It took a mont for Tristan to realize he was awake and no longer dreaming.
The nightmare had felt just as real as this, and until he bit at his lip hard part of him whispered that this was just another layer of the dream. The pain silenced the thought: not the ache itself but all the details around it. The way the breath he sucked in stung at his bitten lip, the slight knot where he'd pulled muscle to bite. These were not dream-details, they were too grounded.
He cast off his blanket and set to moving with heavy limbs, groans chorusing around him. Talk of fitful sleep and strange noises reached his ear, but he had not been so afflicted. No, his sleep had been deep and filled with a single, all-consuming dream. He rembered it perfectly, for waking had not dulled the edge of mory, and Tristan shivered despite the warmth of the nearby furnace.
He'd dreamt of death, and of eating.
Hands and eyes in the walls, nudging hidden chanisms to carve and splatter the vermin crawling through his hallways. Every spurt of red on stone a taste of nectar, a heady triumph to sup on. Tristan had killed and eaten, again and again, feeling as if he were in a race. As if he must beat an hourglass, fill a cup before the last grain of sand dropped. He rembered feeling smug, fit to burst. How the crawling vermin had slled deliciously of terror.
Tristan ran his finger down the seam in his mind, feeling the shifting puzzle-maze that was Scolomancia and the ball clattering around inside those walls. He still wasn't sure what the ball was, what it ant, but sensing the shifts already told him much. And it wasn't everything, either: he made out the faint sound of violin, a distant sonatina that gently rose and fell like waves against the wooden planks of Fishmonger's Quay.
Tristan had stopped hearing any buzzing half an hour into the delve.
It should have been a relief, but it wasn't. The music now only filled his ears when he was touching the seam, but it was... sharper. It gave him insight into Scolomancia's moods, even a glimpse of her intentions when paired with the maze sense, but it was also more than that. Listening to the music felt like dipping a finger into water and feeling which way the current went. He should not have been able to do this, Tristan was sure of it. Now without praying to Scolomancia and tying himself to her.
But he could, and right now the current was pulling them ahead into the four grand iron cubes that rose up the cliff like a stairway for giants. The last four rooms before the delving crews had crossed the Trench and reached the temple whose wide-open gates served as threshold to whatever awaited in the dark. Scolomancia was eager, she was ready.
She believed those last four rooms would kill them all, save for those who ran.
Tristan spared the last of his salted pork for Hooks, who consud it with a touch before flicking her finger at his arm. The sa finger that had just shriveled at in an instant, and how different was his own body really? And yet he felt not a flicker of unease at the touch. His dreams up in the tower had been tumultuous, but he still rembered the crows. One by the window, keeping watch on him. One by the ladder, keeping the world out.
It had felt like having Fortuna back, just a little bit.
"You are in your head, this morning," Hooks said.
Tristan decided that the obvious joke about her not being in Maryam's was beneath even him.
"I had an odd dream," he admitted.
Hooks was a shade of Maryam, but mostly in a taphorical sense: ruby to her sister's crimson, so to speak. Beyond the obvious you could see the differences in how they smiled and glared, or frowned as Hooks now did. It pulled at different parts of her face, made her look sterner, but she wore it well.
"That insect in the walls must have pushed against your mind," Hooks said tightly. "Do you feel off?"
He glanced down at his hands.
"Like I should be better rested than I am," he admitted. "But not otherwise, no."
He found himself flicked again.
"Tell us if it changes," Hooks ordered. "Those iron box rooms feel like bonfires in the aether, the god will have greater reach while we're inside."
But why can she reach out here? Why Tristan, of all those present? Part of him wanted to bla the Lightbringer, whose whisper burrowed ever deeper into his ear, but that seed absurd. And there would be no need for... that, anyway. Song's pragmatically brutal thod of pushing into the Trench had worked, they were nearly at the end of it.
Their crew lined up before the entrance under the curious gazes of Captain Lahiri's delving crew – who by agreent would enter no earlier than fifteen minutes after they did - and Tristan fell in besides Izel. The tinker was alight this morning, his limbs restless. He'd spent an hour and change fiddling with scraps and supplies last night before going to bed, and was holding whatever he'd made wrapped in a spare cloak. It looked square. So sort of panel?
"You seem a little out of it," Izel said.
"Just wondering what you made."
Izel did not look particularly convinced, but Song's call put an end to their conversation. They ford a column in front of the first iron box, simple unpolished tal walls whose rounded gates unpleasantly evoked an open mouth, and proceeded inside.
Tristan slled danger in the air from the first breath.
This was not like the other rooms of the Trench. He'd stepped into a darkened space, one that seed too cavernous even for the great structure seen from the outside, but there were no pendulum blades and pit traps here. It wasn't that sort of trial. Instead there was a single spot of light coming from above in an otherwise pitch-black room, illuminating a long feasting table. It was fitted with a hundred wooden seats, each placed before a plate and cup.
The tabletop was filled to burst with food and drink. There seed to be a bit of everything: beans and lentils besides strawberries and lons, pots of honey besides drumsticks of roasted chicken and a glazed pig's head. Cuts of lamb, chickpeas and greens and plates of grapes. Old carafes in the Trebian style were filled with wine, beer or ad while smaller crystal pitchers glead with apricot nectar. He might have licked his lips at the sight, if not for the instinctive sense of danger accompanying a detail: every single dish and drink was placed distinctly in front of a single plate, as if assigned.
"Gods, is that food still warm?" Bait loudly whispered.
Of course it is, Tristan thought. This place is part of Scolomancia, she makes the rules here. I bet you could walk into the dark and keeping going straight ahead for an entire day without reaching a wall. Each of the last four rooms would be like this, he realized. They were sacrants, steps on the way to the temple that they had proved themselves 'worthy' of undertaking by reaching the end of the Trench. This was not a crucible so much an initiation into the cult of Scolomancia.
Not that it would make passing through any less murderous.
Tristan flicked a glance back and was utterly unsurprised to find that the gate they'd entered through was gone.
"There are carvings on the table," Song called out, having approached the feast.
Tristan slipped his way past the hesitant crowd lingering at the edge of the circle of light, joining her to peer over spiced mutton chops at the set of instructions carved into the oaken tabletop. These were not words but pictures, displaying five steps. The first had figures sitting on the seats at the feast. The second had them partaking of food or drink. The third had them moving to a seat to their left. The fourth had them eating again, and had three distinct lines traced above it. The fifth had an open gate.
"We each have to eat or drink three tis or we're all stuck in here," Tristan sumd up.
He'd heard the man approach, so he did not give Tupoc the pleasure of startling when the Izcalli leaned over his shoulder.
"So, poison," Tupoc said.
"Or drugs," Tristan agreed. "I wonder what stops us from simply rotating around the table to safe plates after we've identified three?"
"The god, presumably. They don't like it when you cheat their rites."
He ignored the hard look Tupoc grace him with as he spoke in favor of the important part: he was not the only one to think this had rite written all over it.
"There is no easy way to tell which food is poisoned and which is not," Song said. "To simply sit and taste things would be rolling loaded dice with our lives on the line."
None of them were fool enough to suggest that a small bite might also be small enough a dose of poison to survive. Everything in this room was made by Scolomancia, that food was exactly was poisonous as the god wanted it to be.
"So of us will survive," Tupoc shrugged.
Easy for the man whose contract allowed him to survive poisons to say. He could just have a nibble thrice in a row and be done with it.
"Tristan, how are we on antidotes?" Song asked.
His hand almost reached for the pack on his back, but he refrained. He already knew the count, this was just nerves.
"I spruced up the Watch standard – two bottles of general redy, two for venom– with a load of purgatives, but they're dosed for more traditional poisons. I'm not sure how well they'll work on... whatever this is."
Song clicked her tongue.
"Maryam?"
Maryam had been close and ca to stand by Tristan, their elbows touching as she leaned over the table. Her dead eye had a touch of liveliness to it, a hint of Hook's presence within.
"None of this is real food," Maryam finally said. "It's solid aether made to look like it. That 2ould make most antidotes useless, since every single elent of that food will have the property of being poisonous."
Ah, he thought. The feast in front of them was essentially a fake painted out of essence of poison. How lovely.
"Can you tell which are poisoned?" Song asked. "Even a broad idea of the number of poisoned dishes would give us a better idea of what we're dealing with."
Maryam shook her head.
"Solid aether is difficult to read, like trying to guess at the text of a book from the cover."
She paused, grimacing.
"So Akelarre might be capable," Maryam reluctantly added. "There's similarities with curses, so a Navigator well versed in them would be able to catch details I cannot."
That Tupoc did not imdiately offer up Alejandras Torrero to look made it plain the man didn't believe she would succeed where the Khaimovs had failed, and no one even ntioned Shumise. Tristan had not expected them to. The Eleventh's signifier also seed to consider herself on the bottom rung of the Akelarre coven, often deferring to the other two.
"We don't need to know."
All their gazes were drawn behind them to Izel, who had stepped forward with his wrapped plate in hand. His back was straight, for once, and it made him loom above even Tupoc.
"Championing ignorance is a bold stance, Coyac," Tupoc lightly said. "I am eager to see where it will lead you."
He then pitched his voice in a mock-whisper.
"Ten silvers on the Jaguar dropout not making it through the day."
Before Tristan could take him up on the action – free silver! - an unimpressed Izel cut in.
"I know how to beat the room, and all we need to do is sit down," Izel Coyac said.
There was so degree of skepticism over this, but when he told them his plan it was mad enough that Tristan could only approve. Especially when he ran his finger against the seam and heard a violent, cutting lody.
Scolomancia had heard the plan too, and had not liked it at all.
They sat how they were ant to, all thirteen of them at the table. And though Tupoc imdiately ate a spoonful of stew – first round poison, he snorted, that's just rude – the rest of them waited for Izel to push his plate to the side and wedge a roughly shaped checkers board between himself and Bait. It had makeshift pieces, half of which he distributed to Bait to his left.
"You have to try your best," Izel told him, and they played.
Bait crushed him swiftly and rcilessly, which was amusing to witness but not so amusing that Tristan forgot to keep an eye on the saffron-colored serving dish beans in front of Bait, or the wild rice plate in front of Izel. His gaze dipped away as the Soshwari was declared the winner, returning to find that Bait was now being served roast chicken and Izel's al was unchanged.
Well, would you look at that. Scolomancia was a god of defeat, so the victory was conceptual poison to her – Bait winning at even sothing as simple as checkers had prevented Scholomance from putting poison in front of him, guaranteeing him a safe bite. Winning made him into red iron for her, she can't try to harm him without burning her finger. Bait bit into the drumstick, and the mont he set it back down on the plate it crumpled into ash. So did the rest of the dish.
Scolomancia had no intention of letting safe dishes get around the table.
They went around in order, doing the best they could to spread out the victories, but the differences in skill left gaps and anyone trying to lose on purpose spoiled the effect for both. Four were left, in the end. Tristan still had twice to partake – how were so many people good at checkers? – and so did Thando Fenya, Alejandra once and ironically enough Izel himself the once.
"Now it gets amusing," Tupoc said, rubbing his hands together. "Proceed!"
Thando beat Alejandra. Alejandra beat Izel, to her captain's cheers, and joined the safe seats. Izel then sat across Tristan, the two of them playing quickly. Well, not too quickly. Tristan tended to miss angles when he did that, it'd cost him a ga against a very apologetic Angharad who'd not even had the decency to use her contract and cheat to wallop him.
"Why did you pick checkers if you are so bad at them?" he asked.
"It was the easiest board and pieces to make," Izel replied defensively. "And it's a ga without luck, so the taphysical essence of victory is purer."
Tristan beat Izel, to his surprise, and ate a mouthful of peppered greens before they turned to ash. He then promptly lost to Thando, who let out a hiss of satisfaction and went to join the others spared. Just him and Izel, now. He ran his finger down the seam, found Scolomancia a furious storm of discordant violin. She was enraged that the feast had given her no corpse, and particularly incensed at how Tupoc and Hooks had been able to simply brute force their way through on account of contract and witchery. Presumably being constantly poked with a needle made of conceptual poison had done nothing to improve her mood. He could not, unfortunately, muster up any joy at the thought.
If Scolomancia didn't get sothing, this was going to get ugly. Maybe she wouldn't be able to harm them in this room, but the next? If she felt like they were cheating her rules, she would cease abiding by them. No, she needed to be reassured they were still playing her ga, that she could still gain sothing from this journey, or she would make this place eat them alive.
Tristan flicked a glance at the carafe in front of him, at the red wine waiting within. Sotis you had to pay your dues to stay in the ga.
"Izel," he suddenly said. "I need you to trust ."
His friend nodded, brown eyes sharpening.
"What must be done?"
"We play imdiately, without thought to strategy," Tristan said. "Never stop."
"I can do that," Izel agreed, seeming surprised.
It should walk the line, he thought. And as they set up the board and began sequence after sequence, Tristan found his early suspicion confird: he was a better player than Izel when given ti to think, but when playing fast distinctly his lesser. He lost, and by a fair margin.
"And now?" Izel asked.
"Now you have a bite of quail," Tristan replied.
Gods, quail. What a stupid bird to eat, there was barely any at on it. His gaze returned to the carafe of wine in front of him, a pungent red. Cocking his head to the side, he reached for the silver handle of the carafe even as he ran a finger down the seam. How bad? Scolomancia's eyes had turned on him the mont he leaned towards the wine, and she felt eager. But not in a hungry way, he decided. Not like soone about to feed.
He wouldn't die, but she would get sothing out of it.
"Well," Tristan grimaced, pouring himself a third of a cup. "Waiting won't make it go down easier."
Fucking wine, of all things. He choked it down, violin crooning against his ear as several shouts erupted across the room and he drank the sour red. It tasted foul, like all wine, but it still went down his gullet as the music rose and strings sliced away at his pounding skull. There was warmth in his belly, one that he could feel spreading outwards through his veins. And quickly, too, quicker than even alchemy should spread.
A throat was cleared, loudly.
"So, Abrascal, are you dying?" Tupoc Xical asked.
"No."
He was sure of that. Mostly.
"Tease," the Izcalli scornfully said.
A gate opened ahead of them, a yawning mouth, and Tristan rose to his feet. He put his pack on the table, opened it and in mont was popping open one of the antidote bottles. He downed a dose, hoping it would take the edge off what was coming, and corked the bottle before securing his pack. It would be fine, he told himself.
Tristan only managed to take two stops before Maryam had to steady him, Hooks appearing on the other side to hold up his arm, and he blinked at the elder of the sisters. He squinted more closely at her hair and found he'd not imagined it. Cupping Maryam's cheek – she went bright red, choking – he leaned in. Her mouth opened as he chewed his lip.
"Your hair is raven-black," he said.
"What?" she got out.
"There's raven feathers in it," Tristan told her, still staring at how they were woven into the hair. "They match."
How odd.
"Shouldn't it be brown?"
She closed her eyes, let out a deep breath.
"You are on ergot wine," Maryam flatly said, peeling his hand away. "Or sothing like it."
"It wouldn't act that fast," he denied.
"No, it wouldn't. And that's concerning. It must have been highly concentrated."
His shoulder was tapped and he turned that way without thinking twice.
"What do I look like?" Hooks asked.
He squinted at her.
"Are you wearing a crown?"
"I should be," Hooks agreed.
Gold looked better on her than silver, and when he told her as much she preened. Maryam elbowed him in the ribs, though he wasn't sure why, and flanking him on either side the Khaimov sisters guided him to the door. The lights on the other side were burning too bright, he thought. And the shadows in the corners churned, he could almost hear Scolomancia breathing through them.
The room on the other side of the door was unearthly.
There was a white line of chalk on a floor of polished black stone a few feet past the door, and past it lay a hallway with a single creature in the middle. It looked like a ragged man sitting in a crouch with too-long and spindly limbs, though the torn rags it wore hid its face save for a slice of too-round mouth filled with teeth. A lamprey mouth. Long, thin fingers held on to a sharp stone the size of a head.
Above the creature a thin ring of silver was slowly turning, holding up a strangely painted orb – a 'sun', that ancient heraldry of a strange burning star. The ring ticked on, inch by inch, until the sun disappeared into a silver box set on the ring and the room went dark as Gloam. Then the ticking resud after a few heartbeats, the glowing sun spat out and light returning. Tristan stared at the creature sitting on the floor, licking his lips.
"It moved," he whispered. "When it was dark."
The lody had told him, the tremble of it. Maryam's hand tightened on his arm.
"You're sure?"
He nodded, cocking his head to the side to study the thing. The way it shivered in parts, not like a whole. The thousands of small tremors, like a thousand rats stitched together were squirming.
"Can you see what it's made of?" he asked. "It's moving."
"It's not moving, Tristan," Hooks said quietly.
It wasn't? The thought scattered and Tristan nearly leaped out of his skin when there was a sudden gunshot, glimpsing a bright-haloed Song firing from behind the chalk line before the room went dark.
A beat passed, the light resud and the ticking with it.
Song's bullet was lying on the floor in front of her, just on the other side of the chalk line.
"Monsters co out after dark," Tristan muttered. "We have to cross while it's still day out."
Run across the hallway to the door he could make out at the end, the one that was a shadow cast on black and no one had pointed out for so reason.
They tried a lantern first. Put it out on the other side of the chalk line, half-expecting the room to go dark, but it didn't. So they waited for the ring to go full circle, and when it entered the box and darkness ca Tristan was surprised to find that the lantern light shone through the dark. Dimr than it should, as if huddling, but it was there.
"There's more," he told the sisters. "It won't be that simple."
"It rarely is," Maryam said.
A pair went in: Angharad and Bait, neither taking more than one step past the line and each with a lantern in hand. They crossed and the creature did not move. The pair then waited for 'night' to fall, weapons at the ready. Twice Tristan saw Angharad pulse, her silhouette shivering like a ripple on water, but no one said anything and then the mirror-dancer caught Song's eye before shaking her head. Oh, contract! She had been using her contract.
The mont night fell, Bait and Angharad instantly crumpled to the floor.
Tristan's heart skipped a beat, but he saw their chests rising and falling. Asleep, which was not as much of a problem as what followed. It was Song who caught it first, the flicker of movent when the creature tried to pulp Bait's head with the sharp rock: she shot at the hand, but the thing only withdrew half a step. It tried again, but by then Tupoc was there with his spear and Thando was firing his pistol. It still managed to tear through Angharad's coat sleeve with dirty fingernails.
Song struck at the dark with her jian a heartbeat later, and between the three of them they managed to keep the creature away while others rushed in to drag the pair behind the line. It worked, mostly. A chunk of Bait's hair was torn off, the skin pearled with blood. Shaking them awake did not work, but when the lights returned their eyes opened. They were confused and moved sluggishly.
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The chalk line was smudged, Tristan saw. Not broken, but almost.
"We can't break the line," Tristan told his crows. "It will be able to reach us."
"Caw," Maryam said.
"Caw caw," Hooks added.
What?
"Are you cawing at ?" he hesitantly asked.
Maryam caught his eyes with her own, the blue and the dead, before slowly shaking her head. Fuck, Tristan thought. Fuck. That was what he'd been realizing earlier, before the gunshot distracted him: he was seeing things. His senses were no longer his own. His body was muddled.
His breath ca choppy. Would it stay in him? Was he stuck this wa– no, he had been drugged once. He wouldn't need it. His palms were sweaty, drops went down his back, and still he shivered in cold. He wouldn't end up under that blanket, he wouldn't. His fingers fumbled for his pack, for a purgative that would get it out, but his heart was pounding so loud against his ears that it made his hands shake.
He kept slipping against the buckle. A lance of pain against his ribs, deep inside. Was it eating him from the inside, hollowing him out to- soone tried to touch him but he flinched back. It was like being touched by a stove.
And a song was playing.
Discordant violin, but there was a through line. Not just noise but a sentence, spoken for him to hear: it rose and fell with his uneven breaths, feeding and fed. The fear was making him closer to her, to Scolomancia. Every icy drop in his stomach broke down a little more of the wall between them, let her croon straight into his ear. Use, the god whispered. See.
But a gentler voice went over it, drowned it out.
"-istan," it said. "Can you hear ? Listen to my voice."
He let out a choked breath.
"Maryam?" he asked.
"I'm here," Maryam said, and there was feather-light touch on his wrist.
Like a question. It didn't burn this ti. He laid down his forehead on sothing – her shoulder? – and the sound that ripped out of him felt like a sob.
"I don't feel well," he whispered hoarsely.
"I know," Maryam said. "That's how the dread goes. I had it too, on the ship off Juska. Breathe deep, hold it in, then let it out."
He breathed as she bid, again and again until his heart slowed down. He felt dizzy, but beyond that embarrassed. He had made a scene of himself where anyone could see, where enemies-
"None of that," Maryam sharply said, hand on his back. "It's not a failing when you catch a cold. Neither is this."
"I'm fine," Tristan lied, stepping away. "It was just the drug."
He tugged back his coat into place, felt wet beneath his eyes. Had he wept, like a fucking child? Tristan sucked in a breath, steadied himself. Only then did he turn, to find that Hooks had been standing between the two of them and the others – only turned larger, broader. Hiding them entirely even though so were craning their necks to see.
The imdiate starkness of the relief was like getting shot.
"Thank you," he rasped out.
"I used to be made of that," Hooks simply said. "I rember what it feels like."
He had no words, and thus fell into the choice of silence. Now that the worst of his hysteria had passed, Tristan brushed a hand against Hook's back in thanks and stepped out from behind her. And though he'd imagined himself a spectacle, in truth he had barely warranted a few curious looks. Eyes were ahead, on the trial and the new attempt to beat it.
After Song's failure to shoot the creature from behind the chalk line, they prepared to try again from past it: Tupoc, Izel and Shumise. Each had a lantern on the ground besides them and soone ready to drag them in should night fall and force them asleep. Shumise was, presumably, among the number to see if Navigators would be as affected as everyone else.
It was a mixed bag. The mont Izel fired his pistol, night fell. It did not make them fall asleep however, only blanketed them in darkness. A short, furious engagent was fought that saw Tupoc get his shoulder broken and Izel forcefully dragged behind the line by Angharad so his chin would not be smashed in. The creature was devil-quick and strong as an ox.
They tried other things, Signs from either side, but the Gloam dispersed when used from behind the chalk and imdiately called down night when drawn from past it. Debate raged as to the thod that should be used.
"Outside the cycle, dark only falls with the first blow," Thando said. "We need to get in close and slay it with that first strike."
"Darkness has only fallen with the first blow so far," Alejandra countered. "We don't know the rules."
"There will be no pulling us to safety behind the chalk if we sally out into the hall to fight it," Song said. "Nor will it let us retreat. It will be to the death. Maryam-"
Silver eyes went looking for her, and with an apologetic look Maryam left him to join the war council. He smiled back, wanly. He might be useless at the mont, but she should lend a hand. Hooks stayed by him, though. When a sudden wave of exhaustion hit him and saw him sit down on the ground facing the hallway she only raised an eyebrow.
"Can you see the door at the end of the hall?" he suddenly asked. "The one in the shadows."
"No," she said after a short beat. "There is an aether ripple there, but that is all we can tell."
Rising notes against his ear. The thought occurred that he might not just be seeing things but also, well, seeing things. Scolomancia had been eager for him to drink that drugged wine for a reason. The sense of loss, of fear, it made closer to her. It had brought their patterns closer to a mirror.
And it was hateful, but he would use it if he must. There had to be so worth to his terror.
He stayed there sitting, watching as the debate ca to a close. It was Tupoc that ended it, on a pointed note that this was a trial of might, of steel.
"There is no puzzle to beat here, no clever solution, and Coyac's little board did fuck all when we tried it," he said. "All that's left is to fight."
Tristan frowned, because that sounded off. Scolomancia was not a war god, her nature was not so straightforward. And this was not a Trench room with a monster instead of a pit trap, it was part of the initiation into the cult of Scholomance. There was a principle at work here, a lesson they were supposed to learn, and fighting was not it. But he had nothing to say, in truth, save that he felt their thod to be wrong. So he kept silent as a war party set out to kill the creature in the span between night and day.
Alejandra was right: night fell before the first blow was struck, re seconds after they were past the chalk.
Tristan only caught flashes of what followed, the rush of violence taking place around the lanterns. Song firing at sothing only she could see. Tupoc taking a blow on the cheek to plunge an obsidian knife into the creature, Shumise letting loose a spinning arrow of Gloam that it bit through. Angharad parrying a blow, scoring ichor on her borrowed blade.
The sharp end of the rock hitting Cressida on the temple, pulping a chunk of her skull.
The utter startlent that shook Tristan almost seed to ripple out, the attack imdiately collapsing. They retreated but it wasn't enough, the creature pursued. Izel's blow struck true only for him to be thrown away like a rag doll, Alejandra desperately pulled a wind of Gloam in the creature's path. Imani threw a knife that it caught, and Thando raised his pistol to fire only for the rock to co down, ripping through his arm just before the shoulder. Song tried to grab him, but the creature wrenched him out of her grasp and of the lantern light.
His scream abruptly cut out.
Light returned for a heartbeat after the survivors crossed the chalk, but there was a single tick and the sun disappeared into the box. Night fell, and when it passed into day it was to reveal the sight of the creature sitting in the middle of the hall again. It sat with its legs crossed, now, Thando's corpse propped up in its lap like a child sitting on a parent. Its free hand held Cressida up as it tore into her headless corpse to devour chunks of flesh, lamprey mouth sucking up their blood as it chewed.
Tristan's throat tightened at the sight. She had not deserved that. They had not deserved that. Part of him felt like tears should be coming, but he was almost outside his body. There was shouting and weeping, recriminations and those trying to get between them, but he kept looking ahead at the creature. It had been cut and struck and shot, bleeding black ichor, and the wounds were not closing. But neither did it seem to be dying.
It won't, he thought. Because this was Scolomancia's room and its monster was not sothing they could beat, that they were supposed to beat. It was a puppet she would feed the stuff of her just enough that it was always strong enough to turn them back. What was the lesson here?
Day turned into night. The arguing did not stop. Maryam ca to stand by him, Hooks disappeared. Night turned into day, into night, into day. There was nothing in here but the cycle and the monster, he thought. What was the lesson?
"-Abrascal's turn," Tupoc was saying. "He can try out a few theories for us instead of staying safely behind the chalk."
"Suggest that again, Tupoc," Angharad mildly said, "and I will-"
Safety. Safety. Why was there anywhere safe at all in this hall? These rooms were not trials, they were sacrants being taught and Scolomancia had nothing to teach them about violence. It was the language by which she spoke with the students, their sole common tongue. The banquet room had been a story, a tale told by the god about herself: an endless banquet to partake of, but any bite could be poisoned. Every student a al, every student capable of harming her.
So what story was Scolomancia teaching her cult here?
Tristan looked at the ever-grinning monster, sitting astride the hallway they must cross. The creature that could not be beat, that feasted on them. That waited patiently for night to fall. For weakness, for us to let down our guard. For them to be driven to venture past their little line in the sand and enter her feeding grounds. Why was there anywhere safe at all in this hall?
Because there wasn't.
The door that had let them in was gone, just like the last. There was only one way, forward, unless they stood there and starved. There was no real choice to cross the line of chalk, only the illusion of choice – and of safety. The ga was rigged and the monster could not be beaten. That was the lesson, the story Scolomancia was telling them. Here I am and here I will remain: I will wait and you will co to and you can never, never beat . I will eat you all.
"But that is also an illusion," Tristan whispered. "Because they didn't beat you last ti, did they?"
He got up, the walls and air buzzing around him as if alive. He paid it no mind. Tristan's voice cut through the shouting.
"Song, how long before night?"
If anyone had counted, it would be her.
"Twenty-nine seconds," Song replied after a beat.
Long enough. Stares were pricking at his skin like flies, biting and gnawing. The violin sounded like teeth made of screams, but it was drowned out by the real shouts when he crouched and ran his palm across the chalk line. He broke it, smudged it, and only stopped when his hand was well and covered. Ignoring the noise, he walked down the hall. Ti was running out, but he did not feel the need to hurry.
The creature stopped eating Cressida when he approached, licking its chops, but he didn't bother looking at it. Instead he half-crouched, and with his hand full of chalk began to smudge a thin, faint circle around the unmoving beast. There was a low, sibilant hiss of a laugh.
"Wicked gas," the beast rasped.
Tristan finished the circle just in ti to hear a tick above his head, and everything went dark.
He woke with his cheek pressed against the floor, feeling feverish but otherwise completely unhard. The beast was behind the new circle of chalk, chewing through Cressida's arm. The Watch didn't beat you, he thought as he rose to his feet. It bound you, starved you out. That'd been the answer, to do the sa. Behind him the others were waking up with groans, sluggish. Without the false protection from earlier, night had struck them all with sleep.
"We were never safe," Tristan told them. "That was the trick."
But the music in his ears wasn't angry, it was pleased. Because Tristan had learned her sacrant. And his solution was the one she'd wanted, the one that did not run against the story she told: the beast was not beaten. It was just contained.
It'd break out in ti, and eat again.
The door ca out of the shadows at the end of the hall, but the cycle of night and day still knocked him out once more getting there. It was embarrassing, as it was true of others as well but he was the only one who ended up needing help to get through the door. The music had faded, replaced by an increasingly loud buzzing that blanked his mind. In his bursts of awareness Tristan kept blinking at too-bright lights, barely making out the next room.
It looked like so kind of tiled floor. There were pedestals with Trebian vases on them and piles of small pebbles in black and white that he distantly heard soone explain they had to cast in vases for so sort of vote.
Tristan kept drifting in and out, that accursed buzzing blanking his mind as it kept growing until he thought his ears would burst. Angharad pressed water to his lips once and he drank, which helped. He heard Izel speak with a hard, clipped tone as he barreled through sothing Tupoc tried to interject, but heard very little after that because even through the buzzing he could make out echoes of Scolomancia's tune turned into shrieks. Maryam helped him cast a vote, and the shrieking only got louder.
It was so distracting he didn't even realize it was over until they were walking through a door again, into the fourth room.
And there with a clean, crisp snap the buzzing ended and his mind beca crystal-clear. All the heat and confusion were shed clean, leaving him with the clarity of sight to take it all in at once.
The room was a broadly circular mausoleum, death dripping from every wall and sown across the cracking stone floor. There was a hallway at the center, not all that long but barred by a series of nine gold ornantal gates that displayed n and won murdering each other in a violent lee. Strewn all over the room, between tombs and coffins and, were small alcoves and pedestals each bearing a single golden lever whose handle was sculpted to look like water being poured out of a cup.
Standing before the first of the gold gates were the First Brigade and nearly their entire crew – the absences in those ranks as loud as those in their own – with weapons in hand. Captain Vivek and Captain Philani ca to the fore, faces taut, but it wasn't them that Tristan looked at.
It wasn't them that had a shiver going down his spine, but the woman he saw sitting astride the first gate. She looked like she'd been tanned, before she died. Her hair was raven-black and her eyes had turned tarnished pale as was the way of corpses. Her blue lips matched her faded blue gown, all worn edges and frayed, limp ribbons. She swung flat leather shoes almost girlishly, smiling a dead woman's teeth at him, and the violin scread.
"Ah," Tristran said, breathing in sharply.
He'd seen her once before, as a corpse on Lucifer's throne.
A mont passed.
"Fuck," he added, helplessly failing to find other words to express how bad this was.
The only thing worse than failing at initiation into Scolomancia's cult might, just possibly, be succeeding at it. Tristan took the finger he hadn't realized he was running down the seam off it, and the sight of her vanished. Would that this fresh developnt would disappear as well, but he knew better than to believe that.
By the ti he was of a mind to pay attention to the standoff between delving crews, guns had been lowered. Oh, good. Now they could focus on marginally less stupid ways to die than a shootout inside Scolomancia's belly.
"The instructions are on the largest tomb," Vivek Lahiri told Song. "The right levers must be pulled in the right order to open the gates in the center."
"And if the wrong lever is pulled?" Song asked.
The man grimaced, a rare break in his smile.
"Traps," Captain Vivek said.
Negotiations swiftly began about how the puzzle should be approached – the crews taking turns or sharing the effort – but Tristan did not even pretend to listen. It was the sa mistake as the one in the hallway being made again. They were treating the room like a trial instead of a sacrant. Even Izel, who had best understood at the start, began going around the room to examine pedestals and layers. There was a gauntness to his face, red in his eyes. Oh, Tristan thought. Cressida.
They had not been friends, but they had been... sothing. And now that his eyes were not full of haze, he saw the claw marks left in the others as well. The way the Fourth stayed close, Alejandra Torrero's hand clenching until it left red marks against her palm. The way Imani Langa turned to whisper to Thando before her face went blank at his absence. It was her second dead cabalist this year. And hadn't he been a friendly acquaintance of Angharad's too?
Tristan shook his head. It could be allowed to matter again once they were out of the grave. His gaze flicked from one tomb to another, to coffins of stone yawning empty and those filled with dusty bones. What was the story here, the lesson taught? The ornantal gates must be the heart of it, but... His thoughts ca to a halt when a man stepped into his line of sight. Tupoc's pale eyes stared him down, that too-perfect face twisted in anger and sothing Tristan did not recognize.
"You're hearing her," Tupoc Xical said.
Not loudly, not enough to be overheard, but he did not speak the words like a suggestion. Tristan t his gaze – straying only long enough to shake his head at Angharad, who was approaching with a hand on her saber – and did not blink.
"As far back as when the revenants attacked Teratology," Tupoc continued. "Which is the main reason you don't have a knife in the stomach at the mont."
"That and Angharad, presumably," Tristan pleasantly smiled.
Tupoc leaned in.
"Do not think for a mont it would stop , her blade being on the other side of the field," the Izcalli whispered.
He drew away, smiling.
"But you're the closest shit we can scrape up to candle-priest at the mont," Tupoc said. "So shed so light, Abrascal – what's the real ga here?"
Tristan looked away, gaze sliding across the room, and as it did he ran his finger down the seam. It was an effort not to jump out of his skin – she was right next to him, blowing wind into Tupoc's ear with a ghoulish smile. But that fear didn't matter nearly as much as the other thing he found: music. Music in the walls, a hundred small tunes lilting this way and that. Traps. He could hear the traps, the shifting pieces of them. Or he could hear when Scolomancia moved them, which was close enough.
And what he saw was that the traps weren't the point. They were just rising water in a closed room, a way to push haste and panic. There was no way to know where the blows would fall ahead of ti, no secret hints written into the architecture of the mausoleum. The point was to make them turn on each other. To give them just enough of a chance of getting out of here that they would pull blades on each other to force others to pull levers.
"She's describing herself," Tristan murmured. "She's the mausoleum, and we're the vermin who'll claw at each other to get at the treasure."
"Toll-taking, then," Tupoc said. "We shove people into traps to get passage."
"No, that won't work," he said. "She'll just eat the dead and laugh as we get stuck."
Tristan grimaced.
"We need to a victory for her to let us out, and we can't beat her. She can rig the ga however she wants."
Tupoc's brow rose. From the corner of his eye, he glanced at Vivek Lahiri's delving crew. Tristan reluctantly nodded.
"What kind of victory?" Tupoc casually asked.
He reached for a coin to flip, one that did not exist, and in a flash the bones of his hand began to ache. He shook it off, hiding his concern.
"Are you familiar," he said, "with the ga of cups and balls?"
A considering look was turned on him.
"And the ball?"
"Harm," Tristan said.
Tupoc laughed.
"You're still my least favorite of the Unluckies," he said.
"I'll live," Tristan drily replied.
"Don't count on it," Tupoc said. "But make your play, I'll back it."
The worst part, Tristan thought, was how easy it ended up being. He just had to slip Song a word about going in turns because he had a card up his sleeve, and just like that they were off. Vivek's lot had arrived first so they had the first shot at the first gate, at which point it was revealed why they believed they had the room in hand.
Amaru Wayar, that oddly cheerful Navigator that Maryam wasn't sure she was furious with or not, dragged one of the skeletons out of its tomb and shoved a small figurine of hard black stone into its mouth. It was sort of mountain cat on four legs bearing a cup on its back, and she poured Gloam into the cup until it ran over and began to trickle down like water. Only that water turned into filants that went down the body, refining and lengthening as more Gloam was poured.
It only ended when a musculature of Gloam was woven inside the skeleton, that twitched and then suddenly rose.
Amaru hastily rose and bowed, quickly speaking in a tongue that Tristan did not recognize in the slightest. Only her surna 'Wayar', stood out. After a mont the walking corpse bowed back, and heeded her request to go pull at a particular lever. There was a whistle from Tupoc, who like a bad rash had stuck to his side. At last Maryam was there to compensate.
"Kantusuyu witchery," Tupoc said, sounding impressed. "I'd heard they can raise the dead."
"She's not raising the dead," Maryam bit out. "That statuette is stuffed with soone's mories, she woke them using Gloam and gave it limbs to move."
"She spoke her surna," Tristan noted. "Could be an ancestor."
"I expect it is," Maryam said. "It doesn't have to listen to her, I don't think."
Only Tristan and Maryam flinched when the pulled lever was greeted by two blades scything out of the wall and cutting the corpse in two. Amaru seed unworried, though, only taking the statuette out of the remains and grabbing another corpse. That won't get them all the way through, Tristan thought. While whatever Amaru Wayar had done with Gloam did not seem to have exhausted her, it'd clearly taken effort. There were only so many tis she could do it before burning out.
But it got them through the first gate: the second lever saw the first of nine open.
"Captain Ren," Vivek invited with a smile. "Proceed as you will."
Ah, so that was the play. Not to push as far as he could from the start, to just do one gate then switch and let their own crew get forward. He'd probably stop when they got to the sixth or seventh, since those were close enough to the end one might feasibly push through.
"Our turn," Tristan said. "Khaimovs, you ready?"
He got a scornful look from both, for once pulling their resemblances together instead of the other way around. They put on a show: Maryam tracing small amounts of Gloam while Hooks disappeared into the pedestals, Tristan following behind them holding the board Izel had made as if it were so sort of artifact. He'd even have thrown in a prayer or two, were it not too much.
In reality Tristan ran his finger down the seam, picking out which lever had traps singing and signaling Maryam when they got to the right one. Bait was volunteered by Tupoc to pull the first lever, but to Tristan's mild surprise it did not open the gate. No matter, finding a second whose trap was not being manned was the work of monts. Angharad pulled the second lever, the second gate opened, and Tristan let out a soft curse.
Maryam caught it too.
"Second gate, two levers," she said. "How much do you want to be third gate will take three?"
"I'm not rich enough to start tossing money out windows," Tristan snorted.
Amaru Wayar got the other crew through the third gate, but it cost her two corpses and she was sweating by the end of it like she'd just been running. Her face darkened after she went to have a look at the levers, presumably trying to do the 'sa' thing with her logos that Hooks and Maryam weren't actually doing, and walked away looked miffed.
No matter. The Khaimovs were an oddity among Navigators, so it was not implausible for them to manage sothing Amaru could not.
They ran the fourth gate. They had to sell it, though, so Tristan had them getting two in a row then triggering a trap – Angharad handled the impaling spikes easily enough, when told when they ca from. There was so relief from the opposition that their apparent thod was imperfect, though short-lived when they cleared the rest of the fourth gate in quick order. The First picked away at the next, but Amaru imdiately lost her corpse and shot her captain a pleading look.
Vivek's smile grew strained but he nodded. Breathing out, the man smoothed his coat and a smokeless fire rippled across his body. He stood still for a mont, then it faded and he calmly pointed out five levers for his delvers to pull.
They were each of them correct.
Tristan let out a low whistle. He wasn't sure what that contract was, but it was impressive. Lahiri also looked like he'd rather have his teeth pulled out than use it again, while not visibly suffering from any cost. Not all nastiness is loud. Their own crew took the sixth gate, sprinkling an injury to Tupoc and two traps that could be dodged to sell the uncertainty.
Tristan's previous theory that from the seventh onward Lahiri would try to finish the gauntlet had died the mont it turned out the number of lever pulls rose with each gate, earning a final burial when instead of whittling away at the seventh gate Vivek Lahiri sought out Song again. This ti, she called Tristan in as well as Maryam.
"There are twenty-four pulls left to find," Captain Vivek said. "Given the certainty of mounting injuries, it seems wiser to band together."
"We don't need you," Song bluntly replied.
The pleasant face tightened.
"You need a clear shot at the trial," Vivek Lahiri said. "That courtesy is contingent on a degree of civility between us, Captain Ren."
The not-quite-threat landed heavily. He's not sure he can make it to the end, so he's willing to lean on us as hard as he needs to. And Tristan saw in Song's gaze that she was going to play this the Stripe way, negotiate, but that wouldn't do. Scolomancia was still being entertained by this, but unless soone got the short end of the stick that wouldn't last. He caught her gaze, saying nothing. Let , he silently asked. Song hesitated, but that didn't weigh much against the nod she gave him.
Tristan smiled back at the smiling man.
"You want to ride us as a horse, and you're willing to break the truce to do it," he said.
"I said no such thing," Vivek Lahiri replied.
"No, just implied it," Tristan said. "But if you want to hide behind my contract to get across this room, you're going to have to pay your dues and feed it."
The Soshwari breathed in sharply.
"The Khaimovs were bait," Vivek slowly said. "You were pulling on your alleged luck goddess."
Tristan put on a reluctant face, like he'd just revealed more of his hand than he wanted to.
"And it costs ," he said. "So I need a hook – we make a wager."
"Offer terms, Abrascal. You have my attention."
"We go on streaks," he said. "Pull until we hit a bad lever, then pass the baton to the other crew. And at the end, the portion of your crew that gets to go forward is the portion of the levers you pulled correctly."
He saw Lahiri pause and go over the numbers, judge that it would significantly favor their side but still leave him with enough he could claim to have been a part of the victory.
"And how would the restriction on going forward be enforced?" Vivek asked. "I would not order anyone under my command to remain in these rooms for a wager."
"Oh, we just need an… officer of the peace," Tristan smiled.
He raised his voice.
"Scolomancia," he shouted out. "You heard our wager. Do you promise to allow those who lose the bet to return unhard to the Trench?"
Silence. He cleared his throat.
"You also get to eat anyone who breaks the terms of the bet," he added. "All protections stripped."
Violin laughed and lapped at his ear as the entire mausoleum began to rattle, traps opening and closing like clicking teeth as Scolomancia signaled her approval. He returned his attention to a pale Vivek Lahiri.
"See, she's on board," Tristan said. "Shake on it?"
Vivek glanced at his second, Captain Philani, who grimaced but nodded.
They shook on it.
"Would you like to go first?" Tristan asked.
He already knew Vivek would decline. If he'd wanted to try the gate, he already would have.
"You can have the pleasure."
"Don't mind if I do, then," the thief said.
He humd along with Scolomancia's song, finger on the seam, and began to wander around the room listening to the tunes in the walls and tombs. He pulled a lever, then another.
By the seventh, when the gate opened, every soul in the room was staring at him in disbelief.
By the fifteenth, when the second gate opened, anger had begun to war with shock. It'd beco clear he had been playing them from the start.
When he pulled the twenty-third, one away from the end, he found the captain of the First Brigade standing in his way. Angharad was there in a heartbeat, hand on her saber, but Tristan laid a hand on her wrist.
"No matter what they do," he said, "do not draw. It would be breaking the terms."
"You tricked ," Vivek Lahiri coldly said.
"After you threatened us," Tristan replied. "There's a lesson in that, Lahiri."
He walked past the man, leaned and pulled the last lever.
"Think about that, on the way down."
The ninth gate opened, and on either end of the room a door opened. One led out, into dim light. The other led down, back to the Trench. Scolomancia laughed in warm satisfaction against his ear as they watched the other delving crew leave, having pulled not a single lever and thus earned not a single crossing.
"He'll rember that," Song said from his side.
"It'll be focused on ," Tristan replied. "And he knows I pulled this blow, so he'll do the sa."
She humd, standing there a mont.
"Well done," Song murmured, then straightened. "Co on. We've reached the end of the Trench, and I would know what lies past it."
--
They'd done more than reach the end of the Trench, Tristan learned the mont he glanced back from the top of the cliff.
Down there, the rooms were all gone. There was only a straight, smooth hallway broken up only by furnaces and immobile rooms. In the distance he could see a large force leaving from the blackcloak camp. Still, that was trouble for later.
The temple was a more imdiate peril, for Scolomancia ran thick here.
If her attention out in the Trench had been a trickle, this place was a river. That temple was lungs, and through its lanes of animal statues and looming gate Tristan could feel a breath rattling out. No two of the dark basalt statues were the sa: hundreds of creatures, from re animals to lares and lemures, each mounted on a stand and portrayed in the exact mont of their death.
They were vividly sculpted, enough to seem real if not for the color of the stone, and Tristan's gaze ran down the rows as their crew warily approached. Impaled, choked, hung, cut in half, bled out, crushed, torn. It was a tide made up of the many flavors of death and misery, from the hound twisted in pain and surprise to the griffin roaring in anger. It was a cursed place, and Tristan did not like it.
This temple was a monunt to death and defeat, lovingly made, and sohow he knew that a single sculptor had done all the work. Consecrated their long years by offering them up the still-sleeping Scholomance to shape her divinity through her dreams.
"We should destroy this place," Izel quietly said. "The world would be better off for it."
"No," Tristan shivered. "Leave it be. To strike at what lies here is to wake it. We won't be better off for that, I assure you."
He moved to the head of the column, by Song, who made room for him without a word. The two of them marched through the accursed pronade, engulfed by a ceremonial guard of the dying, until they'd reached the steps. Each was just high enough to make going up it difficult and tiring – going up them is a sacrifice of comfort – but the profound, unsettling silence of the temple went unbroken save for their boots and breaths.
Tristan ran his finger down the seam, the puzzle-maze that was the shard of Scolomancia's attention set on him, and found the rolling of the ball inside the maze to be slow. Satisfied, almost lazy. She enjoyed dwelling here, drawing from this place.
"Tristan?" Song asked.
He breathed out.
"I think this was her cradle," he quietly told Song. "What lies past those gates is where she was laid to rest by what made her, and these temple grounds are what shaped her mind."
A considering look was leveled on him.
"Should I ask," Song said, "how you know that?"
"Best not," he grimly said.
They went up the last of the steps together, a pair of ants dwarfed by the enormous open gates. Beyond them waited only darkness, so deep and abiding that even Song bit her lip. They waited for the others to catch up, for lanterns to be lit, and like a curtain being closed the Unluckies gathered together. They took the vanguard, not even Tupoc quite daring to argue, and plunged into the dark.
Even the Glare-infused lantern light was pressed on by all sides, as if the very air was trying to smother it, and the oil burned unnaturally quick. Once they reached the edge, though, there was no missing it.
"Gods," Izel whispered.
"Only the one," Tristan said, kneeling with the lantern in hand, Maryam comfortingly close. "And here she once slept."
Scholomance's cradle was a lake of darkness, its waters deep and stretching far beyond lantern light. Even Song's eyes could not see across.
"There is sothing out there," she murmured. "But I am not sure if it is a shore."
"There is sothing out there," Maryam corrected. "Alive."
Her sister was standing at the edge of the temple ground, where the floor dropped in water from a few feet of height. Were there even a single ripple in this water, a wave might splash onto the stone. There wasn't. Or so Tristan thought, before he followed Hook's pointing finger and saw a shape moving through the water. Under lantern light it turned almost greenish, but the moving thing was pale. Hollow pale, the tone of sothing that knew not the touch of Glare.
But Tristan, instead of listening to the shiver down his spine, ran his finger down the seam again. Pricked his ear for the song. And what he heard, felt like a current's flow, whispered a secret. He even saw it in his mind's eye laid plain, Scolomancia offering it as a boon. They'd won this, the goddess whispered wordlessly, by surviving her sacrants.
"East," Tristan told them, shivering. "There is a passage to the east."
"To where?" Song asked.
"Outside," Tristan said. "This is not a lake, it is a belly: one being filled by the waters of the New Canals."
He'd made out a fortress, in what Scolomancia showed him, and there was one in the north of the city. That was their way across, through the ancient waterway and into the dark below the city until they returned to this god-cradle and learned what it was that waited for them out in the abyss. It was, Tristan thought, a fool's journey. The sort only a ship of the mad would undertake, and there was hardly a vessel alive that could make it.
But they had such a ship, and the madn to crew it.
"We'll be back," Tristan promised the dark. "Count on it."
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