Izel Coyac had known it would be a bad day from the moment he woke up with a corpse in his bed.

A leering, rotten cadaver with a burst belly leaning over the foot of the bed, intestines spilled all over the sheets. There had been another by the door, choked on its own vomit, and three more waiting in the hall. Five corpses, all dead from excess: the Five-Headed Hand was sending a stark omen. His suspicion it was about his overeating last night lasted no longer than the walk down to Crescent Street, and by the time he found the others he knew for certain it was going to be a bad day.

For one they were in a hospital and Izel hated hospitals in that same visceral, instinctive way that cats hated water.

The Allazei healing ward was packed even now that the least of the injured had been bandaged and sent to stumble back to some hostel with some poppy in their belly, but the first signs of thaw were already appearing in the hall. Gray-robed physicians changed sheets and mopped up floors, drawing the eye to the few empty beds that would spread like mold as the cured and the dead left by the same old temple doors.

Izel's eye caught on the sleeping Nenetl Chapul, following the graven orbweaver crawling over the captain's face that not even Song could see. It was the second he had found in here. The worst of the deaths must have passed, as two were well short of the eleven that would have betrayed the Grave-Given's genuine attention. He tore his gaze away from the sight of the amputated captain as the Thirteenth moved briskly towards the back of the hall, trying not to let his eyes wander as he kept pace with Angharad.

His ken ran deeper than usual today. Looking for guidance, he sought yellows and found a few – a scarf, a ribbon, beads and southern face paint – but none were cut through by a black line. It was the fifth of the sacred months, the Lord Grandson's twenty days, but that god was ever stingy with signs. Izel would have to do without even the slightest of omens, left with only his own judgment.

That, his record of late seemed to show a curse in full.

"Here," Song said. "The private room."

Their captain turned the corner past an empty, stripped-clean bed without waiting a beat and the rest of them followed. Brusque, by her standards. You could usually tell how fraught Song Ren felt by the pace at which she went through her courtesies. An omen of what was to come, this brusqueness, as was the way that Tristan failed to poke at her for it. The Sacromontan used humor like a prodding stick, jesting this and that to find out how deep riverbeds ran.

He'd refrained, which meant distraction or enough weight on his own shoulders he did not care to look. Even Angharad's gait ran stiff, as if she were fighting down impatience. Gods, none of them had walked away untouched by last night had they? Even beyond the obvious. Izel spared half a prayer to the Dirt-Eater in their name – quartered-sister, take upon you that which weighs us down, all sorrow and sin – but it was not enough to ease the shame boiling in his entrails.

Song wrenched open the door after two swift knocks, dragging him out of the bath of self-loathing he had begun to run the moment he first heard of the Misery Square massacre.

"Sure, you can come in," Maryam drily called out from inside.

Song did not even bat an eye at the quip as she entered. Izel was the last one in, which was not an omen so much as an unpleasant reminder that while the others had been fighting for their lives, for everyone's lives, he had eating a cauldronful of beans, moping away at Tristan's garden and – Izel breathed in, traced the Notched Feather against the palm of his hand with his thumb. It settled him down some.

It was not a prayer, the sign of the Three Hundredth Ninety-Ninth Brother, but a challenge to the self: do not continue as you have, lest you draw the eye of the god of cowardice and defeat upon you.

The private room Maryam had been awarded was small and mostly bare, the few pieces of furniture inside worn, but it had chairs enough for everyone and a small table by the bed where she set down the book she had been reading on top of a pile of the same. He was not surprised she had one of the anterooms, even though it was debatable whether she needed it. Maryam was Captain Yue's favorite, and every other second year Izel spoke to on the way to the Rainsparrow had rhapsodized over her single-handedly holding back a 'Lord of Teeth' until the rest of the Akelarre could bind it.

His gaze lingered on the writhing things he glimpsed in the shadows beneath Maryam's bed, past untucked sheets. Snakes, he thought. And bound together like the stripes of a skirt. The Serpent Mother, but what had drawn her here - vengeance, mutilation or terror? In the blink of an eye the shadows went to rest and Izel closed the door behind him, heading for the last empty chair.

Between Tristan, who was at Maryam's left, and Angharad who sat at the foot of the bed. Maryam looked exhausted, her eyes ringed even darker than usual, but though there was a sickly air about her the skin of her face had not gone sallow the way it sometimes did after Navigators drew too deep on Gloam. One thing to be thankful for.

"I'd thank you for all showing up to help me relocate to the chapterhouse," Maryam said, "but half of you look like your favorite goat just got served as skewers."

It was bait, he thought, and she was eyeing Tristan from the corner of her eye waiting for him to pounce on the concept of having a favorite goat so they could bicker. But the Sacromontan barely even noticed, his foot tapping against the floor like a twitching nerve. Izel's stomach sunk at the sight, as did Maryam Khaimov's face. Worse than he had expected.

"There is trouble," Song simply said, and that had them all trying to sit at attention. "Have you heard about the hunt and the delve yet?"

"Captain Yue mentioned a few things when she came by earlier," Maryam said. "The garrison is angry enough about Misery Square that we can hunt the Lord of Teeth instead of taking our yearly test, or try and explore Scholomance for some secret archive."

"Lucifer's own library," Song explained. "It is called the Glass Repository. A god running it can shed light on the matter of the Lord of Teeth, how it may be no such thing – and might have just walked out of a layer like a living nightmare."

Izel sucked in a breath at that little announcement. None of the students he'd stopped to talk with on either Regnant Avenue or Hostel Street had even hinted that the lemure might be a fake, but then Song was among that small circle of leading Stripe captains. She was handfed morsels of information by Colonel Cao where most brigade captains stumbled around in the dark. By the looks of their faces, this was news to most everyone else as well. Not Tristan, though. His face was empty, without even the mask of a friendly smile, and that was telling. An uncomfortable silence lingered so after a few moments Izel cleared his throat.

"When I arrived this morning, there were garrison men putting up broadsheets directing students towards the gatehouse to sign up with either venture," Izel said. "We would need our covenant instructors to agree to it, but not Captain Wen."

"Students, not brigades?" Angharad said.

He'd noticed the same. It was bound to cause chaos that students could get out of their yearly test by signing up, emptying brigades long before they could set out. Then again, their superiors might see that chaos as a test for the Stripes – did they deserve the captaincy, if they could not navigate fresh trouble? How closely the teachers of Scholomance sometimes flirted with the Dialectic of Night in the way they did things.

"It's expected that the vast majority of College recommended will pass on both enterprises," Song said. "If they make full brigades obligatory, they risk losing some who might otherwise have signed on."

Despite the looks slid his way, Izel did not try to deny their captain's words. Most of the students from the societies would avoid these ventures like the plague. And by the description of this Lord of Teeth the Watch would be needing all the warm bodies it could get, so in this sense their choice was wise.

"There will be several full brigades, though," he shared. "The First already came out and said their full roster was headed in as an exploration crew while the Ninth announced the same about the hunt."

The latter of which would force the Third to follow suit even if they hadn't been a better fit for it by virtue of their members. Their tinker was a powderman and a gunsmith, pure Clockwork Cathedral track, and their signifier was a Banerjee. Those might be a scholar clan on paper, but it was an open secret they were in deep with the Savituri. Tristan breathed out slowly, then shared a look with Angharad – who nodded. The tinker glanced below the bed, but the snakes had not returned.

"I need help," Tristan Abrascal said, and Izel almost choked on his spit.

The Sacromontan hurried to keep talking, as if he could paper over the first words with the rest.

"Fortuna was eaten by the beast," he said, "but she still lives. She's imprisoned in the belly. I consulted a specialist and their best estimate is three months before she begins dissolving."

Savant, Izel thought. How many were learned enough in practical theology to run that formula for him? Four, maybe five. Khosa, Claver, the Qiao siblings, probably Naxi? He couldn't think of a single one that would be willing to give answers for free. He was either paying wholesale or racking up a debt and neither answer was like Tristan Abrascal.

"Whatever that thing is, I need it dead," Tristan told them. "And I need it done quick."

"He is not alone in this," Angharad quietly added. "I am being haunted."

Izel's hand was halfway to his knife before he stopped himself, but already two pistols were drawn and the tip of Maryam's finger boiling black when Angharad raised a hand to stop them.

"Not possessed," she said, evidently thinking the distinction reassuring.

"Elaborate," Song ordered.

"As you know, I cannot speak of what goes on in the depths of the Acallar."

Izel slowly nodded. By the Marshal's order, allegedly. No doubt some had ignored the man, but they had been prudent enough not to let rumors spread about what took place during the Skiritai graduation ceremony.

"What I can tell you is that the souls of three dead have latched on to me," Angharad continued, "and that the usual means to rid myself of them are barred to me by wisdom or circumstance. Should I take longer than four months to achieve this, it may kill me."

Izel only barely mastered his disgust at the notion of the dead cleaving away from the Circle. Such a thing was… vile, if done on purpose. Lessening the world knowingly, one of the few objectively evil acts a man could commit.

"Slaying the Lord of Teeth would end the haunting, or close, and perhaps even mend the wounds the dollmaker left on me – which are what allowed the dead to find purchase on my soul, I am told."

Angharad finished on a hopeful note, back straightening. Izel could sympathize. It was a seductive thought, being able to redress your mistakes. It was how Tristan had talked him into the Thirteenth. But it wouldn't be this simple, would it? Else Izel would not be seeing a skeletal hand grasping a match in the curve of Song's hair. The Midwives of Secrets, handmaids to the Skeletal Butterfly – goddess of murder, yes, but also of things hidden in the dark.

"It has to be your own hand?" Song asked, tone forcefully calm.

There Angharad hesitated.

"It would be preferable," she said. "But to be present and involved in the fight that ends it might also serve."

Might. An unnecessary risk, if she could get the kill instead. If.

"With the right weapon, I could tie it down long enough for you to kill it," Maryam said.

Song rubbed the bridge of her nose.

"No," she said. "You could not."

Izel did not hide his surprise, and for that matter none of the rest.

"My efforts to secure your countrymen a place in Port Allazei as inhabitants have failed," Song told the signifier. "If they are to remain it will be as auxiliaries, and for that we need signatures on the mercenary contract."

"And?" Maryam said, frowning away at her.

And if Colonel Azocar is the one who refused Song, Izel thought, they will have to be signatures that give him pause else he will simply do it again. There were few of these, even in Scholomance. A colonel was nothing to trifle with.

"And Colonel Cao agreed to be one of those signatures," Song said, "but only at the condition that the both of us join the exploration crews."

"It is said to be her favored venture," Tristan mildly said.

It was never a good omen when Tristan went mild. Maryam's face drew tight.

"But we'd still need at least one more," she said. "It wouldn't solve the problem."

"We would need only one more because it is Chunhua Cao signing," Song flatly said. "Every second-year patron could put up their name instead and it would weigh about as much. If we get Cao and Captain Yue, we have what you need. Anything else is a maybe."

A pause.

"And I have my own reasons to seek the Glass Repository," Song admitted. "I need a book it may hold."

Izel's gaze flicked to her hair. The hand was gone and the spindle with it. Good. Things leaving the dark.

"I'm assuming nor for bedside reading," Tristan said.

It was almost a joke, but there was not a speck of humor in his tone. The longer Song had kept talking, the more… something drained out of him. Not quite patience, but not unlike it.

"It is called the Book of the Lofty Mountain," Song replied. "The work of Momu the Lame, founder of the Yunning Sect and the greatest exorcist to ever grace Tianxia. Its pages are said to hold a thousand ways to bind and dismiss curses."

None of them, not even Izel, needed to ask why she would have an interest in such a thing. The urgency, though, was new.

"You haven't needed to purge more than usual," Maryam slowly said.

"It isn't for me," Song tiredly said. "It's for my little sister. My parents are marrying her off and it's going to kill her."

Izel sucked in a breath. Ironic, that Angharad might not have been wrong about the marriage meeting after all – only who it was for.

"I am not one to speak loudly on the matter of betrothals," he said, "but how would it be mortal?"

Song passed a hand through her hair. He regretted asking, for a moment, but better he than one of the others. He had made such a botch of his own life in that regard that his captain could not feasibly think he was looking down on her by asking.

"The curse made my mother miscarry twice, after my youngest sister was born," Song said, fingers clenched. "It killed the child in her belly, and nearly her as well. And that was years ago, when I didn't need to purge nearly as often. If Aihan gets pregnant and I don't have a way to seal the curse, it will be a writ of execution."

Izel grimaced at the unspoken implication that her sister's marriage had no other outcome than being fruitful. He was more familiar with that sort of burden than any of them knew.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"And the only copy is in the Glass Repository?" Tristan asked.

"There are four copies known," Song replied, then raised a finger. "The first is inside the Black Mountain."

That name meant nothing to him, but Angharad winced. A second finger went up.

"The second is in the hands of Forquet the Wanderer."

Tristan let out a low whistle. Why would he care about an old devil that - ah, there was a story about the Knight of the Library robbing the University of Reve, wasn't there? Supposedly Forquet had driven half the faculty mad with a riddle and ridden off with a sack full of precious volumes. A third finger went up.

"The third was looted during the Wars of Abolition and is now part of the royal treasury of Izcalli."

Now it was his turn to wince. The Grasshopper Kings had not been shy about looting anything not nailed down during the Cathayan Wars, and quite a few things that had been.

"The fourth was last seen in Lucifer's possession shortly before he invaded Tolomontera, and has not been seen since," Song finished, her fingers folding away. "It is not a sure thing, not like the others are, but…"

"But it your best chance at getting the book," Angharad finished.

And then there was silence, not one of them daring to speak. Them because they were all being pulled in one direction or another but did not quite dare to step on the reasons of the others. Izel, though, Izel kept silent because he did not know what to say. What could he say? He only felt stark, guilty relief that none of them were looking to him as some sort of tiebreaker, as if the least worthy of them to speak up was somehow the one who ought to decide.

Tristan was the one to break the quiet, and when Izel saw the smile on his face he wished it had been anyone else.

"I will not ask you to set your pledges aside for mine," the Sacromontan said, the picture of understanding. "But neither will I do the opposite."

He could not be the only one, Izel thought, who saw none of the pleasantness reached his eyes. It was like looking at a man cut off his limbs so he might better fit a set of clothes.

"I wouldn't ask you that," Song quietly said.

"Then ask nothing," Tristan said, rising to his feet. "We all go our own way. Some of them may twine, some will not."

His eyes caught on silent, grave-still Maryam and then slid away.

"It need not be a brigade matter, we are free to make our own choices."

What an ugly trap it was, Izel thought. He could see Song was torn, part of her acknowledging that the Repository and her own need could wait longer than the others but also that her choice had ripples beyond her own life. If she failed to get Cao's signature, the odds were that the Orels would be cast out of Tolomontera within days. Put on the first ship out. And House Morcant would be waiting for them wherever they were sent: all it would take was a letter by Nathi Morcant containing the name of the ship and the destination.

Song could not go back on the bargain she had likely struck with her instructor without damning Maryam's countrymen back to chains, but how could she ask the other two to put aside their own need for theirs? Tristan was to rescue not only his contracted god but what Izel suspected what the closest thing the Sacromontan had to family left, and Angharad would quite literally die if she delayed too long. There was a reason Maryam would not meet Tristan's eyes. Weights had been put on the scales and none of them liked how the balance was settling.

Song breathed out.

"Signing the sheets is for administrative purposes," she suddenly said, and that gave Tristan pause as he began to move towards the door. "It will be a formality, not an enforced rule."

The Sacromontan eyed their captain, expressionless.

"You want to double up?"

"Neither venture will be finished in just a few days," Song said. "We will encounter walls, one way or another. When we do, it would be foolish not draw on one another's help."

Izel watched, not even daring to breathe, as Tristan's shoulders slumped ever so slightly. The Sacromontan nodded back curtly.

"Sensible," he said. "I'll keep you informed."

Another nod to the rest of them and then he was out the door. Angharad rose as well, saying something, but Izel closed his eyes. Where were his own scales falling? The ugliest thing was that he knew what the answer should be. Every recounting of last night he'd heard had made it clear that the only students to make a dent in that lemure had been the Navigators. Maryam was bound for the exploration crews. Meanwhile Tristan's contract was likely crippled and while fine work Angharad's saber was no candlesteel.

They would need means to trap the Lord of Teeth, means to kill it. And that was why Izel, heart in his throat, wished on the Circle he could go with the others instead: if he went with Tristan and Angharad, he would have to make weapons. Izel could skirt the lines, he knew. Put most of his efforts on traps, merely rework their armaments, but even that much felt like a mistake. Like a compromise.

And if you gave the Dialectic so much as a crevice to creep through it would get in and grow until again you were cracking a skull, smashing into the wet as bone flew and Father said there, you have a made a truth-

"Izel?"

His eyes snapped open at the sound of Song's voice and he breathed in. She seemed concerned, when he looked at her, and he forced himself to look only at her. Not at the silhouette standing behind her, or blood slowly dripping on the floor. Angharad was gone, he only now noticed. So was the last of his time to pretend there was a choice to make.

"I have to go with them," he told Song. "They won't have the means to kill it otherwise."

"I know," she said, then paused. "Are you all right?"

"I slept poorly," Izel said, then grimaced. "And if I had faced Yaotl earlier instead of fleeing the confrontation, last night might have gone differently. I apologize."

"A hundred things could have gone differently last night," Maryam softly said, drawing his eye. "And today. And it will be the same tomorrow. The past is a-"

She cut herself off, grimaced.

"There is no blame," she said instead.

Maybe, Izel thought. But there is shame aplenty. He shook his head, then rose to his feet.

"I will lend a hand if you run across any troubles of a mechanical nature," he told them. "You need only say the word."

A few awkward questions extended the talk despite his itch to leave. Who was coming back to the cottage tonight, the split of brigade duties – things that felt trivial after what they'd just discussed but still needed to be asked. Izel took his leave and it was only halfway through the door that he gave in and looked.

Behind Song, just before the wall, stood a gruesomely decapitated woman. Half-naked, wearing only a loincloth adorned with small bells and feathers. Blood dripped down her like tear tracks, staining flesh and cloth and dripping all the way onto the floor. Izel wrenched away his gaze as if burned and fled out of the hospital. The Headless Traitor herself.

As he passed the old temple gates to join the hunt he did not want, Izel Coyac was left to wonder which of her domains had called the goddess to him: betrayal, or arrogance?

--

He should have gone after the others. Looking for Tristan when he did not feel like being found was a fool's errand, but Angharad always drew eyes wherever she went. Instead, though, Izel headed north. For a reckoning of sorts.

It was not a long walk, despite the broken grounds.

You could still see the bones of the massacre scattered across Misery Square, Izel thought as he stumbled down the last of the rubble-strewn slope. The garrison had dragged away the bodies but there was still blood smeared on the cobblestones, powder marks and rubble. Even the ruins were scarred where the false Lord of Teeth had plied its fury.

For all that, the Watch had reclaimed the square. A battery of cannons had been set up in the middle of the square, five long modern pieces with adjustable gun carriages surrounding a thick, squat bombard sure to be loaded with salt munitions.

The pack of artillerymen fielding them – all marked by the silver spin on their collar displaying crossed rods, one a wad screw and the other a sponge – were escorted by a full unit of fifty musket-bearing regulars under their lieutenant. The dark-skinned woman was addressing the two men in Akelarre tunics whose rings revealed to be Masters of the Guild. If the Lord of Teeth came back, it would be to a pointed welcome.

Not all the blackcloaks were on watch. A handful of soldiers, led by Professor Achari, were cordoning off the shattered mirror-device while a few students were spread around the square on errands of their own. A pair from the Sixth was measuring aether density with sleek pneumatic thermoscopes, while a tall Navigator muttered and poked at a dark corner.

Bait from the Fourth was there as well, walking the length of square near the bloody marks with copper pincers in hand. Right, the Savant was a teratology specialist. He must be looking for remains of the Lord of Teeth. Izel's brow rose at the sight of the captain of the Forty-Fourth – his hair now faded and gray – standing with one of his cabalists by a large pile of clothes and equipment, talking with a corporal.

Besides the wrecked griffon temple, what must be the gear of the dead had been piled up: blades and guns, cloaks and powder and trinkets. Last night's tribute of grave goods, Izel thought, though some of the pile would be from students who had survived. The cabalist from the Forty-Fourth, for example, was pointing at a pistol in a mound of the same.

Half on a whim Izel approached, the noise from inside the temple drifting up to his ear as he did. Watchmen were at work in there, clearing a route for carts by removing rubble and propping up walls with wooden planks. His eyes slid across the wounds of the old temple, finding among them the twisting glint of turquoise scales - the spear-thrower of drought, the favored weapon of the Deathless Bird. Fire and rage. Head cocked, following the lay of it, he found it was aimed at a particular point in the piles that-

Huh. Was that Tristan's tricorn? The beat-up leather was particular enough Izel was mostly sure that it was. Passing the retreating pair from the Forty-Fourth, he traded polite nods and cleared his throat at the officer scribbling something on a slate. She raised her head after she'd finished.

"This isn't a market," she warned him. "You say something in there is yours, your name and a description go on the list and eventually we will check."

"My brigademate's hat is in there," Izel said. "Can I sign for it?"

"That's allowed," the sergeant conceded.

Izel Coyac, 13 went on the slate besides leather tricorn, used and soon he was walking away with the hat tucked under his arm, in a better mood. He had been right to come here. Even a small thing was better than nothing. The turnabout had him daring to venture closer to the shattered mirror-device, half the reason he had come here in the first place.

Professor Achari stood aside from the soldiers painting red lines on the stone, talking with one of the Savant teachers quietly until he caught sight of Izel. The old Someshwari spared him half a smile, his long silky beard and shoulder-length white hair shaking as he told the other teacher something and the younger man walked off.

"Izel," Professor Nilan Achari said. "Come, come. I'd wondered if you would make your way here. You're the fourth since the verdant star."

The tinker straightened at that.

"We are allowed to look?" he asked.

"Tinkers are," Professor Achari said, stroking his beard. "Cao had to throw us a few bones to keep us behind her."

Within the curls of that beard Izel thought he spied a white bindweed flower, seven sepals sprouting beneath it. The Prince of the Third Hour's own flower, an invitation to visions. Revelations waited beyond the veil.

"Gods ward you," the old man quietly said. "You're having a day, aren't you boy? Your ken is running buckwild."

Izel wrenched away his gaze from the flower.

"It's a forceful day," he admitted. "I have been seeing signs since I woke."

A tinker was a mechanic, but to follow along the tracks of the Deuteronomicon one needed something more than just a talent for craftmanship. Working with aether engines required a… knack. It was not something born, not the way Navigators were born with their talent, but something that happened to you. An encounter, an accident, an obsession.

The coyote head pulling back in shrill, raucous laughter as the drunken god tumbled back into the cushions, the singers and dancers shrinking back as the banquet spilled all over the floor- Izel breathed in, killed the memory. He would not give the Laughing One the pleasure of weighing down on him.

Suffice it so say that something left you with a mark, and that… rawness let tinkers like him get a sense of what they were doing and avoid the catastrophic errors those building aether machines without the 'ken' so often stumbled into. Some older Umuthi called it a curiosity instead, as it made many older Deuteronomicon tinkers 'curious'.

A polite way to say that years of exposure to aether machinery would sharpen your ken but also slowly make you eccentric. If you were lucky. There were madhouses on hidden islands filled with the old tinkers that had not been.

"You have the most variable ken I've heard of," Professor Achari said, shaking his head. "Usually they are monomanias."

Izel's own fateful encounter had left him with what the Candle priests had called a blessing on the divine chamber of his mind – he could feel the traces of his gods in things and places, his mind filling in the pieces through waking dreams. A gift, a curse. The Laughing One never dealt out one without the other.

"I've had some unpleasant surprises of late," he replied. "That tends to crowd the signs."

"I won't tell you how to handle your business," Professor Achari said, "but I will curtail your workshop hours if I have reason to believe your health is at risk."

That almost put a smile on his face. The source of Professor Nilan Achari's restraint in advice-giving was beloved workshop gossip, the tales of how their teacher got exiled from the Imperial Someshwar never quite agreeing on whether he'd dueled, seduced or divorced the head of the League of Kanish – or why. Izel's favorite version was that he had done all three, not necessarily in that order.

"I will be careful," Izel assured him. "Take the time to under a good Glare source for several hours later today."

"See that you do," Professor Achari said, then sighed.

He gestured at the broken device.

"Go on, then," he said. "You've a right to a look."

Izel nodded his thanks, Tristan's hat still tucked under his arm. He passed the still-drying painted line that marked the entrance of what had once been a palace to the kings of Sologuer, greetings the other blackcloaks there as he did.

The remains of the machine were quite a sight, even scattered as they were. Izel crouched at the edge of the broken shards, trying to fix in his mind's eye what it had looked like before the violence. Last year the garrison had brought it out as well, but the soldiers had not let anyone approach it – especially not tinkerlings, the sergeant in charge had sternly told him when he tried.

Most people describing the machine would talk about the mirrors or the lighthouse-like burn of it, but these were ultimately surface trappings. A mirror-suite was standard when it came trapping Glare, and emanating as beacon was the most basic application of such trapped light. No, if there was anything to be learned from the broken parts it would be in the engine.

And there had been an aether engine in there, he confirmed as much by walking deeper in and picking out what looked like a half-melted furnace seal and what was… Izel trailed a finger through the dirt on a patch of stone that was not scorched but still black and brought it to his nose. Mineral smell, but when licked it tasted like smoke.

"Perfect culm," he muttered.

So the furnace itself hadn't been the axis of the aether engine, the part whose conceptual symmetry – move one in the aether or the physical and the other would be affected – was empowered to create motion. Perfect culm was present in both aether and the material, straddling both at a three-two distribution that meant when used as a physical fuel it could also simultaneously be used to power the aether section of an aetheric engine. Usually something simple, like a wheel or a piston.

So, if the furnace wasn't the engine then it would have been in a chamber nearer to the mirrors. A lead pipe gave him hope, but the sheer amount of shattered lead glass he had to pick through to find more delicate parts waylaid him – until he realized there were two different kinds of glass in there. Lead glass for the mirrors, but also smaller shards of pure crystal glass.

There had been a lantern chamber inside.

Izel stared at the wreckage, disbelieving. Really, the whole thing had been a flare engine? A trapped piece of Glare fed with aether fuel so it would burn more strongly and then that burn was captured by the mirrors and turned into a glorified beacon. That was so archaic, though.

The device had looked like a lighthouse because it was essentially a fancy variation of one: a small tower with a furnace at the bottom burning perfect culm, whose smoke would rise into the lantern chamber above it. The lantern contained a trapped piece of Glare, which the culm smoke would make flare up and reflect on the walls of the mirror chamber to cause a beacon of light that was projected from the top of the tower.

"No," he finally told Tristan's hat, which he had been fanning himself with. "It can't have been that simple, because it was much too large. Even if they only wheel out the machine once a year, burning that much perfect culm would be an extravagant waste."

The mirror-device had been what, ten feet tall and at least half as broad? Keeping that going for hours would be wildly expensive even if none of the perfect culm smoke was wasted. So there must have been some sort of catalyzer device in there, a container where the culm smoke mixed with another substance to bulk up what was being fed into the lantern chamber without diluting the effect. Likely simple gas, but kept in a catalyzer lined with a material that bleeds out aether taint.

It would allow the Watch to cut down on the fuel being used by cutting it with gas, and explained the strangeness in the description of what had happened to the machine last night.

When the monster stomped down on the engine and broke the Glare containment, it had blown up the catalyzer beneath it by triggering a gas explosion. Which explained why Izel had not found a single piece of the container, it had melted into unrecognizable slag. Mystery solved.

Except for the part where a single minor piece of trapped Glare – it had to be both fed and amplified, it could not have been significant - should not have hurt the lemure to extent he'd had described to him. Smoking, pain, patches of skin falling off? If anything a Glare release of that kind would have caused a single deeper hole. Something was off.

Breathing in, Izel ran his fingers through the dirt again. Touched the broken pieces, tried to get a feel for them. How they had fit, how they had come apart. Heat going up – a furnace with a seal for a mouth, breathing smoke into the container. Gaz and smoke being mixed, portioned and fed to the lantern containing a piece of Glare at precise intervals, flaring it to reflect across the mirror-chamber until the spillover was spit out by the top of the device like a ring of light. A searing halo crowning the machine until the gathering was finished.

Meaning, for hours.

"It wasn't powdered," he breathed out. "The perfect culm, it was solid pieces."

Izel himself had only ever used the powder because he'd never had the means or know-how to make an engine that would run continuously. He had only ever used perfect culm for a burst of force, to induce a reaction. But for a machine meant to run for hours and feed smoke into the lantern chamber at a slow but steady pace, solid pieces would have been used.

Only Izel wasn't seeing solid pieces, there were no shards like that anywhere.

"When it stomped on the machine, it incinerated all the remaining culm in an instant," he told Tristan's hat. "The gas explosion is what did it, the blast was funneled unto the furnace because the creature was stepping downwards. And the furnace is what killed so many students."

There had been a physical component to the release, what seared the eyes, but the killer stroke had been the release of the aether equivalent of a jet of boiling steam. Those closest to the machine, who had died instantly, had essentially had their souls cooked. Gods. At least it would have been quick. More interesting yet was that the physical component of the culm had been what burned the Lord of Teeth physically, but what had staggered it for a span must have been the aether portion of the fuel.

Meaning a machine that stirred nearby aether might be able to daze it again.

Izel rose to his feet, tucking the hat under his arm again. He needed his journals and a stock inventory. Maybe even budget. An aether spike might be able to kill that creature, that was what he'd just found out, and while those could be used as weapons they weren't. Not really. You had a better chance of hurting a human bludgeoning them with the spike than by triggering the device. He could forge a hundred of these and never give an inch to the Dialectic.

He grinned at Professor Achari as he hurried out, to the old man's visible surprise, and not even glimpsing another sign in the bloody streaks at the heart of the square dented his mood. A hand shape, each finger ending in a head – a warning against excessive pleasures from the south-facing god. He hadn't enjoyed figuring it out that much.

Straight south he hurried, towards Templeward Avenue by the ruined streets. He climbed up slopes of loose stones and mortar, half-leaping down and turning the corner past a shattered house to – get grabbed by the collar through a window, tossed on the ground with a groan of pain. He blinked away the ache in his back, patting dust off his face, and looked up to find-

"Finally," Princess Yaotl of the House of Acatl snarled. "No more running, Izel."

-trouble. The Five-Headed Hand, Izel dimly recalled for the second time today, also ruled over the excess of indolence.

He should not have forgotten this was going to be a bad day.