Though she was strapped half-naked to a stone slab and being prodded at, that wasn't even the worst part of Song Ren's firstday evening. No, that would be maintaining the restraint it took for her to keep what she thought about Captain Yue's personal study off her face.

Every room in the Akelarre chapterhouse was just a hair's breadth away from feeling cramped, in deference to the limited space within the bastion walls, but Yue was the senior Navigator on the island and received corresponding treatment: her study was about the size of the cottage's drawing room, though with a lower ceiling and a great deal more clutter.

There was not a tabletop without piles of books and empty plates, her dip pen and inkwell were on opposite sides of the room and worst of all Yue had been using a freshly cleared chair as her writing desk instead of her actual writing desk, which served as stockroom for a pillow with a hole through it and two bowls of dyes that had dried long enough ago to flake.

Evidently the captain was one of those people who 'had a system'. So did Song! It was called 'putting things away in the right place'. Everyone should be made to practice it, on pain of public hanging.

"And when was the last time you purged?" Captain Yue asked.

"This morning, before class," Song replied.

The captain let out an interested noise, jotting down a few characters in her journal – code and not Cathayan, Song had discreetly checked – then leaning over to remove the braid of straw she had laid down on Song's bare belly. Silver eyes picked out what Yue was looking for, and by where her fingers were lingering that appeared to be discoloration and brittleness in the straw.

"Interesting," Yue said. "Either Maryam was uncharacteristically incompetent, or you have a tiered connection to the curse."

"Pardon?" Song tried.

"You're already touched by Gloam, girl," Captain Yue informed her. "But at this rate of acquisition your skin would start to slough off after a little over two weeks, so the curse's progress must slow past a certain threshold."

She swallowed. That had been a vivid image, if not a pleasant one. She was glad she'd asked Maryam to stay outside for today.

"And that is significant?" Song tried.

"It's not a natural phenomenon," Yue replied. "It's too precise for that. Meaning it's being imposed on you from the other end."

"The nascent god," Song said.

Her stomach clenched at the thought of it being able to reach her here, all the way across the sea.

"Likely, if not certain," Captain Yue said. "In a way, Ren, your tie to that entity is not unlike being its priest."

"You can't be serious," she said.

A priestess to her own doom, to the death of her sisters? She would rather drown.

"Well, you're an unusual case," Yue conceded. "Priesthood is just the religious name the credulous slap onto aetheric synchronization, that is to say pattern-mirroring between a lucent's emanations and the specific aetheric taint of an entity."

Song frowned, trying to parse out the technical terms. This was a step beyond the basics they had learned in Theology.

"A priest's faith embraces the nature of their god, and thus allows them to pull on its power to the degree of that embrace," she tried.

"For a Stripe, you're not all that slow on the uptake," Captain Yue 'praised'.

It was for the best, Song considered, that Professor Formosa was the one handling the exploration crews.

"Essentially, yes," she continued. "It's why most priests are just fools muttering prayers while a smaller portion will manage tricks, the parts of the divine pattern they were able to ingest. It goes both ways, of course. By absorbing the pattern of their patron, they became an extension of it to some degree. It's why gods start cults: it allows them toeholds in the Material and perspective touchstones that they can't really develop as pure aether intellects."

"What makes a high priest different from the rank and file, then?" she casually asked.

Casually enough that it seemed Yue did not notice her interest, thank the gods. The last thing Tristan needed at the moment was someone interested in pointing a scalpel at him.

"Compatibility," Captain Yue said. "Some minds are a natural fit for a god's nature, or in the case of minor deities they end up adjusting to their primary touchstone. The depth of the affinity usually ends up creating a boon simply by accumulation of tainted aether, and they get to draw much more deeply from their god."

Song frowned. Tristan, despite being celebrant to the Lady of Long Odds, generally disapproved of gambling and recklessness. But he's said she has no other contractor and that she's been with him for years. It must have been Fortuna who adjusted to him, not the other way around – even then, on Asphodel, to draw deeper on his contract he'd needed to bet it all on long odds. In other words, match her pattern. Yue glanced at her face and misread the reason for the frown.

"You're wondering why anyone would want to be a contractor when priesthood seems so much more flexible in what it grants."

"The thought had occurred," Song half-lied.

"For the same reason we don't snort blackpowder and spit out bullets," Yue told her. "A contract has set boundaries that can't be broken from the god's end. It's an organ tacked onto your soul. Priesthood, though? You let that thing into the house. Priesthood is direct contact between you and the entity. If the god leaves enough of its taint behind to form a pseudo-boon, you think that's all it's leaving in there?"

"It's also changing the soul," Song guessed.

"Pattern-mirroring isn't a name picked out of a hat," Captain Yue said. "If you channel a god without the protection of a contract, then you progressively become a mirror of its pattern. When they describe celebrants as being unearthly, it's not just a figure of speech – the minds of high priests are no longer entirely human."

Song's fingers clenched.

"And you say I am a priest to the curse god?"

"Like a priest," Yue corrected. "I believe that the reason you top up so quickly to a minimum threshold of Gloam is that the entire Ren bloodline serves as a toehold for that nascent entity. It needs you to have at least that much Gloam in you to be able to sense you. Unlike a priest you don't draw on the god, and shouldn't try to – given its nature that would kill you instantly."

It was not atypical of her life, Song thought, that she should get all the dangers of priesthood with none of the benefits. Still, there was a useful kernel in there.

"But it is adjusted to us," Song slowly said. "Because hatred of the Ren is central to its concept, to simply be a Ren is to mirror part of its pattern."

Yue cocked her head to the side.

"That's more or less accurate," she said.

"Can it see through me?" Song bluntly asked.

Captain Yue shook her head.

"It's reaching out to you but you're not reaching out to it," she said. "In practice, think of yourself as connected to it by a tube. It uses that tube to feed you the curse, but that's all it can do. At the moment, anyway."

Song's eyes narrowed, but she let that particular sleeping dog lie. She had always known it would be victory or death.

"But I can use the tube as well," she said. "Last year, after Asphodel, I did not have to purge for months afterwards."

"So Maryam told me," Yue smiled. "And that, girl, is worth investigating. Did the admiration of the people of Tratheke simply put a stopper on the tube, or was there more to it? Did you harm the god by winning esteem? These, as much as a chance to study a nascent curse entity, are why you are worth spending one evening on a week."

She rubbed her hands together gleefully.

"After all, how often does one get to toss pebbles at a god?"

Captain Yue reached behind her, producing a silvery borer with too many handles.

"Try not to move," the madwoman advised. "It'll hurt more if you do."

--

Izel had run the numbers eight times now: in theory, this worked. In practice the best result he had achieved so far was 'no explosions'.

"This one will be different," he announced.

"So I have heard," Helena Vargas said from across the observation window, then paused. "Three times now."

He could not quite muster a glare at her for it, since that was factually true. It was not an obligation for an Umuthi student using the device vetting chambers – better known as the debacle vaults – to have a witness along, but their teachers strongly recommended it. Bring a second even if you are convinced your device is harmless, Professor Achari had said. Especially if you think it's harmless. That you were fool enough to believe that is already evidence your judgment is terrible.

The professor had then launched into a fascinating story about how he'd once known a Deuteronomicon tinker who had built a compass that could be used by an entire ship crew simultaneously and the first use of the device had killed seventy-eight people by replacing the part of their mind that knew how to breathe with the absolute knowledge of where the north was.

Not that such a disaster was possible here, as the very purpose of the debacle vaults was to prevent such a spread.

It was why the room Izel stood in was all bare yellow bricks covering up an enclosure basalt. The bricks were imported from Tianxia, mud mixed with salt and magnolia ash, while the basalt walls were Izcalli stele stones. No aetheric reaction could cascade through those. The observation window where Helena stood, behind him by the vault door, could have a metal shutter made of tomic alloy pulled shut but it was usually kept open. Pipes with running water ran above and beneath it while the window frame was studded with Idean lead, which was as a lodestone to aether.

Every single one of the ten disaster vaults cost as much as a castle in the famously lush lands of Artecale, and they were allegedly one of the reasons the Watch had maintained a presence in the city after Scholomance closed – not continuing to use them would have been such a colossal waste of money that the order's treasurers would have torn out enough hair to cause an epidemic of baldness.

"I improved the tolerances," Izel grunted. "It will work."

"Of course it will," Helena smiled pleasantly at him, then immediately closed the shutters.

A beat passed.

"Unwarranted," Izel complained.

Still, nothing to it but to test the device now.

Izel carried his box to the back of the room, kneeling there and unlatching the sides. It popped open, revealing the fifth iteration of his lenslight. The device itself was not particularly complicated. It consisted of a brass lantern chamber containing a fist-sized chunk of palestone emitting Glare light, connected by a squat tube to a second chamber that ended in a series of lenses through which the light passed. That second chamber contained several panes of aether-forged magnifying glass and a gas burner, which were meant to amplify the emitted Glare. It was a little less than a foot broad and two long, weighing exactly ten Lierganen pounds.

Izel carefully pulled out the lenslight and set it down on the floor, then pulled down his iron mask and pulled on the thick iron-plated gauntlets that came with it. Along with the iron plate-reinforced leather apron he already wore, it should protect him from shrapnel so long as he didn't do anything foolish. The tinker breathed out, steadied his hand and pulled the switch atop the second chamber of the lenslight.

The brass shivered, the machinery of the second chamber slowly coming alive now that he'd released the clockwork switch. That was the first step. His hand moved to the side of the brass chamber, turning the knob there until he caught a faint hissing sound. A second later the gas he'd released caught fire and he stepped back, keeping his body close together to maximize protection.

Five seconds passed, then behind him he heard the shutter open.

"I always knew you could do it," Helena called out.

He rolled his eyes under the mask. With the most common point of failure passed, he could now find out if the lenslight was actually functioning as intended. He unscrewed the brass cover over the lenses to the front of the device, careful not to let his fingers pass the rim even if the gauntlets would protect them. No point in being careless. A focused beam of Glare poured out of the lenses, painting the wall before it in a perfect circle. Simple emission meant nothing, though. Izel needed measurements.

From the apron pocket he clumsily produced a set of six metal plates on a ring, each lacquered with different concentrations of lunar salts. Izel dipped the first plate into the beam, withdrawing it after three seconds. The edge was darkened, a success. So it was with the second. His additions then, had not reduced the Glare beneath its initial measured emission. The third plate darkened as well, which had him straightening.

The gas he'd added to the lenslight had improved the strength of emitted Glare at least equally to the heat being released by the burning gas. Now time to find out if… The fourth plate, after three seconds, came out untouched. Izel's lips thinned under the mask. He angled the plate differently and tried again, but to the same result. Damn it. The fifth plate came out untouched, and naturally the sixth – huh.

The sixth plate, which had the least lunar salt in the lacquer as was thus least sensitive to Glare, did darken. Which should not be mathematically possible, unless… Izel tested the plates from the fourth onwards, but the results were the same. So no, the power of the emission had not increased after the initial test. That was not the explanation for the results. Frowning, Izel turned the knob shut and pulled the switch on the clockwork before screwing the lid back on.

Only after did he take off his mask and gauntlet, frowning even as he put away the lenslight in its carry box. The door opened, Helena Vargas entering just to lean back against the wall with a cocked eyebrow. The other tinker was taller than he was, one of the tallest women he had ever met, and heavyset despite her narrow shoulders. She was not one of those beauties that turned heads on the street, but between the luxurious blonde locks and the impish smile Izel had found himself taken more than once.

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"You don't have the look of someone who got the right results," Helena said.

"I failed to break past the third plate," Izel reported.

"So your amplification machine only amplifies the Glare by how much the fuel you added produces," Helena summed up. "Most tinkers would still consider that a success, Izel, considering the materials you used when making your lenslight."

He had, on purpose, kept the overwhelming majority of the materials to make and fuel the device mundane ones. Even aether-tempered glass was not rare so much as expensive.

"It cannot be called a success when the device does not do what I require it to," he sighed. "I need quadratic results, not linear."

Izcalli already had linear methods to improve the power of Glare emissions. The only way a linear method could ever cause the reactions he needed was if the fuel involved was effectively free and infinite, so he might as well make a fucking wish to the Moon-Eater for it. Grunting, he rose to his feet.

"But, if I can reproduce one of the results, I might yet have proof that my concept is sound," he said.

Her brow rose.

"How's that?"

Wordlessly, he produced the plates and showed her the edge of the sixth – which was marred with two dark marks.

"That's the sixth plate," Helana slowly said.

"So it is."

"That barely has any lunar salts in the finish," Helena said. "How could the strength of a Glare emission cause a reaction on that but not the previous two plates?"

"I have no idea," Izel admitted. "But if I can reproduce the result, at the very least it will be proof that my lenslight is capable of affecting Glare emissions beyond just boosting them with fuel."

Helena let out a low whistle.

"And that'd be one thing if you tinkered like most of you deuces, but you haven't used a leviathan's left ball and the bottled sweat of Lucifer to make your machine work," she mused. "The most expensive part is the treated glass, right?"

He nodded, deciding to ignore the slightly unflattering term for Deuteronomicon tinkers.

"Which would be a fixed cost when building the device, beyond replacement when worn out," Izel confirmed.

"That means your machine might see real use, if you can make it work," she said. "It's not just another Deuteronomicon miracle."

He cocked an eyebrow at her, but she was unmoved by the sight. While it was true that some of the most powerful Deuteronomicon machines ever created were ruinously expensive to make and fuel or fragile enough that repeated use was sure to shatter them – hence the derisive term 'miracle' – it was hardly to the extent that the Clockwork Cathedral liked to imply.

Besides, the Cathedral would bankrupt the Watch with a thousand marginally different musket patterns if allowed. Each of them naturally deserving their own dedicated workshop, because those grew on trees.

"I smell unkind thoughts about my chosen track, Coyac," Helena informed him with a raised eyebrow.

"Never," Izel said, with a certain distance from truth. "Please, tell me about how floating docks are going to make shipyards irrelevant and not at all end up sold at auction in Ramaya because they're floating leviathan bait."

That particular debacle, about a decade back, had apparently been so ruinously expensive even after recouping some of the costs through auction several of its backers had been forced to step down from the Wednesday Council. A rarity, as one elected onto it usually served for life.

"There was no way to tell that in advance, the first ones did fine near Sacromonte," she muttered. "And your lot on the Wednesday Council signed off on their construction too!"

"A shame no one asked the leviathans what they thought," he drily replied.

She laughed.

"And here I was, trying to compliment you," Helena dramatically sighed. "How is a girl supposed to tell you she admires your mastery of the practicals through such a rain of insults?"

"Rhetorical questions might work," Izel suggested.

She grinned.

"It's good to see you in a better mood," she said. "You've been so grim since the start of the year."

"It's been a difficult few weeks," he admitted.

"That's the word getting around, yes," Helena said, then cocked an eyebrow. "So, you used to be betrothed?"

"I left that behind along with Izcalli," he said.

Firmly enough to make it clear he had no intention of discussing the matter further.

"But it was following along, evidently," she mused.

She eyed him from the corner of her eye.

"That why you never looked me up after the party last year?" she all too casually asked. "I thought it might be because you took a liking to that Qiao lovebite, but I haven't heard of anything picking up there."

Wait, the lovebite was from one of the Qiao siblings? Which? No, that could wait. Izel cleared his throat.

"Given the general revelry of the night, I did not want to presume intentions," he told her.

He'd not avoided her after, either, but she had never brought up that interlude so neither had he.

"Presume away," Helena frankly replied.

Oh. He coughed again. That was quite flattering.

"I'm not sure that would be wise at the moment," he delicately said.

"Because of the princess?" Helena snorted. "Please. Nosostros y el resto. I am no handmaid and she's not even a queen, so even with inflation I am more than a match."

Izel spent a whole heartbeat impressed at the audacity of Helena using Emperor Viterico's famous pretext for his invasion of the Emerald Coast as a way of equating herself to an actual princess of the House of Acatl, then had to try very hard not to be charmed. Or too visibly amused.

"Well, there's a novel use of that historical anecdote," he got out. "But my brigade is already in troubled waters, Helena. I'll not add to the trouble when I already brought it to our door, much less bring your own brigade into it."

"The Twelfth can take care of itself," she told him. "We might not be as attention-grabbing as you Unluckies, but we're not exactly toothless. Still, I won't push you."

Or so she said, before leaning in enough he withdrew back to the wall. He hit the brick softly, eyes widening when she rested her right palm against the wall above his shoulder and only stopped leaning in when their mouths were close enough they could taste each other's breath.

"But if you change your mind," Helena murmured, "you know where to find me."

She pushed off, sauntering away through the door.

"Think about it."

Izel took a moment to gather himself, clearing his throat and needlessly adjusting his apron. Well. Combined with the memory of her dipping him back at the party, that'd been a… stimulating experience. He forced himself not to consider she was still in shouting distance and that the shutter here could be closed.

Izel instead brought out his boxed device, walking down the hall to the vestiary so he could divest himself of the testing gear. Up the stairs after, straight to the storage across the hall. For now the second years still had nooks in the main building to put away their projects and tools – he put away his lenslight in his trunk and locked it – but that would not last.

The Workshop was one of the largest buildings in Port Allazei, if you counted all the annexes, but it was constantly filling up. Already students were claiming the nearest houses, turning them into barebones tinkering corners and assembly yards, and it would only get worse as students kept arriving every year. In time the storage would become classrooms and work rooms.

Walking out of the storage he almost ran into Jingyi, who blinked owlishly behind his glasses and would have tripped if Izel did not steady his shoulder.

"Ah, there you are," his friend said.

Jingyi, despite despising public speaking and avoiding crowds as if they would make him explode, had one of the smoothest, most honeyed voices Izel had ever heard. The kind that would see you named a herald just because lords enjoyed hearing it.

"Just came back from the debacle vaults," Izel said. "You were looking for me?"

"Not me," Jingyi said, the Tianxi fiddling with his glasses. "That girl is in the vestibule, asking about you."

Izel blinked.

"Yaotl?"

"The princess, yes," Jingyi said. "Says she needs to talk to you. She hasn't done anything yet so she's been allowed to stay, but if you ask one of the instructors they can have her thrown out."

"I don't think that's necessary," Izel said.

His friend scowled.

"It is," he said. "Bad enough the brat did a whole speech about driving you off the isle, but now she shows up here too? Zichen's right, you should go to Professor Achari and have her banned from Workshop grounds."

Which would see her banned from the Ossuary as well. The College covenants mirrored each other's bans as a matter of course. How much more damage to her reputation such a sound, public rejection from all three College societies would do to Yaotl was difficult to measure, save for 'a significant amount'.

"She hasn't done anything to warrant that," Izel told him. "I will if she does."

Jingyi sighed.

"I'll go with you to the vestibule," his friend said. "Keep an eye out."

Considering the Tianxi arrived an hour early in the morning to avoid the press of the crowd in that room, that was a genuinely touching gesture. Izel did not think he needed any such escort, but it would have been ungrateful to refuse the offer so they went together. It was not a long walk, or at least not a complicated one. The entire front of the Workshop was a single transversal hallway only interrupted by the vestibule and the main doors.

It wasn't all that full, at this time of the afternoon, but there were still half a dozen Umuthi milling about. Yaotl was easy enough to pick out: she was the only one in the room with face paint, and though unarmed she wore the fighting fit instead of the regular's uniform everyone else did. Jingyi stayed by the pillars, glaring through his glasses, as Izel approached her. There was a small ebb in conversation as everyone's eyes went to them. Eager for a scene, or wary of one. Sometimes both.

"Yaotl," Izel greeted her.

"Izel," she replied with a nod, pushing off the wall. "My inquiries yield fruit at last."

"Something like that," he said. "Can I help you?"

"We need to talk," Yaotl said.

"I won't be going anywhere with you," he clearly said.

While Izel doubted she would hold him somewhere against his will, she would be entirely willing to use him as bait to draw out his brigade.

"Then surely there is some sort of commissary in this building," she said. "It is large enough for it."

There was. Small, relative to the size of the Workshop and the number of students dwelling in it, but given the hours some tinkers kept it had been judged necessary that some source of food and drink be kept on hand.

"What is this about?" he finally asked.

She looked away.

"I have encountered some difficulties."

"And you would speak to me of them?" he asked, brow raised.

She snorted, but it was not a sound of amusement.

"Who else?" she bleakly said. "At least one of my cabal is a spy of Uncle's, I am sure of it. The others stayed only out of greed. Our patron is a diplomat of the Watch who thinks of nothing but how to squeeze concessions out of my veins."

She shook her head.

"No, even as you deny me you remain the person I can most trust on this island," Yaotl said.

That she genuinely seemed to believe that broke Izel's heart a little.

"Two rules," he said after a moment. "Do not speak ill of my brigade, or attempt to argue I should return to Izcalli. Break either of these and I will leave."

Yaotl hesitated, then sharply nodded.

"Bargained and done."

This was a mistake, Izel thought. He made it anyway.

--

They swung by the commissary for only moments, long enough for Izel to grab cups and a jug of water before leading her away to one of the nearby empty workrooms. He doubted this was the sort of conversation best had in the open. They sat across a too-long table meant for woodworking, atop uncomfortable high-backed chairs.

Yaotl stared down at her cup.

"Scholomance has not been like I expected," she finally said.

Izel said nothing, left her the room to find her own words.

"The training for the Skiritai is not unworthy," she finally said. "And the Marshal, he had… strong words to say on the subject of trying to leave his guild. I do not believe he was lying, for he was indifferent to the deaths of students afterwards. The Acallar took four."

Fewer than last year, Izel thought. The Skiritai must have prepared their underclassmen. She grimaced.

"And ever since your viper of a Mask-"

Izel set down his cup and rose to his feet.

"What are you doing?" she blinked. "I-"

"I warned you," Izel said. "Speak ill of my brigade and I will leave."

"Even him?" she replied, disbelieving. "I know you, you can't possibly approve of what-"

"That is none of your concern," he hissed, and she flinched away. "You do not get to interrogate my relationship with my cabal, Yaotl, after trying to bribe, threaten and bully them to toss me aside. You do not have that right."

Fury flickered across her face, but it was short-lived. She grimaced, raised her hands.

"Peace," she said. "I misunderstood the terms and apologize for the offense."

It was tempting to walk out anyway, leave. But then he'd already done enough of that when it came to this relationship, hadn't he? He forced himself to sit back down. Yaotl hesitated, clearing her throat, and looking away.

"After the confrontation with your colleagues," she said, "I have found the rest of the students… inhospitable."

"You're a pariah," Izel bluntly stated. "So are the rest of your brigade, by association."

Her teeth grit, but she did not deny the truth.

"There are many unspoken rules to the Watch," she said, coming as close to complaining as she ever allowed herself. "I was condemned for gathering warriors to my banner, as if it were not natural, and when I attempted to recruit squires for the hunt my patron told me that such thing might get me expelled from Scholomance!"

"Brigades are not warbands," Izel told her. "They are meant to do more than fight, and to serve as a wall between civilians and the night besides. The Watch is not an army in the way that you learned."

The amount of Skiritai she'd gathered in her brigade had likely angered half the captains in her year, as it meant several would go without in their own brigade, and given that many of the Allazei locals were relatives or families of watchmen her patron had been gentle in his warning – trying to drag the children of garrison soldiers on a dantesvara hunt was more likely to end up with her shot in an alley at night than an expulsion.

"The order is corrupt and full of bickering," Yaotl bit out.

He laughed in her face.

"This coming from a girl raised at the Calendar Court?"

The corruption of the Watch, at least, stayed within certain lines.

"The vices make sense there," Yaotl said. "Here? I cannot understand how the Watch still stands at all."

"Because Vesper is worse off if it doesn't," Izel said. "For now."

Her brow rose.

"Less impassioned a defense than I expected of you, after our last conversation," Yaotl said.

Izel sipped at his water.

"I heard from Angharad," he said, "that the Marshal gives a speech about how the Skiritai are the real Watch or something along those lines."

"He did," Yaotl said, then looked amused. "Did the tinkers give you such speech as well? That sounds more interesting than ours. Hark our trinkets, children, for without them the Watch is nothing?"

"No," Izel said. "The College societies know better. What Professor Achari told us that first day, is this: the first and fundamental duty of the Umuthi Society is to kill the Watch."

She blinked, lowering her voice.

"They plan treason?"

She sounded, he thought, pleased he would share something like that with her. Izel shook his head.

"The first Umuthi, Yaotl, worked with iron swords and battering rams," he said. "They wielded Antediluvian wonders like magician's staffs, barely understanding their own tools. But the world left that time behind, because that is the secret at the heart of everything: obsolescence."

It had spoken to the Izcalli in him, that. The recognition that death was born in life, inseparable from it.

"Bows became crossbows, crossbows became muskets," he said. "Inch by inch, learning has built a house of steel for mankind to live in. Once we trembled powerless in the shadows of greater beings, now we wield the means to drive off devils and slay gods."

He smiled.

"That is what the Umuthi are for," he said. "To keep the records, to push the boundary, so that era after era the house of steel rises taller. Until the day comes that mankind has nothing left to fear from the dark, for it will be the most fearsome thing left in the world."

Izel shrugged.

"And on that day the Watch will die, for it will have been made obsolete. But it will die smiling."

That was what the College saw and so few of the other covenants even realized. The Watch was not a solution, it was a bandage on a gut wound. It was not an end, it was means – means for mankind to survive long enough it learned not to need the Watch. Yaotl was silent for a moment, then swallowed.

"That is," she finally said, "more compelling an argument than what was made to me."

"I have found the Umuthi to be the most Izcalli of the covenants in philosophy, despite the Malani name," Izel admitted.

There was fatalism baked into the bones of his society that was familiar to anyone raised to the telling of the Fifth Loss.

"You could still do more back home," she quietly said.

"Two," Izel evenly said. "That's twice you disregarded my warning. If there is a third, I will walk out no matter what you say."

She looked away, fists clenched. Yaotl was not used to others setting terms on a conversation with her. Even among the Jaguar Society initiates, her surname had hallowed her.

"My brigade came close second in scalps, at the final count last seventhday, and it did not nothing for us," she finally said. "Our reputation is in no way redeemed."

Only the Ninth had beaten them, Izel recalled, though the Second had come close after salvaging the disaster of the first day.

"Your reputation isn't that you are bad at killing things," Izel told her. "There is no point in putting a bandage somewhere without a wound. You were, rightfully, called feckless and contemptuous of what the students here have and will sacrifice. Why should bringing back a bag of lycosi heads change anyone's mind about you? Everything that Tristan said that day rings true and you have done nothing to disprove it."

"We have shown skill," Yaotl insisted. "Worth."

"There are others just as skilled," Izel gently said, "who could have filled your seat, and not schemed to flee this isle before the year is out. You have to know that, Yaotl."

She gritted her teeth.

"I know that you have gone native," she said. "Swallowed the lines they sell. But at the end of the day, Izel, they are mercenaries. Warriors for lucre over anything else. No amount of highbrow philosophy will change that, and I will not take lessons from men who sell their blades instead of swearing them."

"Then you will learn nothing," he said. "And leave with exactly that."

Templer flared.

"I don't understand what you want from this damned place, Izel," she bit out. "I have looked into the Umuthi Society and while they do make machines they make twice as many weapons."

She met his eyes flatly.

"You once sought to flee such a trade, to take refuge from it at the Calendar Court. Now you flee to it instead, and I cannot help but think that if all you wanted was to cast cannons you never needed to leave Kukoya."

His fists clenched, for she said nothing he had not already told himself a hundred times. He could almost feel the burning heat of the foundry carved into the mountainside, hear the smile in his father's voice. An age died on the fields of Diecai, Izel, and no one even noticed. No one except Doghead Coyac, who'd wanted Izel's own hands to make the arms that would break the world.

Doghead Coyac, who when spurned had sent Izel off not with anger but pride, gifting him the same mace that he had used to rise from porter to war captain in the service of the Grasshopper King. What do you know I do not, Father, that you would send me off with a smile on your face?

"My brigade would not ask me this," he said.

"They won't need to," Yaotl said. "The world will ask for them."

She shook her head, scornful.

"At least Doghead was honest enough to ask," she said. "That I can respect. But this?"

Yaotl rose to her feet.

"All that running, Izel, and how much further are you really from where you started?"

The only answers he had were those he wished he hadn't.