Iseult

“No, wait, the money, captain, think of the-“

Younger than me. Cocksure, charming, hair greying at his temples. I know his type. Not used to losing.

He wheels like a kestrel, frame swept wide. It’s quick, he knows we’re all watching him. I flick my gaze down to adjust my cuff just a heartbeat after we make eye contact, which means I don’t look away quite quickly enough.

“Captain! A moment of your time! Ignore these,” and here he gestures dismissively at the trio of departing sailors. One turns and delivers a sneer and a contemptuous hand gesture, her wrists glittering with brass bangles. “Gormless shellbacks.”

It’s difficult to place him, just from those words. The cut and colour of his suit means he’s bought it here, in Ildathach. But his drawl and his hair marks him from further west, possibly around Crowmere. There are little hints about him from across the continent, beyond the borders of Yvreathe: an ivory cravat splashed in Wraithwild-damask, a row of gorgeous buttons on his coat that could only have come from much further abroad, in Khazraj.

He approaches me politely, so I’m forced to place my pencil down on the bar and close my notebook. To his credit, when he shakes my hand he does so with a gentleman’s grip, leisurely instead of bone-crushing. When his eyes inevitably flicker downwards to the tattoos on my hands and fingers, he studies them politely, without a trace of shame.

If he’s noticed me measuring the immense heft of his shoulders and the weight of his expression, he’s too polite to make a point of it. Perhaps he’s doing the same to me. I give him the blank look I reserve for men of his sort, the kind of well-dressed gentleman who approaches a woman like me in a lounge like this.

“Evin Tumble. Tumble! Yes, as in Colt & Tumble. I’m the latter.”

Also part of his plan, then, this quick off-balancing disguised as a casual introduction. I make a mental note and promote this conversation from boring to manipulative. There’s something unusual about the set of his teeth in the light, the flintlock percussion of his speech. Something predatory and watchful.

The rest of the room, a varied mixture of the higher-paid sort of sailing crew and warehouse workers, is pointedly not watching us. I let my gaze fall politely on the tasteful decorations of the lounge, speckled as it is with little islands of fashionably bored clientele. This decade’s chic- light tile floors and dark wood walls. There are a dozen other places in Ildathach that share the same aesthetics. Soft amber candlelight reflects off of a number of stylish touches. A display case for baked sweets. A gin glass. Evin’s ring catches this light, too, and I refocus on the man.

I’m aware of the intensity of his stare and the fervour of his enthusiasm. There’s an expectation there… oh, right. I speak.

“Iseult. Morrin. And I am a bulletsmith. Or a mathematician. Not a captain.”

Not my birth name, to which most people who speak only Irdcheol react with either a panicked look or a stammered imitation. Evin Tumble’s face beams with sudden recognition.

“Thought as much. Iseult Morrin! In the flesh! Of all the places in Ildathach. I saw you from across the room, and I knew you were a sigilist from the,” and here he gestures vaguely at my daybook and at the badge of my profession, a lit crimson brooch that is only now starting to fade to pink. “But I didn’t realise it was you. The accent, that makes sense,” he squints at me, then taps a finger in the air. “You don’t look particularly like your picture, you know. You don’t have the-” and here he swirls his hand in the air in front of the bottom half of his face, and looks at me expectantly.

I shrug, muster myself into yet another repetition of this exact conversation. “I think the artists took some liberties.”

He doesn’t press the subject, mercifully. “Anyway. Yes. Fascinating work. I’m from Crowmere, you know. Or just outside of it. Salted my burns trading with Wraithwilders before joining up with Wynne Colt and making Colt & Tumble. Been doing business all over the continent, these days- even done the flight to the Far Coast! Who knows, maybe we’ve worked together before! Well. Before Colt & Tumble really started specialising in excavations, anyway. I don’t suppose there’s a lot of overlap between witchery and mining.”

There is, obviously. Explosives and precision, just scaled differently. There’s no possibility he’s ignorant of this. I’m taken aback by his casual slur.

“I’m rambling. I’m rambling! Typical. Or so I’m told. Allow me to not mince words. I need to hire a crew. Small time. Simple job, really. You see, we at Colt & Tumble have some rather deep pockets. And our backers have deep pockets too. And we’ve got a plan.” He says that last word with a particular resonance. His eyes are positively glowing at this point.

“You’ve probably heard musings about this already, a woman of your, hah, calibre. It’s about the moon.”

That last sentence he speaks with a sacred delivery, pausing to suck air between his clenched teeth. I blink, and try not to let my surprise be obvious.

“You should see the look on your face! I thought Bani Yathrib were supposed to be hard to impress!” he guffaws loudly, boisterously, dominating the conversation before I can interrupt him. “No, not the real moon. The new one. The counterfeit.”

*

About half a year ago, we acquired a new moon.

Just to clarify, there was nothing wrong with the original moon. She’s still there, of course. But there’s a new one up there too, a tiny grey mountain that circles quietly overhead about once a week. Sometimes it transits across the face of the original, which is always a bit disconcerting. When it first appeared, there was terrible unrest clear across the continent, from Yvreathe to Khazraj. Across all of Calacar, really: the citizens of the Far Coast allegedly held a two day celebration after it was originally sighted.

Comets are famously portentous omens, but an entire moon? Everyone in Khazraj calls it the Leaden Heresy, which all things considered is probably the best name for it. On the sunrise side of the continent, we call it the new moon. I remember my neighbours actually spoke to me, for the first time, during those first heady weeks when it appeared. The entire city of Ildathach was in uproar.

Every seven days, you can see it pass overhead. It’s tiny, but you can’t miss it, especially when it traverses the sun. It’s estimated at almost exactly eight miles above the ground: higher than the highest eagles, but low enough to occasionally brush underneath wispy cirrus clouds. Too high and too fast for airships, even ones with modern engine halos. Balloons are totally out of the question. In typical Ildathach fashion, our city has become jaded to its presence, and in the last six months the new moon has shifted from appalling portent to banal curiosity. It doesn’t seem to do anything, or bother anyone. Talking about it, analysing it, trying to stop it- it’s like trying to fight winter. So now, it is accepted.

This is what makes Evin’s obsession so unusual. Most of the city’s gossip has graduated to more fecund snoopery- the sudden surge of noble rot in the waters around the Wraithwild, especially near the city of Brixa Thalaam, and rumblings of yet more unrest from bitter clans in the Aergan. It is not my habit to talk to other people, but even I’m aware of the news. Until this little meeting, until Evin Tumble’s unexpected zeal, the new moon was last season's gossip.

*

“I beg your pardon?”

I’m hiding my disbelief in conversational chaff, scrabbling for more time to think. He’s all grins and fiery eyes. I place my lukewarm drink on the table, using the condensation from the base of the glass to outline an ordered, organised pattern on the wood. The timber under my hands is spotless, worn from decades of use, and I draw a small measure of comfort from its weight and its age.

He repeats himself casually, absurdly. I delay again, with another conversation filler.

“You can’t be serious.”

He shrugs, good-naturedly. I wonder how much of the real Evin Tumble I’ve met tonight, and how much of it is an act that he uses to talk to people like me. Underneath the casual hand-in-pocket slouch of an Ildathach gentleman, the dashing cut of his jacket, the fashionable hairstyling, the real him is down there, peering out at this conversation, hidden behind walls and walls of spectacle and bombast.

One last try. “But… why?”

There’s a lull in as he digs through his satchel. I take a moment to inspect the crowd around us, relishing the pause in the conversation as Evin shifts focus. Most of the previously curious watchers from around the room have loosened their attention, instead opting to huddle into private conversations or hunch indifferently over their drinks. A group of out-of-place sailors cackles wildly in the centre of the lounge. I watch one slap another on the back, then slam a heavy fistful of spiral-stamped coins onto the bar before leering at the heavily bearded, blank-faced man serving her. She spins back to her group, face drawn into something between a sneer and a snarl, and for the first time I see the massive tattooed chevron crossing her face from temple to temple. She catches my eye and winks before cocking her head back to the barman and saying something that evokes another wave of grating guffaws from her crew.

Evin uses a kerchief to scrub the already impeccable table and places something lustrous in front of me. Two somethings, actually. Daguerreotypes, mounted in a frame of some dark wood, one above the other. They show the same thing, at two different levels of magnification. The new moon, etched in breath-taking precision onto brilliant silver plates. I’m impressed.

“You wouldn’t believe how much of a pain in the arse it was to get these made. Or perhaps you would. I’m sure you can appreciate the difficulty of tracking a moving object with a telescope, so on and so forth. Engineering and mathematics,” he wiggles his fingers in what I can only assume is a suitably mathematical pantomime. “Anyway. Yes. The effects are rather breath-taking.”

He’s not wrong. I’m almost afraid to touch the prints: they’re metal, and obviously protected by a layer of what I can only assume is higher-quality glass, but I’m reticent. Just the cost of making them is enough to give me pause. The fake moon, at least from these pictures, blossoms in on itself in a series of patterns, fractal forms that appear random from a distance, but sharpen into staggeringly complicated designs from the first picture to the second. It certainly looks nothing like our normal moon. Even in the second frame, the one that magnifies the lumpen mountain to such an extent that it frames only a portion of the thing’s craggy face, I can see the patterns of precise lines blur into smudges right at the limits of the camera’s resolution. They’re familiar, impossibly. Nobody outside of the Wraithwild makes sigils even remotely similar to this, and these configurations are of a wholly alien dialect to the knotwork I’m familiar with. But the intent is unmistakeable. Wards, charms, geometries, whatever your preferred nomenclature.

I take a moment to drink in the pictures, momentarily forgetting my scepticism. His plan is ridiculous, yes, but these prints are magnificent. My frostiness clangs back down when he speaks again, when I remember he’s there.

“We can estimate a few things from these pictures, you understand. Until Colt & Tumble was able to actually produce the images, we weren’t particularly interested in the new moon. But you can see it clearly. It’s not just a rock. We don’t know what it is. But these areas here?” his hand circles a pair of outcroppings that, to me, simply look like the rest of the mass of the moon. “Nickel. Iron. The new moon’s small, obviously. But it’s probably half the size of the city of Ildathach proper from what we can tell. Think about what that means. Just in mineral wealth.”

Regretfully, I tug my gaze away from the reverie of the pictures and inwardly grimace at this gross normalisation of the miraculous. His casual framing of such a gorgeous thing in terms of vulgar revenue is jarring. We should be talking about magic, or mystery. Instead we’re discussing money. He’s a miser, ogling a painting, seeing only the gold in the frame.

A few minutes ago, I wasn’t even thinking about the damned moon. Now I’m defending it.

His pragmatism goads me into a response of some sort. I repeat what he said, moments earlier, reflecting these same blunt words back at him.

“So you’re going to shoot it out of the sky. With a gun.”

When he shrugs, he does so with his entire body. “Well! It’s not like we can fly that high with a balloon! And it’s moving too quickly! And besides which, what would you rather do with it? Let someone from the Wraithwild or Khazraj catch it? Perhaps in our own side of the continent- someone from Yvreathe. Ys? Crowmere? I’m from Crowmere, and I can’t imagine how awful it would be if the princes got their hands on that. How about those animals from the Far Shore? I’m sure they’d want a piece of this prize.

“No. Iseult, it has to be us. Colt & Tumble, with the blessing of the Chaplain himself. It’s going to happen, you understand. It’s just a matter of if you want to be a part of it.”

He’s engrossing, I’ll give him that. The flow of his charm is hardly stymied when he pauses to nonchalantly order something unusual-sounding from a passing waiter. Thus armed with a clay bottle of something that smells like liquorice and turpentine, he steers the conversation to other topics, deftly refilling both of our glasses. We talk for hours.

*

Later, I get a measure of the type of man that Evin Tumble is, after the contract has been signed. After the absinthe. Once he has what he wants from me, hints of the real Evin start to show from under the façade.

He drops the light flirtations as soon as I put my name to paper, though his industrial cheerfulness remains. No shadows on his face, or sinister, villainous cackling. His demeanour flattens, and I wonder if he is indeed younger than I am, or if he’s simply done a tremendous job of screening his age with his barrels of confidence. I excuse myself well before midnight, and he doesn’t protest or race to follow me. Doesn’t even take his hand out of his pocket to bid me goodnight. When I step outside into the residual summer warmth, I am alone, save for the general crowds of Ildathach in the evening and the soaring light of the aurora overhead.

Typical.

The walk back to my flat is lonely, though to be honest the half hour or so that it would normally take is shortened and condensed by the amount of alcohol I’ve just consumed. I find myself fumbling with the lock to the front door of my workshop, my free hand locked around the wicker cap of the tube that Evin gave me. Colt & Tumble’s contract, now inked and rapidly drying in the scroll case tucked under my armpit. I sprawl onto my settee, fixating on the gleaming surface of the river outside my window. What have I gotten myself into.

But, to be honest, that is a problem for my future self. For now, I sit in the dark, idly picking at the lid of the case, and watch warm lanterns sputter and flicker across the inky waters of the Ilda River.

*

It is clear that I forgot to draw my curtains, for the sunrise wakes me. In protest, I bury my head under the settee cushions and attempt to force myself back to sleep, to quell the hangover currently stewing the top of my skull.

*

It’s still there.

What was even the point of drinking that much. I never drink that much.

I mourn, momentarily, and pretend it is for some reason nobler than the smouldering creaking in my temples. It didn’t used to be like this. It took me almost a month to walk from to Ildathach, over a decade ago, after my disastrous first year in Brixa Thalaam. When I first arrived , I had work. Or, rather, I had to work. The drinking and the carousing only emerged in these past gentle years. And now I am here, and I am hungover. Before I can squash it, a floating accusation, a remnant of my parents, smothers a gentle and all-encompassing judgement over me.

Something digs into my armpit. Scroll case.

I am neither hungry nor happy. I am, however, outrageously thirsty, and stagger towards the water pot in the kitchen. The worn pump handle is cold, which is comforting. I open the case one-handed to unfurl the scroll, and my eyes blur over as I try to dissect the contract.

Light slants in sideways through the window, and it is a simple enough thing to look at the scroll. On mornings like this, though, when one is forced to work against one’s will, there’s a particular unkind masochism in attempting to read unfamiliar legal text. Years ago, I would’ve ploughed through it, reading the entire thing, understanding nothing. Now, headache permitting, I stare at the paper for about twenty minutes, hunting for the little tricks people in this city likes to spangle these documents with. Nothing, so far.

It took me a year to gain fluency in Irdcheol. It’s not tremendously different from Mutafasih, truth be told. But these people don’t think like mine. Like everything written must be shorn, greatly or gently, of actual meaning. This contract is an excellent example, because it spreads over three pages what could be accomplished in three lines. Why does everything in Yvreathe have to exist outside of what people know, why can it not instead simply be what people say? Everything important becomes draped in these charades.

This momentary flare of anger dispels my hangover, momentarily. It returns as my irritation subsides. It’s hard to focus on the contract.

I remember a night from my childhood, waking to a Wraithwild sunrise. I remember sitting up to see the silhouette of my father breathing deeply in the empty breeze, the vista before him magnificent and desolate and empty. He had turned, and smiled, and his face bore the wear and love of centuries.

The hangover cackles in the roof of my skull. This sullenness is probably just wreckage in my blood, left from the absinthe.

My attention span leaves me. I slump back in the chair, contract now held in two gently quivering hands. I close my eyes and think.