Pale Lights

Chapter 158 31

Maryam crept along the floor, fingers trailing Gloam as she pricked her ear.

She risked a glance past the corner of the metal panel, immediately drawing back. Just ahead a kobalos was panting as it gazed below, clutching a barbed javelin. It had a ragged mail coat on and a helmet with holes for its horns, but mail could be worked around. The Akelarre Guild had entire suites of Signs meant for that very purpose.

With the hand not holding her pistol she traced the barred triangle anchor-symbol, then tracing strokes wide and sharp around it to twist the basic Arrow pattern into Gulati's Arrow. As she finished the last curve on the derivative she withdrew her fingers and Gloam branded itself into the air, shaped into a Sign. She held it back until she popped back around the corner and aimed it the kobalos' way.

The movement caught its attention and it chittered in surprise as it turned her way, javelin pulling back, but Gulati's Arrow came tearing out of nothingness half an inch in front of her palm. In the blink of an eye a spike of oily darkness had caught the beast in the chest, hardly even staggering it but melting through the ringmail in a thick patch.

The burns spread from there, devouring it from the inside as Maryam's nav kept a tight hold on the Sign.

Aad Gulati's variation on the Arrow would keep burning away at what it touched so long as one maintained their grip on the Sign. The downside was that the more it ate the harder the Sign became to control. Maryam, whose Grasp was usually one of the finest in her year, could make much better use of it than most. She could feel Hook's glee the sight of the brutal effect and almost rolled her eyes. Her sister liked combat Signs a little too much.

She waited until a chunk of the torso was gone before dismissing the Arrow, the kobalos dropping to the ground as she rose to her feet and tugged her cloak back into place. On the other side of the half-circle balcony Yaq was on his feet as well, flicking ichor off a long knife. He nodded at her. They'd secured the second level, then. Below them the main body of the crew moved from cover to cover across the pocked metal ground, only smoke and silence answering them from the rest of this wretched iron wasp hive.

"The second level is clear," Maryam called out.

Yaq was not the screaming type.

"The top level is clear," Silumko called back from above.

After a long moment of them fanning out, the remainder of the crew on the bottom level finally relaxed their guns.

"Clear," Song announced in turn. "We gather downstairs."

Resting her pistol against her shoulder muzzle up, Maryam allowed herself a satisfied glance at the last half-hour's work: a handful of corpses up here, most killed by Yaq without a sound as the large man moved with a panther's silent lethality, and many more downstairs where their main body had drawn the attention of the kobaloi while the flanking forces hit the upper levels. She waited for Silumko to come down one of the odd sloped halls that served as stairs in this place, watching as he struggled to make his way down between the sharp angles and slopes.

Maryam called the room a wasp hive in her head because it was broadly shaped as one, four levels of a structure that was akin to a fat pear. The inside was a forest-like mess of iron panels and fallen metal beams, with the ground level a broad warren of holes and walls. The kobaloi tribe had gathered mostly around the central part of the structure, which boasted two stacked half-circle balconies overlooking the middle of the ground floor.

The last level, the basement, was so thickly filled with broken metal and collapsed ceiling that it was impossible for humans to wade in through past a few feet beyond the door. Silumko leaped down the last of the angled slopes, landing next to Maryam with his musket held steady.

"That was easier than expected," he said. "Considering their numbers, I mean."

She snorted. There might have been thirty-odd kobaloi in the room, but there was a reason those lemures were not considered a threat to anything other lone travelers or farmsteads deep in the hills. Unless they were led by a larger lemure, anyway.

"We caught them by surprise in their own lair," she said. "Some of them weren't even armed. It makes musketry almost unsporting, not that I intend to stop."

Their crew's ranged weapons punching through the enemy's armor without trouble meant they might as well have been wearing silk robes instead. A decided advantage in a fight, though that did not make dealing with them a stroll in the park. The rudimentary crossbows they sometimes wielded packed quite a punch, and at a comparable range. The quarrels were often nothing but sharpened wood, but the kobaloi smeared shit and ichor on the tip. Cemelli had cleaned Maryam's shoulder wound to be sure she got all of it out, when she was clipped earlier.

"I'm not one to turn down a fight stacked my way," Silumko cheerfully agreed. "Still, you'd think Scholomance would have worse to throw at us this far into the Trench."

Maryam traced the evil eye against her palm at that tempting of misfortune. This was their sixth room of the day, the furthest anyone had pushed into the grand maze.

"There was something odd about the last shuffle," she said. "It was unusual of it to give us an empty room, and at the last moment to boot."

The first two rooms this morning had been in the usual mold. One a hall of spinning blades whose timing changed every two and a half minutes, the other a field of checkered black-and-white ceramics that blew up first on a three-one pattern but then abruptly all turned into traps for the last section of the field. Yaq had, for some reason, found this deeply hilarious. Izcalli humor could be passing strange.

Still, though the rooms had been dangerous and required both care and thought their delving crew crossed them without much issue.

The room after that was one that had already been cleared – the Fourth and Eleventh, by the painted marks – but that'd been a different sort of trap. The disarmed traps had hidden a kobalos ambush, the tribe peppering them with crossbow bolts and javelins before legging it. Song had caught them out early, thankfully, and a few kills were enough to have them on the run. It'd still cost Maryam a bolt to the shoulder, which could have torn muscle if not for the layers and padding of the combat fit.

That was not the last they saw of the little bastards, either. They harassed their crew through the next room as well. It would have been tricky to navigate on its own, for it consisted of two sets of shuttles going back and forth across a deep spiked pit and since each shuttle only covered half the length of the pit you had to leap from one to the other when they were closest – a timing that changed on a cycle. The kobaloi had made it much worse by sneaking onto the further shuttles to shoot at them all the while, though at least they proved poor shots when on the move.

Still, between some fine shooting and Maryam's personal contribution of throwing a Gloam-hound construct in their shuttle to tear them up their crew made it through the fourth room as well. They'd expected the fifth room to be even worse, but Scholomance then inexplicably shuffled off what it had lined up for them just before they entered to put another empty room on their path. The god was visibly angry about it, according to Song, and for good reason: they'd walked right through the solved room into this iron hive, the lair of the same kobalos tribe that'd haunted them all the way.

They had cleared it of the lemures with relish.

"There must be some kind of mechanical limitation on what it can do when shuffling rooms around the Trench," Silumko mused. "This whole place was built."

"Built by Lucifer, his court of devils and an empire's worth of slaves," Maryam shot back.

Hell was said to be the mother of many mechanical horrors, and depending on the chronicle the Lightbringer was either one of the greatest minds to ever exist or a god in the flesh.

"Even aether engines are engines," the Mask insisted. "They are capable of astounding things, but there are still rules they must obey."

Maryam was disinclined to argue mechanics with a man who was half a tinker, so she simply grunted in acknowledgement and let the conversation lapse until they'd reached the ground floor. Yaq was already there with the others, having gone down the path on the other side of the balcony.

"We will be taking a rest here," Captain Emeni announced, patting at one of her hair knots.

She'd not taken a wound today, a relief after the javelin she ate in the stomach last time. Still, the pretty face was tired even if her gaze was undimmed. Silumko groaned in relief at the announcement, and he was hardly the only one. Given their crew's progress they had continued the delve uninterrupted since morning, pushing on uninterrupted save for a rest to eat earlier. Some of them were getting tired, though not Maryam.

Part of that would be the poppy pills Cemelli had fed her earlier and made her body rather... floaty, but there was more. They were just on the edge of finally getting somewhere in this fucking delve, Maryam could feel it, and that lent her a feverish sort of energy. There was a victory around the corner, proof they weren't just wasting their time in a pointless game of dice with death. A hand caught her shoulder and she almost twitched.

"Are you all right?" Song quietly asked.

Her friend's uniform was barely scuffed even after all the day's travails, she ruefully noted.

"I was only thinking of how far we made it today," she said.

Song slowly nodded.

"There has been some discussion of turning back," she said. "Some among us are getting exhausted."

"We're close to something, Song," Maryam said. "I can almost feel it. At least a little further."

"I happen to agree," her captain murmured back. "It was too agitated earlier for it to have been entirely about the kobaloi, there is something else near it doesn't want to see."

She sighed.

"But there is more to this than the two of us," she said. "Emeni is ambivalent, so as compromise after resting we will push one room further – but no more. We still do not know what our path back will look like."

Maryam grimaced but did not argue. That was one of the first lessons the Trench had taught them: anyone who blew all their powder on the way in would be in the pits for the way back. There was no guarantee Scholomance would take it easy on them while they retreated. And Ishanvi did look tired to the bone, now that remembered to check. Slumped on the ground with half-closed eyes, breathing shallowly. The little scholar was fit, but there was a still a softness around her edges that Maryam recognized from their first year Warfare class.

Ishanvi Kapadia had begun training not so long before Scholomance, that was her guess, and while she had been assiduous she was not used to long days of physical work. Many College students had been the same back in Warfare class.

"I still think we could push further," Maryam said, "but it sounds like that decision's been made."

Song hummed.

"You've never been so eager to throw yourself into the delve before."

Blue eyes narrowed. That was much too innocent a tone.

"Is there question in there, or are we going to be throwing statements around?" Maryam said, then paused. "Rice sometimes tastes good. Clothes can be red."

She'd thrown the rice one in there just to piss off Song, but tellingly the other woman did not even bat an eye.

"I am not accusing you of anything, Maryam," Song said.

"Really?" she tightly replied. "Because it sounds like you are."

"Or maybe," Song said, "I happen to be acquainted with throwing myself into the work to avoid other matters."

Her fingers clenched. What was it with everyone and trying to tell her how to live her life, lately? She was doing her fucking job, the one they'd signed up for. Just because Yue would soon have the supplies for obscuration didn't mean that Maryam needed to use them immediately. It was under control.

"Winning your race to the library is what we're here for, aren't we?" Maryam harshly replied. "It's become the point of our year, we won't even be doing a test. Never thought I'd heard you complain about me taking it seriously."

She walked away from her captain before Song could answer, knowing it was ill done but her teeth clenched too tightly around a bit of spite to care. She went to stand with Ishanvi, who had woken up enough to break bread with Silumko. Quite literally, the two of them sharing a nut loaf and some dried sausage in between pulling at their waterskins.

"-like a rather low wage," Ishanvi frowned. "Coffee-making is a rare and prized skill. And you are all paid this much, not only you?"

"I asked Tristan and he says he's got the same wage," Silumko told her. "He started taking shifts before I did, too, so he shouldn't be paid less."

Maryam, not quite able to make herself sit down with them, instead folded her hands behind her back.

"Talking about the Chimerical?" she asked.

"Well, Hage underpaying us for working there anyway," Silumko said. "I don't suppose you could get it out of Abrascal whether we actually have the same wage or he was lying through his teeth?"

Considering Tristan regularly called Officer Hage 'the worst sort of cheapskate' and an 'extortionate old spider' Maryam very much doubted anyone taking shifts at the Chimerical was getting paid a copper more than the devil could get away with offering.

"Silumko," Ishanvi chided. "Not all cabalists talk freely about money."

Maryam frowned at her.

"He'd tell me," she said.

The other woman's brow rose in what looked like genuine surprise.

"Oh, are you two close?" Ishanvi asked. "Apologies, I've never seen you together."

And Maryam's mouth opened to say something scathing, but then she tried to bring up an example from after Ishanvi's arrival on the island and she could hardly think of one. They... Gods, had they spent any time at all together beyond the brigade hours since Misery Square? Maryam could not even think of a time only the two of them had gone to buy food together. Because either I did it with the Orels to show them the good shops or I passed the duty to Angharad.

It occurred to Maryam, like a bolt out of the black, that for all that part of her resented Tristan holding her at a distance his contribution was merely the holding – she had walked out there on her own. She swallowed, mumbled an excuse about keeping a lookout and fled the pair. The closest thing she could think of to disappearing into a hole was heading down to the basement, but adding insult to injury there was already someone down there. Cemelli Popo, kneeling down by some painted iron panel with a lantern, spared her a curious look.

"I've found one of the places the kobaloi use to make their ringmail," the Savant informed her. "A little deeper in. There's piles of alloy shavings by a makeshift anvil and hammer."

A change of topic. That would do.

"I would have thought their armor to be salvage from the invasions of Tolomontera," Maryam said.

"It could be for repairs," Cemelli mused. "I've noticed there are patches in their mail shoddier than the others. It would fit with them being imitators of lucent creations rather than creators. In most regards, anyway."

She inclined her head at the painted iron panel. Maryam was not exactly impressed: thick spirals of rust red and brown covered most of it, surrounding what she thought might be meant to represent Lucifer's ancient throne. There was a large red eye on it that'd thrown her off.

"A great admirer of spirals, are you?" she drily asked.

"It seems confirmation that the kobaloi tribes in the Trench are under the dominance of Scholomance," Cemelli told her. "Or something taking that guise, anyhow."

She then turned a more critical eye on the painting.

"Artistically speaking, this is rather well done for something painted using one's fingers," she said. "Almost certainly not the maker's first work, which is interesting to me."

"So you're a fingerpaint expert?" Maryam teased. "Peiling classes teach broadly indeed."

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Cemelli looked almost embarrassed.

"I thought to become a painter, once," she admitted. "I even studied at the workshop of Master Madiaraga in Ixta for a year."

"That doesn't sound like an Izcalli name," Maryam said.

"It isn't, but I'm from the Totochtin League," Cemelli shrugged. "We're barely even Aztlan."

The League was one of the oddities of that part of the world, Maryam had always thought. It had been the seat of Izcalli royalty once, and one of its wealthiest regions. But it had also been invaded and annexed by other powers half a dozen times, and those tides coming and going had left them rather different from every nation surrounding them.

"Evidently you changed careers," Maryam said. "Was the workshop a disappointment?"

Cemelli shook her head.

"Gods, no, it was the best time of my life," she replied. "But I couldn't afford to keep paying the fees. My family lost almost everything in a flower war. None of my kin were grabbed, thankfully, but the Izcalli ransacked the dye shop and enslaved most of our workers."

The Izvorica grimaced. That was all too familiar a tale, though the slavers were from a different banner.

"My condolences," she said.

Cemelli shrugged.

"I still paint," she said. "There is no reason I should stop. This is a job, not my life - I trained as a physician to help pay my family's bills, joining the Watch doesn't change that. It just means I don't have to worry about getting stiffed when I send my bill."

A practical woman, this one, Maryam thought amusedly. And with a certain approval. Cemelli Popo rose to her feet with a groan.

"One more, then," she said. "I could have done without, but I suppose the Stripes need their pats on the back."

The signifier was not in agreement for the first part, but the second was a breath of fresh air.

"Not impressed by Colonel Cao's magical points?" Maryam laughed. "For shame, Cemelli."

"The most magical thing about them is how they make generally sensible people lose their sense," Cemelli said. "I've been meaning to talk to you about, considering you're the steady one in your brigade."

Maryam's brow rose.

"I thought Song had grown on you," she said.

"She's brilliant," Cemelli bluntly replied, "and very gifted. That skews her opinion on what can and should be done."

Maryam crossed her arms.

"You're having doubts about the delve," she guessed.

"I saw the attraction of the exploration, at first," Cemelli said. "But to be frank our last yearly test was significantly less dangerous than what we're currently doing, that we would have to keep doing for who knows how long."

It wasn't the first time Maryam heard such talk. Never before in their crew, but it had not escaped her attention that a few of the brigades at the bottom of the score board had disappeared. More than the number of students who'd died. Some were dropping out, preferring to take their chances with the yearly test instead. Cemelli coughed.

"There's always the chance we'll end up like you Unluckies, it's true, but on the whole I think this delving business has not been an improvement," she continued. "I expect Cao knows it too, which is why she's whipping the Stripes into a frenzy with points and bribes."

"If this fails it will be an egg on her face," Maryam agreed.

"And if she makes it too easy to pass, the Obscure Committee will have her whole head," Cemelli said. "I don't envy her that tightrope, but she's the one who chose to join the circus."

Cemelli Popo, Maryam thought, was growing on her. She'd been the least personable of the Twenty-Ninth at first, but as an occasionally disagreeable woman herself Maryam was willing to mercifully give her a pass over it.

"I'm not saying we should quit immediately," Cemelli told her. "But I wanted to take your pulse about this."

"I see your point," Maryam admitted. "If the risks keep increasing, I could see myself agreeing with you."

The other woman sharply nodded. They went back up together, taking the time to drink water and stretch before the rest of the crew grouped up to leave.

The exit was through the ground floor, crossing the wasp hive across the broken grounds and boltholes. Maryam would not count on this room staying empty longer than an hour, despite the numbers Song had painted on the walls to mark it as cleared. Soon enough another pack of kobaloi would move in. It won't be our problem if we keep a good pace.

Beyond the hive, through a doorless threshold, they found not another trap room but something... stranger.

Two massive steel pistons were slowly pumping up and down, each as tall as a tower and their bottom connecting to large gears through slits in the ground. Holes on the top end of the pistons were filled by a rod that was tied to layers of clockwork machinery emerging from some great engine squeezed beneath the pistons. It looked like a pair of massive furnaces whose chimneys sprouted thick vapor – rising in columns that joined the clouds above – and kept three massive wheels which lay half underground rolling. There were brass tubes everywhere and strange dials, the whole structure put together about the size of a galleon.

Maryam stopped to stare in a mix of dread and awe at this infernal machinery, hardly the only one of their crew to do so, but one instead stepped forward with open glee. Silumko was almost whistling as he went around a piston to approach the furnaces, the rest forced to follow lest he be exposed to ambush.

"This must be one of the machines that allows Scholomance to shuffle around rooms in the Trench," he told them excitedly. "See how the pistons connect below? The rooms are on something akin to mine rails, but it should be in a square grid so they can be shuffled in any direction."

The signifier watched the great sealed furnaces, whose shell hid all that went on within but still caused enough heat that even standing a dozen feet away she felt like she was facing a fire.

"One of," Maryam repeated. "There will be more of these?"

"Oh, almost certainly," Silumko said. "Three, perhaps four? This is devil work, Khaimov, those furnaces burn aether. They will never run out of fuel, but they can only burn so much without melting themselves. One won't be enough to enable something like the Trench."

Burning aether? Gods, she was glad she'd not even been tempted to feel that machine out with her nav. Captain Totec had always been crystal clear that sticking your logos into strange machines was a good way to get your soul ripped out, the wisdom of experience shining bright. Silumko, carried by his enthusiasm, had not slowed down in his talking.

"Pandemonium being filled to the brim with furnaces like this is supposedly why Hell is such a wasteland," he told her. "Not that the devils have to care about the ground cracking from the heat."

Maryam only hummed, spared the need to humor him by Song and Captain Emeni stepping in.

"Is there a way to shut it down?" Song asked.

"There should be, the furnaces need to be snuffed for repairs," Silumko noted. "Yet I don't see the valves that'd do it. They might be underground."

"And shooting it would..." Captain Emeni trailed off.

He hummed, stroking his chin.

"Nothing short of a cannon will dent infernal alloys, but assuming we bring one to bear?" he stopped for a moment, as if running numbers. "At a guess, a similar result to when the machine was shattered at Misery Square only there will be physical heat released as well metaphysical."

He paused.

"A much larger and more intense reaction, of course," he said. "Everyone within half a mile not protected by some god or boon should die within a heartbeat of the release, then the physical explosion would hit their bodies."

"So you don't recommend blowing up the furnaces," Cemelli drily said.

"Not unless we can shoot it from further than a mile away," he replied. "It would probably harm Scolomancia for us to do so, though, which is worth noting."

Their crew conferred after that, coming to the conclusion that besides having Ishanvi make a sketch of the machine there wasn't much to do. They scattered, looking for the next passage. Song and Maryam found something promising, brass stairs past the second piston, but quickly found those wrapped around the back of the machine. They went up anyways, and did not regret it: they were brought onto a narrow maintenance platform at the base of the chimneys, and while the heat was oppressive the view of the maze ahead was worth it. Of the maze and more.

They went back to the others, finding Ishanvi was done and that Emeni Maziya had found a room to the right. It was a visible dead end, sadly, and even if they'd been inclined to risk another death room none of them would have done it for the privilege of going no further. Instead they brought the others onto the maintenance platform, squeezing tight, and there were some gaps.

"Gods," Ishanvi said, "what is that?"

"That," Song replied, "is the end of the Trench."

They were barely halfway there, Maryam thought, and only because some of their rooms had been long halls. But as far as she knew this was the first time anyone had put eyes on the end of the maze. After another long stretch of death games the rooms all converged to the bottom of a cliff not unlike the one where the Watch camp had been raised, but there would be no lift for this one. Like a gargantuan set of stairs, four cubic rooms stacked atop one another went from top to bottom of the cliff – and beyond that last room, under gloomy clouds, lurked rows of animal statues at the end of which a temple waited.

The way out of the gargantuan room containing the Trench.

"Ancestors," Silumko said, "but that temple looks like bad news."

"Animal statues are always a bad sign," Yaq quietly agreed.

"There's a cat temple in Ingalapur where for an offering of fish you can be buried in purring kittens," Ishanvi challenged.

There was beat of thoughtful silence.

"Bad sign for rats," Yaq finally replied.

Maryam smothered her smile at the pout Ishanvi turned on him for that, even more so when he smiled back and she flushed. The view was a fine note to end on, Maryam thought, and even better was that this furnace seemed a fixed position: Scholomance had not shifted the beehive room affixed to it and Silumko theorized it could not. Though their guns were at the ready, it was with a quick gait they went back.

It had been a long day and they were all too eager to return to camp – where the day's discoveries should be well praised by Colonel Cao. For those who cared about such things.

Yaq moved so quickly that Maryam didn't notice until the knife had left his hand.

The kobalos twitched in surprise, touching the knife buried into its throat to the hilt as if disbelieving that it was there, then slumped forward. Its javelin clattered loudly against the floor and the salvaged iron plate it wore as a breastplate thunked loudly, but even though they all tensed there was no answering noise from deeper within.

"A survivor from earlier?" Maryam asked in a whisper.

"No," Yaq firmly said. "Sentinel."

"Guns up," Song ordered, turning to the other captain. "Fighting retreat?"

Emeni nodded.

"Let us not be drawn into a tar pit this late in the day," she agreed. "We fight only enough to withdraw."

Killing the lookout had bought them the advantage of surprise, so instead of blundering in they crept forward towards the center of the room staying in cover and out of sight. Now and then they risked a peek, and what they found had Maryam's stomach clenching. At least two dozen kobaloi, though not as well armored as the ones they had killed earlier. Yet it was not the beastlings that worried her, it was the much larger lemure among them that the kobaloi kept a wary distance from.

It looked like a hairless anteater twice the size of a bull. Its flesh was eerily translucent, almost like... wet glass, and the skin looked disgustingly thin. One could make out pulsing veins and the pull of muscles through it, like it was barely even there. The feet weren't even clawed, instead ending in thick bulbous tentacles, while what should have been a thick tail on an anteater was instead an elongated abdomen like an ant's, trailing along the ground.

Maryam watched in horror as it approached a dead kobalos, a long and prehensile black tongue carefully taking the armor and everything else off the corpse then slithering across the dead flesh like it was tasting it. Then it withdrew and its mouth snapped open into four long, teeth-rimmed jaws dotted with round white eyes. It ate the whole kobalos in an instant. The anteater stayed in place, swallowing its meal, then it shook its abdomen and its tongue peeked out. Tasting the air again.

It began moving towards another corpse, but the horror did not stop there for it had barely gotten the mail off another kobalos before it began twitching. Its jaws fluttered and it tensed, abdomen roiling as it slightly rose off the floor – and under the bulbous appendage a wet-lipped mouth spat out a pile of mucus and bile that began moving.

Screaming and scared, a mucus-covered naked kobalos tried to wipe itself clean. It was dragged away from the anteater by a pair of survivors even as the larger lemures resumed its corpse-eating.

"Fuck," she very softly whispered.

So that was why Scholomance didn't seem to mind throwing kobaloi at them no matter the losses incurred. It had this... whatever the Nav this fucking thing was to spit the corpses back out on their feet. There had to be something taken from the corpses like this, Maryam though, lemures weren't charities. But this was still a major logistical problem for the expedition: they could not expect to ride out the kobaloi, not with that thing around. And if she could realize that, then...

And there it was, Song and Emeni Maziya gesturing at each other in what Maryam thought to be Malani naval sign language. They did not debate long, and the order went up and down the line like a shiver. Ishanvi, who had been told it by Silumko, leaned close to Maryam to whisper.

"We try to kill the anteater and run," she whispered. "You're to slow down the kobaloi if you can."

Maryam frowned but nodded. It was a golden opportunity, she recognized as much. While their crew was perhaps running a little low on powder to kill their way through an entire second kobaloi tribe, hitting the bigger beast and running for it was not unfeasible. Risky, but not unfeasible.

The ambush started when Song popped out and put a rifle shot right in the anteater's head, only for Maryam to watch in disbelief as the lead ball got stuck in what turned out to be thick, gelatinous skin. The others rose from cover a moment later, shots erupting as Maryam breathed out and reached for the currents of Gloam, preparing strings to hinder the enemy, and she saw Yaq break cover and run for the anteater with knives in hand. She pulled out strings, wove them, and-

And then the real ambush started.

It fell like hammerstroke, splattering half a kobalos from sheer weight. More than twenty-feet tall and rust red of beard and mane, the one-eyed giant let out laughter like the rumble of a storm as he casually ripped out half the dead kobalos from under his foot and tossed it at Yaq – the Skiritai dropped to the floor in time, but ichor splashed all over his cloak. Onjancanu, Maryam thought. Fuck, it must have been waiting upstairs.

Now they knew what the bigger lemure leading the kobaloi was.

Maryam rewove the strings on the fly, Hook's own hands emerging to pull at the angles so she wouldn't lose both thumbs in the process, and she'd anchored the Gloam on the shadow the giant cast – that was the weakness of the strings, you had to find an uninterrupted path for them – when it happened. Her Grasp slipped and she pulled a bucket of Gloam instead of a thimble.

Tamping down on the panic she broadened the string as much as she could, but it still ate through the tip of her wooden fingers like they were kindling. Swallowing loudly, she tossed the half-baked arrangement on the onjancanu and dared pull no further. It wasn't enough, she thought as it crisscrossed up the giant's legs. It only went halfway up its body, and that last thick ligament she looped around its arm to keep it from swinging. It fought her, pulling against.

The kobaloi, meanwhile, feared their giant overseer more than they did muskets. They charged with shrieks, a few aiming crossbows. Maryam had to duck under one, and in the same moment the onjancanu pulled at her string. She groaned in pain, feeling like she'd just been kicked in the stomach.

"We need to run," Maryam managed to shout.

They were already breaking. Song had taken a bolt in the shoulder, finally missing a shot for it, and Yaq was limping away with Silumko's help. They all made for the front of the hive, Ishanvi emptying her blunderbuss and scything the closest kobalos in two as she followed right behind Maryam. The witch let out a shout of pain when the onjancanu tore through a string, and had to release them all or risk having her sister ripped out of her.

The giant roared with triumph, stomping after them, but they were nearly to the door and – Cemelli stumbled, Maryam swallowing bile when she saw the javelin planted in her eye. But Yaq's hand was on the haft, having caught it at the last moment, and...

"Rip it," Cemelli shouted, wept.

There was a wet squelching sound as Yaq did, Maryam seeing the pierced eyeball pop out with a string attached before she looked away to heave. But she did not stop moving, did not stop running. All the way through the empty hall as Cemelli passed out and had to be carried, the giant and his shrieking cohorts thundering behind. And after that, thank every god, the shuttle room. They all crammed in the same shuttle, getting it moving as they were carried across the spiked bit and away from their pursuers.

By the time the kobaloi began throwing javelins, they'd moved onto the second shuttle.

The onjancanu tossed a kobalos their way out of spite, but pursued no further.

--

They came back half dead and still terrified, to wide eyes from the rest of the delvers.

But even as the Twenty-Ninth rushed Cemelli to the hospital, barely even stopping to raid the infirmary supplies at camp – they woke her and drugged her so she could use her contract on herself - Maryam and Song were summoned by Colonel Cao. To Song's honor, despite the unalloyed attention of a woman she looked up to she quite clearly could not wait to get out of the tent and head to the hospital.

That was not to be, however, as Cao wanted every detail and wanted them badly enough to have the infirmary physician summoned to the tent to clean and bind Song's wound while she was questioned. It was hours before the colonel had squeezed them sufficiently dry, and then the stern woman gave them an almost proud look.

"You did very well," Chunhua Cao said. "Not only do you have a new stopover and description of the end of the Trench, you've found out key information. Should we kill that scavenging lemure and the onjancanu we will be much closer to making it through."

Maryam was exhausted and had been fantasizing about gnawing off her arm to escape her seat for an hour – a desire that grew when the poppy began to fade and pain crept back in - so when Cao casually awarded them points she only half-listened. It was only Song's flabbergasted face that gave her pause.

"I'm sorry," Maryam said. "Could you please repeat that?"

"Thirty," Colonel Cao said. "And the rooms you cleared, of course. We shall even count the machine as a passage room."

Over the last week the First and Thirty-Eighth had slowly been catching up to the alliance of Tupoc and the Spy, but with what Cao had just tossed at them their own crew had not only surpassed but almost lapped the two. Unless Maryam was mistaken, they were now within a single solved room of more than doubling either score. She walked out of the tent still startled, as much by this as the neutral look on Song's face.

"I thought you would be pleased," she said.

"We are being made into a banner," Song replied, voice clipped. "Enthusiasm about the delve has been waning, so the colonel splashed a reward on us to show that anything breaking the deadlock will be greatly recompensed."

"We're still pulling ahead," Maryam said.

"Until the next time she needs a deadlock broken," Song said. "We will not be the lucky ones twice."

Her captain passed a hand through her hair.

"It doesn't matter," she said. "The hospital first, if you don't mind."

Maryam didn't. They'd be sleeping in town tonight, she decided. No sense in crossing Allazei to get to the hospital and then cross it most of the way back to reach the cottage. They were both hungry enough that by the time they got to the Triangle they took a small detour through the top of Regnant Avenue to grab food from one of the eateries and ate it as they walked to the hospital, the warm pastries filled with cheese and spice a comfort in the face of the cold winds coming off the bay. They even got a basket of them to bring as a gift.

Maryam was only too happy when they moved further away from the coast, as her eyes kept straying to the dark expanse of water no matter how often she caught it and forced herself to look away. Every day the Orels ran later was a piling worry. Had it been a Gloam storm? They were rare in the Trebian Sea, where the many ancient lights left by the Antediluvians usually broke them up before they could form, but sometimes they blew in from the Pastel Sea or the interior of Old Liergan.

There is nothing to do but wait, she reminded herself for the hundredth time. She quickened her pace without even noticing it before she'd pulled ahead of Song, who was merciful enough not to comment. With Song by her side Maryam didn't even get side-eyed by the gate guards of the hospital, and a quick question at the desk had them sent in the direction of Cemelli's private room. They traded a look at that, because they both knew from experience that a private room was not a good sign.

Outside the door they found Yaq and Silumko, the two leaning against either side of the door and quietly chatting. The latter looked up at their approach, a look hard to decipher flashing through his eyes.

"Captain Song, Maryam," he greeted. "It's kind of you to visit."

Yaq nodded in agreement, looking slightly awkward.

"She is in consultation," Song stated, eyeing the closed door.

"Lady Knit took an interest," Silumko acknowledged. "I thank you for coming, truly, and will be sure to pass it along. But I am not sure now or after will be a good time to..."

He trailed off and Maryam made a face of understanding. She wouldn't want to see another brigade just after a goddess raked her over the coals with a price either, especially not when she'd taken that wound fighting alongside them. It must seem somewhat unfair that it was the Twenty-Ninth who kept taking wounds needing to be paid for while the Thirteenth got off relatively unscathed.

It was beginning to dawn on Maryam that even the least martial of the Unluckies were unusually quick on their feet by the standards of Scholomance. They might not be the best in a fight, but they were very good at surviving. Finally she'd found an upside to every single one of them coming with a mortal enemy attached, she ruefully thought. Were any of them slower or less wary, they'd never have made it far enough to become Unluckies.

"We wouldn't want to impose," Song assured him, then pressed into Silumko's hand the small basket. "I've spent enough time in beds here to know the food is nothing to boast of, so pass this along with our compliments if you would."

Silumko smiled and thanked them as he took the pastries, but neither side tried to get a conversation going past confirmation that they still intended to meet tomorrow morning at the usual hour. Even if they did not delve, it was almost certain Cao would want to debrief the Twenty-Ninth as well.

The two of them were not dismissed so much as they dismissed themselves out of politeness. Something about that, though, stuck with Maryam like a pebble in the boot. She couldn't quite put a finger on what, though, and neither could Hooks. Well, she'd never liked the hospital anyway. It had a god's shrine in it, that was enough to make any signifier uneasy. She put it aside.

Tomorrow's delve needed planning. They'd made it halfway through, today, but Maryam would not be satisfied until they reached the very end. She had to make it count.