Íde

It’s a humid morning. Heat rolls off the ocean, mixing with the salty morning air and lacquering me in a sheen of uncomfortable sweat. Chained airships visible from halfway across the city guide me towards the docks, and my meeting location with Sean and Miss Morrin. The current clutch of ships, a squadron of five or six, are illuminated by a combination of crimson engine halos and twinkling lanterns. They bob serenely in the early dawn, the undersides of their hulls lavishly painted in swirls of Ildathach livery.

The number of ships prowling Ildathach’s skies has increased every year since I was a teenager, and all of the vessels here bear the Chaplain’s seal on a prominent and visible part of their hulls. I pass under their great shadows and feel a temporary wobbling vertigo as I glance up into the hovering school. Each is a short-masted barge, clad in charmed wood and metals, crowned by a matte scarlet ring that occasionally blossoms peals of intense smouldering fire. Some vessels have a pair of these immense halos set in parallel or perpendicular arrays over multiple masts. One, a monstrous vessel near the head of the harbour, has three. She creaks loudly as I scurry under her, and the stamped crest of the Chaplain’s Office has been branded a hundred times in a checkerboard pattern on her underside. She bobs once, a minuscule movement, and releases a fantastic gout of flame from her rear ring. I feel the weird warping of the ship’s bulk as I scuttle under it, and my hair gently settles back onto my shoulders when I step out from under the vessel’s shadow.

Further down the coast, and a few miles outside of the city, sprawls the birthplace of Ildathach’s airships: the walled manor of the Wine Party. Every two months, when their engine halos begin to lose potency, each will inevitably float back to that secretive place, where sigilists and charmers employ whatever arcane knotwork they invented to get the things to fly in the first place. Sigils that work for weeks, without a sigilist present. When I was born twenty years ago, such a thing was considered impossible. Or so my professors say. Professor Finneces insists that the airships are a result of experimentations with strange sciences from the Far Coast. But Professor Finneces is also in many ways quite mad.

The sea is clearly in view now, peeking between the empty spaces between buildings and spires. The syllabus at Saint Listless’ had been exhaustive in its coverage of the city’s history, so even though I’ve never actually been to this part of the docks, I have at least a sort of academic adjacency to the subject of the sea. Most of Ildathach is built on previous iterations of Ildathach, and Jejune is no exception- these huge brick docks are built on limestone blocks hewn three centuries ago, which were in turn dropped into the ocean to build the foundations to expand the city in the first place. The Dunaidh family, wisely, kept the Saints-founded docklands intact during their takeover of the city.

Still, it is one thing to know the numbers behind Ildathach’s trade from lectures on the flow of goods from the Wraithwild, from Khazraj, from the Far Coast. It is another to see it, to feel the sweat and the salt ground into the bricks. A pair of labourers are marching through the street towards me, gripping a monstrous haul between the two of them- an armoured grey-shelled lobster easily as big as either one of them, its tremendous claws lashed shut with several lengths of rope. They eye me suspiciously as they pass, like they’re worried I’m going to try to steal the beast. I try to stay out of their way, and watch the sad, scuttling legs of their prize flail uselessly in the morning light.

I focus on the horizon, and the sea that is now more emerging more frequently than not past the silhouettes of cranes and low-slung warehouses. Crowds of labourers have begun to form and bustle about the wide, filthy streets. The sun is low on the ocean, and has been for some time, and half a sky away the tiny new moon begins to peek above the flat, sparkling sea. I scurry out of the way of a wide cart, laden with crates and straw and boisterous workers. This boulevard is the haunt of net-menders, many of whom have already emerged from either block houses or tattered cloth tents propped against more permanent lodges and warehouses. I pass through to a new street of shad-fishers, many of whom join me in the growing ebb of men and women making their way to the docks. Sean was kind enough to draw a map to the meeting place, so I unfold the parchment from my dress’ pockets and am pleased to note that I have made it almost all of the way to the right place on memory alone. Up around the corner here, through this archway labelled HIGH DOCK TWELVE, then up a flight of very worn and very large stairs. I take the steps two at a time, and as I round the corner, I begin to understand the vast scale of Jejune, and its forest of docks.

Combined like this, bobbing together, the ships extend along stone wharfs and barnacle-encrusted woodwork from here all the way to the horizon. Rigging so complex and so intricate that it almost forms knotwork geometries adorns every large vessel. Most of the ships are moored some distance from the land, and the rising sun chases them all in gold and white. Sweeping clouds of gulls offer a sense of scale for distant craft, and for the first time I consider the size of the things. They’re more like cathedrals than boats.

Some are from climates far, far from ours. Most are Yvreathan vessels- if not from Ildathach, than from the major city-states closest to us: Caronek, Ys, western Crowmere. Interspersed between our familiar ships are cogs and barques from the Wraithwild and Khazraj both.

I spot two boats flying rare totems. Both are whalers from tiny Sallowsnap, hulls festooned with hooked and pointed ivory. They are some of the smallest ships in the harbour, though makes up for their lack of bulk with a potent, surly viciousness.

Our voyage will not take us that far east, to the desolate waters near the Torment. Nor will it take us to the western half of the continent and the bristling states of Al Khazraj. Rather, we will sail north- hook around Caronek waters, sail serenely past Crowmere, and eventually arrive at our destination of Brixa Thalaam, halfway between Yvreathe and Khazraj. The Wraithwild, the narrow buffer zone that cleaves the Aergan from Cotton Castle.

I like maps. When I was younger, in the Ragged School, cartography was the first subject that my teachers noticed me in. The same love of precision and detail carries over exactly to sigilwork.

This brick dock is two floors above street level, yet it’s almost parallel to the wide, barely-moving deck of the ship where I’m supposed to meet my new companions. She is not an airship, and lacks the sleek lines or fiery engine ring of the boats I saw on my walk through Jejune. The Gundog Walking is a massive trading cog, proud and creaking, and her deck is host to at least five or six dozen scampering sailors. I spy Sean and Miss Morrin on the other side of the dock, and begin to walk over to them. He waves at me- she’s staring into the sea, eating an apple out of a burlap sack. Even from this distance, I can see there’s something different about his face, a ruddy mark slashing over his eyes and forehead. All around me, men and women scurry over the docks and the ship, trailing ropes and shouts, readying the vessel in preparation for the voyage.

“You! Cumberground!”

I’m not sure what that even means. But I’m very certain it was directed at me.

The woman currently shouting at me is about ten yards away, and looks roughly as tall as my collarbone. Her hair is a shock of shaggy blonde, peeking out from under some species of nautical hat. The hat, combined with her sweat-slicked fringe, half-conceals a sigil-worked eyepatch. Her coats, for there are two despite the heat, are a mess of colours and designs. She’s rolled one sleeve to her elbow, exposing a bewildering tangle of tattoos. I notice some more complex designs that look like Wine House designs. Whoever she is, she’s-

“I’m talking to you, cockchafer! Get out of the way!”

Alright that was a bit more direct. I pivot and narrowly avoid getting flattened by a pair of sailors pushing a steaming, sigil-etched box across the dock. Its mass is evident as they strain to slow it down, the unwieldy bulk barely shifting as their muscles cord and strain to control it. One of the pair is wearing a necklace of metal-clad fish bones, and the tendons on his neck strain mightily underneath it. The woman turns and glides smoothly past the struggling crew, then stalks neatly towards me. Now that she’s closer, I can read the glyphwork that has been engraved onto her eyepatch. It’s gorgeous.

“They told me that we had a couple of real dogfuckers who were going to join us for the voyage. Now I’ve seen mister happy executioner,” here she stabs a hand, knifelike, in the direction of Sean. “And miss spooky Bani Yathrib,” her hand moves, adder-quick, at Miss Morrin, who has suddenly taken an interest in me from across the dock.

“But I don’t know who you are.”

Her single working eye, roiling like a furnace, is trying to bore its way into my forehead. I remember what Mister Whelan said, about sticking up for myself.

“I’m Íde Ceallaigh, the sigilist?”

She raises both eyebrows. I’m trying to stare at the knotwork on her eyepatch, because the fiery intensity of her remaining eyeball is honestly distressing.

“Alright, Íde the sigilist?” She’s not asking it as a question. She’s making fun of my nervousness. “Why don’t you stand there,” and she points to the archway I walked through to come to the dock. “While the adults do the work? Hey?”

He said to stick up for myself. He said to stick up for myself.

“No.”

I honestly mean to say more, but the words all seem to lodge themselves somewhere halfway between my heart and my brain. By the time I’ve spoken, she’s already turned away from me, wearing a genial smirk. I watch, in horror, as she slowly swivels back to me, her expression frozen. Once again I stare at her eyepatch, and am seized with a mounting fear that this woman will actually murder me.

“Listen here, you thin-fucked bobolyne. If one of my crew ever tried that with me, your feeble, barely congealed brain would not be able to comprehend the colossal degree of punishment that would be wrought upon him or her. Do you understand me? There are no cities, no seas, no worlds where this would come to pass. And if I you would like to try that again, you will find that I am more than happy to render this treatment unto you, you passenger.”

Oh Saints.

“Yes. You have fucked yourself into a position hitherto uncharted by any explorer in your stunted, idiotic lineage. I am Omarin Holofernes, captain of the Gundog Walking. And you, Miss Pengrinder, Miss Narrowly-Avoided-Catastrophic-Suicide-By-Sea-Captain, will stand there, until I deem it acceptable for you to board my ship.”

She glowers like a sun-sigil- not just her face, but her entire body. I’m held in place, not even breathing, like she’s going to summon another Calamity, aimed only at evaporating me. She turns and I fold, almost literally, and withdraw myself to the archway near the dock’s entrance. When I board the ship about an hour later, I do my best to stay hidden from the maniacal captain. Her sailors grin savagely whenever they shove by me.

*

“You didn’t!”

I’ve known Sean for less than a week, but he howls at my misfortune with the schadenfreude of an old schoolfriend. Somehow, his frivolity is contagious. Well, slightly. I’m still nursing the horrible captain-Holofernes-induced pit in my stomach.

We’re underneath the heaving deck of the Gundog Walking, sandwiched into a miniscule berthing barely the width of a few graves. It’s outfitted with four bunks, though there are just the three of us. Between our packs, our beds, and our bodies, there is just enough room for us to hunch around the cabin’s tiny table. We’ve been at sea for a few hours, but this is the first time all three of us have simultaneously been in the compartment. I cannot particularly say I enjoy the damp claustrophobia, though it’s better than the risk of leaving the room and running into the captain.

The ship strikes a particularly belligerent swell, and Sean uses a thin finger to pin a biscuit to his pewter plate. His forehead is freshly marked with a long, ugly bruise which swells the flesh around his eye socket and gives him a slight squint. Half of one eyeball is permanently bloodshot, though this has no impact at all on his sanguine demeanour.

The constant bobbing, the cramped air of the cabin, and the terrible social malaise that has been inflicted upon me by the captain have all worked together to entirely drain me of energy. Unlike the other two, I dare not leave the room, despite its suffocating lack of windows or ventilation. I can hear the sad calls of the food animals through the tarred wooden planks. Ship-noise, both from baying sailors and the Gundog Walking herself, drift frequently throughout our cabin. Whenever the ship pings or creaks, it sounds to my ears that she is about to spontaneously disintegrate. Nobody else seems worried, so I do my best to bottle my anxiety.

“No, really, Íde. That’s incredible.”

I throw my hands up. “You told me to stick up for myself!”

Miss Morrin’s uninterested mien shifts for the first time, cracked by a glint of smugness. “She has a point. You did tell her to stick up for herself.”

Still on the cusp of laughter, Mister Whelan puts his hand on his chin and rests a scarred thumb on his jawline. His mirth is vaguely comforting. I feel a little better. I’m very curious about the injury that he’s acquired in the days we’ve been apart, but I don’t dare ask him directly.

“Alright. Alright, fair play. I’ll speak with the captain. But, Saints, that’s very funny.”

Miss Morrin occupies the entire other half of the room. The bunk below hers is unoccupied, and it is where she has decided to store her belongings. A sort of cave has been built around where she’s currently sitting, comprised of a stack of books, a sealed rucksack, and an immense oilskin tube, fastened with a sling for easier carrying. She had been in the process of writing something in one of her notebooks when Mister Whelan had slammed the door open and started this conversation.

I’m sat on the rough wool blanket I brought with me on the journey, one of the few items that has survived my childhood and three years at Saint Listless’. Sean has taken the bunk above mine, though he’s currently leaning back on a tiny stool that is one of our only pieces of furniture. He’s illuminated by a gorgeous light sigil that Miss Morrin must have prepared before the voyage. The radiant slate dangles from a rope that is in turn hooked into the cabin wall, and the swaying of the ship skitters deep shadows across both of their faces.

Her knotwork is unlike what I’ve been taught at the college. Staring at light sigils while they’re burning is generally never a good idea, and it’s hard to study the thing surreptitiously while having to squint heavily to even get a feel of it. The style is highly compacted, and she’s drawn the knot in a way that’s slippery and angular, simultaneously. I can follow the intricate curves in only the vaguest sense, but it would easily take me an hour just to write this knot, let alone the time it takes to calculate the curvature and density of shapes to get it to work in the first place.

If creating the artful charm hollowed her, I can’t tell. Normally you can see it in people’s eyes, when they’ve written something this good. I’ve gotten two-day headaches from sketching glyphs half as dense as her little sigil.

Six weeks ago I was near the top of my class at Saint Listless’. My research into three dimensional knotwork was being noticed by a handful of professors. I had been invited for an interview-before-an-interview for a potential Wine Party experiment. And now, like an idiot, I’ve decided to broaden my horizons, and am consequently stuck in a dipping wooden cupboard with a frigid war heroine and a man who thinks that my misery is hilarious.

“Anyway,” Sean smiles, finger still pinning the biscuit in place. “Right! So, Íde, you’re from Saint Listless’. And Colt & Tumble thinks that you’re an interesting enough sigilist that they’ve told us to include you in this little crew. I hope the college has a good curriculum for knotwork, because Iseult here can cut a dream in half and use it to burn you alive from a hundred yards away. Seen her do it in the field.”

That’s a joke. Probably a joke? The contempt that Miss Morrin projects at all times manifests here with a second-long eye roll. “I don’t know a lot about knotwork,” he continues, “but I do know that working with more than one sigilist on a single project can be tricky.”

I hazard a response: “Well, maybe Mister Tumble needs some sort of help charming the oleum on the way back to Ildathach? That type of work can be done more easily by two than one. I mean, if you think about it, any sort of alchemy is going to be easier to work in the Wraithwild than in Ildathach because of the way the geography interacts with the material and the knotwork. And any sigilry done on the oleum containers or the fluid itself would be better off started a few weeks in advance so Colt & Tumble workers have less to do, right?”

Sean looks surprised, then turns to Miss Morrin. Sigil-wrought shadows streak across his face as the ship rolls gently. “Is that true?”

Miss Morrin nods, then continues my train of thought. “Evin insinuated as much. It’s not specifically in the contract, I checked. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to get us to do some knotwork beforehand. You know these company types. Still,” she turns and scrutinises me. “Oleum’s an interesting medium. How comfortable are you with that kind of work?”

Saints, finally someone asks me a question I can answer. I almost trip over myself with my eagerness to help. I’ve never worked with it directly, of course, because I am a sigilist, not an alchemist or engineer. But our professors were, if nothing else, exceedingly thorough. I start talking.

Twenty minutes into our conversation, Sean excuses himself from the table. Miss Morrin and I discuss theory, for an hour. More than once, she nods at a reference to Wine Party or Glyptic Society research, and says phrases or nouns in languages I don’t understand. At one point, she excuses herself to retrieve a notebook from an oilskin bag, and takes a moment to consider notes written in a dense, finely-detailed script. I stop talking as she traces a tattooed finger down the creamy parchment.

Iseult’s hands and face are wreathed in patterns that I can only guess the meaning of. Her neck, a block of almost solid black ink, is even more unusual. I’ve actually studied drawings of this style of tattoos before, at Saint Listless’, but this is the first time I’ve seen Bani Yathrib tattoos outside of the context of a book or scroll. Symbols of power, etched into flesh, invoking esoteric sigilwork that sparks lively debate amidst a certain sect of Ildathach academics. Adherents to a handful of Saints tattoo themselves with various liturgy and iconography, so I’m not unused to the idea. Saint Listless’ had scattered notes on the subject, a handful of second-hand testimonials, set into slim journals deep in the library’s archives. I remember reading, or maybe it was hearing, that those tattoos retained shreds of potency long, long after their power should have faded. That they were made by using rare tinctures, desert or forest inks harvested by the thimbleful from exotic plants, then mixed with pulverised fossils, incarnagris, or the harvested gut-fat from people who had died violent deaths.

That tattoos are fascinating, but truth be told I’m burning to ask her a question about her bullets. Saint Listless’ wouldn’t give me access to their tiny supply of Bani Yathrib ammunition, and the reproduced paintings that are placed in the museum and the library aren’t any particular help. Even in my lectures, I never actually saw a real scrimshawed bullet. The closest thing to true three dimensional knotwork on Calacar, one of the most divine secrets of the Bani Yathrib. Our college’s collection, I know, came from the undignified looting of a dead tribesman, and I’ve never even come close to finding a hint as to where I might study a real knotwork bullet anywhere else in Ildathach. Nobody I talked to was willing to let me take a look at the precious little scrimshaws, not for something as trivial as a student’s personal research project.

Now, just in front of me, sits a woman who makes and carries dozens and dozens of the things. I’ve heard them rattle when she sits down. Each ball inscribed in exotic knotwork, engraved as one complex, sigil-creating line. Impossible magic, insanely overlooked by sigilists in Yvreathe, who find it unfashionable and archaic.

Right in front of my nose.

Saints I need to ask her about her bullets.

If she reaches some sort of conclusion from her studying, she decides not to share it with me. Eventually, Miss Morrin appears to have become totally absorbed in her readings. She doesn’t object or even notice when I escape the cabin to alleviate my claustrophobia and search for Sean. There is no torchlight outside of our little room, and I can barely make out the step-way up to the deck of the ship, tens of yards away to my left. To my right, I can still hear the sad clucking of chickens, locked down here in the dark.

My foot catches on the planking as the ship rolls gently, but I catch myself mid-stumble. The sunlight from the above decks is getting closer.

I wonder what made Miss Morrin leave her home, to move to, and, according to the stories about the four thousand, bleed for Ildathach. I’m not sure what to think of her. Even when we’re discussing sigil theory, most of the time she regards me with a completely blank face. The rest of the time she looks at me like I’m an idiot.

I emerge into the sea air, and stare into the impossible flat plain of the sea. My desire to find Sean vanishes, instantly. I stare, and a bell sounds in my bones when I realise that we are completely out of sight of land. The thought fixes me to the decking, and my hands begin sweating when I see sailors scurrying not only on the decks bout me, but in the rigging and spars above. My heart catches for a moment when I see one leap, catlike, from one position to another.

After a few minutes of being lost in that wild, endless blue, I realise that being above deck will dramatically increase my risk of seeing the captain again. This thought alone unshackles me from the hypnosis of the rolling saltwater around me, and I retreat belowdecks and return to our quiet little room.

*

The Gundog Walking bobs with the rhythm of the sea, and I lean my weight into the bed and let myself roll with the waves. This rocking struck me with a light nausea when the ship initially left the shore, though that has since damped itself into a rather more bearable queasiness that I can easily ignore. I tighten my grip around a worn pencil stub, idly doodling in a blank page of one of my notebooks.

A thought distracts me as the Gundog Walking rams through a wave. Are Ailín and Fionn alright? The rest of those thoughts wash in immediately after- about not just my brothers, but my mother as well. I hope they’re all alright. I hope they’re alright, and I feel guilty about only thinking about them now, hours after we left Ildathach. When I said goodbye to them the day before, my mum had seemed proud, but hesitant. My brothers were excited, and spent most of our dinner teaching me about the monsters that live in the Wraithwild. I remember being that age, ignoring my school’s foreign history lessons in lieu of asking the teacher about the weird animals that inhabit those weird places.

I am focusing on the feeling of the motion of the boat when Sean appears in the doorway, returning from his rounds of meeting the crew and presumably engaging them with his onslaught of bonhomie. He grins and looks at me, pencil in one hand and tarot in the other, cross-legged on my bunk. The sheaf of papers under my wrist represents a few hours of sigil-mathematics. I’ve been trying to puzzle out a workable configuration of the same three-dimensional knotwork that has irritated me for half a year.

“What are you doing?”

He saunters over to my bunk and stands over me, at the foot of my tiny bed, and waits for me to stammer out a response.

“I, uh. I’m drawing a sun-sigil.”

It strikes me that Sean has absolutely no understanding of knotwork. His carefree grin compels me to explain further.

“But in three dimensions. Like a regular knot that works in on itself, but also one that uses the shape of its own intersections to create denser information structures. Rather than a regular sigil. Which is flat, obviously. We can apply the same principles to a, uh, a sculpture, and achieve similar results. So I can create a sigil in a much smaller space. Theoretically. Eventually.”

A patient nod. He doesn’t press me further.

“Ye-es.” The syllable stretches out, contemplative. “I see.” His eyes travel over to my left hand. “And the cards?”

“I, uh, I’m, well. I’m looking at the tarot.”

Sean lights up, like a child on Imbolc. He gestures with one thick-fingered hand. “Do you mind if I take a seat? I’ve never seen an actual reading before! Just, you know. The people at the festivals. The magicians and so on,” he grins and wiggles his fingers, magicianly. “My father never let us actually pay for one. In Llancreg it would be a bit… unbecoming.”

I try not to be rude. “Well, many of the street readers in the Ildathach festivals might be actual sigilists, maybe part of the Wine Party, and-“

“Anyway, how does it work? Could you do a reading?”

I pause my shuffling. This was just supposed to be a meditation for me, but Sean just seems so earnest.

“Well. Okay. There are a couple of problems with doing a full reading here on the ship,” there are about a hundred problems, starting with the fact that we’re jammed into a storage room, facing west, on a boat, surrounded by saltwater, “but, well, this should work. Here.”

I pass him my deck, and he takes it thoughtfully. I gesture for him to give it back, and he does so, bemused.

“So now the deck is a little bit aware of you, at least. I want you to think of a question, but please don’t tell it to me just yet.”

The Gundog Walking leans sideways, riding a strangely violent swell. We sway with it, and I close my eyes in what I hope is a sagacious expression.

“You probably know that the tarot can’t exactly predict the future. In many ways, it gives interpretations of what has already happened, and allows you to focus on what may happen based on previous events. It’s supposed to help you look at things differently, from outside of your own biases.” I’m paraphrasing one of my lecturers, Doctor Finneces, who taught us the application of tarot to sigilwork. The old man always had a knack for theatre, though here I eschew his legerdemain. “First, now that we’re shuffled and the cards know you, we offer a share to the Saints. Tell me when you feel I should stop.”

He tilts his head, then his eyebrows raise ever so slightly as I begin removing cards from the top of the deck. I move them one by one, facedown, to a neat pile to my left. They won’t be useful again. He raises a hand, and I stop.

“Second, I deal four cards.”

The spread, in this case, is a diamond configuration, with an empty centre. I deal anticlockwise, starting closest to Sean. My hands hover for a moment over each card, then I reveal them sequentially, feather-light, and relish the feeling of the cardstock and the rough wool of the bedding.

“The Sun. The Dove. The Knight of Spirals. The Fool, inverted.”

He’s watching me with a quiet, focused interest. I’m actually trying not to use fortune-teller’s theatrics, but there’s something about the moment that seems graver than I expected. The ship is still listing, its timbers still groaning under the strain. Here, on my bunk, Sean and I stare at each other in a moment of chilled time.

I deal the last card face down, in the centre.

“You can choose to invert that, if you wish.”

The moment stretches on.

“Alright, Íde, I’m going to be honest, I have absolutely no idea what that means.”

That sense of gravity shatters, and I’m back in a scratchy bunk, being stared at by a bemused socialite. He holds his hands up.

“No, I mean… this is great! Really! But what is happening? What do I do?”

I sigh, inwardly, imagining Doctor Finneces’ disappointment. In my defence, I never understood the professor’s love of spectacle. I gesture towards the face down card in the centre.

“Look, the cards mean different things if they’re facing one way or the other, right? If it’s inverted or regular. So here, this card in the middle, you don’t know which way it’s facing. So you can choose to turn it upside down or not before you reveal it. It’s a nice flourish. It gets you connected with the tarot.”

He frowns, reaches for it, then hesitates. His fingers brush the card, but he chooses not to reconfigure it. When he reveals it, it is Saint Anchor, inverted. Cryptic Saintly script is stamped on the bottoms of his sandals. I breathe in and close my eyes.

Five card spread, unbalanced, unfocused, on a moving ship. A charlatan’s performance, not a real reading. We couldn’t use this tarot to attune a sun-sigil, let alone try anything more complicated.

“The card you’ve just flipped, the only one you touched. Saint Anchor. Inverted, it could mean a few things. You see how he’s just been run through with swords, ten times?” All cards are based on the first tarot, which was designed by the Saints just over a millennia ago. But there has been some artistic drift, over the intervening centuries. My deck features a classic depiction of Saint Anchor, done in an Ildathach style. “It could normally mean being a victim, or being violent. But inverted, with the meaning reversed, it could mean-“

“Betrayer,” he whispers, suddenly serious. I pause, then continue. “I suppose so. Or one of fifty other meanings. It’s not always literal, if that makes sense. Sometimes it’s… okay. We’ll move on.

“That card closest to you. A good card, a nice card. We’re pretty sure that the Saint-hieroglyphs translate to something very close to ‘sun’- hence the enormous sun printed on it. If you’ve seen a sun-sigil written down before, you can see the similarities. Knowledge, love, light, obviously. Something to be coveted, or won, or desired. Generally associated with an object or a place, but it could be a person, maybe. Combined with this next one, the Dove. Look at the way it’s drawn. Doves are innocence, obviously, but sometimes this is more about flight, or escape. You see how it’s depicted, flying away from the bird catcher? It’s a good combination of cards, these two. Anyway.”

I adjust both remaining cards, straightening them out, making the knot look more respectable.

“Two left. This one, closest to me. The Fool, inverted. The Fool isn’t literally an idiot, though it sometimes can imply a naivete or a lack of something. Similarly, inverting it doesn’t imply genius. Sometimes it’s being too conservative. Sometimes it’s being too carefree. Finally, this one,” I tap the last card. “The Knight of Spirals. A hero. Something good. Sometimes stubbornness, sometimes something unstoppable. An avenger. It depends.”

I shrug. Doctor Finneces would be happy with the reading, if dissatisfied with the lack of flamboyance. Sean nods, and I can’t tell if he’s satisfied or just being polite.

“So… what does it mean?”

I shrug. “Well, what was the question you asked yourself at the beginning of the reading? Hopefully you remember it. I’ve tried this with my brothers, before, but sometimes they forget and we have to start over.”

There are a few insurmountable issues with tarot reading. The first is that the primary usage of a tarot deck lies in reorganising or reconfiguring extant magics, rather than in murky future-divining. All cards, regardless of what country they come from, are derived from incomprehensible Saint-language, and truth be told there is enough ambiguity and variance in interpretation that exact translation of even a single card has proved impossible. A handful of seers and crackpots across the continent claim to know the truth behind the tarot, and preach their own interpretations for specific cards or sets.

As you can imagine, this makes meaningful readings quite difficult.

He frowns, and starts to open his mouth when the door to our cabin creaks open. Miss Morrin takes one step into the room, the splash of black at her throat and face lending her a wraithlike demeanour. She takes a cursory look at the two of us, crammed onto my bunk, and snorts once.

“Doing a little light reading?”

Her bootsteps are quiet and catlike, and as she paces towards us I wonder again what I ever did to insult her.

“Íde is showing me a tarot reading,” beams Sean. She folds her arms.

“If I could have your seat, Sean.” He shrugs and uncoils himself from the bedding, slipping off the side of the bunk onto the floor with an easy grace. She kicks off her boots and hauls herself onto the bed. The bullets in her body clack and shift when she stoops and sits down into the same cross-legged position that Sean was in. Now that he’s been ejected from the position, Sean watches us, chin raised, arms crossed.

“Alright, Íde. Let’s see. Five card spread, in a knot. Sort of a modified La Rén design. No Complication configuration on this centre card, here.”

“I didn’t want to make things too unwieldy for him,” I respond. A true configuration tarot, not one of these parlour readings, takes at least four more cards.

She nods. “Fair. Oh, and I see you’ve already given several cards to the Saints, as well,” here she gestures towards the cards to my left, facedown. “Very nice. A nice little Yvreathan reading. But.

“Have you ever seen a Bani Yathrib reading before?”

I actually have, and long to say that, to deflate the ego that this woman is bringing to bear on me. But I’m also deeply curious. Seen a Bani Yathrib reading, absolutely, in a manuscript. The Bani Yathrib tarot is similar to ours, but with no Saints. But I’ve only studied their readings in books. I move to gather the cards and let her reshuffle.

“What are you doing?”

I freeze.

“I’m… picking up the cards. So you can do a reading.”

Iseult grins.

“The cards are already dealt. I’m doing the reading.”

I look down. The spread is the same. Iseult continues.

“Focal, centre card. Saint Anchor, what we would call The Ten of Swords. Next, the Knight of Spirals. Inverted. After that, The Fool. The Sun, inverted. And the Dove, inverted.”

Her eyes flash, like she’s spoiling for a fight. Bani Yathrib or no, I have spent the last three years at Saint Listless’, submerged in sigilry and symbolism. I rise to her challenge, frowning.

“Iseult, this reading has already been finished. You can’t just read Sean’s question from the other side like that, that’s not how it works.”

“Why not? The yantra is set. The cards have spoken. Now it’s just interpretation. I haven’t touched your deck, sigilist. I’m just confirming what you’ve read.”

That feeling is back, that latent weight of portent. Iseult continues.

“Sean. A Ten of Swords is a foul card. Violence, hatred, betrayal. An ending of a thing. The Sun, inverted. A drowning, perhaps. A curse. A poisoned goal. The dove, inverted- my word, this is a grim reading that she’s dealt you. Manipulation, imprisonment, sociopathy. The Fool, well, that one may be rather self-evident. And last, the Rider of Coins, inverted. Ah. Well that just seems a bit too much.”

Iseult reaches to the card closest to me and flicks it with one tattooed finger, so that it is now facing her.

“Much better. A heroine.”

A dram of sweltering indignation.

“You can’t do that! You can’t just- change the cards like that?”

She smiles, and leans back into her cross-legged position. Saints, I hate that smile.

“Why not?”

“Because they’re not your cards to change!”

“Are they yours?”

She says it with a quiet hush, and she’s right. Her face is poised, pantherine, and I see in her expression a shadow that I have not seen before. Deathly, alien, foreign, cold, clawing, darkly and awfully set in deep, empty years. This woman, this nomad from the Wraithwild, touches the cards with the skeletal grasp of a Saint. A slab of churning panic boils in my gut.

I glance at Sean frantically, for help, but gain nothing. He looks at me sympathetically, then tilts his head at Miss Morrin. She is Sean’s terrible opposite. So, so spiteful. I can’t think of anything to say, so I stop myself from speaking and feel the panic inside of me turn into anger.

“This is a difference between our people, you understand.” She speaks levelly. “I have lived in Ildathach for more than half of my life. I know what philosophy has shaped you. But you do not at all understand what the Bani Yathrib are like. How emptiness shapes us. How this,” and here she taps the Knight of Spirals, “and this,” then her chest. “Are the same.”

I hope she can’t read the rage in my heart. I just want her to go away.

“Thank you for your time, Íde. You can use my deck in the future, if you’d like to refocus that reading.”

With that, she unfolds her legs. Both her knees crackle as she extends them, and she winces. When she reaches the floor, she puts her boots back on, rifles through her pack for a notebook, and leaves.

Sean looks at me sympathetically, and holds my hand as I bite back my anger, a twinned thing oriented towards Iseult Morrin and my own helplessness.