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Chapter 50

Chapter 49

Chapter 48

Chapter 47

Chapter 46

Planning was mostly about balancing odds. Mitigating negative outcomes, improving one’s chances of success by narrowing scope and removing risk. Yet no matter the work done, no plan was ever perfect.

Song knew that better than most, having spent what felt like most of her life falling just short of where she needed to be, of matching the standard that would finally see her father’s face gladden and her mother smiling for more than the ghost of a moment. The smallest of mistakes, of ...

Chapter 45

Tristan did not like Marshal de la Tavarin.

Chapter 44

Song waited patiently, her rifle propped up against her shoulder as the shadow moved through the bushes.

The wind was thin today and the Tolomontera winter did not often lead to fog, so there were only minor adjustments needed to her aim as she tracked the movement. Song would never quite get used to the sheer luxury of using only the finest of blackpowder and bullets, she thought. She still relished it as much as she had the first time she was handed a paper cartridge of corned powder ...

Chapter 43

It would have been more prudent not to enter Scholomance at all, even if they were only lingering by the antechamber, but Maryam had been curious.

She’d been back in Scholomance for classes since her obscuration, but that’d meant moving with purpose. In and out, no frills. Today she had time to spend while waiting, exploring how different the place had come to feel. With her sister in her eye, they could even make out the ripples that betrayed the presence of the god in the walls �...

Chapter 42

On a rainy seventhday morning, huddled inside the tent with two hand-drawn maps between them, Song Ren sat with her brigade and considered the death of the Lord of Teeth. As an intellectual exercise, she must admit she found it quite stimulating.

On paper, logistics were the greater part of the work. While strong and dangerous, the Lord of Teeth would not survive sustained cannon fire and rifles should give it pause – unlike muskets, their shots would get past the thicker outer layer ...

Chapter 41

The hunting crew were all sworn to silence over the Lord of Teeth’s lair before they returned to camp. The longer that knowledge was kept quiet, after all, the longer their crew could act unhindered by the others.

Yet Angharad could not say she was surprised when, come evening, there hardly seemed to be a soul on Lamb Hill that did not know of their adventure. To so blatantly break an oath in Peredur would have seen the culprit turned into a pariah – and then likely driven out of po...

Chapter 40

Waiting in the hall, Maryam had to resist tapping her foot against the ground in what would be too open a display of nerves for her to tolerate.

The chapterhouse was far from deserted at this time of the day, but she was not in a part of it that saw much traffic. At the furthest bound of the bastion, to the right of the stairs that led up to the private studies, there was a narrow and poorly lit hallway of stone benches leading to nothing but a barred door. Behind it, Maryam there would...

Chapter 40

Waiting in the hall, Maryam had to resist tapping her foot against the ground in what would be too open a display of nerves for her to tolerate.

The chapterhouse was far from deserted at this time of the day, but she was not in a part of it that saw much traffic. At the furthest bound of the bastion, to the right of the stairs that led up to the private studies, there was a narrow and poorly lit hallway of stone benches leading to nothing but a barred door. Behind it, Maryam there would...

Chapter 39

It was a little nostalgic, eating chicken-and-onion skewers with a keg of cheap beer.

It reminded Angharad of the evenings out after fencing tournaments, when she would sneak out with the other competitors to buy too much street food and get drunk in public gardens until someone’s minder found them and they were all forced to trundle back to their lodgings feigning feeling chastised. Angharad’s first kiss had happened while she smelled of roasted beef and maize beer, Arianwen laughi...

Christmas Week

Hey there!

For rest and childcare reasons I'll be taking the week of Christmas (22 to 28th of December) off, so that means there won't be an update on the 26th. The weeks before and after will proceed normally.

Happy holidays,

E.E.

Chapter 38

He’d not slept nearly enough, but still Izel found himself sitting at an empty table in the Rainsparrow Hostel’s eatery as the morning lights swept into Port Allazei.

Alonzo, who ran the morning service on tercedays, had let him in before the hall officially opened and even offered him a plate – near-stale bread and sausages that one needed very sharp knife to slice, but it had still been a kindness and Izel had thanked him profusely for it. The older man only patted his back and ...

Chapter 37

Izolda Cernik had not been much of a tactician.

Oh, she’d not been a babe in the woods when it came to schemes but she’d not proven all that great at them in either the royal hall of Volcesta or the sacred groves of the Ninefold Nine. Looking back, Maryam thought that in the early days Mother had muddled through on power and charisma until she could hand off the actual campaigning to war captains. Thankfully, Maryam had more than one parent to draw on and Goran Khaimov had reigned o...

Chapter 36

The houses claimed by the Orels were packed tight from the addition of another seven souls, but the sounds coming from their yard were happy.

Young Koval was shrieking with laughter, a black-haired man only a few years his elder wrestling with him in the grass. Blankets had been laid over the steps and grass, the newcomers sitting on them with hollow cheeks but gleaming eyes. Old Horvat ducked and weaved among them, filling cups and patting shoulders and wheezing. Bolic was standing tal...

Chapter 35

The oil lamp kept flickering.

It would burn fine for a few minutes, then start to cough like dying man. It was driving Maryam mad. She kept the irritation stoked, clutching the burning ember in her hand as a distraction. Fear had gnawed away at her guts the entire way to the port warehouse as she forced herself not to look at the ships in the harbor, the galleon and the merchantman flanking her skimmer. The galleon flew Watch black but not the other ship, and what did that mean?

H...

Chapter 34

The tea was not as good as Song’s.

No, Angharad corrected herself, that was unfair. It was better than the cheap Someshwari leaves the Thirteenth used as their basic stock, instead falling short of her captain’s personal stash that was doled out as sign if favor and affection. ‘Do Sau Ghode’, the teahouse whose comfortable little sideroom she currently occupied, probably had better fare to offer than what she had been served anyhow. The Skiritai Guild was notoriously skinflint w...

Chapter 33

They left Izel by the bedside, the two of them ending up at the bottom of the stairs from the sheer need to put a physical distance between them and the sight of Song Ren laid up in that bed looking exactly like what had been done to her.

Silence held a moment, Tristan forcing his thoughts to stop spinning while Angharad mastered her temper. Not so different at all, when it came down to it. Absent-mindedly, Tristan ran his tongue against his new tooth. The physicians had only put it in ...

Chapter 32

Maryam was more than a little familiar with ambushes.

The first year of her mother’s war against Malan had been a long streak of hiding in woods and along mountain paths so the Izvoric could charge out of cover and close the distance on Malani patrols before they could get a volley out. The High Queen’s armies did not use massed muskets like the Watch did, but they fielded squadrons of musketeers that would scythe through even knight’s armor if they were allowed to get their shots...

Chapter 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 an...

Chapter 30

Izel Coyac rubbed the bridge of his nose, vainly trying to slow down the incoming headache.

He’d been at this for two hours now, moving down from his desk to the cottage’s drawing room in the hope that the view out the window might inspire, but he could not seem to find where the mistake was. And there must be a mistake, because the last two tests of the lenslight had resulted in the same anomaly he had first found with Helena.

He did not dare approach Professor Achar...

Chapter 29

In the moment after the loud snap of broken bone, all Tristan could think of was the name.

Benito Giran. That’d been it. A first year from the Two Hundred Sixty-Ninth, the Stripe of a holding brigade who had been looking for seasoning. He’d joined the fighting with an eye to bringing some of the other first-year independents into his brigade when his temporary cabalists left. He’d laughed a lot, Tristan recalled, and loudly.

The hippogriff had snuffed him out in an instant, ...

Chapter 28

In the early hours of the morning, Izel Coyac sat by the last smoldering embers of the campfire and poked them with a stick. He stirred the fading red, eyes on it yet unseeing, and if asked would say there was no greater purpose to it. It was to keep the hand busy while his mind was away.

But the gods disagreed.

Among the pit of gray ash and black coal there lay lines of glowing red, and when watched from the corner of his eye they came together in shapes. Canoes, he thought. He p...

Chapter 27

Maryam was not having a good time.

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

It screeched and sparked above her head, suddenly whipping back as the articulated metal arm that’d shot it out withdrew into the wall. Behind her Ishanvi threw herself forward before she could be carved in two by the wall-blade coming out of the floor, Maryam leaning back to grab her by the shoulder and drag her into the next section. There had been no way t...

Chapter 26

The ground whispered against Tristan’s boots as ahead of him the lantern’s light dragged into existence a stretch of underground. It wasn’t the first time he returned to the forge, but it was the first at night and somehow that made a difference. Even knowing that the briarid had long left the grounds he could not help but tense up as they approached the basement, fingers tightening around the grip of his pistol.

He knew, in principle, that the lemure would not be there.

Tha...

Chapter 25

Maryam’s nameless ship had sailed before, of course.

It had made the journey from Asphodel to Tolomontera, and since been beached on different parts of the island. Yet on all those instances it had been sailed by a Watch crew, not her own. And while today was not the first time that the Orels took to the water – they’d gone fishing at the edge of Allazei Bay twice over the last week – this would be the first real journey undertaken by the Izvoric crew manning her ship.<...

Chapter 24

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 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 correspo...

Chapter 23

They met the Twenty-Ninth Brigade at the square in front Scholomance a quarter before noon, Captain Emeni Maziya and her three cabalists proving punctual.

That was common with Malani, Song had found. While they tended to loop in a turn of phrase so they would not be lying should they happen to arrive late, generally speaking they abhorred not being on time unless it was tradition that they should be late. It was a refreshing change compared to the Watch and Tianxi bureaucracies, which w...