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Chapter 23
🕑 Added 2025-08-22 16:00:18 +0000 UTCThey met the Twenty-Ninth Brigade at the square in front Scholomance a quarter before noon, Captain Emeni Maziya and her three cabalists proving punctual.
That was common with Malani, Song had found. While they tended to loop in a turn of phrase so they would not be lying should they happen to arrive late, generally speaking they abhorred not being on time unless it was tradition that they should be late. It was a refreshing change compared to the Watch and Tianxi bureaucracies, which were rightly infamous for chronic lateness.
“Captain Song,” Emeni Maziya greeted her, offering her hand.
Maziya was cut from the same cloth as Angharad, physically: tall and shapely, but with the muscles arms of someone trained for hard combat. Her hair was pulled into four large Malani knots that must make wearing a hat impossible, the rest of her head nearly shaved.
“Captain Emeni,” she replied, shaking it.
Their tones were cordial, but neither pretended anything beyond that. While the Stripes were not so many that they did not all know each other by name, Song had only rarely crossed paths with Emeni Maziya. The Twenty-Ninth had been careful to stay out of the rivalries between the leading companies, hewing closest to Ferranda’s brigade and what had been Captain Anaya’s Twenty-Third before her death at Misery Square.
“We secured the discussed supplies without difficulty,” Captain Emeni told her. “Any trouble on your end?”
“Everything is in hand,” Song replied.
It was unfortunate the price of rope in town had mysteriously doubled the day before the exploration was to begin in earnest, but not unexpected.
“As I recall, Ishanvi Kapadia is meant to be waiting close by,” the other woman said.
“She should be at the gates,” Song agreed. “Shall we?”
“By all means.”
She could almost feel Maryam rolling her eyes at her, and from Emeni’s lot there were a few amused looks. She turned a scowl on her friend – so what if Stripes liked their formalities? It was important to maintain the appropriate degree of professionalism when working with another cabal. It was a quick walk across the square, which was nearly deserted. By now the morning classes were finished and few students lingered in the school’s shadow any longer than they had to.
Ishanvi stood before the gates exactly as promised, though only one of half a dozen underclassmen waiting around. They talked a little too loudly, Song thought, laughed just a tad too shrill – and their eyes never quite left the entrance, the façade and the great open gates of stained glass behind which lurked eldritch lights. You could almost smell the fear on them. It’d been five days since classes had begun: the way Song had it told to her, already four first years had been taken by the god in the walls.
The Someshwari girl extricated herself from conversation with a smile, Song raising an eyebrow in approval as she saw how thoroughly equipped the Ishanvi was. That she would be in fighting fit was only to be expected, but Ishanvi had come bearing a blunderbuss, a pistol and a large curved blade almost too short to count as a sword. Khadga, Song recalled it was named. She had thought them ceremonial weapons meant solely for religious rites, but evidently not.
“Good afternoon,” Ishanvi greeted them.
Looking rather less disheveled than when they last met. She was holding up under the pressure, then.
“Ishanvi,” Song greeted her back. “Allow me to make introductions. You already know Maryam and myself, of course.”
The Laurel inclined her head in confirmation, offering a friendly smile.
“A pleasure to see you both again,” she said.
“You’re not dead,” Maryam noted. “Good work.”
Considering Ishanvi’s cheer did not so much as waver at that, it was a shame the girl was history track among the Arthashastra Society: the diplomats had lost a promising recruit.
“Leading the Twenty-Ninth Brigade, Captain Emeni Maziya,” Song pressed on.
The woman in question nodded a greeting. Captain Emeni had been skeptical about the addition of a first year to their delving crew, but been convinced when Song mentioned Ishanvi’s claim to have read the old Watch records from when the Glass Repository was last accessible.
“Silumko of Malan,” Song said. “Krypteia.”
The Mask inclined to tinkering, a tall and twitchy Malani with a broken nose and brown eyes. Tristan liked him, having described him ‘an eminently practical man’. He’d also been about her own Mask’s match in a fistfight last year, so unless he’d sunk a great deal of time training up then even Maryam was likely capable of taking him in a brawl.
“Well met,” Ishanvi nodded.
“That blunderbuss,” Silumko lightly said, “is not a Watch pattern.”
“So it isn’t,” Ishanvi cheerfully agreed.
And added nothing else. To Song’s muted amusement, the Mask actually seemed to approve.
“Yayauhqi of Izcalli,” Song said. “Skiritai Guild.”
The man in question was even taller than Izel, his heavily scarred cheek lending him a grisly look. Song thought his preference for Izcalli leaf daggers was almost incongruous given that he was a mountain of muscle.
“Call me Yaq,” he said.
“And their fourth-”
“Cemelli Popo,” the woman in question cut in. “Peiling Society. I believe we came across each other at the welcome ceremony a few nights back.”
“When you explained the Ossuary boards with Andreu Claver, yes,” Ishanvi confirmed.
“I am a physician by trade,” Cemelli told her. “Most of my pack is dedicated to the purpose, so feel free to call on my services as we delve.”
The small, thick-waisted Aztlan hadn’t been anywhere as friendly with Maryam or herself, Song noted. That was College societies for you. She personally found Cemelli interesting, because the girl in question not only spoke Antigua without any trace of a Centzon accent but her hair was pulled back into a perfect Mazu topknot. That and she was contracted to a goddess Song had never heard of before for the power to slow or accelerate the flow of blood at a touch. A useful skill, for a physician.
The Twenty-Ninth was one of those brigades that Song struggled to place. They had ranked twenty-first in Colonel Cao’s rankings, firmly in the lower middle, but Captain Emeni did not seem in a hurry to change this. Her brigade did not have an obvious specialty, either, looking at its makeup. Song saw few intersections to their skills, and the one she thought most likely was thorny if true – and strange for a Malani to be taking up, besides.
With everyone here the seven of them proceeded past the gates into the antechamber, then into the great hall where the exploration crews had already begun to gather. The gates in the back that had led to the throne room for graduation were long gone, but Song could see how three doorways out of the hall had been forced to remain in place by metal spikes in the ground. The garrison must have arrived early and put in the work, because none of that had been there yesterday morning.
In the center of the hall stood two dozen garrison soldiers, including those bearing the large devices known as yatrameters, and few Akelarre guildsmen stood with them. Song only recognized the one, Professor Balthazar Formosa. As the head instructor for the Akelarre student, he was the best-known face of the Navigators in Allazei even if it was Captain Yue who headed the lodge.
The students steered clear of them, leaving an unspoken moat of empty room around them, and unlike the meet at the Colored Arches there was little mingling this time. Nerves and wariness had everyone keeping to their own delving crews, maintaining a healthy distance from one another.
Song suppressed a grimace at the sight of Vivek Lahiri and Captain Philani quietly chatting near one of the doorways to the right. Of all the alliances here, these two were going to be the most difficult to beat to the Repository. Imani Langa was eyeing the pair from across the room, perhaps thinking the same, though she had to look away when something Tupoc drawled forced her to turn his way with a scowl – well, if two Stripes had ever deserved each other.
Finding Nathi Morcant and his Forty-Ninth was as simple as checking where Maryam was glaring. The Pereduri was in a corner, surrounded by his brigade and addressing what had to be at least ten spellbound first years. Most of them were independents, several Skiritai. Captain Emeni, who walked at her side, let out a thoughtful hum when she caught Song looking.
“He’s an ambitious little prick, that one,” Emeni Maziya said. “He’s secured an invitation to our next supper, in case you were unaware.”
Song had been, but she offered the other woman a mysterious smile instead of saying as much. Bad news, that. The informal supper society that the Malani nobleborn had formed did not have much influence, but it did provide connections and that was the last thing she wanted Morcant to get more of. I will have to talk to Angharad.
“You do not seem enthusiastic at the notion of his company,” she said.
“The Morcant are the worst kind of social climbers,” Captain Emeni scorned. “I hear they gave their children Malani first names as part of an attempt to have their house taken out of the Pereduri peerage and added directly to the rolls of nobility.”
Which was, going by her tone, apparently a grave sin. It sounded like complete yiwu nonsense to Song, but she would consult her specialist on the matter and hope that shed some light on the dramatics. She hummed thoughtfully, as if considering the implications, then changed the subject.
“We should stake a claim on a doorway as early as we can,” Song suggested. “Better to have the other crews nipping at our heels than barring our way.”
“Sensible,” Captain Emeni approved.
There were two doorways on the right, but the two largest alliances of second years - the First and Thirty-Eighth on one hand, the Fourth and Eleventh on the other – were already lounging by them quite aggressively. The sole doorway to the left, tucked in behind a pillar, had only the Eighth Brigade and a gaggle of first years by it. The choice to be made here was clear. Their alliance closed ranks and moved forward together.
Saran Pillao, captain to the Eighth Brigade, was a passing acquaintance of Song’s but did not look particularly happy to see her approach. The Someshwari ground his teeth, eyes flicking across their number with growing frustration.
“It would be best if you took a walk, Saran,” Captain Emeni lightly said.
“We’ve parity in Skiritai,” he replied.
Song lightly laid her hand on the pommel of her jian.
“That won’t be enough,” she told him.
Captain Saran’s slender mustache trembled in anger. He was not, Song saw with some trepidation, looking like a man about to fold. Must she-
“Zama. Get your logos out or fuck off – we’re serious about taking point.”
Maryam took a step past her, hood still down, and locked eyes with the Eighth’s mute signifier. A long moment passed, then Zama Luvuno sighed and shook his head. He clapped his captain’s shoulder and walked away, to Saran’s visible startlement. It took the wind out of the Someshwari’s sails, and though he shot them a glare he was too taken aback to keep it up. He followed after his Navigator, still looking a little disbelieving.
A moment passed, then Song cleared her throat.
“Get your logos out or fuck off?” she repeated, a little disbelieving herself.
“I’m sorry, Song,” Maryam said, tone heavy with sarcasm. “Should I have said ‘would you kindly present your logos to my unworthy eyes, Master Luvuno, or perhaps fornicate outwards’?”
“Well,” Song said. “So long as you know.”
There were a few choking sounds behind her. Ah, right, the Twenty-Ninth was still present.
“So that’s why they’re training up a Laurel,” she heard Cemelli whisper.
“I think Abrascal is their main diplomat right now,” Silumko whispered back.
“The snail poison guy?”
Clearing her throat, Song forced herself to cease listening. Their crew spread out around the doorway, the few first years that had been lingering retreating further away at the sight of it. Song spared a look at what lay past the door: beyond the threshold she could see narrow stairs going up in a spiral, but little more. She was startled out of her study of the stairs by Maryam leaning in close.
“I’ve just been asked for a chat,” she murmured. “I’ll be right back.”
Song slowly nodded. She leaned back against the wall and kept an eye on her Navigator, talking with Captain Emeni to keep it from being obvious. Maryam walked towards the center of the room and, as if by happenstance, within moments was joined by Amaru Wayar and a Lierganen signifier that Song did not recognize. They spoke quickly, Maryam laughed and then they parted. Had she not been told, Song would have thought the entire meeting coincidental.
Song cocked an eyebrow at her friend when she returned.
“Two things,” Maryam said. “Professor Formosa will make announcement that the delve starts in a few minutes, and it would be best if we do not move towards the center of the room when it happens.”
“Why?” Song frowned.
“Because every crew without a Navigator along is going to be given a stark lesson on why that was a mistake,” Maryam said.
She then cleared her throat, looking at the other captain present.
“No need for concern, Maziya,” Maryam said. “The Akelarre have set terms of engagement – so long as you stick with us, you’re protected by them.”
Emeni Maziya’s face was unreadable.
“Duly noted,” she replied.
It unfolded like Maryam had said: Balthazar Formosa soon called for their attention and pointed out the three captured doorways as the starting paths. Much of the students present approached the center of the hall to hear him better – but not, Song noted, any of the second-year alliances.
“Officers carrying yatrameters will follow along behind you but they will not endanger themselves beyond the strictly necessary,” Professor Formosa said. “Proceed with care.”
He waved his hand after that, adding a casual ‘dismissed’ without even bothering with a wish of good luck, but the crowd was in no place to mind.
The moment the last syllable had left Balthazar Formosa’s mouth, students began to drop.
Song watched with horror as an unseen current went through first and second years alike, toppling them like domino tiles. A few realized what was happening, drawing blades or pistols, but there was no obvious opponent. Within thirty heartbeats of it beginning, every single student without a signifier in their crew was on the ground, eyes open and breathing shallowly. Stuck in a daze.
On the other side of the room, Amaru Wayar and the Lierganen from earlier gripped wriggling, trembling glyphs of Gloam.
“Don’t make noise,” Maryam quietly said. “It’s an easy Sign to spread, but it’s just as easy to break.”
Well, that was one way to secure a head start.
Professor Formosa looked utterly unsurprised and sent out the garrison soldiers in small squads. Four men led by an officer carrying the yatrameter joined them quickly enough. The young Malani lieutenant introduced himself to the crew as ‘Felicity-of-the-Faithful’.
“Aptronymist, huh?” Captain Emeni sympathetically asked.
“My family is,” the man sighed. “I am not particularly religious.”
Ah, another Redeemer cult. Song thought she might have heard of this one before – they argued that names shaped nature, and thus children should be named what they would become. Evidently Lieutenant Felicity had elicited not to become a sangoma, one of the infamous Redeemer priests, so the doctrine was about as sensible as it sounded. The lieutenant and his four fellow soldiers, who carried heavy packs on their backs, followed their party up the stairs. It was a mere minute before they reached the summit, not far at all, and at the end waited a dark chamber past a doorless threshold.
Song stepped in, lantern high, and checked for immediate dangers. There were none, thus room was made for the lieutenant to come up and check the room with his device. Lieutenant Felicity took one step in, glanced down at the yatramater then nodded.
“It’s a path forward.”
Song took point with the lantern in hand, Silumko at her side. The room looked unremarkable: an abandoned antechamber that had once held decorative busts, though now all that was left were the six stone plinths on either side. She took her time, checking the ceiling – which was strangely arched in a way that did not well fit the chamber, a hint that Scholomance had meddled with the room – and then the walls, but there was nothing out of sorts. The door at the end was thick wood with a lock. The two of them slowly crossed the room, the rest following behind, and came to stop before the door.
There Song crouched, halfheartedly wishing that Tristan was here, but Silumko produced lockpicks of his own. Leaning closer to the lock, she glanced at the inside and-
“Don’t,” she said, catching the Mask’s wrist.
“Ren?”
Moving them both to the side, she unsheathed her jian and poked at the edge of the lock. Immediately two thin needles punched a foot forward out of the lock, their points coated in something oily. Without batting an eye she smashed down the pommel of her sword, snapping the needles off.
“There’s no room to turn a key inside the lock,” she told Silumko. “Only the mechanism popping these out. It must open some other way.”
The dark-skinned man passed a hand through his hair.
“Bracing,” he said. “The old girl isn’t going to take it easy on us today, it seems.”
“That or Scholomance considers poison needles to be taking it easy,” Song replied.
He shot her an amused look but did not answer.
“Let’s have a look around,” Captain Emeni said. “There must be something we can use.”
Song made a point of nudging away the broken needles so no one would step on them as the rest of their company spread around the room, lanterns in hand and poking around carefully. No one wanted to find out firsthand what those needles had been coated with. It was Maryam that picked up on the trail, having stood motionless in the middle of the room for the better part of a minute with her eyes closed.
“The plinths all have some sort of machinery beneath them,” she said.
While the pedestals could not be inclined forward or back when pushed, Captain Emeni discovered that they could be pivoted.
“There was some sort of puzzle with the busts here,” Ishanvi said. “They must have been removed so we would have no hint to go on.”
Ah, but while the busts themselves were gone Song found that after wiping clean the dust around the plinths there were faint marks of wear that gave away some of the angles – some of the busts had been looking at each other, either diagonally or across. It took them about ten minutes of fiddling about and elimination to match the four pedestals that the marks on the stone had not outed, after which the lock on the door at the end of the chamber popped open. It came slightly ajar.
“Solved,” Lieutenant Felicity said, popping his head back and whistling. “Bring out a spike, lads. Nail it down.”
The garrison men walked in, one carrying the metal spike while the others brought large hammers, and as the first man knelt to hold the spike in place the exploration crew assembled to move to the next room. There was no need to worry about their way back being lost so long as someone stood in the room – Scholomance could not change or move a chamber someone was standing in.
Beyond the chamber stood a long hall of pristine white marble, a perfect rectangle about a hundred feet long interrupted only by the small oil lamps that hung from the ceiling on chains. It ended in an open threshold, without even a door. Lieutenant Felicity popped in long enough to confirm the yatrameter marked the room as heading closer to the Glass Repository, then doubled back.
“Long hallway, well lit,” Silumko muttered. “Ten ramas there’ll be pendulum traps.”
“Only a fool would take that,” Song snorted.
She took a pebble from her pouch and tossed it down the hall. The clatter echoed lightly, but nothing else happened. Not a simple trigger, then. Weight, perhaps? Silumko had knelt by her, a stubby longview in hand, and he suddenly chuckled.
“Left side, ten feet,” he said.
Song’s silver gaze flicked there, and after a beat she found what he had: a shallow depression in the stone, which started about a third of the wall’s height then went all the way up to the ceiling then all the way across it. It was just wide enough, she saw, for a swinging blade.
“Pendulum trap,” she agreed.
“Already?” Maryam whined.
Song heard her sigh, then the clinking of coin and Yaq letting out a pleased grunt. Goddamnit, Maryam. Knowing what to look for now, Song found another pendulum blade at twenty feet on the right, thirty on the left again, and this way again and again at ten foot intervals – until the last two, which were both to the right. Scholomance’s idea of getting tricky, perhaps. Yaq went in first this time, a long wooden pole in hand.
He waved it around about ten feet in, and after a beat a large half-moon shaped blade cut swung down from the ceiling to disappear in the wall. The Skiritai had pulled back his pole in time, and instead of proceeding forward they tested three more times to find out the interval at which the trap reset. Once it swung, one would have just shy of three seconds before the blade swung back. If you kept to the opposite side and relatively low then the blade should miss you outright, but they agreed it was best not to take the risk.
Yaq crossed. He strode a few feet further then picked up the pebble Song had thrown, but the sight of it had her frowning. For a moment, looking at the stone, she could have sworn it… moved?
“Wait,” she called out. “There is something.”
Yaq paused, cocking an eyebrow at her. Song put out her musket, prompting the pendulum to fall, and crossed in the same breath it passed her. She knelt down afterwards, trying to get a better angle of where the pebble had been – and she saw it again. A slight movement in what should be solid stone. Stiffening, she glanced back and studied the floor there before she slowly resumed advancing through the hall.
The marble near the door was pure white, but the closer the floor got to the middle of the hall the more translucent it became. The movement she had seen? Bubbles, inside water. That’s why the god put lamps in the room, so the reflection of light on polished marble hides the effect.
“It’s an ice trap,” Song flatly said. “The floor thins the closer we get to the middle, we’d fall right through.”
And whatever was waiting for them in the water would not let them leave it so easily. Gods, if not for the peculiarities of her eyes she would not have been able to see through the reflection. Curses all around, and now the danger of the room became clearer: they were going to have to crawl while pushing forward their supplies, never putting too much weight on the floor at once even as blades swung above them.
Maryam was the lightest among them, even though she was taller than Ishanvi, so she went first. The marble on the other side of the hallway grew thick again, so once her friend was past the middle of the hall they were able to make a rough daisy chain by tossing her bags and her tossing them on the other side. It took a quarter-hour, then Maryam herself crossed all the way through and a knot loosened in Song’s shoulders. They went in weight order after that: Ishanvi, Cemelli, Song, Silumko.
When Emeni reached the very middle of the hall, where the floor was thinnest, there was a faint crack. No surface marks, however, so with measured movements she was able to cross all the way. Yaq would not be so lucky, so they improvised. They threw him a rope from the supplies and had him tie his waist tightly. Then every last one of them save for Maryam held on to the other end of the rope.
“Go,” Captain Emeni ordered.
Yaq crawled forward, belly to the floor and spreading out his weight. Foot after foot, until he’d reached the same spot where his captain had caused a noise and a louder crack sounded. Spiderwebs began to spread, a chunk of floor shattering and…
“Pull,” Song shouted. “Pull.”
They pulled at the rope, dragging him forward with all the muscle they could bring to bear. The taciturn Izcalli shot forward, his boots skimming across water, and he passed the first pendulum swing in the blink of an eye. The second, though, was poor timing. The pulling slowed, hands having to be taken off to drag more rope in, and Song saw the pendulum was going to catch him. Would have, if not for Maryam’s fingers tracing oily darkness. A shot of something hit the pendulum blade and it slowed, then Hook’s hands at her side finished tracing the same.
The ‘Burden’ slowed the blade enough that it did not even brush the back of Yaq’s boots.
They were able to take it slower with the last few feet since the floor was thicker, Yaq crossing in his own time. They took a moment to check on each other, making sure no one was wounded, then picked up their packs and weapons. Song popped her head past the doorway. The next room appeared to be a half-circle of a lecture hall with a dozen closed doors in a row, but before they could get into that they had to settle another problem.
“No,” Lieutenant Felicity-to-the-Faithful plainly said from the other side. “I’m not attempting that crossing.”
Song glanced at Maryam, who grimaced. They were only on the second room and her friend was already two Signs deep, at this rate she’d risk burnout before they got anywhere. On the other hand, if she did not cover for the garrison men then this avenue was good as a dead end.
“It is either that or we find another path,” Song murmured.
Her friend sighed, pinching her nose.
“I’ll cover you with Signs, lieutenant,” Maryam finally said. “And your fellows as well. Meanwhile the others will do the rope trick.”
Lieutenant Felicity still looked disinclined to agree, but he had to know that if he proved too timid they could complain to Colonel Cao. Nailing down the room was straightforward, at least, needing no crossing for the soldiers: they did it next to the door, on the hallway’s side. Felicity hugged the wall opposite the blade and as far from the hole in the middle as he could, but still ended up with wet legs and screaming he had felt something in the water.
No one was fool enough to disbelieve him.
Maryam was now four Signs deep, but at least when the lieutenant tested the next room it confirmed going this way brought them closer to the Repository. Odds were, Song thought, that Scholomance judged this room enough of an obstacle that it did not mind stretching out this path longer. It wasn’t wrong. The four soldiers were made to wait on the other side until it was confirmed that the next room was solved. No point in asking Maryam to signify again until they were sure there’d be a point.
Not that this particular room seemed all that elaborate. It was a tiered lecture hall in a half-circle, going down three levels with stairs in the middle. The bottom of the hall boasted no fewer than twelve wooden doors, all set in the wall at identical intervals. Silumko slowed them, though, as they approached the bottom. Song had not noticed anything, but he prodded near one of the tables on the last level and there was a loud click.
A square piece of floor on the way to the doors dropped out, revealing a dark pit. Charming.
“Let me have a deeper look before we try the doors,” Silumko said.
Despite taking ten minutes to examine every nook and cranny, this seemed to be the only trap. That wasn’t part of the doors, anyway. Song hung back, leaving it to the specialists. After that first door there was no risk of Silumko taking lockpicking lightly, and only so many of them would fit near the door anyhow. In a matter of moments the first one was unlocked, though when Camalli yanked it open a metal stake punched forward propelled by a contraption.
Had any of them been fool enough to stand in front of the door, it might well have killed them.
Song folded her arms, watching the pair move to the second door: beyond the open one was space no larger than a closet, just enough fit the contraption and no more. She heard someone walk up to her, glancing to the side and finding it was Ishanvi.
“I must confess,” the bespectacled girl said, “that this is not like I expected.”
Song raised an eyebrow.
“What did you expect?”
“Something that feels less like gambling,” Ishanvi said. “Rolling the dice in every room, hoping the toss is never bad enough someone dies of it.”
“The same is true of every contract we’ll take on,” Song told her. “The Thirteenth did not set out to face the Newborn in Asphodel. The dice turned on us, so to speak, until there was no other choice.”
Ishanvi Kapadia bit her lip, worrying it, and for a moment Song could not help but think of her as young. The girl was nineteen, only two years younger than her, but it felt as if there was a chasm between the lives they had lived. Song thought of the way the first years had looked at Scholomance, out in front, and wondered when it was that she had ceased feeling fear at the sight of the place. Professor Sasan had once told them that was the purpose of this school, to kill the voice of fear inside their head, but Song had expected it to be some grand enlightenment.
Not the slow, steady erosion of the concept of what she had once thought of danger.
“I don’t think it’s trying very hard to kill us yet,” Ishanvi finally told her. “The reports I read about when the school closed, they mention entire hallways being flooded and devils being dropped onto unsuspecting students.”
Or it is waiting until we are too deep in to turn back to unleash these, Song thought.
“It was starved for a long time, and did not get to eat many last year,” she told Ishanvi instead. “It might not have the strength for such tricks anymore.”
The girl hummed, though she looked unconvinced.
“Do you ever wonder what this place is really for?” Ishanvi suddenly asked.
“For Lucifer to dwell in,” Song replied. “It was a summer palace, famously.”
“Was it?” Ishanvi asked. “The Lightbringer barely spent any time here before the Watch caught up to him. And the way he had this place built…”
She frowned.
“The old reports, they call the god haunting this place Scolomancia,” Ishanvi told her. “Not its real name, they say, but it sometimes answered to it. They had a better grasp on what the entity is capable of than we do.”
“And?” Song said, cocking an eyebrow.
“Scolomancia does not get to create anything,” Ishanvi said. “It can mix existing rooms, but not create them outright. Which means every trap, ever dead end, every trick was built on purpose. One can grow mad trying to guess at the Lightbringer’s intent, but why trap his own palace so?”
The implication there was clear enough.
“You think those rooms were made so Scolomancia would get to use them,” Song said.
“I do,” Ishanvi nodded. “And that’s not even the most interesting part.”
She breathed out.
“If Lucifer did this, what was it for? What is Scolomancia barring access to?”
“Guesswork,” Song said, disapproving.
“Maybe,” Ishanvi said. “But the rooms are real, and they exist for a reason. That much is not guesswork.”
They were interrupted by a burst of flame as Silumko opened the eleventh door, a trap belching out a small inferno that dispersed after a moment. The last door was opened, after, and revealed only bare stone. Twelve doors, and all twelve had been a dead end or a trap. Song frowned, her interlocutor as well.
“It can’t be a dead end, the yatrameter would not have responded that way if there was not a conceptual path forward,” Ishanvi muttered.
That had most of them looking to the ceiling, but Song instead crouched by the pit. Spikes at the bottom, she saw. She slowly circled the rim, observing with eyes that did not care for the dark, and eventually let out a little snort. Maryam was besides her a heartbeat later, cocking her head to the side.
“Ah,” she said. “So there’s a tunnel down there, though we’ll have to crawl.”
“And also not fall on the spikes,” Song said. “It’s a good thing we have several coils of rope.”
A heartbeat passed, then Maryam grimaced.
“Fuck, I’ve got the narrowest shoulders,” she said. “That means I’m first in, doesn’t it?”
“Why, Warrant Officer Khaimov, thank you for volunteering,” Song smiled.
--
The hidden shaft was tall but narrow, which made for uncomfortable crawling.
Song had it easier than some of the others, for hers was a slender flame, but she still felt unpleasantly squeezed on her way through. The end of the crawlway led into a broad stone floor at the bottom of broad but steeply angled stairs, which they stumbled out onto one after another. There was a wide arched threshold behind them, the room past it dark and cavernous. Lieutenant Felicity was last out, and looking none too pleased at the trip. He checked the yatrameter.
“Still forward,” he reluctantly confirmed.
He glared at the shaft exit afterwards, as if blaming it for being stuck there with them. Song paid him no further mind. The device had confirmed they were still on a path, so that meant they must go up and not down. Up the stairs they went, guns out, and as they climbed the heights Song suddenly paused. The room did not carry echoes well, but she was fairly sure she had just heard a woman’s voice. Guns at the ready, they approached the crest of the stairs and prepared to fall into a firing line – and beat a retreat towards the arch, if need be.
Only what waited past the crest was not lemures but a rather more familiar sight: Vivek Lahiri’s brow rose at the sight of her and he lowered his musket, gesturing for the rest of the First and the Thirty-Eighth to follow suit.
“Captain Ren,” he said. “An unexpected pleasure.”
“Captain Lahiri,” she replied, inclining her head. “I feel the same. Scholomance must have twined our paths.”
Captain Philani, who had been standing besides the ever-smiling Someshwari, let out a loud snort.
“Well, there’s certainly work enough for a dozen brigades here,” he said. “By all means, come have a look.”
With her eye no longer on the guns, Song allowed herself to take in the rest of the chamber – though she somewhat had already, as the heart of it was… difficult to miss. The top of the stairs led into a broad room whose back wall was at least forty feet wide and was entirely iron, or at least covered in it. The wall was a vast tapestry of twitching machinery and puzzles, each filling at least a foot long square, and as they approached Song’s eyes widened as her stare followed the wall up and up and up.
“Saltless gods,” she breathed out. “That must be at least two hundred feet.”
“Precisely so, in fact. Exactly fifty Lierganen feet wide and two hundred tall.”
Her gaze flecked at the woman who’d just addressed her – and whose name Song would have known even if she had not made a study of the First Brigade, for it was written in golden letters above her head. Monchou Ma was an Umuthi Society student, and reportedly a scion from the famous Ma family of Luxing. Given that the Ma ran the most famous eldritch weapons workshop in Vesper, it was only to be expected that she would be Deuteronomicon track.
The reason why Song believed her claim, however, came from the letters above her head: she was contracted to the inventor god Gongshu Mugong for the power to know the precise dimensions and strengths of everything she saw. Mind you, only the first part was publicly known. For understandable reasons Monchou preferred not to mention that she knew the precise bending and breaking point of everything in her sight.
Song slowly nodded, still taking in the sights as her crew caught up. The upper levels of the iron wall were touched by beams of Orrery light from windows high up and behind, the effect startlingly beautiful. She was not so affected she forgot to look for doors, however. On either side of the iron wall there were small doorways, neither of which were touched with a spike. The others had come from the bottom of the stairs, then.
Song waited for Captain Emeni to join her before heading out to the side for an informal council with the other two captains present, Vivek and Philani. None of them were eager to get into too much detail about the dangers of their route, but Song established that the path that the other alliance had taken to get here was about as difficult in practice as their own, even with the crumbling floor and the pit crawlway.
“With the room secured twice over, this seems like an appropriate place to establish a camp going forward,” Captain Vivek said. “I expect it will become something of a waystation for crews as we delve on deeper.”
Song nodded in agreement.
“Do your people have any notion as to what that iron wall is meant for?” she asked.
Captain Philani shook his head.
“No,” he said. “We’ve figured out two of the puzzles, they are not all difficult, but it seems unwise to trigger the machinery before we have a better notion of what it does.”
“Admirable restraint,” Captain Emeni praised.
“I see no need for squabbling between us going forward,” Captain Vivek continued. “There are two doorways and two crews. Let us each choose one and part on good terms.”
More than reasonable.
“You arrived first,” Song said. “It seems appropriate that you should choose first as well.”
“How polite,” Vivek smiled, inclining his head.
They shook hands and parted. Maryam, who had gone aside to speak quietly with Amaru Wayar, had a report of her own.
“She and Diego ended up slowing the crowd by about a quarter hour,” she said. “If we don’t keep up a good pace, it won’t be long before people start catching up to us.”
“Let’s pick up the pace, then,” Song said.
Vivek and Philani went right, so their own crew naturally went left. Scholomance seemed to lack a plan to deal with them, or perhaps it was making time – first they went up a flight of stairs, then down. A hallway sent them to the left, leading straight to another that sent them rightwards. From there they stumbled across a dusty, empty stockroom but past its locked door they found something slightly odder.
It was a simple enough hallway. Narrower than Scholomance’s usual architecture, with a low ceiling and more tightly packed walls, but still more than enough room to move through comfortably. About sixty feet long, and their lanterns revealed nothing but bare stone all the way to the opposite doorway.
“I don’t see the trap,” Silumko admitted, kneeling by her. “If there is a trigger, it might not be mechanical.”
Song nodded.
“Maryam?” she asked.
The signifier closed her eyes for a few moments, then they fluttered open. After having had to ferry across four garrison men with Sign cover she’d privately told Song that she needed to slow down for at least an hour, but she could still look ahead with her logos. There was a reason signifiers were so prized when delving Scholomance.
“There’s something in the aether here,” Maryam said. “Like a lantern. It doesn’t seem to be doing anything, though, and I’m not seeing any mechanisms in the walls or floor.”
“I’m not seeing any obvious physical opening for a physical component to the trap, if there is one,” Silumko noted. “Maybe this ‘lantern’ is an alarm for the next room.”
Song hummed, reaching for her pouch and tossing a pebble into the hall. It skipped across stone and came to rest, but to no effect.
“Our choice is risking it or turning back, then,” she said.
“Risking it out trying the iron wall,” Captain Emeni corrected. “Lahiri and the others will be delving the other route by now and they will not look kindly on us trailing in their wake.”
“That sounds,” Song said, “like a vote in favor of pushing ahead.”
It was, and the tally was strongly in favor – only Yaq voted against and Ishanvi abstained, though Song suspected that was merely because she thought it impolitic to vote against as well. The silver-eyed captain rolled her shoulders and stretched her legs.
“Song?” Maryam asked, eyebrow cocked.
“It is my notion to press forward,” she said. “I will go first.”
Her friend’s lips thinned in disapproval, but she did not argue.
“Be careful,” Maryam said instead.
Song nodded back with a faint smile. As careful as one could be in such a place as Scholomance, anyhow. Her pistol stayed holstered and her sword sheathed, while her musket was strapped to her back: all she had in hand was a small brass lantern burning Glare oil. Her first step into the hall was careful, like a cat testing the water, but there was no reaction so she put her foot down entirely.
She took two more steps forward, slow and wary, then paused to look around. She could not find any change. Looking back at the blind angles from before, the corners of the hall on either side of the doorway, she saw only that Scholomance had done rough work putting this place together: the stone of the doorway and back wall were not the same as that of the walls and ceiling of the hall, the hallway’s being slightly darker.
Song kept advancing, lantern in hand, and every breath where no trap came alive only had her growing warier. Twenty feet in, Maryam called out from the doorway.
“You’re at the edge of the light in the aether,” she said.
Song breathed in and out, then once perfectly calm took a step forward.
Nothing.
It was tempting to slump as the seconds passed, to let herself believe she was out of danger, but that was the sort of foolishness that Scholomance fed on. She could not let down her guard. Instead she resumed her advance. Ten more feet, twenty. She could see through the doorway, now, into a room that looked massive – perhaps even larger than Lucifer’s throne room. Just another twenty feet and-
A faint shiver went through the floor, and Song spent half a moment listening for movement before realizing that it wasn’t a shiver at all she had felt. The floor was moving.
She broke into a run, forward for the doorway out. She was closer to it than the entrance. One step, two and she almost slipped on the third because the floor wasn’t falling or shifting – it was tumbling to the right, the floor and right wall staying connected at an angle as the moving wall revealed that behind it laid a deep, dark pit she was being emptied into. Suppressing a curse, she ran on the side of the rising floor as it tumbled rightwards, the angle growing ever steeper.
Song dropped the lantern to move quicker, not paying attention as it tumbled into some pit below save for the flash of bones she glimpsed at the bottom.
She wasn’t going to make it in time.
The edge of what had been the floor was going to scrape against the ceiling when she was mere feet away from the doorway, emptying into the pit below like a bowl of scraps into the garden. Gods, but the precision it must have taken to build this trap. What could she even- precision, yes, precision.
Song took her musket off and shoved the stock in between the rising floor and the ceiling – a moment later there was a snapping sound as the great mass of stone plowed on entirely unimpeded. Song swallowed a scream and grasped the barrel of her stuck gun like it would kill her to abandon it, because it would, and prayed as the bottom dropped out under her, angling towards the pit.
The trap should have kept tumbling rightward, pouring her into the pit forcefully, but it didn’t. She hung there from the barrel of her gun, hands growing sweaty, and watched how the metal curved slightly downwards from the weight she put on it. And also watched how the trap got stuck.
There wasn’t enough room, that was the problem. The tumbling part of the hallway had been designed with inhuman precision so the edge of the floor would brush against the ceiling with less than half an inch of room, and though the trap had mass and strength enough to crush the wood and metal of her musket’s barrel, it could not compress them to the extent it needed to keep tumbling forward.
So, instead, it got stuck. Not that it helped her much, stuck as she was hanging over the pit.
The musket gave a little more, bent a little further. Her palms were sweat-soaked.
“Please be clever,” Song rasped out. “Please have thought of that, please.”
A heartbeat later, she learned that the crafter of this trap had thought of what should happen if something got stuck in the trap. It began tumbling back the other way and Song almost wept in relief. The very moment there was angle enough to support her landing, she dropped at the junction of the angle made by the wall and ceiling and ran straight for the door.
Her musket fell apart behind her, the compressed part snapping off and getting smeared on the wall while the rest clattered against the ground. But Song, Song was through. She called out that she was fine to the others across the hall, without wounds, but instead of shouting across the divide to coordinate a crossing Song allowed herself a few steps into the next room.
The ‘lantern’ in the aether, she dimly thought. That must have been the trigger, the equivalent of a pressure plate – it had only triggered when she left the lantern’s cast, took her ‘foot’ off the plate.
But that half-formed notion was chased out of her mind immediately by the sight laid out before her. The room was even larger than she had thought, the ceiling so tall she could not see through the mist and only a dim light pulsed in the distance. She was high up, atop a drop almost tall enough to be called a cliff, and she slowly walked towards the edge to get a better look at below.
There, Song saw stretching out what she could only call a trench: like a cut in the ground, a massive ditch stretched out so far away that she could barely make out the end. It began as a single hallway, but soon split into several and Song could see how the corridors began to intersect and lead to dead ends rooms as the trench advanced across what had to be several miles.
It was a massive, shifting maze of traps and dangers that Scholomance had put between the exploration crews and the Glass Repository. And Song saw a shape in this, in the decision and those that would be made to match it: the trench, ever-changing as the god won and ate or lost and learned. The exploration crews, forging paths and methods as the god in the walls taught them one death after another.
Colonel Cao had warned them that to delve Scholomance was to match wits with a god seeking to bar their way, they would need to outwit it again and again to get anywhere. Her warning, as they so often were, proved prophetic. Because Song did not see a mere trench, below, she saw a gauntlet thrown on the floor.
Come one and all, Scolomancia was daring them. Come and let us find out which is swiftest: your wits or my teeth.
“Challenge accepted,” Song Ren replied, and picked up the fucking gauntlet.
Comments
Alex
Im wondering how both storylines will intersect, It will be very interesting if Scholomance is much bigger than we thought and has an entire "basement" that webs out all over the island in long corridors
Jacob Burton-Edwards
I would like to register the prediction that Scholomancia, the god animating the building, is actually Lucifer, and that he intended to become its Malignus Loci from the start. He had all these traps built because he knew he'd get to use them. The devils he drops on people are remnants of his armies. And he did all this because he knew the temptation of a ritual for making powerful, long-lived supersoldiers would be too great for the Watch to refuse and he'd get to keep harming them for centuries after they slew his last body.
Joe Rachman
I'm struggling to understand how Song's technique works. The floor tips to dump her in a pit. She shoves her musket in the gap where the floor edge of the tipping floor meets the ceiling and this blocks the mechanism as while it can crush the material it can't compress it, following so far. She then hangs from the barrel of the gun (given the pressures wouldn't the barrel just sheer off the stock? but ok let's say it doesn't). The trap then unjams itself tipping back the other way. Ok, but then surely the crushed gun just slips out from the gap no longer held in place by the pressures and Song falls sliding down the angled slope to her doom.
Runaway_Cactuar
I think a small part of Song died when she heard that the most diplomatic member of her cabal is known as the "snail poison guy". Bet she'll remember that point when it's time to bring on a newbie~
