Iseult

The potency of the Violet Manor plays over my hair and fingertips. Over the last week, I’ve felt the static build in my bones. I know what artefacts are kept in this little fortress. The secrets that rest or live behind armoured chambers. Why the people of Saint Listless’ College would allow Íde and me inside is unfathomable. I long to steal away one day, to try to break open one of the closed and undoubtedly armoured doors we walk by every day on our way to our workshop.

If the rest of the Manor has anywhere near the density of curiosities present just in Room 60, I could spend my life going through them. A quaint little academic front for the more subtle arms of the Chaplain’s Office, hiding a platoon of researchers and a trove of stolen artefacts that could be rivalled only by the Wine Party vaults. No wonder the work teams weren’t allowed to raise this building. Screwjacks might reveal the treasures they’ve buried under the street. Things that are better left in the dark.

After what happened to her in the Bloom, Íde Ceallaigh might belong here as well. I try not to think about what the engineers, sawbones, and sigilists that haunt this house would do to her if they knew what had hidden itself in her head.

If I cannot explore the Manor, I can at least watch Íde, and the secret that’s been buried somewhere deep in her skull. Secret syllables from the Shorn Peak. The bees spoke to her, and I have been patient and I have waited for weeks to find the right time to tease those words from her. I’ve struggled in this environment, with that prize so close, and fantasise throwing open the vault doors, to reveal saltlion skulls or Saintly relics or a whale prince or any of a hundred other oddities. This may be a test of some kind. Or a trap.

Or a lure cast by Colt & Tumble.

My family taught me a hunter’s patience. But thoughts of Íde and the Manor gnaw at me. What did the bees say to her?

Resisting the urge to break into one of the other rooms of the Manor is already difficult enough. I have literally no idea how close an eye any of the staff are keeping on us. They’ve weaved no unusual charms around us, of that I am certain. No sigils have been secreted on my person or my belongings. Whether this lack of security belies an insane confidence or an unimaginably unconcerned approach to safeguarding their valuables is beyond me. Of those two options, I’m not sure which one concerns me more.

It became clear from the first day that the greatest way to distract myself from the secrets of the Manor would be to conduct the work required. I can leave Íde and Moira to work on the emptiness configuration. The targeting array, though, the shot at the heart of the moon, is far beyond what Íde can accomplish. She’s unusually gifted in standard Yvreathan knotwork, true, but for this type of work I’ll have to employ tools and technologies beyond her and probably Moira’s specialty.

For days, I set yantras. I configure the tarot. The calculations and knots here are nothing like they would be for an emptiness configuration or a fire charm. These forms are secrets of the Wraithwild, and the loose knotwork that I scrawl upon papers and slates are a tiny portion of the actual work that has to be done, inside my head. The sigilists of Ildathach are talented, probably more talented than any Bani Yathrib, at physical knotwork. We use their charms as well- emptiness configurations to suck water out of the warming morning air, fire charms to cook where no wood grows. But this is the third-style sigil, beyond the science of the men and women of Yvreathe and Khazraj. Myth-harnessing.

Even if someone were to snoop through my notes, they would be unable to remodel the system without cracking open my brain as well. I’ve secluded myself in isolation, only a quarter-present in the room, and have emptied my thoughts to let the configurations flow in. I spend hours and hours staring at nothing, plucking strands of stories from the air and from the fringes of my awareness. It’s dissimilar to the precision geometries required to write a sun-sigil or an emptiness configuration. More than anything else, it reminds me of the fugue-calm of target practice. Eventually, dream-like, I take up the largest of the chisels and begin.

A half a day later, I hold in my hands a strip of curved metal no wider than my finger and no longer than my forearm. My fingers are worn grey from engraving the steel. When I crack my hands, every joint pops loudly.

The thing in my hand is not carved with the familiar swirls or spirals of Yvreathan or Al Khazraj knotwork. It is something entirely different. I run my fingers along the delicate geometries, the asymmetries and clusters of bubble-like circles. One hundred and twenty eight of them, almost all of them measured in different diameters. Similar work decorates concealed parts of my jezail, the components I have to replace the most. The smallest could easily fit on a blade of grass. Conversely, we’d need the length of a three-story building to fully contain the largest (luckily, only a portion of its perimeter is necessary for these purposes). The actual targeting array that the professors and by extension the Wine Party have requested for this cannon aren’t so different than the ones I use in my own firearm. I don’t tell them this, of course.

My finger catches. I startle, and look down. A mistake. Beyond a normal mistake. A tolerance that will cause the energies here to misalign.

This is not normal. I twitch with a deep self-loathing.

Thinking too much about Íde and the bees. Tired. Need practice. My contempt curdles into anger. Nothing else will be accomplished today. My notes are in disarray, from hours of subconscious perusal, and it takes me ten or fifteen minutes to reorganise everything. Everyone else has already gone home. Even the sun has set, and the sky is lit only by the aurora and the light of the real moon.

*

I get it the next day. And complete another part of the array a few hours later, a similar curved iron strip that slots delicately into the original. Piece by piece, day by day, I finish constructing the rudimentary cage before Íde and Moira are done with their work. In their defence, I can work alone, because I already have all the measurements I need from the thick cannon blueprints and calculation ledgers that have been provided courtesy of the Wine Party. As long as the Wine Party, Colt & Tumble, the Violet Manor staff, or anyone else that Evin Tumble has seen fit to contract without oversight changes any parameters between now and when the gun is assembled, I’ll be fine. I blink, and hours trickle through me like sand.

Arthur and Hatim are remarkable engineers, and find myself far more interested in them and their marvellous device than I expected. Though I understand how it works, I am not actually sure why it works- despite Arthur’s repeated assertions to the contrary, I’m fairly certain I could not come close to fabricating any part of the machine. Perhaps most impressively, they have finished it with few charms or glyphs, save the knotwork necessary to manufacture each individual part. Both enjoy describing every aspect of their creation, though I suspect Hatim is simply happy to speak with someone who’s not from Yvreathe.

I still haven’t managed to draw anything about the bees from Íde. I can’t figure out the best time to ask. Before the Bloom, when I thought she was simply chaff added by Evin Tumble to supplement our little jaunt to the Wraithwild, I hadn’t paid attention to her. In Brixa Thalaam, I found her competency surprising, and welcome. Now I’m wary of it, lest it be the symptom some deeper change that was wrought on her by the Wraithwild. She sprints through her work in bursts, ripping through calculations and drafts and experiments for an hour, then wastes time drinking coffee or chatting in the break room. I don’t understand her at all.

During one of these protracted breaks, I find myself sitting with the sigilists and Hatim around the threadbare coffee table in the break room adjacent. We have a half of a half of a sandwich each- Arthur had brought one from home, and had insisted we split it between the four of us. Moira had objected to him ripping them in half with a grease-streaked hand, and had cut and served the little meal herself. He’s gone now, to pick up a new lunch from outside of the Violet Manor. We are not discussing the work at hand, so I sit, quietly, and they fill the silence with their chattering.

Moira is fairly religious, though despite her affiliation with the College is not an adherent of Saint Listless. The conversation has bent, inexorably, into that quagmire. Hatim is from Khazraj, so his relationship with the Yvreathan Saints is fairly distant, and he has no preferred chapel in this city. Íde has never really discussed her faith until now, save for our brief theological conversation on the Gundog Walking about the Bani Yathrib’s relationship with the sun and the stars. Luckily, the professor does not press me on that topic, as her encyclopaedic command of religious literature is established after a few minutes of discussions. The competing liturgy and inter-faith relationships of the Saints is dizzyingly complex. I fade back in to the conversation as Arthur opens the door, paper-wrapped sandwich in hand, and to my dismay they’re still discussing Saints.

“We have the same idea in Khazraj,” explains Hatim. He’s speaking almost completely to Íde, and I get the feeling he’s previously engaged with Moira on this topic before and knows what snares to avoid. “It rhymes as well. But not in Irdcheol. Something like,” and he looks at the ceiling, eyes fluttering as he translates the song. “By a wound by a traitor by a… choking? What’s the word for,” and he stacks his fists and makes two twisting gestures.

“Crushing? Suffocating?” Íde offers. Hatim squints, then bounces his head back and forth. He asks me if I know the translation, and looses an old word I’m unfamiliar with. I shrug.

“Constricting.” Moira offers. Hatim snaps his fingers, vocabulary established. “Yes!” he continues, with rare enthusiasm. “Constricting. Like a snake.”

Al Khazraj do love their snakes. It’s hardly surprising that the idea has worked itself into their mythologies.

Arthur takes a seat next to me, with a smile. I nod politely at him. Íde speaks next. “So pretty similar to our Saints then. Except we say asphyxiating instead of constricting. And the murderer has to be a sibling, not a traitor. But same idea, the threefold death of Saints. Immortal to all deaths except for one complicated but inevitable one. ‘And they felt knives as straw, and pestilence as sunlight, and no beast could pierce their skin.’” She scratches the back of her head. “Didn’t know that we were so similar.”

The alchemist nods, cracking all of his knuckles simultaneously. He says something in a flat, academic Irdcheol, like he’s translating in his head: “Poisonous beasts shall not approach them, knives will turn from their skins. Disease will find no purchase amongst their livers, time will slough from their hearts and leave them, eternal.” His diction shifts to its more familiar, colloquial form. “From Mujhan il-Uzāt. Al Khazraj Saint-poetry. In truth, not dissimilar to what you’ll read in books or hear in hymns in Yvreathe. You’ll actually find a lot of similarities between the scriptures.”

The conversation lulls, and I feel a hook as my presence in the room starts to warp the conversation in a certain way. Perhaps if I ignore it they’ll all move on. They think they’re being subtle, but it’s nothing I haven’t been exposed to, a dozen times before. Khazraj has Saints. Yvreathe has Saints. Brixa Thalaam has just the one, Saint Teneral. And we, the Bani Yathrib, have none. Expectation congeals around me.

Fine. I sigh, and break the tension. “Everyone on Calacar has Saints. Even the Tecuani have Saints. It’s just the Bani Yathrib who don’t.”

I expect some response. An exhalation from Hatim or Íde, some proselytising from Moira. That doesn’t happen. Instead, Moira leans in, and asks a question that sounds more rehearsed than spontaneous.

“Iseult, if you don’t mind. Something I’ve thought of. Have you considered the reflections between the way that we view the Saints and the way that the Bani Yathrib view the sun?”

I mean, obviously, yes. It’s a stupid question. The differences are greater than the similarities. No suns walked on Calacar’s surface, bringing magic and cities. No stellar architecture clogs the landscapes of the continent. And, perhaps most importantly, stars die very rarely, and not to inevitable cursed deaths.

“Yes.”

Her ears perk up. “And what is the conclusion that you’ve come to, after spending so many years in our city?”

I look at her, trying to understand her motive. I am suddenly, and surprisingly, struck with how much I miss having Sean around. I could just offload this conversation onto him. She’s still staring at me with that neutral, welcoming look, the same kind she probably uses on reluctant students.

“They’re not the same.”

Her eyebrows work their way up her forehead. “But what makes you say that? Perhaps it was the sun that taught your people the other magic. The ones that the Saints didn’t give the rest of us.”

Indignation boils inside me, to have our religion reduced to this. If it’s an insult, she’s delivered it in a flat, academic’s tone, to hide it. If not, perhaps she is truly ignorant of what she’s saying. Her eyes give away nothing, no hint of purpose. I realise I have underestimated Moira O’Tierney.

“No. There is a difference. The sun, the stars, they don’t build. They don’t talk. They just love us. And the rest of the universe, emphatically, does not. The Saints are for everyone else on the planet. They guided your peoples, invented the first knotworks, built their monuments, then died. Even the Tecuani have Saints, and they’re not even human. Maybe their Saints overlap with yours. Maybe the Saints become something inhuman. Maybe that’s why nobody can read their language.”

I actually know almost nothing about the Tecuani Tetrad, the Saints of the Far Coast. But that’s not really the point. I hope the coldness in my voice capsizes the conversation. Moira looks like she’s loading another question, but I head her off before she can start. If she’s willing to casually lace the conversation with blasphemies, I can do the same.

“Of course, the stars are still in the sky. That’s another key difference. Of all the two hundred or so Saints, there’s probably one left, correct?”

Íde actually makes a noise as she draws air in through clenched teeth. Even Mister Hatim seems surprised at the boldness of my question- I wonder if any of them fell for the bait of me pretending to be ignorant of what I’ve just said. Arthur begins to speak smoothly to change the topic, but Moira holds up a hand, and looks at me with something like disappointment.

“You should be aware that what you’ve just suggested, Iseult, is referred to in a theological framework as the Bloodless Heresy.” Again, that noise. Íde seems shocked that we would even talk about the idea’s name. I feign ignorance.

“Why is that?”

Her fingers tap on the table, just once, in rapid sequence. “To be very clear about this, it is the general opinion of most churches all across Calacar that there are, indeed, no living Saints.” Hatim’s rapid nodding belies a sort of unexpected nervousness. “But the idea that there might be a remaining Saint, even over a thousand years after the last sighting, is not original. More than one Saint has no recorded death. Records have been lost. They could have been altered, or forgotten. Also, all parts of the continent agree,” her hands flick towards Hatim, “that every Saint was predisposed to die the same threefold death, though we quibble about the precise nature of that act. There are no disagreements, though, that that death must involve another Saint. So, if there were two Saints remaining, and one killed the other…”

Then there would be nobody left to take the life of the last Saint. He or she would be doomed to die the threefold death, but could never actually do so.

I actually did ask this question, innocently, four years prior. I was very, very lucky that the reaction wasn’t violent. Discussing the Bloodless Heresy in Ildathach is profane. Judging by Hatim’s reaction, the idea is hardly popular in Khazraj either. The professor spreads her hands wide, and shrugs.

“Of course, logical rules can’t always be applied to saints. The threefold deaths are sometimes metaphorical. Perhaps the last Saints were compelled to construct an elaborate suicide pact. Or,” and here even her academic detachment skitters slightly, unable to entirely quell the sacrilege. “Or perhaps there is a Saint, still on Calacar. Still wandering, perhaps, or imprisoned. What would it be like, to be unable to die from hunger or thirst, but to live forever? Perhaps to spend a millennia entombed in safe, undying stone?

She’s got a preacher’s turn of phrase. I wonder if Moira studied at a church before she transferred to academia. She sounds too polished to be saying this off the cuff.

“Oh, and Iseult- Tecuani Saints do not overlap with our churches. Saints Sadist, Grandiose, Callous, and Remorseless are just translations they gave us. Misguided religious dross from an alien culture.”

Arthur awkwardly shifts the conversation to new topics, and the snide remark I’m loading fizzles to nothing. He’s evidently passed some internal threshold of blasphemy. The others seem eager to move on. We discuss the Wraithwild, the d’hain, and the uneventful voyage we took to Brixa Thalaam. I feel Moira’s eyes flicker back to me throughout the rest of the break, resting just too long on my face, her mouth twitching just enough to be noticeable.

I refuse to be drawn into this, and when we return to our work I don’t acknowledge Moira at all, neither for the rest of the day or the day after.

*

Moira and Íde do the bulk of the work with the emptiness configuration, and it is finalised five days later. This, combined with the targeting array I’d previously completed and the alchemist’s machine, means that the job is now almost done.

This project’s emptiness configuration is outrageously complex, but not the hardest sigil any of us have ever formed. Most of the work could be split into two distinct two obstacles- configuring the charm to harmonise with the machine that Hatim and Arthur had created, then making sure that the sigil could actually be written in stages. The former was a task that nobody in this room, and I suspect nobody on Calacar, has ever done before. The latter was simple enough, but time-consuming. Obviously we wouldn’t deliver the whole, completed sigil to Colt & Tumble. Doing so would mean we’d have to activate it sometime in advance, and almost certainly lose all its potency by the time the moon could be hunted. Rather, it would be delivered in an almost completed state, ready to be slotted together and activated when needed.

Engineering device included, this entire apparatus is about four cubic yards in volume. Most of that is taken up by the strange, weird protrudings of the alchemists’ device, which sprouts an oversized wheel and bafflingly-organised piping. The targeting array is the next bulkiest thing, a steel cage that is designed for the insane sixteen-inch calibre cannon that Colt & Tumble and the Wine Party has requested. Arthur helped me mount the thing in the cage, and Hatim had worked to make it as adjustable as possible, in case there are any deviances in the gun’s design. I should certainly hope not. Moira had the tact not to gawk at the portions of sigilry that I’ve had to leave visible, lest the obscuring process damage their workings. Íde stares at them openly, and I have to make it very clear that although I do appreciate her waiting until we are alone to ask me about their intricacies, I will not explain them further.

The girl has a knack for reaching correct conclusions from scraps or fragments of evidence. I have no interest in helping her understand the secrets of my knotwork further. Luckily, she complains that the glyphs make her head pound, so it does not become an issue.

The two sigilists, for their part, have created three slates, which when combined correctly will meld themselves into the optimised emptiness configuration. They’ve decided on a mixture of consecrated chalk and silver for the sigil itself, for stability. I can’t blame them. I am shocked by the flawless quality of their work. Each two-foot square is covered in patterns with line weights that range from a half to a sixteenth of an inch. Although the basalt itself is shadowy grey, the density of the interlocking charms is such that all three components are almost entirely white. I know the purpose of each part of each slate, though some of the methodologies they’ve employed I must admit I have never considered.

Íde looks shattered. The hollowing from writing the glyphs must have been immense.

Ten days of labour, when combined together like this, seems disappointingly small. Íde and I stare at it, left alone in this room for a moment after the alchemists have gone home and Moira has left to conduct some other minor task elsewhere in the Manor.

Íde speaks first, looking up from a three-dimensional knot she’s idly sketching in one of her notebooks. “Do you think this is going to work?”

I wouldn’t normally bother to respond to something like that, but find myself in a charitable mood. “I have no idea.”

That gets a reaction. Íde’s mouth actually sockets open, involuntarily, and she closes it quickly. I scramble, trying to be nicer. “That is… it will probably work.”

Her surprise doesn’t seem ameliorated. Íde, startled, asks: “What do you mean, probably?”

“Alright, perhaps I chose my words poorly.” Now I’m flustered. “I don’t know that this is going to work, because nobody knows if this is going to work, because nobody has ever done this before.” She looks like she’s about to interrupt, so I keep talking.

“But,” cutting her off, “I don’t think I could’ve done this any other way. I’ve checked my work. Is there anything else I could’ve done? No. Is there anything else you could’ve done? Anything new to test? Any calculations you didn’t triple check?”

Íde frowns, and legitimately thinks about it. “No.”

“So I’m not worried.”

She sputters for a moment. Her voice is on the verge of cracking. She rubs her face with both hands, then looks at me, face covered, over ink-stained fingernails. “I’m sorry, Iseult. I’ve just been sleeping badly. I’m not focusing well, and I’m paranoid I’m making all these stupid mistakes. I’m remembering things, but then when I do them- it’s like it’s not me. I’m worried the sigils won’t work. What if we supply this to Colt & Tumble and it doesn’t work?”

I try again. “But you can’t change anything, right? You’ve done the best you can. We’ve all done the best we can. There’s no other configurations to do. There’s no work that hasn’t been reviewed. So if there’s nothing to change, and no way to influence the result… you can’t really be worried about it. Or, at least, you shouldn’t be.”

She quietens down, mulling this over. I wrack my brain, trying to figure out what to say next. I wonder, insanely, if she’s right to be worried, but immediately quash that thought. We stand in silence, just the pair of us in this great, cavernous room. I weigh in my head what to do next- whether I want to explore the Manor, or try to get Íde to tell me what the bees told her.

There must be some way to make her feel better. “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t we celebrate? The work is complete. It looks well done. We can get a drink or two. I’m sure you know some pubs nearby.”

Her smile grows, and grows, vibrant and a shade short of maniacal. I did not expect this level of enthusiasm. Being nice may have been a mistake.

Maybe it would’ve been safer to try to break into another part of the Manor.