Sutra, City: Yamatai.
The Second Eldritch beast had never stopped fighting. Bound in silk that nothing they knew of could cut, it had thrashed in the garrison's yard tireless, working its severed cage-lattice like a jaw, though the eldritch beast’s effort to cut through the silk was meaningless, however the beast’s resistance was still making it hard to move him, so Ling decided to end it, one stroke, the same as the first beast, and the yard had finally gone quiet.
The Lantern Eldritch beast however, had not moved since the shore. It lay in its silk wrapping like a thing asleep, docile, its nodes dark. Nobody trusted it, and nobody could explain it, so they were still on alert around it.
The courier from the capital had never come.
"We're going back anyway," Noah said, at the long table with Ling. "We have to report either way, and the road's the same road. It comes with us, the hearts, the bodies, and the live one. Better than it sitting in your yard another month."
Ling considered that, then nodded and reached for paper and wax. "I'll write it over to you. Two hearts, two bodies, one living specimen, transferred to the capital's custody." She glanced up. "If it stops being docile on the road, don't hesitate, Noah. Kill it."
"I promise," Noah responded.
So on the last evening, the customs house was full one more time. Xiao had traded half a day's wages for a fish bigger than Midori, and the stew was delicious.
Mavis sat at the very end of the bench, in the space closest to the door. It had been decided that she would accompany them, in seven words nobody had pushed against — "Can I... come with you? To Serica?", and since then she had been quietly, visibly terrified that someone would ask her to explain herself.
Xiao, of course, did.
"You'll love the capital," he said, leaning across the table with his whole grin. "The towers, the trees, you know the trees there are purple? Purple! And the…"
Mavis shrank about an inch into her collar.
"…and I'm talking too loudly," Xiao finished, at half the volume, and slid the bread basket toward her by way of apology.
Jin was worse, because Jin was sincere. "Does distance matter?" he asked her, eyes bright. "For the song. Is it line of sight, or hearing, or, wait, does the target have to hear it, does it work on every target? or is hearing just how it looks from outside…"
"Jin," Izumi said.
"I have so many questions about her curse!!"
"Jin."
He subsided. Izumi, without a word, put her spare travel cloak over the bench beside Mavis, it gets cold on the headland road, she said, and went back to her bowl.
It was Hana who did the thing none of them had managed. She got up, came around the table, stood in front of Mavis, and bowed. Low, and long, the bow you give in temples. Mavis went scarlet and half-rose and made a sound like "ah—" and looked around for rescue, and Hana straightened up, smiled her small smile, and poured her tea.
Later, when the fire had burned down and the others were arguing about the road, Noah found himself at the quiet end of the room, and Mavis was there, and it seemed like the time.
"Can I ask you something?" he said. "About the song. You don't have to answer."
She looked at her hands, but she nodded.
"On the shore, I felt it," Noah said. "At the edge, like it was passing me by. But it only took the beast. That's the part I can't make sense of, why it worked on that thing and not on any of us."
"Because of the rhythm," Mavis said. Her voice was small but it didn't waver on this part. "The one I used... it only works on things that aren't human. That's why it took the eldritch beast, and passed you by."
"Where did it come from?" he asked. "The music, I mean, the curse, how did you get cursed?"
And that was the wrong question. Her hands found her sleeves.
"There was always music in our house," she said. "I loved it before I could even talk, my mother said. I used to, " She stopped. Started again. "And then, when… when I…"
Her voice didn't break. It just ran out, like a lamp does.
"That's plenty," Noah said easily, as if she'd finished the sentence. "You don’t need to tell me, I’m sorry if I brought up bad memories."
She looked up at him, and after a moment, she looked down.
It is clearly a traumatizing memory for her, I shouldn’t ask about this again, Noah thought, and let it be. He knew better than most how long a night could take to talk about.
They loaded the wagon at dawn.
The iron boxes went in first, then the two salt-packed bodies wrapped in canvas, and then, lashed along the wagon bed, the long silk-bound shape of the Lantern Eldritch who was showing no resistance.
"Stay three days," Xiao said, for the fourth time. "That's all. The festival is tomorrow, you've never seen anything like it. Ten thousand lanterns on the water. The whole sea lights up."
"He's right," Ling said, and everyone looked at her, because Ling had never once volunteered a sentence about lanterns. She shrugged. "It's worth seeing."
"I wish we could," Noah said, and meant it. "The capital's waiting on this. On all of it." He gestured at the wagon, and then, a little helplessly, at the whole south. "We have to go."
"Next year, then," Xiao said. "You'll come for the festival, and I'll teach you to fish, and you'll be terrible at it."
"It's a promise."
Midori came forward last. She held out a folded packet of paper, tied with string, pages in her small hand.
"Copies," she said. "All thirty-one names. Ages. Where they were taken from, and when." Her chin was level, but her hands were very tight on the packet until his took it. "They're alive somewhere. If the capital ever learns where those things were carrying them…"
Noah looked down, as if he knew it was more likely that they all died.
"We'll look for them," Noah said. "I promise I’ll do my best."
Hana didn't say anything. She bowed once more to Mavis, who bowed back this time, wobbling, and in an awkward way.
The wagon rolled out the north gate with the morning carts, Izumi at the reins, Jin already sketching some improvement to the axle, Mavis small and straight-backed on the bench in Izumi's spare cloak right next to Xiangli.
Behind them, the others were waving their goodbyes.
Undercity of Nauz
Dust motes danced in the stagnant air of the abandoned amphitheater, the cavernous space sitting in the middle of the undercity like a dead eye. Around a long, scarred table dragged from some ruined counting-house, the Qlipoth Order was meeting, as the last of the members finally arrived. Thaumiel sat in absolute stillness at the table's end, watching the assembly form. Beside him, seemingly insulated from the heavy atmosphere of the gathering, and inside the amphitheater, there was five people: Thaumiel, Wend, Lilly, Reed, and Samuelle.
Lilly sat at the table's end, beside Thaumiel, and she was drawing.
On the upper half of her sheet sat a lock. A real one, molded steel, no bigger than a fist, its face a nest of fine cuts and channels around it, in silver-flecked ink, she had drawn a circle. On the lower half of the sheet she was drawing a key, with a second circle around that, and between the two circles sat a third, smaller one, joined to both by straight inked lines. Inside the small circle was a symbols of a complicated glyph.
"The auction will be the most guarded ground on the continent," Thaumiel said to the others. "Malthane has been preparing it for months. We should expect hired cursed humans on every gate. The noble families will bring their own eldritch holders. And if the Utopians attend, then somewhere in that crowd will be things none of us wish to meet." He paused. "So understand this first: we will not force anything. Anyone who plans to fight their way in has already failed."
He glanced down, then, at Lilly's sheet.
"A little thinner through the shank," he said gently. "It has to travel. Take your time."
She didn't answer. She turned the pen and kept working.
"Then how do we get in?" Reed leaned forward over the table. He was tall, and his long hair was tied back out of his face, and patience was not among his gifts. "Just tell me who to hit."
"Nobody, yet," Thaumiel said. "What we need first is information. Exact information. How the security is spread. Where every post stands, who holds it, when they rotate, and how they are dispatched when something goes wrong. Until we hold that, we hold nothing."
"And the second thing?"
"The second thing is Malthane." Thaumiel folded his hands. "On the auction ground, he is the piece that matters most. He must be somewhere else, or in no condition to act, when it happens."
"Then I'll take him," Reed said. "One on one. Point me at him."
"No, Reed."
"I'm serious. All I need is…"
"You wouldn't last." Thaumiel interrupted him aggressively, "His heart is Diamond Tier at the least, probably even Apex tier. That is above your current strenght."
Reed sat back, jaw working, and said nothing.
Thaumiel turned to Lilly again. She had finished the key. She set her palm flat over the wet ink, and the drawing rose out of the paper, a key of pale metal, impossibly fine, cool as if it had been carried through winter. He picked it up, slid it into the molded lock at the top of the sheet, and turned it.
It went in. It did not turn.
"Close," he said, holding the lock to the lamplight. "The wards inside are cut finer than the mold shows on its face. It's the middle glyph, Lilly, the one that makes the two agree. Change it. The way I taught you." He set the failed key down beside her. "And try a new design for the key. Make it adaptable, you designing it precisely removes the glyph’s agency and hard codes it, we need the glyph to control the key’s shape so that it gets created exactly as the lock needs it, maybe add a second material glyphs inside the key circle, something similar to the one we used for creating the custom candle in the testing session."
Lilly pulled a fresh sheet across the table. She had not spoken all evening. She had not looked at him once.
"Malthane knows the auction is a target," Thaumiel went on, to the room. "In the coming days he will assemble an elite security team around the event, he will probably hand pick them himself through a test, and they will be Eldritch holders and Cursed Humans." He let it sit for a moment. "We are going to be standing inside it. One of ours, in their ranks, is worth more than everything else we do."
He looked at Samuelle.
Samuelle Bane sat a little apart from the others, thin as a slat, the circles under his eyes so dark they looked drawn on. He had not said a word through the whole meeting. He nodded once.
"That judge's soldiers come down in a day or two," Wendy said, from her place at Thaumiel's shoulder. "A hundred of them, they're saying."
"Let them come. Nauz counts more than ten mouths that the city above doesn’t even know about, let them guard the exits, that would be useless." Thaumiel smiled slightly. "Nauz has more mouths than the city has ever counted.", the mouths that Thaumiel is talking about is a convention used to refer to the Nauz undercity entrances.
At the end of the table, Lilly set her palm to the new drawing.
The key rose from the paper. Thaumiel took it, fitted it to the lock, and turned it, and this time there was a soft, heavy click.
He held the key up to the light for a long moment.
"Perfect," he said. "As always, Lilly, your genius is out of this world.", while he padded her head like a puppy with a proud gesture.
She cleaned her pen and said nothing.
Thaumiel rose, sliding the piece of paper that made the key into his coat. "That's everything for tonight. Wendy, see that she rests, she's been drawing for two days." He straightened his sleeves. "Now, if you'll excuse me. I have a meeting to attend."
"A meeting?" Reed said. "With who?"
"We are about to make a new friend," Thaumiel said, and walked out into the twilight of the undercity.