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Chapter 3
🕑 Added 2025-03-14 04:00:05 +0000 UTCScholomance spat them all out, as if they had turned into the most distasteful of morsels: there was not a single attempt to slay or deceive the students as they slunk out of the grounds.
That eldritch and eerie ceremony had unsettled them all enough that the Orrery lights above felt like a hollow reassurance, and the Thirteenth were far from the only brigade to retreat to their lodgings. No, one and all they were eager to put walls between themselves and that gruesome blessing bestowed upon them.
Angharad ended up in one of the armchairs, absent-mindedly picking at the sleeves of her formal uniform as she stared a down at the cup of tea set down before her – eastern blackleaf from the Sanxing republics, with a slightly smoky taste she enjoyed. She had never tried it before Song first served her a cup, yet it had quickly become a favorite. Angharad still preferred coffee, but there was an odd sense of comfort to being served tea that Song Ren had brewed.
It felt like being taken care of, and also a little like being patted on the back – Song would not brew a pot for just anyone, so being served one was a mark of favor. Especially when she broke out her personal stocks, as she had today. Izel and Maryam had been served Kuril greenleaf, a shared preference, while Tristan sipped at what Angharad could only call boiled mint leaves. Blowing off a curl of steam, Angharad sipped at her cup before she set it down on the silver tray.
The small sound rang loudly in the silence.
The Thirteenth Brigade was sitting in the cottage’s drawing room, crammed across the armchairs and settee whose cushions had been restuffed. Orrery light filtered wanly through the windows, and there was a long moment of nothing as they kept sipping at the cups they had been served. It was Izel who ended the quiet, also setting down his cup on the tray before folding his arms.
“So,” Izel Coyac solemnly said. “That was horrifying.”
Despite herself, Angharad huffed out a laugh at the bluntness.
“Agreed,” she said. “The screaming alone…”
She had never heard a spirit make such a noise before. One must not apply the laws of men to their kind, of course, but the sheer agony there had been in its voice… Unsettling. It had smacked of cruelty, and even inflicted on a spirit as deserving of death as Scholomance cruelty was nothing to be proud of. Much less to be promised four more times.
“I could have done without the screaming,” Tristan allowed.
“Trying hearing it twofold,” Maryam sighed, rubbing at her forehead. “It was screaming in the aether too.”
She had been scowling on the entire way back, in that way she did whenever she had a migraine. Angharad had wisely kept her distance and ensured Tristan always stood between them – Asphodel had changed some of what lay between them, but only a fool wiggled fingers in front of a snapping turtle when it was already in a foul mood.
“Try seeing the god get quartered on that throne,” Song said. “I do not consider myself someone lightly discomforted, but that was thoroughly discomforting.”
Maryam’s sister slipped out of her shadow, taking shape long enough to lean against the side of the settee. Angharad still struggled to fit together the knowledge that Hooks wore a shape of Gloam while looking as solid as any woman and being able to touch physical objects without curdling them. Still, it was not for her to understand. Her eyes saw what they saw.
“So that’s what was happening,” Hooks said. “We couldn’t see it well, it was like trying to see through a rainstorm.”
Angharad had occasionally tried to ascertain when it was that the younger Izvorica dwelled in her sister’s dead eye, granting them both a sort of clairvoyance, but eventually given it up. If there were signs to it, they were not physical ones. It was best to simply assume that any time Hooks was not visibly outside Maryam, she was dwelling in the eye.
“I felt some concern for your health, considering the nature of this ceremony,” Angharad told her. “I am glad to see this was unfounded, Lady Khaimov.”
Hooks – whose true name they had been told not utter around others – nodded back at her, looking all too pleased. Angharad was not sure why the other woman thought it flattery to call her a lady. She was the daughter of an Izvoric chieftain, as Angharad had it told to her, and not enrolled in the Watch. The title was only her due.
“And speaking of health,” Izel said, “does anyone feel any different?”
The broad-shouldered man clicked his tongue.
“Lord Asher said we would be ‘sharpened’, but though it was an elegant turn of phrase I would have preferred some practical details.”
Spoken like a tinker. Angharad idly pulled at her contract, barely dipping a toe into the glimpse before releasing it. It came as easy as earlier, and she rolled her shoulder as she considered her words. It was a vague sense, the boundary of her limits, but it still felt the same now as it had when she tried her contract on the plaza outside Scholomance.
“I suspect I am now capable of using my contract marginally more often,” she volunteered. “Perhaps once or twice more within the same timespan.”
“I’ve seen no difference with my own contract,” Song shared.
Both their gazes went to Tristan, who was the third contractor of their brigade, but the messy-haired man only shrugged.
“Hard to tell for me,” he said. “I don’t think it’s changed?”
He then glanced to the side, paused as if listening to someone and rolled his eyes. Ah, the striking Lady of Long Odds must be whispering secrets into his ear. Rather enviable.
“No change,” Tristan elaborated. “But the great and powerful Fortuna shares with you a bounty of knowledge-”
“Eating the sliver of god eased metaphysical friction our bodies and the aether, meaning also between you and the gods you are bound to,” Maryam cut in. “Tristan is already close as can be and Song is constantly using her contract, so the only one it’s noticeable on is Angharad.”
A beat passed.
“You have been excommunicated,” Tristan conveyed.
“I will prepare the appropriate bribes to arrange my return to the congregation,” Maryam replied without batting an eye.
Angharad’s lips twitched. Hopefully one of these days the pair would decide whether or not they were flirting, but until then as least they served as decent entertainment.
“I have felt little of this promised vigor, however,” Angharad said.
“You are the most physically fit among us,” Izel told her. “That is hardly a surprise.”
He squeezed a look in the direction of Tristan and Maryam afterwards, which while less than flattering was entirely fair. The latter wrinkled her nose.
“I have a pounding headache, but aside from that I feel no different,” she said.
“It is only our first year,” Song said. “We must not forget that.”
Angharad followed down the path of her captain’s thoughts a moment later.
“You believe the first consumption might be mostly about preparing the ground for the later ones,” she said. “Preparing our bodies to bear further boons.”
Perhaps also more powerful ones. It had not been said that every victory against Scholomance would bear equal reward.
“Why does schooling in Scholomance last five years?” Song asked in reply. “Why not four or six?”
The silver-eyed captain traced a finger around the rim of her cup.
“We’ve been told that after the second year Mandate will no longer be taught and Saga will become a mere elective. Our time here could be shorter, if classes are the only consideration.”
“So five boons are what the Watch wants from graduates,” Izel said, eyeing the garden through the window. “I wonder what the others would grant us.”
“That would be worth researching,” Song slyly said.
Angharad suppressed her groan. It wasn’t that she disliked reading, she didn’t! Reading was a proper hobby for a well-bred lady, enriching one’s character and conversation. It was just that the kind of books Song assigned them to read tended to be violently tedious. And she knew if you did not read them, too, because she asked questions about them at dinner.
After the brutal example made of Maryam over that history of the kingdom of Sologuer, none of them would be willing to risk such a fate.
“I can’t help but notice none of you are asking the most important question,” Tristan said.
Angharad turned to blink at him, and she was not the only one. Tristan Abrascal had a knack for finding angles the rest of them forgot to even think of.
The thief paused a beat.
“We ate god, does that mean we should skip dinner?”
Angharad chortled, as did Izel, but when Maryam tried to smother him with a cushion it was a form of justice. The situation would have devolved into a great deal of bickering had Song not wedged herself in.
“Should any of you feel changes, physical or otherwise, report them immediately,” Song ordered. “While Scholomance’s boons might be useful, it would be rather naïve to assume they are safe.”
A cleared throat.
“Most of us have a second ceremony to prepare for. Given how long it will take to warm the bathwater, we ought to get started on the process as soon as possible.”
“Someone else can go first,” Izel offered. “I need to shave my head again, it will take some time.”
Angharad eyed his head, which bore what was barely more than stubble. It seemed a great deal of trouble to take a knife to one’s scalp for so little yield, but she could understand wanting to put in an effort for the night.
“Putting your best foot forward for the feast?” she asked.
Izel flashed her a smile.
“I have been looking forward to it.”
She had no trouble believing that. The three societies of the College had come together to throw a massive banquet to celebrate the graduation of all their students. Over the last few days ships had docked bringing int not only entire crates of delicacies but also musicians and dancers. Word in the Malani circles was that there might even be fireworks imported straight from the Republics.
“The gates open at six, but I expect most will begin arriving near seven,” Izel continued. “Song, your dinner is at…
“Seven, but most of us will begin arriving closer to six,” Song drily replied. “We can head out to port together, most of the trip is shared.”
“I must admit I envy you the Academy ceremony,” Angharad said. “A masque ball sounds like a lovely evening.”
A themed dance! She had only attended a few back in Peredur, but they had been lovely evenings. Would that the graduation ceremony of the Skiritai bore even a sliver of such elegance.
“It also meant a new dress in Watch black,” Song sighed. “That part I could have done without.”
Angharad winced. She had not considered that.
“At least the seamstresses were taking coin,” she offered.
“There is that,” Song conceded.
As it turned out the brigades that sailed to Asphodel had, entirely by accident, avoided one of the perils the Watch planned for the students. While the prices for goods and sustenance in Port Allazei had been more than affordable at the start of the year, they had slowly but steadily risen throughout the year until a bag of rice went for half its weight in gold. Which, obviously, was untenable even for the wealthiest of Watch princelings. By the time the Thirteenth docked in Port Allazei, coin had become largely worthless and most everything was done by barter – shopkeepers still accepted labor and goods as payment.
The very week after shops started refusing coin outright and a trap closed on the unwary. Entire cabals had to leave their lodgings in port for some township in the outskirts called ‘Scraptown’ where poor meals and a roof could be provided for a pittance, but doing so added hours of traveling to everything. For Stripe students, it was considered an admittance of failure.
By arriving near the end pf the process the Thirteenth avoided emptying its brigade coffers – which had, mind you, already been mostly empty - and instead begun taking contracts early. Some with the garrison and others straight from the Galleries, which uncoincidentally had an entire section of hotly contested bounties that paid in foodstuffs. Yet the strangest part of it all had been when, after a few months, Port Allazei emptied from all the students leaving on their yearly test and left a mere handful of cabals in the ruined city. There had been so few students left all classes and schedules were consolidated.
At least the shops began taking coin again when Port Allazei turned into a ghost town, and at reasonable prices too.
“You know,” Tristan began, “if you helped me…”
“I am not smuggling you into the masque,” Song flatly told him. “I do not care the bounty amount that would get you, I am not losing points just before Colonel Cao puts out the final ratings.”
“Can’t eat points,” Tristan pointed out.
“Coin is not usually served at the table either,” Angharad noted.
He shot her an amused look.
“I’ll be heading out with the two of you, I think,” Maryam mused. “I’m not expected at the Abbey until eight, but I can idle time away in town until then. Maybe grab a plate at the Crocodilian. Angharad?”
“I must be at the Acallar at seven, so sadly I will not be accompanying any of you. Unless…”
She trailed off while looking at Tristan, who shook his head.
“There’s no Krypteia graduation,” he told her, then cleared his throat. “As a rule, I would discourage you from eating or drinking anything a Mask hands you.”
“One should always consider poison when handed a cup,” Izel agreed, as if this were a reasonable thing to say.
Angharad eyed him with dismay. She had heard talk of the Calendar Court’s purported fondness for poisons, but thought it only idle talk. Surely Izcalli lords could not be allowed to murder each other like this, killing one another in broad daylight. A suspected poisoner should be called into an honor duel and slain, ending their reign of terror!
“We have our duties, then,” Song said. “Izel, my hair will take long to dry so I will take the first bath as you so kindly offered.”
“By all means,” he gallantly said.
They broke up to see to their affairs as soon as all the cups were emptied. It was poor manners, Song had said, to leave such a gathering before all were finished. With the two who had social evenings ahead gone to prepare and Maryam disappeared upstairs for a nap, Angharad was left standing by the sink to dry the cups with a cloth when Tristan handed them to her. It was simple, pleasant work that let her mind wander.
Until there was a single cup left and it slipped through Tristan’s stiff fingers to fall back onto the water, the Sacromontan going utterly still.
Angharad softly cursed, passing a hand before his eyes, and he did not react. A trance, then. She began counting down, as he’d asked her. A moment later he let out a ragged breath, closing his eyes as he leaned against the counter. There was a bead of sweat on his brow, and she suspected that if his eyes were open the flecks of gold in them would be like smoldering embers.
“How long?”
“Five seconds,” she quietly said. “It is not improving, Tristan.”
“It isn’t getting worse, either,” he said, but it was half-hearted.
“The sooner the shrine is finished…”
She tried not to sound accusing, but suspected she came short of success.
“Look, it’s not that simple,” Tristan bit out. “You know I tried a house shrine and it didn’t do anything. And when I last tried a public one-”
“You painted the statue in a wishing fountain red, then added some yellow hair,” Angharad said, unimpressed. “Most spirits would have taken offense.”
The Fisher would likely have killed her over such a thing. She was aware that Tristan and his own patron had a rather different rapport, but every spirit had their pride. One should not tread on it needlessly.
“She asked for a statue and I delivered,” he insisted. “Anyway, I need a garrison permit to set up a proper public shrine and they’ve been stringing it out.”
Angharad frowned.
“They want a bribe?”
She had thought better of the Tolomontera garrison. Some of its officers supposedly treated some brigades better than others – the Ninth stood out in this regard – but besides such patronage they were said to be forthright in their dealings.
“I wish,” Tristan sighed. “No, any new shrine needs Obscure Committee permission and I get the impression student requests for those are at the bottom of their paperwork list. With Lord Asher currently in town I’m hoping to make a direct appeal.”
“Wise,” she approved. “You know, it might be equally wise to speak to Maryam about-”
“Maryam has her own troubles,” he sharply interrupted. “And this is a… religious matter, anyway.”
“You know she would be glad to help,” Angharad said. “To take a closer look at your soul.”
His lips thinned.
“I rarely get the episode more than once a day,” Tristan dismissed. “I’ll handle it myself, Angharad.”
She eyed him for a moment. He was not a fool, Tristan Abrascal. She could think of only so many reasons he would refuse to involve the Thirteenth’s sole signifier, given their closeness. In this instance, though, the closeness might be the very reason. Though Tristan would no doubt laugh at her should she say so, Angharad often thought there was a rough sense of honor to how he dealt with others. Like, say, refusing to ask a favor of someone before having decided where the two of them truly stood.
“That is your choice to make,” Angharad acknowledged.
Not the one he should be making, she privately acknowledged, but it was not her place to say so – only Tristan could decide where his honor lay. They finished the last of the dishes and split up. There would be no banquet waiting for Angharad in the Acallar, but that did not mean she did not need to prepare.
Oil her sword, for one, and check whether her powder was dry.
--
It was a boon for them all, how it looked so sinister.
If the Acallar were a more welcoming place, it would have represented an insidious sort of danger. The Skiritai students headed down into the depths week after week but to ever allow themselves to think it routine, to grow comfortable with the grounds, would have been a terrible mistake. The only routine here was that they walked with death and that forgetting this for even a moment would cost them dearly. No, better that the Acallar be dark and foreboding so they might never be fooled to think it anything but a place where men came to die.
And tonight there was a grimmer cast to it than usual, for of the seventy-five Skiritai initiates who had first come to Port Allazei only fifty-four remained and the graduation made the absences all too noticeable. Thus went their final tally, Angharad thought: one expelled, three lost to the tests, three lost to Scholomance and the rest to the red games of the Acallar.
The students had all come in fighting fit, armed and ready, but were told not to descend into the arena. They were to remain standing on the balcony above, that old watching gallery strewn with the seats of the mighty now nibbled away at by the teeth of time.
They milled around uncertainly, the small talk sporadic enough that Angharad fell into thought. She had wondered, on occasion, what tied together the two guilds of the Guildhouse. Oh, she knew the historical reasons for the union. They had learned in Mandate that the Akelarre and the Skiritai had already existed as orders of their own before joining the Watch so in the early days of the order the two covenants had held special rights and banded together to preserve them.
Yet the vast majority of those rights had disappeared as the Conclave and the Garrison asserted their preeminence, so why had this association continued into modern nights? There was no shared privilege left to defend and Angharad had never thought there to be much in common between the Navigators and the Militants. Certainly not enough to warrant the close alliance that was the administrative union known as the Guildhouse. Tonight, though, she thought she might be catching a glimpse of the reason.
It was a small thing, the differences in how covenants celebrated graduation, but it cast a greater shadow. The other covenants were feasting or hiding, but the Guildhouse? Its guilds had a different sort of business for the evening.
Maryam had been tight-lipped about what the Akelarre would be up to, but it was open knowledge some sort of ceremony would be taking place in the depths of the Abbey. An initiation into the deeper mysteries of the Navigators, perhaps even formal acceptance into the guild.
Ultimately the details were of little import. What set the Akelarre apart was that their celebration was no such thing – it was a second graduation. They were marking it as one thing to graduate Scholomance, another to rise within the Akelarre Guild. There was a sense of… community, there. A bleak one, given that the signifiers were to gather around a howling void trying to talk them into leaping, but Angharad was in no position to judge.
The Skiritai Guild’s own graduation was, it seemed, equally bleak.
“Fuck me,” Shalini muttered. “They could have served drinks, at least.”
Just as the Akelarre retired to the Abbey, the Skiritai had been called down to the Acallar. The journey down into the depths had been no more cheerful than any before it, but as the Skiritai idled on the upper balcony Angharad mused that what waited them in the arena below would be even grimmer than death matches. Seventeen black shrouds were laid there on stone, some draped over a corpse and others over little – or even nothing at all. Not all the Skiritai who had died down here had left a body.
Some left bones only in the belly of the beasts that had devoured them even as those now standing on the balcony watched.
“I think it would have been worse to be handed wine while looking at this,” Angharad said.
An approving grunt from her left. It still surprised her that Salvador remained part of her slaying crew. The scarred Sacromontan was of the Eleventh Brigade, accursed Imani Langa’s cabal, and he had never spoken a word of any involvement he might have had in the Mask’s entrapment of the last survivors of House Tredegar. Angharad had seriously considered cutting ties with him, after the return to Tolomontera.
But then that would have been unfair of her, considering who still stood at her right.
“I don’t mean a party,” Shalini Goel snorted. “I mean to make looking at our dead fellows slightly less fucking awful.”
Shalini had not known, Angharad was almost certain of it. She was not sure the short gunslinger would have cared that her brigade’s captain had treacherously shot Isabel Ruesta in the back, but Angharad had learned that for all her playfulness the Someshwari was almost blunt when it came to personal matters. She was not someone who would have let such a thing hanging between them unaddressed after the Thirteenth returned from Asphodel.
And if Angharad did not cut ties with Shalini for serving under a captain who had given her offense, would it not be hypocrisy to do the same to Salvador? So the both of them stayed. Angharad’s gaze lingered on the corpses below, or rather at empty room besides them.
“Velaphi should be here,” she murmured. “He deserved better.”
Better than Alejandra Torrero wearing his hat like a mourner’s veil and Tupoc’s curt silences. Better than Bait avoiding his name and Cressida Barboza not bothering to even feign sympathy. You would have made it to the end of the year, Angharad thought. It had been a worthy death, she knew. Would that he’d been able to live a worthy life instead. Shalini squeezed her arm and Angharad spared a smile for her. She’d not forgotten it was at the other woman’s urging they had taken on Velaphi in the first place.
“Good man,” Salvador rasped out. “Better than replacements.”
True enough. The three of them had rotated their fourth member regularly, taking on spares who belonged to no permanent crew and adjusting the pick according to the tactics they wanted to employ. The most frequent returner was Yang Chen from the Sixteenth, whose skill with both musket and a long bladed polearm called guandao made a highly flexible fighter, but the man was brusque and aloof. He’d not even considered her offer before refusing when Angharad suggested a more regular arrangement with their crew.
Her gaze dipped said Tianxi’s way and she found him standing at the rightmost edge of the balcony, elbows leaning on the railing as he watched the shrouds in open boredom. Shalini’s gaze followed her own and she let out a noise of disapproval.
“I know you don’t have to get along with people you fight with,” she said, “but we don’t have to go out of our way to bring in a prick either.”
Salvador warbled out a laugh, the sound oddly dry, and Shalini flicked him a grin.
“It is not a waste, learning how to fight alongside strangers,” Angharad said. “How often will we get to fight with other Skiritai out on contract?”
“Wisely said.”
She turned to face the speaker, whose voice she was all too familiar with. Musa Shange had grown noticeably taller than her over the last year, though the Malani had kept the same lithely muscled frame. The faint scar on the side of his neck where a pirate lord had tried to cut his throat was only noticeable if you knew what to look for.
“Musa,” she said, inclining her head.
She extended the same courtesy to his three accompanying subordinates, and they in turn made a point of politeness to Shalini and Salvador. After a year of chancing this pit, the edges had been sanded off the rivalries between most of the students here. Rudeness was rare, even between those who openly disliked each other. After a thin streak of small talk – the Acallar did not invite enthusiasm in such things – Musa asked what he must have actually come here to ask.
“Have you decided how you are to spend your leave?” he too-casually asked.
Angharad’s lips thinned.
“I have not,” she said.
“Do consider accepting Sebastian’s invitation,” Musa advised. “As I said, a place will kept for you on the ship if you wish. Lucierna would well treat such a rising prospect.”
“Consider it I will,” Angharad evenly said.
Revealingly enough, the man was gone soon after. Shalini snorted at his back.
“They really want you there, huh,” she said.
“No one else from the Thirteenth would be interested in the offer,” Angharad said.
Captain Sebastian Camaron of the Ninth Brigade had extended some private invitations to spend two months of leave on the fortress of Lucierna, where his father commanded as marshal. The western shore of the isle apparently bore a small but beautiful city with splendid beaches and lively evenings, which paired with promise elbow rubbing with top Garrison officers was quite a tempting offer to some. If one wanted to be indebted to the Ninth Brigade, anyway.
It was not the first time Musa brought up the matter, which had her suspecting that Sebastian might have been ordered to secure the attendance of one of the ‘Unluckies’. The brigade’s reputation was opening doors, these days, though she would have preferred some of these remained closed.
“Careful,” Salvador rasped.
She had something about Musa needing only so much care on the tip of her tongue before she caught that the Sacromontan was looking in another direction entirely. And who was approaching did have Angharad straightening, hand coming to rest on the pommel of her saber.
Lady Lindiwe Sarru swaggered up to them with a haughty look on her face, cloak trailing behind. She was shorter and slimmer than Angharad, but swift on the draw and surefooted as a cat – not to mention agreeably shaped, though the cloak went some way into hiding her most generous blessings.
She was also an enemy destined to be crushed Angharad’s bootheel, preferably with a great crowd assembled to cheer at her doom.
“Tredegar,” Lady Sarru sneered.
“Sarru,” she sneered back.
“Evening, Lindiwe,” Shalini added, rolling her eyes. “Doing well? I am, thanks for asking.”
Salvador rasped out a laugh. The Malani noblewoman ignored them both.
“I see you survived the first year,” Lady Sarru said.
“Disappointed?” Angharad smiled.
“Oh, much to the contrary,” she said. “It means I have longer to teach you your place.”
“And what makes you think you have the ability, Lindiwe Sarru?” Angharad scorned.
“Only one of our slaying crews bagged a lemure from the Steel list,” Lady Sarru idly replied. “Is the truth not plain?”
“Only one of our slaying crews lost a man,” Angharad said. “That truth is plain enough.”
A tightening around the eyes.
“Watch your back, Tredegar,” Lindiwe Sarru said. “Sooner or later, your crutch will give.”
She stalked off on that note, cloak billowing. Angharad’s brow only rose. That last sally would have stung more if she had used her contract in the Acallar fights since returning, but she had not. The lessons of Asphodel were not forgotten.
“Goodbye Lindiwe,” Shalini called out at her back. “Good talk. Always great to see you.”
The Someshwari scoffed.
“Well, I guess it wouldn’t be a graduation if we didn’t get a Sarru visitation,” Shalini said. “I hope she’s going to Lucierna, because some time on a beach might help her be a little less of a bi-”
“Shalini,” Angharad interrupted, amused and a little scandalized.
“You know it’s true,” Shalini Goel insisted.
Angharad found it a little strange that Shalini would dislike Lady Sarru as much as she did, given how her taunts were spared to the rest of the crew – which was, most of the time, summarily ignored. She almost asked about it, but she was interrupted by a clarion call. A pair of boys stood atop the stairs leading into the depths, silhouettes cast against Orrery pale.
The Marshal’s pages were older now, but the boys were still buried in piles of eye-searing ribbons and frippery as expensive as they were tasteless.
“Now announcing His Grace,” the one failing to grow a mustache called out. “Marshal Hermenegildo Berenguel Adamastor de la Tavarin, Count of Encoberto.”
Retired was added under the breath by most the class.
Marshal de la Tavarin then made his appearance, limping down the stairs. The old man’s brass lionhead cane tapped lightly against the ground as he descended, long snowy hair trailing. Today’s fare, Angharad noted, was particularly terrible. As usual he wore a Watch black coat, but this time the pinned sleeves were bright puke green while his trousers and hose were striped pink-and-purple. The feather on his wide-brimmed hat was not the usual one, narrower but much longer – almost four feet long, it must be – as well as a pale pink which did not match that of the hose..
The Marshal made it to the bottom of the stairs before pausing, turning to look expectantly at his pages. They must not have seen him, because they only blew the clarion trumpets again after he angrily waved his cane at them. Clearing his throat afterwards, the leathery old man tugged at his purple-and-green cravat before addressing them.
“Below,” he simply said.
And below they went, through the stairways and tunnels towards the heart of the Acallar. To the island in the deeps ringed by abyss and iron cages, to which only one bridge led. The blackcloaks that kept an eye on the monsters in the cages always kept out of sight if they could, as if to avoid getting to know the students, and tonight was no exception. The portcullis leading to the bridge was brought up, then the black-cloaked men faded back into the tunnels.
Marshal de la Tavarin led his students to the line of shrouds through the treacherous grounds of the arena – the ruins of what might have been a town, strewn with pitfalls and walls and pillars. The bodies had been laid at the foot of the centerpiece of the grounds, a rusty mimicry of the Grand Orrery standing only ten feet tall with a skeleton nailed to its central pillar.
The Marshal went to stand between the dead and the rust while the rest of them silently came to stand before the shrouds in a rough line. Graduation began, not all that surprisingly, in quite an abrupt way.
“That old relic Asher sold you an equally old lie, this morning,” Marshal de la Tavarin said. “He claimed, before gods and men, that survival is a victory.”
The old man bared his teeth in disdain.
“It is not,” he told them. “Victory is the act of defeating your opponent, and survival does not defeat the night – it goes on, patient and undisturbed. To avoid drowning in it is nothing to boast of.”
The Marshal flicked up his hat.
“But it is not nothing, either,” he conceded. “Children, you have been put to the test and not found wanting: you are now are skopis now in truth, blades fit to be wielded by the Watch. At last you may call yourselves initiates of the Skiritai Guild without speaking a lie.”
This was, then, to be as Angharad had suspected. An initiation into the mysteries of the Skiritai Guild, a second graduation like that of the Akelarre.
“But make no mistake,” the Marshal said. “You are the lowest of the low. The likes of you are bought and spent by the hundred every year the blade-trade is plied, and it has been plied since men learned to make iron sharp.”
Angharad’s jaw clenched and at her side Salvador scowled. They were not the only ones rubbed wrong by the talk, for too many had died to this vicious training to make it easy to swallow being called the lowest of anything. The Marshal thumbed his luxurious mustache.
“A year is what I spent teaching you what it means to pay a price,” he said. “How much blood a pint of ichor will cost you, the wages of pride and fearfulness alike.”
Murmurs of agreement from the crowd. That truth was more to their liking.
“It is a lesson that can only be learned by tasting that copper in the air, by watching men whose voice rings familiar be devoured by beasts,” the Marshal said. “And you have learned it.”
A pause.
“So now your second lesson begins.”
Marshal de la Tavarin straightened, and most of them with him.
“You are to be Militants,” he told them. “You will be the first into every breach and the last out of every catastrophe. Your lives are the oil of civilization’s lamp, burnt to keep the lights on even an hour longer.”
His smile turned ghoulish.
“And every king under firmament will want to spend you like coppers at the fair.”
Angharad grimaced, for in that she sensed more than a kernel of truth. Watchmen were always sent into the fire, it was their trade and calling, but Skiritai? Like mirror-dancers, she knew that the respect they were shown would come with offers. Requests, orders. Kill this man, win this cause, champion this name. Skill brought greed as much as it did acclaim Some of those around her looked disbelieving, however. The Marshal was openly amused.
“Did you think that learning to walk with death would see you esteemed? Blades are used, children, until they break. Then they are tossed away and another drawn.”
He ground his cane into the dust.
“They will feast you and sing your praises,” the Marshal said, voice almost loving, “they will mint medals to pin on your chest and put your names on grand monuments. And then, smiling all the while, they will send you to die for the most worthless of causes.”
The old man cut through the rising chorus of muttering like a knife.
“This is the second lesson you must learn: what is your life worth?”
And as if summoned by that last sentence, a presence came upon them.
The Fisher slithered through Angharad’s veins like cold seawater, eager and pleased, as the air grew thick. Heavy, so laden with something unseen that Angharad thought she might choke on it. Only then a shiver ran through the world and the weight lightened. The first gasp she hardly paid attention to, until it spread across half their class. The other students were all pointing at one of the shrouds, the leftmost one and it was – moving?
The Marshal limped up to the sheet and tore it off without a word, revealing the naked girl beneath it. The same Someshwari girl who’d been the first to die on these grounds, throat cut by a satyrian so quickly she couldn’t even scream.
And now that girl let out a ragged, terrified gasp as she clutched her healed throat.
“Sleeping God,” Angharad whispered. “She’s…”
“One,” the Marshal called out.
Then he moved by the second corpse. A heartbeat later it shivered under the pall, the young man that Angharad vividly remembered being impaled through the eye screaming back to life as the Marshal tore the black sheet off him.
“Two.”
Garrison watchmen followed in their teacher’s wake, bearing cloaks and clothes and water, but they all watched spellbound as the Marshal moved to the third corpse.
“Three,” he said after the third started weeping.
Then four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and… The weight in the air, Angharad thought, was all but gone. It had been a heavy haze before but now she could barely feel it. The tenth corpse shivered, but only once. It did not move again
“Nine,” Marshal de la Tavarin quietly said, “out of seventeen.”
The silence around him was so complete every soul heard his words as if they’d been screamed.
“That is what you clawed back from the Acallar by slaying the monsters held within its walls,” he told them. “Nine deaths.”
Six of them, Angharad thought, had died on the very first day. The next two the following week. All this killing, all this dying, and they’d barely won anything past the first month of Scholomance.
“Those not returned, are they…”
It was Lady Lindiwe Sarru who spoke, tone hesitant. She had lost one of her crew late in the year, one of the last deaths.
“Gone?” the Marshal completed. “No, not quite yet. The Acallar will hold the dead for a year and a day. That is how long you have to cut down beasts to buy them back – if the price is paid in time, at the end of the year they will be returned here.”
The old man smiled.
“The greater the beast slain, the greater the deed and the greater the power the Acallar has to spend on bringing back those slain here,” the Marshal said. “This temple, children, is a machine whose sole fuel is glory. A dozen fights from the Flint list will barely be worth one Iron. A hundred might equal one from the Steel list – and Steel, children, will always bring exactly one of you back.”
Soft gasps erupted even as he went on to inform them that, as they were now full-fledged initiates, they would be granted access to a written tally of which dead souls’ return had been bought. The Akelarre Guild was capable of ascertaining this for them and contracted to do so every first of the month.
But Angharad, oh Angharad was instead stuck contemplating the devilry in that bargain. For how many students might die trying to kill one of the monsters in the Steel list to bring one of them back, only deepening the debt the class must pay? Yet Flint kills would barely move the needle, punishing cowardice, and a crew slaying Iron beasts all year might bring someone back – but only one, and what if time ran out for the one they sought? Iron beasts alone would never be enough to settle the full accounts.
“Only those who died inside the Acallar can be brought back,” the Marshal said. “And upon return, they will be scoured clear of the touch of gods – losing all boons and contract – as well as find themselves missing… pieces. Memories, character. Nothing is without cost.”
He leaned in.
“And there is no choosing, children,” the Marshal happily told them. “The dead are returned in the order they died, there can be no skipping the line.”
The gravity of that settled on their shoulders. What is your life worth? How many risks were the Skiritai down in this pit willing to take to bring back another student? They might be willing to risk the Steel list for a friend, but what about a stranger? Already Angharad could make out the grim mathematics that would be demanded of them. What the order of resurrection meant if death trying to save another put you at the end of the line with the others less willing to take risks after your death, with fewer crews left capable of killing a Steel beast at all.
What were they willing to put their lives on the line for, what odds did they draw the line at?
“Your Grace,” Musa Shange called out. “A question, if I may?”
The Marshal waved his permission.
“The students that will be arriving when our second year begins,” Musa said. “Will they also be tested in the Acallar as we have been?”
“Of course,” Marshal de la Tavarin toothily grinned. “And they’ll die like flies at the start, much like you did. Any of you who perish on your second year will have chaff to buy back before it gets to you.”
And the dead, he told them afterwards, had failed initiation into the Skiritai Guild. The were expelled from Scholomance and would not be considered by the covenant again. A lesser thing compared to death, Angharad thought, but a reminder that even those who returned would not be spared consequence. It was only natural that they would ask to see the current tally, and the small leather book was grimly passed around from crew to crew.
Cai Wei, the line read when she held it, going to the next on the block. Second of Second, 4CS. The second day of the second month in the fourth year of the Century of Smoke. Meaning that, once leave ended, the Skiritai would have one month and three days to buy back her life.
Angharad only somewhat remembered the girl in question, a Tianxi who had used a spear. Worse, the crew she had been part of soon dispersed and one of them died later in the year. There was, she saw in the lay of the crowd, no great enthusiasm to face a Steel beast so early in the year to pay for her revival. It was understandable, since the few successes against such creatures had all taken months of preparation, yet the thought left a bitter taste in her mouth.
“The Acallar will be closed until your second year begins,” the Marshal told them. “Sleep on it, children. The dead certainly will.”
And on that grim note he left them standing besides the eight corpses left. Angharad had not even noticed the Fisher’s presence leaving her, but when she clenched her fingers she found her palm clammy and almost feverish. A wave of exhaustion passed over her – this ceremony had drawn from her when she already felt drawn.
“Angharad?”
She shook her head, sparing a smile for Shalini even through her sudden tiredness.
“It is nothing,” she said. “Let us head back up.”
“Want to grab a drink after this?” the other woman asked.
Angharad glanced back at the shrouded dead, then exhaled.
“I think I very much do,” she said, and back up into the light they went.
Comments
Nathan Fish
"Eating the sliver of god eased metaphysical friction s//between/ our bodies and the aether," "Over the last few days ships had docked bringing s/int/in/ not only entire crates of delicacies but also musicians and dancers." "By arriving near the end s/pf/of/ the process" "The western shore of the isle apparently bore a small but beautiful city with splendid beaches and lively evenings, which paired with s/promise/promised/ elbow rubbing with top Garrison officers was quite a tempting offer to some." "Children, you have been put to the test and not found wanting: you are s/now// are skopis now in truth,"
Victor Cavalcanti
There's no way the "eating a god will sharpen you" is just a minor buff to boons. There's lots of students that either don't have boons or are signifiers.
Chris O'Hare
I feel like there’s going to be a new horror revealed with these dead souls. Like, halfway through the next year they are told that each soul not bought in time turns into a or will claim another ten students at random.
BeautifulBusinessBoi
EE is on break until April 11th, per the AMA post. Payments are on pause for the month though!
LUXRUS
No chapter?
BeautifulBusinessBoi
Angharad finds Fortuna striking and is jealous of her whispering in Tristan’s ear? Her picker is still as bad as ever lmao
Skeys13
Marshall giving Cunt
Avid_Appletree
I wouldn't be suprised if the Masks do actually have a graduation ceremony but they have to find it first. Or maybe Tristan was just lying and the avtual graduation ceremony is infiltrating another graduation ceremony.
Avid_Appletree
It is very limited. So probably not that shocking.
Joseph
Or vice versa am enterprising skiritai could try to get weaker first years killed by tricking them into dangerous situations.
Pratyush Singh
Fighting Steel beasts is not training, not when it is meant to bring back a human life. In fact, this is the one time to actually use her contract - there are real stakes here, and purposefully limiting her skillset in order to improve would effectively be the same as putting her own improvement over the lives of the people she could save. Which, maybe she'll do, but at least based on her current characterization I do not believe she would sacrifice their lives for the sake of improvement.
Darryl Greensill
It doesn’t help anyone for first-years to know. Not the first-years themselves, their risk calibrations will be skewed in one or the other direction. And it doesn’t help the later years, because the first-years will pester them to please risk their lives to resurrect my love interest/sibling/kidnap target. I think the second-years will take the same approach as the attendants: try not to get emotionally attached to first-years.
Darryl Greensill
It’s a guild-based grind quest! But Angie is OPAF and will be kite-farming Steel mobs by the end of the book
Darryl Greensill
Thanks folks, lot of seawater been vomited up since then. EE, if you’re listening, a short reminder would be a good addition!
Jacob Burton-Edwards
On the one hand, Tristan is his gift that keeps on giving. On the other, why would he ever make anything easy for anyone?
Jacob Burton-Edwards
It's impossible to keep the first years unawares unless you completely prevent interactions between them. Which they can't, because there's only one Port Allazei which everyone needs to buy food from. Someone always talks. The only sensible thing I can figure is they just kept the first year in the dark to grease the wheels. Make sure there were people to bring back for all future students.
Dominic Corbin
Resurrected students fail and are sent away from Scholomance, so they aren't going to be telling many people
Jacob Burton-Edwards
Everyone believing in reincarnation probably reduces the shock value some, but I completely agree. It's wierd to introduce this in the third book.
Markos El-Far
I feel like that contradicts her clear character growth she has just obtained. Wasting a training opportunity to “cheat” would go against everything she learned on Ashpodel.
NuclearUmbrella
She used her contract in said duel, and Sarru found out iirc. She thinks she's cheating in the Acallar, hence Angharad's statement about learning her lesson from Asphodel.
Ed
well, one way to solve this it's to make a competition with the flint monsters, how many flints can you kill in a day? ten, fifty, one hundred. that way they learn their limits and help a little, a type of status competition. to choose the flint, iron, steel lists its like to choose what to fight, thousands of death bodies, a armed cult or a mountain-like god. its good that they can choose.
Noble Solana-Walkinshaw
Also people age out, it only keeps them a year and a day. So if for example they fail to make headway for six months, a bunch of the “backlog” of souls will clear out.
Draken09
I believe the first year students will be kept unaware. Their lesson is about the price of violence in blood. It's not until year 2 students learn to weigh the value of a life.
Draken09
And dislikes caffeine or anything psychoactive.
Draken09
Judging by the conditionals, the Acallar is... Holding them. Catching the souls that would have been released within its walls and essentially holding them ransom. Gods have been shown to hold games within their shrines. We saw many examples back in book 1. Now we've seen two more: Scholomance's devouring dare, and the Acallar's game of lives. Both gods exist here as they do because the Watch finds these games worthwhile to play, while the gods get enough to devour and grow. Scholomance grew too much and was belligerent before, but the Acallar seems much more willing to play its role. As Angharad noticed, the game is ultimately skewed in its favor.
Ed
It's quite fitting for the world they are living on.
Joe Rachman
Oh God what if Tristan is going to have to organise gambling as worship, he'd gonna hate it even if he made money as the house
John Harper
Is this the first time we've seen resurrection as a power? Feels like a pretty big deal. They seemed less shocked about that than I'd expect.
MouseThatJumps
I'd like to point out that between Angharad now being able to use her contract a few times each day, the Marshal implying that even steel list monsters can be solo'd, and the enormous Checkov's gun of beloved Skiritai comrades dying and needing to be resurrected, the stage has been set for Angharad to potentially slay several steel list monsters in a day. Is it believable now? No. But 80 chapters down the line it could be.
Jacob Shpiece
Annoyance at Angharad's reputation, with everyone cooing over 'the mirror dancer' - it sounds like the spite between them has only grown in the interim
Jacob Shpiece
This is so deeply fucked up. I didn't like it when I first read it. Resurrection always leaves a weird feeling in my mouth, and here we're talking about nameless characters who immediately walk off screen. The only thing I felt like it did was cheapen the accomplishment of those who survived to the end of the year. But thinking about the lesson this is going to instill in the Skiritai...teaching them to constantly measure the value of their own life, and death. Literally creating a marketplace in which their lives have a tangible value, and measuring the worth and price of each fight in terms of how many lives can be won or lost. Which is, as the Marshall points out, a pretty necessary lesson: in a world that is constantly looking to spend your life, this trains you to almost instinctively assign a value to your death, and to judge whether its worth the sacrifice. Which of course, has the effect of making the students measure every cause they'll undertake in terms of lives. It teaches them to use death as currency, whether their own or their allies, while also teaching them that their own lives (and deaths) are categorically more valuable than those from outside of the order. It is such a powerfully insidious lesson (really more of a dehumanization technique) to be taught.
Ash M
Wait, the author of Hope is a pale lights reader? Small world!
Poop McScoop
Is Shallini gonna get it? Also, contract breaking may not be the worst for Angharad.
sarvashaktimaan
Tristan is a mint drinker, let's go
Musclerelaxant
Subtle callback to Angharad eyeing up Fortuna in the finale of book 2 even in the midst of everything going down 👀
Sam Friend
No. It's 900 iron or thousands of flint. Which adds up better
Riven Refulgence
Tristan actually really liked the peppermint tea that Song served him in the past, so it's another touch that Song is looking after her cabal.
Ranger Science
I mean. It pretty much has to be something of a casino, no?
Pordgy
With how often he's involved with them I have to wonder if Tristian's original concept was inspired by the idiom 'Luck of the Devil'
Ryan Hearn
The duel in at the invite-only malani party which her uncle interupted, iirc
MAS
Respectfully asking that Fortuna’s shrine be completely outlandish and gauche.
Runaway_Cactuar
I love how everyone got fancy tea from Song except Tristan lol
Darryl Greensill
Anyone remember what Sarru’s beef with Angharad was?
Ed
so the math is like nine students back equal ninety iron or nine hundred flint, with half a hundred student killing monsters almost everyday i was expecting more.
Joseph
How will this work for the upcoming students when they are in their second year and know the seniors in their third year are killing for them so the pressure is less? If it only lasts 3 yrs it would work and force them to give their all by the end of the third year because by their fourth they will be able to save most and have little incentive for fights. And how well or will they keep it a secret from the incoming students with all the resurrections?
Lucy Severine
Oh that's incredible. Wow. Great chapter
Audrey Johnson
Ooh this Skiritai revelation is certainly about to stir up some ramifications of what honor means.
Joe Rachman
Also Tristan meeting Asher to ask for a shrine. This promises to be interesting...
Joe Rachman
Well the Skiritai are revealing themselves to be spectacularly fucked up...
joie01
it really just hit me. theyre seniors. theres first year juniors coming in. thats exciting
Joseph
Lucifer is terrifying for being able to build such a place. And the way it seems the narrative doesn’t see him as a god or the darkness but a formidable individual makes him more awe inspiring.
Pteromys Momonga
Well, that's an interesting surprise! I wonder if the effects of the Acallar are related to the Scholomance god, or if it's derived from a ritual or something. The Marshal described it as a temple, which would seem to suggest some divine connection. Certainly grim stuff regarding the costs and limitations of reviving fallen Skiritai, and consistent with the rest of what they've been taught. I really hope we get to read about the other graduation ceremonies when EE returns from break - especially the masked ball; I have a weakness for those.
Morgwath
Thanks for the chapter.
