Pale Lights

Chapter 154 27

Maryam was not having a good time.

"Black fucking Goat," she cursed, ducking under the spinning metal blade.

It screeched and sparked above her head, suddenly whipping back as the articulated metal arm that'd shot it out withdrew into the wall. Behind her Ishanvi threw herself forward before she could be carved in two by the wall-blade coming out of the floor, Maryam leaning back to grab her by the shoulder and drag her into the next section. There had been no way to tell when they came in, the floor seamless, but now the differing heights of floor sections let you pick out them out easily.

"The dial is at three," Song Ren evenly called out. "Shift."

Exactly two heartbeats after Song's last word, the floor of the oval-shaped room shifted. Split into eight sections, the surface broke up every which way. Some went up, others down, others were inclined forward or back seemingly without rhyme or reason. Maryam swallowed another curse, throwing herself onto the edge of the now backwards-sloping floor trying to toss her back onto the section with the blade traps.

She caught the edge, hoisting herself up and offering Ishanvi a hand to tug her up so she might as well. After a beat of delay the walls around them shifted forward by two slots, like a belt being slid forward, and that wasn't even-

A sharp crack resounded, almost instantly followed by the sound of crumpling metal. Song, standing in the middle of the room on top of a raised platform she could barely fit both boots on, calmly began reloading her rifle as the armored form toppled down from the top of the wall. It was still clutching a jagged javelin in hand, now splashed with ichor from where Song had slain it with a shot through the throat.

Maryam could not quite make out what the creature under was, save that it was child-sized, hairy and had cloven feet. They were also very fine javelin throwers, as the jagged wound ripped into Emeni Maziya's stomach could attest.

"We need to pull that lever," Silumko shouted from the other side of the room.

He was looking a little singed from the way that gout of flame had clipped him, but his cloak had taken the worst of it. A bang resounded as Song paused in her reloading to casually put a pistol shot into another lemure. It toppled back out of sight, screeching wildly.

"That could make it worse," she shouted back.

"Do you see anything else to do?" he asked.

"Three seconds to trap reset," Song stated. "Two."

Gods, how was she keeping count in the middle of all this? Maryam squinted, trying to recall what she'd seen of the trap order, but the damn thing was all-

"Darts," Ishanvi gasped out from her side.

"One," Song warned.

Forward would mean the wheels again, and the floor there had been lowered. Dangerous, but...

"Forward," Maryam cursed.

She threw herself past the edge and onto the next section even as a panel opened in the wall and a dozen darts were spat out by some sort of metal contraption – she hit the floor badly, swallowing a groan as her knee burned and Ishanvi landed besides her in a horrible bellyflop that had her gasping like a fish on the shore. Both pressed themselves against the floor, so the spinning metal wheel carved into the air above them before withdrawing.

"The dial is at four," Song said. "Shift."

A shout from the other side. Yaq and Cemelli were absorbed in keeping their captain alive, the large Skiritai moving her from one section to another and the Savant keeping her from bleeding to death with a mix of bandages and her contract, but Silumko was still trying to solve the room. Which had apparently cost him when a gust of yellow gas shot out of the wall and he didn't get his cloak up entirely in time. The side of his face was blistered like someone left out in direct Glare for too long.

Two beats, the sections shifted. Their floor shot up, ticking gears below pushing up a piston beneath it, while every other sloped towards the space that made – to try and forced them below the raised floor, which would then smash down on the next rotation and crush whatever lay beneath. One more tick, the belt slid. Two slots in the opposite direction as before, and Maryam did not need to guess which trap that was: the flamethrower was not clean, it'd made dark streaks around the mouth spitting out the flame.

Another crack, another dead lemure tumbling down after Song put a bullet in them. Gods, but they were lucky that after Song began shooting back at the creatures they'd turned coward, because there must be at least a dozen of them. Her captain was slower to reload with the isibankwa rifle than she had been with her musket but only by a hair, and somehow seemed to be reloading her pistol in spare moments as well. And the masses of Vesper claimed it was the Akelarre that did magic.

"The lever," Silumko mouthed, his voice half a groan. "Khaimov, has to be you."

Maryam bit at her lip, keeping a hand on Ishanvi's shoulder to make sure she was there and not falling off their floor-section turned raised platform, high in the air. There were two doors to the room: the one they had entered from, which had locked moments after they entered in a grim omen, and the portcullis barring the way out at the opposite end of the oval. It was set in the wall, and to its left was an iron lever that in a place not trying to kill them Maryam would have assumed was meant to raise said portcullis.

But this was Scholomance, so it had trap written all over it.

Silumko wasn't wrong, though, because what else was there? The walls were solid save for the parts that moved for traps, and atop them were spikes save for four gaps the lemures peeked out to promptly get shot by Song. The floor was stone, and beneath it there was room but the bottom of it was roiling machinery that would rip someone apart if they stepped carelessly. The only other standout was the dial above the portcullis, going from zero to nine with a ticking brass needle advancing with every shift.

That lever was suspicious as cousins showing up after an inheritance, but their crew was low on options.

"Three seconds to trap reset," Song announced. "Yaq, staying in place leaves you in range of the darts from the other side."

They couldn't keep doing this forever, she thought. Mistakes were coming, and to graver consequences than a javelin in the belly.

"Hooks," Maryam whispered.

Agreement was traced against the veil.

Even as the pair carrying Captain Emeni hastily repositioned to avoid the darts Maryam's sister shot out of her shadow, dispersing into a flock of ravens. Maryam kept a hand on their logos, tugging her back together even as beneath her own feet the machinery holding her up her section began to tick. The Gloam flock coalesced back into a shadowy outline of her sister, standing by the lever and pulling it up just as a gout of flame burned beneath the raised floor she stood on – meant to incinerate anyone who would have hid there, presumably.

The moment the lever was pushed all the way up, the fire cut out and the entire room went mad.

Their floor slammed back into the ground, hard enough Maryam was thrown to the floor and Ishanvi's glasses would have flown away if not for the string keeping them in place, but that wasn't even a prelude. The entire room had been on fifteen-second rotations before, more or less, but now the dial moved without pause and so did the room. She was barely back on her feet when a slit opened in the wall and a gust of yellow gas was spewed out, Maryam barely able to signify a Sphere before it could be blown into her face. She still felt a burn on her forehead, the sensation searing hot.

Sticking the Sphere right against the mouth spewing gas sealed it shut after the first few fumes and since the Sign could not be moved, only broken, the threshold of pressure to puncture it was too high for the machine spitting out gas. Not that she was able to pat her own back for long.

"Back," Ishanvi hastily said, grabbing her by the hood and pulling.

The floor's incline shifted beneath their feet, angling downwards, and they both toppled backwards as darts tore through the air. Maryam felt the air whirl just before her face, dimly noting that without Ishanvi that would have been her shoulder. She had presence of mind enough to dismiss the Sphere before both their backs hit the floor as they slid down, moaning in pain. Maryam's sister slipped back into her shadow as she watched with horror: further ahead, the flamethrower trap kept spitting out fire as it slowly rotated back towards them.

They both scrambled back towards the top of the angled floor, to throw themselves over the rim. Shit, what was on the other side again?

"I told you," Maryam snarled out without looking, because she was not dying without the last word. "I goddamn told you so, Silumko!"

"No, he was correct," Song calmly said.

The air behind her was getting warmer. Maryam threw herself over the edge, landing on another downwards slope. Ishanvi followed with a dull thud, and before either of them could move the floor righted itself before shooting down. Leaving them about the right height for their torso to be incinerated when the flamethrower caught up. Which it would, because they were stuck in a hole with moving machinery for walls – no one was putting a foot in there without getting it torn out by gears.

"Song," Maryam called out.

"Almost there," Song said.

A heartbeat later there was a gunshot, followed by the sound of a lemure falling. Pistol. When had she even reloaded it?

"Is there a Sign that shields from fire?" Ishanvi asked.

"That I know? The Sphere," Maryam noted. "For about one second, before it shatters and we die screaming."

"So we hit the floor and pray," Ishanvi grimaced.

"No, we're getting hit for sure," Maryam said. "The fire's spread gets conical further out."

She could see the flickering, burning light just past the rim of their pit.

"You don't sound like you're about to die," Ishanvi faintly said.

"We're not going to die," she replied. "Maybe. SONG?"

"I have it," Song Ren replied, tone serene.

And as the last syllable left her mouth there was a sharp crack, the rifle's bark, and after a tense second Maryam saw the fire spout gutter out. All around them, the machinery walls of the pit slowly began to spin out – as if the momentum's source had been killed and the gears were only bleeding out what was left. While Maryam would have enjoyed some kind of triumphant emergence from the hole in the ground, the bleeding out process actually took several minutes so instead everyone else was standing at the edge of the hole by the time they were finally able to climb out.

She took Silumko's offered hand, letting herself be hoisted up the rest of the way. Gods but the side of his face was looking bad, like he had red boils, and it touched the corner of his mouth. No wonder he'd not spoken up since that last shout. She nodded thanks to him and he nodded back. Nothing more need be said. Yaq finished pulling up a flushed Ishanvi, Maryam checking her over for wounds once before turning to Song.

"What happened?" she asked.

Song stepped aside on the now-still floor, gesturing at the portcullis. No, Maryam noticed after a beat. At right above it, where the dial was. The needle on said dial was scrapped, because Song had shot it at the exact moment it was over the number zero.

"It never went over the zero mark before you pulled the lever," Song said. "It skipped directly from nine to one after a two second pause. When rotation became constant it did, though, and I noticed during that beat the machinery paused. I just had to keep the needle there."

There was a moment of profound, baffled silence as everyone stared at her captain. Silver eyes blinked back at them, face blank as she hid her surprise at their reaction. Yes, Song, Maryam sarcastically thought. Because just anyone would have been able to notice the discrepancy in the middle of death roulette, figure out the solution and then manage to accomplish with a rifle shot was what was very clearly meant to be something done through holding the needle in place by hand. Fucking Song Ren, sometimes.

"The portcullis is still closed," Maryam said instead. "I'm afraid you don't get a passing mark, Mistress Ren."

That the face Song made at having been told she'd failed even a theoretical exam was the closest she had looked to being bothered since they entered the murderous oval was, admittedly, one of the reasons Maryam would never be able to be angry with her for too long.

"We don't know it's locked," Song insisted. "I will try forcing it up."

Immediately she wandered off, dragging off Yaq with her for muscle while the remaining students turned still-baffled gazes on her. Captain Emeni, only standing because she had an arm around Cemelli and looking a little pale, rasped out a wet laugh.

"Well," the other captain said. "I suppose there's a reason the Thirteenth have a reputation."

A beat passed.

"Ha!"

Maryam glanced to the side, finding that Song and Yaq had succeeded at raising the portcullis off the ground maybe a foot.

"I told you," Song called out "I'd wager it was never locked in the first place."

"So there is," Maryam drily told the other captain. "So there is."

--

Ishanvi painted the numbers on the wall: 13, 29, 200.

Emeni Maziya was in no danger of death so long as her physician was around, but she wouldn't be getting any better either. It was thus a given that their crew would begin the trek back to camp, but before they did they must claim stake their claim on the solving of the room. Only after the red paint took did they begin returning through the beaten parts of what students were calling 'the Trench'.

They'd beaten two rooms this morning, which out in the hallways of Scholomance would have been a pittance but down here was a more than respectable performance. The door at the entrance of the oval had unlocked when Song killed the machine, so they simply returned to the wind hall they'd cleared earlier. It'd been a nasty piece of work as well, walls and floor covered with nails while machines at either end of the hall alternated blowing a strong wind and sucking in air like a siphon.

Silumko had been the one to figure out a solution, cleverly finagling a grenade so its wick wouldn't be blown out when it was sucked in by the machine. The trap itself delivered the explosives into the heart of its machinery, silencing the first of the machines and allowing them to take their time dismantling the second. Those nails had been surprisingly dangerous, too: a single unwary step would have seen one go clean through the sole of even Watch field boots, so they'd wrapped cloth around theirs just to be safe.

Maryam was eyeing said nails warily as she made her way through the 'safe' path, which was little more than stepping room between the jutting sharpness. Inevitably, within moments of them having crossed back into the wind hall there was loud ticking and the clang of metal as the oval room slid into the outer wall of the Trench to their left, Scholomance pulling it out of sight and into the dark as it moved around its maze to fit another room to the doorway of the wind hall.

"That is always a little discouraging to see," Silumko commented.

"Rooms do not reset," Maryam reminded him. "Scholomance only has so many of them to put in the Trench."

The crew composed of the First and Thirty-Eighth had established that much last week, when encountering the same room twice and finding the traps were still disarmed. Not that the god in the walls was out of tricks despite this, as the unpleasant surprise they'd encountered in the oval room had made clear. Yaq had one of those armored lemures strapped to his back, to bring back to camp so proper teratologists might have a look at it, but there was a source of lore closer at hand. The signifier cleared her throat, her eyes on the nail-strewn floor but her mind half on what she was to say.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Ishanvi, you seemed to recognize something when you had a look at the corpses," she called out. "Do you know what they are?"

"Maybe," the Someshwari hedged. "I cannot be sure without the right books."

"Your best guess, then," Captain Emeni tightly said.

A pause.

"I believe they may be kobaloi," Ishanvi said. "The characteristics fit: furred body, hooves, elementary use of weapons."

Maryam's brow rose. She knew about those, mainly because she'd been surprised to find out that a species of lemure that existed on Juska also dwelled in the Trebian Sea. The Izvoric called them crniglodavci, the black gnawers, though some poetic souls preferred to title them 'the small men of the hills'. They were pack lemures that delighted in collapsing things man built by sapping below them, but rarely a threat unless some bigger beast slapped them around and made them into minions.

Satyrians, in particular, like to use them like hunting hounds to flush out prey.

"I thought kobaloi had tusks," Cemelli said, helping her captain through a gap.

"Some do," Ishanvi replied. "I hesitate to name them firmly because kobaloi mutate very easily in high-Gloam environments. It is a common teratologic mistake to mistake a different species of lemure for one of their mutated breeds."

"So we could be looking at Scholomance's own private tribe," Song evenly said.

"It would fit," Ishanvi admitted. "They require relatively little subsistence to survive and won't fall into violent competition if there is a greater creature keeping them in line."

"Or a god," Maryam said.

"Or a god," Ishanvi agreed. "Though few besides gods of the Old Night would deign to make use of their kind."

And on that cheery note they finished making their way out of the wind hall in a single file line, Maryam noting with some surprise that the god in the walls didn't shift the hall away even as they exited it. The new room connecting to the door must be particularly vicious for it not be shuffling the paths. Past the hall they were back to the entrance of the Trench, the opening sequence of three rooms that was the unmoving common trunk which then split off into multiple routes.

Their crew had taken the leftmost path out of three this morning when it set out, but there were now five branches instead. Good luck, Ishanvi, she thought. The former scribe's personal crusade of mapping out the Trench maze in her journal seemed to Maryam a fool's errand, but the girl could spend her rest hours however she liked.

Past the last of the entrance rooms the seven of them paused at the bottom of what could only be called a cliff: the very same one Song had been the first student to reach when she made it through that vicious tumbling hall trap last week.

It was a sheer drop of at least thirty feet, but when its summit became the forward camp of the exploration crews a combination of students and garrison hands had put in the work to make it usable. There were pulleys settled upstairs for cargo and the brave, as well as a crank lift for the wise. The pair of garrison soldiers at the bottom of the lift saluted when their crew returned, ringing a small bell to signal the top of the cliff. The lift began creaking its way down a moment later.

It could only take three at a time so they went in batches. The wounded captain with the also-wounded Silumko and their physician first, then Yaq with Ishanvi and the lemure corpse. Song and Maryam went up last, which gave them time to talk mostly in private.

"We won't be delving again today," Song murmured. "The javelin didn't make it all the way to her guts but it still went deep. The bleeding was bad enough she might have died, if not for Cemelli."

"Silumko will have a hard time talking before he gets his face looked at, too," Maryam agreed. "I could see us swinging a second trip with only Emeni and her doctor missing, but not with him out of the game as well."

There was a hint of frustration on Song's face, but she mastered it even as the lift came back down for them.

"There might be labor in need of doing at camp," she said. "And if nothing else, we can go wayfinding."

Ugh, Maryam thought. To both. She was neither a tinker nor particularly enthused as the notion of sniffing around the routes linking the camps and the entrance hall in the hopes that Scholomance would toss them a safer path that could replace one currently in use. Everyone could see that the god's attention was on the Trench, it usually kept throwing dead ends at those who went wayfinding until they gave up.

Tristan, were he here, would have called it gambling without even the decency of a prize.

They both stepped onto the lift when it reached the bottom, sparing a nod for the soldiers before they were brought back up. Before long they were at the top, stepping away from the edge of the cliff and towards the Trench camp. It showed, Maryam thought, that there was no army in any land so well versed as the Watch at putting up outposts. Last week, within days of a feasible route between here and the iron wall being discovered, the garrison had built a well-functioning outpost out of only what could be carried by men.

Crates filled with loose masonry collected within Scholomance were stacked two high as an outer rampart ten feet high, while behind them benches had been positioned so that musketmen could stand and fire over the makeshift wall. The insides were organized in a grid with clear avenues for movement once delineated by chalk on the ground – half of it wiped by boots, now – that split the space between a supply depot, an infirmary, a refectory, a dormitory for the garrison and a long line of tents for the exploration crews.

There was even a makeshift headquarters at the back, a black pavilion tent where Colonel Cao had personally set up.

Besides the great paper-strewn table where captains were invited to sit for briefings, the ambitious Stripe instructor had also set up two boards. One carried public information: maps of the established routes to and from the camps, a list of still-extant dangers along them and the prices of various supplies when bought inside Scholomance. There were even 'work bounties' for crews to take up, labor that the colonel had judged would improve the camp and was willing to reward. They ranged from as simple as bringing in specific supplies to as complex as building a proper gate for the outpost.

The other board, the one where Song's eyes strayed and remained, was a lot less useful in Maryam's view: it held scores. By brigade number, and the numbers were amended twice a day: once at six in the morning, again at six in the evening. Clear a room? Three points. Have a room you cleared used among the settled paths? Three again. One point for solving one of the iron wall puzzles, one point per work bounty unless specified otherwise.

Considering a student's point total would decide whether or not their yearly test was waved off, the moment the numbers were made public competition had... significantly hardened.

There'd been scuffles already, though never in camp, and the independents had mostly come together in a broad sort of protection league that called itself a 'student association'. It was surprisingly well funded and just as 'surprisingly' very respectful to Nathi Morcant, which surely must be coincidence. The tick had dug in, his efforts buoyed by the Sign that Amaru and Diego had pulled out on the first day of the delve. No one wanted to be dropped asleep at the starting line again.

Their own crew held a respectable score of twenty – soon to be twenty-six – but they'd been fucked on the paths. They and the First-Thirty Eighth alliance both, actually. While both their crews had found the initial paths to the iron wall and the Trench, late seventhday last week Tupoc and Imani's crew had stumbled into the former room through a roundabout but significantly safer path that had become the mainstay.

Irritatingly, the First and Thirty-Eighth had then pulled slightly ahead by having their path between the Trench camp and the iron wall becoming the mainstay. It went through a trapped rope bridge over an abyss, but that was still significantly more manageable than the tumbling hallway their own crew had gone through.

Everyone who could had pitched in for the lift and the Trench outpost as well as the larger and more comfortable iron wall encampment, but now the work was done and there was no more honey to squeeze out of that rock.

The remaining work bounties were the hard ones, the iron puzzle wall still needed scaffolding before the upper levels were attempted, and to try finding a replacement for one of the rooms in the settled paths was a game of long odds. That left fighting with all the other crews for the privilege of being the one to match wits against the latest death room in a murderous god-steered maze.

But hey, the death rooms gave more make-believe Cao points so it was definitely the better option! Stripes.

Cemelli had dragged her captain off to the infirmary for a better check-up than what the field had allowed, and that left the rest of the Twenty-Ninth somewhat at a loss as to what they should do. Song stepped in without missing a beat – Silumko was sent off after the other two, Yaq instructed where to put the lemure corpse and Ishanvi sent to make inquiries at the headquarters tent.

They all set out briskly, under Maryam's suppressed eye roll. It had not escaped Maryam's attention how comfortable the Twenty-Ninth was becoming with taking her captain's orders. The way even the previous rather dismissive Cemelli now perked up when addressed.

It was, Maryam mused, a classic case of Song Ren disease. When the gods pissed all over your day and Song ended up being the one keeping her head and settling the mess, throwing in a display of military valor and her being generally respectable, it became so very easy to see Captain Ren as some sort of captain's captain.

And why not? She was a devil in a fight, decisive when trouble came knocking and organized as only someone with a deep and abiding hatred of disorder could be. Maryam could still remember what it had been like when they first met. This brilliant, put-together person taking an interest in you, feeling dazed by her attention. Eager to keep it. And the thing was that, objectively speaking, Song was one of the finest officer candidates of their generation.

Their early days on Tolomontera last year had admittedly been disastrous, but Song had then taken that shipwreck and course-corrected in a way Maryam could not imagine any other captain in their year doing. It would be doing them all a disservice to pretend it had been on purpose that the Unluckies almost split up at the seams, that they were better off for it, but it would be just as much of one to pretend that their brigade's knit had not significantly tightened in the aftermath.

And so far the Thirteenth's record lived up to Song's ambitions. A brigade led by a Ren should have been a pack of black sheep nobodies, but instead they were ranked third in their year and they'd come out of their first major contract lauded as heroes. And it helped that the Thirteenth were talents one and all, but no Scholomance student was talentless. Song kept the Unluckies functioning and largely pointed in the same direction, which seemed like a small thing until you remembered who the Unluckies actually were.

So Maryam could sympathize with victims of Song Ren disease, having once contracted it herself. It was just that it was hard to stay in awe of Song once you'd seen her reorganize the munitions shed three times until the order the barrels were kept in suited her – not smallest to largest but largest to smallest, it 'felt less cramped' – or sit in the drawing room pretending to read The Life of King Chongsheng when she was really just there to eavesdrop on Izel and Angharad gossiping.

None of these things made her lesser, of course. But they made her someone, instead of the distilled essence of Promising Young Stripe that the Twenty-Ninth was now smelling off her like perfume.

Maryam went to drop off all her weapons and supplies in their crew's tent, between rolled up bedrolls and a small barrel of water that was sadly too precious to use to clean up even if she would have liked to. By the time she emerged, Ishanvi had returned from Cao's tent with answers.

"We were not the only ones to encounter the kobaloi," she said. "They have been attacking crews all morning, though only in the Trench."

"And?" Song pressed.

"We are the first to think of bringing back a corpse," Ishanvi revealed. "She's sending someone to take it and it'll be counted as one-pointer work bounty, added with our two cleared rooms."

Song looked pleased, but Maryam rolled her eyes. It'd not been much effort to bring over the kobalos corpse, but chasing Chunhua Cao's esteem too eagerly could only drive them into a pit.

They split up after that. Song went to speak with Cao and look up the latest work bounties, while Ishanvi disappeared to the edge of the cliff with her ink and journal. Rather than join Yaq in visiting the infirmary Maryam decided to go along with the latter. The Someshwari carried a lovely little wooden box touched with paint that held within it a writing kit made for traveling, and was soon sitting by the edge of the drop with her journal on her lap while her dipping pen, inkwell and cloth stood at the ready to the side.

Maryam sat besides her in silence, watching in fascination. Ishanvi opened the page, flipped past the drawing of the maze's layout she had made this morning – up here was the best vista for it, they could see almost two thirds of the way through – and quickly began sketching out the wind hall and the oval room out of memory, each taking up half a page. After the basic outlines were done she filled in the parts and made notes on the sides, including wounds taken and what Maryam found to be some idle details like smell or temperature. As a finishing touch she added the estimated time each room had been entered at and when they ended.

When she was done, Ishanvi waited a span before blowing the ink.

"The new maze layout next?" Maryam asked.

The girl nodded sharply.

"And since we appear to have the time, I will be doubling back to the iron wall to check on the puzzles there," Ishanvi told her. "I've begun keeping a section on them as well."

Maryam hummed.

"You think it will help us get to the Repository?"

You never knew, she supposed. Ishanvi looked surprised at the question.

"Oh, that's not the aim at all," the bespectacled girl said. "I suppose it might, but mostly I am keeping a record."

Maryam frowned.

"Of?"

"This," Ishanvi said, looking all around. "I suppose eventually some Conclave historian will be sent to collate a history of this exploration from the garrison reports, but that cannot compare to an account written on the ground."

"You're writing a history of the exploration?" Maryam asked, amused. "I wouldn't have though it worth the effort."

Students getting devoured by Scholomance was nothing new.

"All history is worth keeping," Ishanvi firmly replied. "It is the weave that keeps the strands of civilization together. Yesterday is the foundation today is built on."

"Weave the Strands, is it?" Maryam teased.

The motto of the Arthashastra Society was not the most stirring of the lot, though Maryam had always appreciated the layers of meaning to it – the Laurels were not only diplomats but historians and legalists, scholars of language and trade and rulership. Theirs was the weave that turned the many strands of mankind into nations, they were right about that.

Not that it would stop her making fun of how it sounded.

"It is a well-put motto," Ishanvi muttered. "Certainty better than 'Beyond the Horizon'. Do you know what the Orden de Cazadores found beyond the horizon, Maryam? They found Hell! So much for salvation, and so maybe put that in your pipe and smoke it."

Maryam had, in fact, known that. Yue had revealed to her that small piece of history last year, which was far from common knowledge even among Navigators. Her lips twitched at the other girl's indignation.

"I'm short a pipe and Angharad gets fussy about tobacco anyway," she said. "I'll have to pass."

Ishanvi turned on her what could only be called a pout.

"Your own brigade patron is a historian," she said. "You should know the importance of such works."

"One day you will actually meet Captain Wen Duan," Maryam noted, "and realize that most of what we've learned from him are things not to do."

She looked skeptical and Maryam could see the ink had dried on her page, so she rolled her shoulder and got up.

"I'll leave you to it," she smiled. "Have fun."

"This is serious business, Maryam," Ishanvi muttered. "There's not call for all this grinning."

She walked away grinning anyway, mood slightly lifted from the morning's pall. Better to hit the refectory before she went to the infirmary, she decided, since it was not impossible for what she saw there to cut her appetite. She made her way to the long tent, little more than a table in front of a field kitchen besides which empty food crates had been flipped to serve as seats. Maryam had intended to slurp down a bowl of the latest cauldron of leftovers soup that was the cook's apparent specialty and pair it with day-old bread before going away, but it seemed like her impromptu lunch was to turn into a larger affair.

Sitting in a corner were two of the First Brigade, and now that Amaru Wayar had excitedly waved her way Maryam knew from experience nothing short of outright running would shake her off. She picked up her meal and pushed a crate to join them, eyeing the other cabalist. One of the two Tianxi in the First Brigade, the one that wasn't a tinker but a... Savant? Sicong Ling, Maryam recalled. They'd never spoken before. He had a dignified bearing, she thought, and wore a surprising amount of white for a watchman.

"You lot are back early," Maryam said, honestly surprised. "Are you already done for the day?"

"One of Philani's boys took an arrow in the leg," Amaru told her. "We would have pressed on anyway, but with Scholomance shifting our path back behind us we decided it was wiser to withdraw."

"The god turns its finest wiles on us," Sicong Ling said, stroking his chin. "It has grasped we are a threat to it."

Maryam's brow rose at the bombast. Well, it was true their crew had gotten the furthest into the Trench of any of them. Tupoc and Imani's crew actually led in points because of how those were counted – that long, relatively safe route to the iron wall room had served them very well – but both Maryam's own crew and the leading alliance of second year had delved deeper into the maze. For now, anyway.

The chatter was light, both sides careful not to reveal too much about the rooms they'd beaten and how. Maryam threw them the bone that Emeni Maziya had taken a bad wound and received in trade news about the student association.

"Really, they hired Diego as Navigator muscle?" she said, almost amused.

"The irony is delightful, isn't it?" Amaru laughed.

"It is not unwise of the association to ensure half of the Akelarre that lay them low will no longer be pointed at them," Sicong said. "Though I do wonder what they have in mind."

"Haven't seen them at this camp yet," Maryam agreed. "Seems odd to go wayfinding, at this point. Are they doing the iron wall puzzles?"

A shrug from the slender Tianxi. Talk turned to idle things, Amaru sharing a mildly amusing story about how their Skiritai – Fikile, his name was – had accidentally gotten himself stuck in cuffs they did not have the keys to the previous day.

"How did you even get him out?" Maryam asked.

"I shattered the manacles my martial arts," Sicong Ling told her. "I was once an inner disciple of the Niaogong sect, you see."

"I see," Maryam lied.

Amaru cleared her throat.

"It means he received the boon of the sect's patriarch, its patron god, which they use for secret arts," she said.

She gesticulated in a vaguely aggressive way when saying secret arts, to her companion's visibly pained expression. And that wasn't even the part that set him off most.

"To call qi a boon is a wild oversimplification," Sicong bit out. "It is a deeply spiritual-"

"Anyhow, he can do all sorts of neat stuff with it," Amaru airily continued. "It's very impressive."

"It must have been a loss for the sect to let you join the Watch," Maryam said.

She didn't know much about Wuxia sects – Song's family, for obvious reasons, had avoided them like the plague – but she did know that those who got the boon from their patron were meant to stick around. Sicong Lin coughed into his hand, looking away.

"There were unusual circumstances," he vaguely said. "It was an acceptable compromise for me to join the Watch."

"He made the wrong enemy," Amaru told her. "Some brilliant new disciple."

"How was I supposed to know he was the reincarnation of the Patriarch's mortal sworn brother?" Sicong frustratedly said, throwing up his hands. "My father's an elder and we were still both almost cast out even though he was the one to pick the fight. For an absurd reason, too!"

"You stole his fiancée," Amaru grinned. "That's not absurd."

"She'd already broken the engagement before becoming a disciple," Sicong insisted. "And we were still courting!"

"Also you lost that big spar," Amaru added, clearly well practiced as wheedling along his anger.

"I wouldn't have, if the Patriarch didn't order me not to use qi out of fairness," he snarled. "You know it was-"

A moment later he sobered, looking at Amaru with hard eyes.

"You did it again," he said.

"I did it again," Amaru smugly agreed.

He cursed.

"I will not lose my temper next time," he swore.

Maryam cleared her throat.

"This is a regular spectacle, I take it?" she asked.

"Vivek has suggested that I help our dear Sicong in mastering his temper," Amaru said.

"And what Vivek wants, he gets," the Savant drily said. "At least Monchou wasn't there. She never learned the difference between a cutting comment and one that amputates."

"I'm lucky in that regard," Maryam mused. "I think I have the roughest tongue in the Thirteenth."

"Oh, I don't know about that," Amaru said. "I think it's endearing how you go about!"

Maryam stared at her very flatly.

"Sometimes I wonder about you, Wayar," she said. "I really do."

Sicong snorted.

"You have yet to even-"

He was cut off by the sound of fireworks, though it was not from too close. All their expressions darkened and they rose to their feet, remnants of the meal abandoned as they rushed to the outpost rampart. Climbing the bench, they looked into the distance and found the last remnants of the red flare that had been shot in the air. It came from a smoke-obscured room, and around it the Trench shifted like a kite in a windstorm. Eager, excited.

There would be no getting there, even if another crew had been close.

"Any idea who that was?" she asked.

"The Seventy-Seventh," Amaru said, swallowing. "We passed them on our way back, warned them."

"How many?" Maryam hoarsely asked.

"Four," Sicong replied.

The Trench's shuffling slowed, then stopped. The maze came to rest as the curtain of smoke thinned out. Maryam could not see what lay inside, not from here, but she knew what the next crew into that room would find: corpses. Never forget, Lord Asher had told them at graduation, that you must win every time. The last of the motes of burning light had long cleared the air, the call for help gone and behind it remained only the whisper of the rest of Asher's warning.

It only needs to win once.