration was, when you stripped away the mystical trappings. The controlled hollowing of a part of the body, he’d called it. We turn ourselves into darklings, piece by piece. Maryam shivered at the memory and licked her dry lips.

“If not a bout of mania,” she said, “what can explain Professor Baltasar having seen me earlier?”

“Tolomontera is sitting atop one of the largest aether wells of Vesper,” Captain Yue said, sounding pleased. “Odd happenings are not only likely, they are to be expected.”

She paused, thoughtful.

“Perhaps your presence caught the fancy of some entity in the aether?” she said. “Or it might have been a reflection of you from a different time, or even a part of your soul strengthened by lower order entities?”

The captain was warming up to the subject the more she spoke, eyes alight.

“I cannot wait to find out,” Captain Yue enthused. “To think I would be so lucky as to be handed so delightful a puzzle this early in the year.”

Callous curiosity, Professor Baltasar had called it. Maryam’s estimation of the man’s judgment went up a notch. Perhaps some of the thought showed on her face, for the captain’s enthusiasm was visibly pulled back.

“But I have held you back long enough,” Captain Yue said. “Pick whichever bed you will Maryam. The Meadow is open to all.”

Tiredly thanking the other officer, Maryam dragged herself up. She picked the bed furthest from the captain, but after that huddled under the sheets without even taking her boots off. Head on the pillows, she felt the grass around her breathe and the water flow – the currents of the world quieted, the encroaching dark kept at bay.

She was out in moments and it was the best night of sleep she’d had in months.