Teormu stared at Saia in silence. Her pupils made small movements right and left, as if she was calculating the most appropriate answer. Her viss churned with discomfort.

“Mayvaru…” she began, then shrugged a bit, and that gesture seemed to give her the courage to continue. “She’s a great servant of the city. She helps us keep control of the conquered lands. She defends us from outside attacks.”

Her voice was as melodious as ever, but her viss revealed her true feelings. The rage grew as she spoke, especially from the moment she mentioned the conquered lands. Saia could feel Serit’s fixed gaze on her own face, as if they couldn’t understand what she was doing, nor why she felt so proud of herself.

“You’re lying,” she said.

Teormu stiffened. Saia hadn’t anticipated the tinge of panic that started taking hold of her body. Teormu was observing their clothes and demeanor now, probably looking for signs that they were guards or affiliates of Mayvaru. Her left hand slithered away from the sheets and graphite to search for something under the cushions. Saia imagined she had some measures in place in case someone hostile entered her shop.

“I’m not,” she said, and Saia admired how effortlessly calm her voice sounded despite not having the same control of a sphere. “Tell me how can I prove my loyalty to the families.”

“Don’t worry,” Saia interrupted her before she could take out the bundle she was trying to reach under the cushions. “We don’t like Mayvaru either. We’re planning to fight her and bring her down.”

She didn’t elaborate on what she meant with ‘bring her down’, because she didn’t know either. It wasn’t really worth thinking about, not until after she’d faced her and survived.

Teormu stared at her, and since she didn’t seem to find the traces of sanity she was looking for in her expression, her eyes shifted to look at Serit. They nodded slightly, as if they could take the gesture back in case she didn’t react as expected.

Teormu’s hand retracted from under the cushions.

“Speaking against important servants of the families is treason. Don’t get me wrong, your feelings are very common inside the city, but nobody is so foolish to say them out loud. You’re foreigners, and that’s probably a big reason why you were admitted to this part of the shop in the first place: the guards are all Arissians. Fighting Mayvaru is something people have already tried. They were hunters, experts at dealing with creatures like her, but they failed badly. What do you even hope to accomplish?” She shook her head. “Don’t answer. I don’t want to be involved in this.”

Saia created a wind. Some of the cushions flew away against the wall, startling both Teormu and Serit. The tattooer was looking around, as if she could find a plausible explanation for what had just happened. Saia made the knife and inks rise in the air and kept them there until Teormu noticed. Her eyes widened with fear. When Saia spoke, her voice came out from behind the tattooer.

“If there’s someone that can fight Mayvaru, it’s me. But I need that pattern.”

Teormu held her breath, holding the stack of sheets so tightly the paper was crumpled under her fingers. She only relaxed when the knife and inks lowered back onto the table. She coughed a bit, more to recover her bearings than out of actual necessity. She smoothed the paper and tapped it with the back of the graphite. She seemed to be considering Saia’s request with more attention, at least.

In the end, she sighed.

“It’s just a smell,” she said. “I can always say that I didn’t know what it would be used for. But if it’s not a tattoo, I’ll need to know on which material you plan to trace it and with what. I assume it won’t be ink?”

“No,” Saia said.

Teormu waited a bit for her to elaborate, then sighed.

“I’ll also need to know the size and the general shape of the object it’ll influence. You’ll have to find someone else to trace it, though, because I strictly specialize in tattooing.”

“That won’t be a problem,” Serit said.

“Why do you need to know all of this?” Saia asked.

“To make a pattern that’s more efficient and precise. You won’t need as much of your viss to activate it.”

“I’m not interested, then. I have enough viss.”

Teormu crossed her legs with a sigh. Saia had the impression she was bracing for what could potentially be a long discussion.

“There’s another reason. It’s to protect the secret of my patterns. It’s a common practice among the families, and also whoever invents patterns outside of the Arissian territories. Usually we start out by creating a general version of the pattern that only works when using a big quantity of viss. This version is kept secret, usually it’s not even written down. Then we adapt it to fit the specific object, person and usage it’s meant for. We also disguise it with inert lines, if the shape of the pattern allows them.”

“Inert lines?”

“Superfluous parts of the pattern,” Serit answered before Teormu could. “If you remove them, the effect won’t change.”

“That’s possible?”

Teormu smiled.

“There are rules for everything, as long as you study enough. The families have pushed the art of pattern-making to the limit and ensured they were the only ones to reap the benefits. They have made it illegal to buy artefacts if not from them, and bringing them out of the city’s borders is also illegal without an official permit.”

Saia nodded.

“Should I tell her about the statues?” she asked in Serit’s ears.

They sat up straighter, and for a moment she thought they had forgotten about Teormu and were about to answer out loud. They scratched the side of their left hand, right under the protruding bone of their wrist. Whatever.

It wasn’t a particularly polite gesture, but she understood their annoyance: she had already revealed what they planned to accomplish without consulting them, might as well go ahead and tell the rest.

“I plan to trace it on viserite,” she said. “Sculpt it, specifically.”

Teormu raised her eyebrows.

“You’re a sculptor? Not the material I’m most familiar with, but at least it’s more reliable than ink.”

She jotted down something onto the untouched paper. Serit leaned a bit forward, observing her writing as if they were waiting for her to finish before they could talk.

“I’m sorry, but I’m curious,” they started when she didn’t give any sign of slowing down. “Earlier you implied that there are people using ink to trace patterns on surfaces. I was always taught to never do that under any circumstance, as tinctures, graphite and the like can’t keep viss properly contained, resulting in bleeding out that sometimes can change the effect of the pattern. So I was wondering, is there really a way to use them without incurring these risks?”

Teormu kept writing until she had almost reached the bottom of the page, and only then raised her eyes.

“You should ask the painters. But yes, it’s possible. There are stricter rules to follow and a lot of calculations to gauge which side effects the pattern might cause if viss bleeds out in the wrong shape. Depending on the composition of the ink, it might be similar enough to the material on which it’s traced to be a bit more stable. In general, you should never reuse an ink pattern twice, even if it seems fine to the naked eye. Not without retracing it first, at least.”

Serit nodded, producing a small smile. Saia thought back at the painters, at all the families that governed Aressea. She had managed to learn the names and occupations of most of them by listening to the conversations of the market crowd and the official communications that were screamed from the rooftops by government officials.

“Why isn’t there a family of tattooers?” she asked. “You seem powerful enough.”

“Power doesn’t mean much without legitimacy, at least in this city,” Teormu said. She abandoned the pencil, her eyes glinting at the candlelight. “We were part of a governing family, about two hundred years ago. One of the three branches of the painters: artists, calligraphers and us, tattooers.”

“Then what happened?”

“War.”

Saia had only heard that word at the temple, taken straight out of the sacred texts, and at Iriméze, in the threats of the spirits. It had never occurred to her that it might have happened on earth too, and so relatively recently.

“The families at the time wanted to expand the territories of the city to include the Golden Lands,” Teormu explained. “They considered it their right, after Aressea had conquered the city of Darasa and its immediate territories, hundreds of years ago. They tried diplomacy, they tried withholding resources and granting others in great quantities, to sway the local governments in their favor. It didn’t work, so of course they turned to violence.”

Her eyes lowered to look directly at the candle.

“Now they try to pass it as a hard and suffered decision, as if it was necessary, but it only took a meeting of the families to take the decision to invade. They all agreed, except for the head of the tattooers’ branch. She walked off, and the rest of her side of the family followed her in leaving the painters. As a punishment, and to avoid setting a precedent, they were forbidden to practice their craft ever again. We continued anyways, of course, mostly outside of Aressea’s territory. A side of the family went to fight for the Golden Lands. They were all massacred there.”

“You’re a descendant of those tattooers?” Serit asked.

“Yes, on my mother’s side. My dad…” She quickly shook her head, as if she didn’t find it relevant. “It wasn’t just because of the war, of course. The painters already couldn’t stand us, because they thought that we made their patterns easily accessible to everyone. All because you can’t really block people at the borders the same way you would artefacts, especially if they’re influential citizens or foreigners. When a couple of patterns leaked out, tattooers were prohibited to practice on people who didn’t pass an extremely strict check. Nevermind that our knowledge had grown and we could make patterns tied to the person’s specific imprint.”

“What do you mean?” Serit asked, with a voice inappropriately loud compared to the somber tone Teormu had maintained up to that point.

She raised her head and looked at the roof, pointing at the pattern on her throat.

“Some of these lines make it so that the pattern can only work on me. I used them for all the tattoos I drew on my body.”

She lowered her head again.

“The other families have learned the same thing too, over time. Some of their artefacts can only be activated by either one specific person or a group of people that are sufficiently related to each other.”

“Fascinating,” Serit said in a breathy voice. “How did you learn these things?”

Teormu retracted a bit.

“It’s not the kind of information I would share with anyone. It’s a family secret, not just for tattooers but for the others as well. Only the people who have joined them by winning their contests can learn how to apply them.”

Serit looked at Saia.

“No,” she said in their ears. “I have no intention to participate in the sculptors’ contest.”

They slowly tapped a specific point on their jaw to indicate that they were sad. Saia thought she needed to tell them to only use the gestures for important things, and certainly not under the direct gaze of the people they wanted to hide their words from.

Luckily, Teormu didn’t seem to have caught onto the fact that they were communicating.

“What about the shape of the object you’ll have to trace the pattern on?” she asked.

“Is it really necessary? Can’t we make a compromise?”

Teormu stared at her without answering, the graphite raised in the air. Saia’s display of force had convinced her to help defeat Mayvaru, but not to obey unconditionally. On instinct, she checked the bundle she’d tried to reach under the cushions. There was a small box without a lock, containing a rolled-up parchment closed by a wax sigil. She checked the content: it was a complex pattern traced with ink. The curves and loops were wider than the ones of the tattoos. She couldn’t see any similarity with the patterns she knew, so she memorized it to examine it better later.

“We’re not completely committed to the shape, yet,” Saia said. “Can we bring you the details later?”

Teormu nodded.

“Works for me. But I won’t get started on the pattern until I have that information. Preserving the secrecy of my patterns isn’t just something I do for the survival of my business, but also out of self-preservation. The guards tolerate us, but they will swarm immediately if one of our patterns spreads outside of Aressea’s borders.”

Saia nodded.

“If you don’t have other requests…” Teormu said, half-standing. Serit imitated her gesture, but Saia stayed still.

“You’ve mentioned people attacking Mayvaru in the past,” she said. “Who were they? What happened?”

Teormu settled down again.

“Before Mayvaru appeared, about ten years ago, we had an order of hunters trained to kill humanized animals. They are…”

“Animals who eat humans and look like them,” Saia quickly interjected. “We know.”

“They worked for the Dulrir’s clan, the beastforgers. The population feared them and the other families started feeling distaste for their increasingly disturbing experiments, so they founded that force to calm down the public opinion. They also served as an implicit threat to all the animal people in the area. Their communities weren’t as numerous in the past for this very reason. But I digress.”

She hid the sheets and graphite under the same cushion where they’d been at the beginning.

“They kept working for the government after the beastforgers’ sudden death, even if their numbers dwindled and there were frequent talks of assimilating their force into the city guard. They worked to destroy all the surviving experiments of the Dulrirs, a job that coincidentally sent them away into the Golden Lands, right as Mayvaru and Beramas took their place in the city. They didn’t return to Aressea, people said they established a base somewhere in the ruins of Darasa.”

She shook her head.

“It doesn’t matter: they decided to work alone when they attacked Mayvaru, knowing that even if they succeeded they’d be probably incarcerated if not killed by the families for harming one of their servants. I don’t know what happened, but Mayvaru returned to Aressea with most of their corpses, announcing that they had fought a creature too strong for them and failed. A lie, of course, as the information coming from the Golden Lands revealed, but it was a good enough explanation for the government to accept without damaging their reputation.”

Saia reflected on her words. She had hoped for something more, for a detail that could give her an edge over Mayvaru.

“So that’s it? They just died?” she asked.

Teormu breathed in deeply.

“Not all the hunters were brought back. Nobody knows whether it’s because Mayvaru didn’t bother to collect their dismembered corpses, or because some of them managed to survive and run away. If they still exist, they are at Darasa. Nobody enters the ruins, except maybe for Mayvaru’s animals, but I would expect the hunters to know how to take care of them.”

Saia nodded. A thin trail, that could lead to nothing, because Mayvaru was a unique creature with mysterious powers and the hunters might have just underestimated her. But they’d have to enter the Golden Lands anyway as soon as Mayvaru left to visit them, so they might as well check Darasa’s ruins too.

She stood.

“Thank you for everything. How much do we owe you?”

“We’ll talk about it once I work on the pattern a bit. I don’t feel comfortable discussing prices when I don’t have all the information to start the job.”

Teormu walked with them to the door. She hesitated before opening it.

“Please be careful,” she said, the bitonal quality of her voice lowering to a whisper. “I’ll do my best to disguise the pattern as a sculptor’s work and not a tattooer’s, but I don’t know which resources Mayvaru can employ to seek out who created it. I know you’ll have more important things to focus on during the fight, but please destroy the pattern before it falls into her hands. If possible.”

“Of course,” Saia said, then expanded her domain a bit to peer into her viss. “Are you sure you want to help us? You could be in danger regardless.”

Teormu nodded with renewed determination.

“I want to see that bastard killed. I want to see the Iraspes defeated. Everyone with a brain in this city does.”

Saia didn’t know what to answer to that declaration of open treason, so she just nodded.

Back into the midday sun, she took a moment to look at the city around her, at the pastel-colored buildings and the summits of the palaces towering on them all. She counted more of them than the current governing families. After hearing about the beastforgers’ demise, and even the tattooers’ fate, she wasn’t surprised at all.

“What now?” Serit asked.

“Animals,” she said. “I need to study more of them. Is there a zoological garden at Aressea?”

Serit thought about it for a moment, then shook their head.

“I don’t know, but if it exists, it’s not famous enough to be described in the books about the city.”

“Then we need to return to the villages. Don’t make that face, it’s the only way to be sure we’ll find some interesting animals.”

“I thought you already had everything you needed.”

“I don’t know for sure what I’ll need. I can mix what I know, even make bigger versions of small animals. But I want to be a bit more prepared.”

Serit sighed and adjusted the bag they’d bought to hold all of their meager belongings.

“I’ll study the maps along the road, then,” they said. “Hopefully Darasa won’t be too far.”