\hypertarget{prologue}{%
\section{Prologue}\label{prologue}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``You can't drop a pin in Procer without hitting royalty.''}

-Eleusia Vokor, Nicaean ambassador to the Principate
\end{quote}

Cordelia Hasenbach, First Prince of Procer, idly glanced at her
paperweight and pondered how satisfying it would feel to break Prince
Amadis' nose with it. No such thoughts, of course, appeared on her face
as she continued to listen to the ruler of Iserre lay out his objections
to the Principate's current political stance. Objections was admittedly
a generous term to use. One might have called the man's tone ``whiny''
if one cared to pass such a judgement, but properly raised ladies like
Cordelia did not venture such opinions out loud. For all that
southerners were convinced that the Lycaonese were one bad harvest away
from barbarism, manners had been drilled into her from an early age.

``If these Callowan paupers insist on taking Proceran gold, it is only
fitting they should be led by a Proceran commander,'' Amadis finished,
the smugly self-satisfied smirk on his face tempting Cordelia's hand to
drift towards the paperweight.

She allowed silence to linger long enough that the cold glare levelled
onto him by Uncle Klaus started to make the Iserran shift uncomfortably
before replying.

``The Liesse Rebellion is a popular uprising, Prince Amadis, at least in
appearance. We must not allow the shadow of foreign interests to be cast
on that image,'' she reminded the man patiently.

That she even had to explain this much to a ruler over twice her age was
galling. For all that the Prince of Iserre had a way with intrigue, his
grasp on popular opinion was\ldots{} dubious. The Alamans rulers had
spent so long playing the Ebb and the Flow that they were completely out
of touch with the people they were supposed to rule over. \emph{That is
what happens when one is the fulcrum of a nation's political elite for
nigh a thousand year}, she reflected.

``With all due respect, First Princess Cordelia,''-

``Prince,'' she corrected flatly. ``First \emph{Prince}.''

It seemed to dumbfound southerners that she still went by the Rhenian
formal address rather than the more gender-accurate one she'd gained
upon her election as the ruler of the Principate. While she was
technically the princess of Salia, now that she'd gained the title of
First Prince, she refused to allow the southlings to slight her heritage
by refusing to acknowledge that she came from the northernmost
principality of Procer. Rhenia was still backwards in some regards and
the laws had never been officially amended to reflect the reality of
women ruling, but she was proud of her origins nonetheless. Not that she
would expect an Alamans to understand. Their own tribal confederation
had joined with the disparate Arlesite holds to found the Principate and
they'd never allowed anybody to forget it. \emph{Meanwhile the Lycaonese
were made part of Procer by conquest, as they are so fond of remembering
for us.} Yet this particular Lycaonese was the lawfully elected ruler of
the Principate and she would not allow this wretch of a man to forget
it.

``Your\ldots{} advice has been duly noted, Prince Amadis,'' she spoke
calmly. ``We will explore all avenues open to us, but at this point in
time direct Proceran involvement does not seem like a feasible option.''

In truth, imposing a foreign general would be utterly disastrous. For
all that Liesse had bought an army's worth of mercenaries in Mercantis,
over half of the rebellion's rank and file was peasant levies from
southern Callow. Should the Countess Marchford be replaced by a prince
of the Highest Assembly as Amadis so clearly desired, mass desertion
would follow. Callowans were notoriously touchy about their independence
and while they would fight for a restored Kingdom they would not bear
arms to forge a Proceran protectorate. Amadis took the implied dismissal
with ill-grace, as Cordelia had expected him to. The prince of Iserre
bowed to the exact degree he was expected to and not an inch lower
before leaving the room. Normally she would have taken the time to
smooth over the man's ruffled feathers, but today he'd tried her
patience too much. It would not do to allow him the impression he could
push her this far on a daily basis. She'd have to make that statement
more pointedly, of course. The man was working trade deals in Creusens,
sabotaging a lucrative but not politically relevant one should get the
point across. A moment passed, then Uncle Klaus rose from his seat and
poured himself a glass of mead. The grizzled prince of Hannoven eyed the
silver-gilded goblet with puritan disdain before gulping down a
mouthful.

``Not your most loyal subject, that one,'' Klaus grunted.

Cordelia snorted. ``He would sell me out for a basket of fish,'' she
agreed. ``It would not even have to be \emph{fresh} fish.''

And yet, irksome as it was, she would continue to have to play nice with
the man. Amadis had made too many alliances to be dismissed out of hand.
His keeping Iserre largely out of the civil war had allowed him to
emerge from the two decades of warfare with an intact power base and
full coffers. In the wake of Cordelia's rise to power malcontents from
the Alamans and Arlesite principalities had flocked to him like maggots
to a corpse, bolstering his power and influence to a very troublesome
extent.

``He's a buffoon,'' her uncle decided after a moment. ``Spends more gold
on throwing banquets than equipping the Iserran army.''

``He is a buffoon making inroads in Creusens and Segovia,'' she reminded
him with a sigh. ``That makes him a particularly dangerous specimen of
the breed.''

The prince of Hannoven smiled wolfishly.

``Let him try his luck, then,'' he said. ``We taught them to fear
northern blades, at Lange and Aisne. A third time will sink in that
lesson properly.''

Cordelia loved her uncle dearly. He'd been the one to command her armies
during the civil war, and she would never have managed to unite the four
Lycaonese principalities without his backing. He was, in truth, one of
the finest military minds in the Principate. While the principalities of
the centre and the south had been playing their petty games Uncle Klaus
had been taking on the endless flood of warbands trickling down from the
Chain of Hunger, and when the time had come for Cordelia to claim the
throne he'd shattered every army that stood between her and it. But he
saw things through the lens of military affairs only, and in the Highest
Assembly that was the kind of flaw that got you murdered in your bed.
Amadis would not trigger another civil war, if he started to really
oppose her. After twenty years of the Principate bleeding itself to
death none of its rulers wanted to start another fire. He'd simply start
going after her support base until she became little more than a
figurehead to the Principate.

``We have other preoccupations at the moment,'' Cordelia murmured. ``The
Dominion has been shuffling around troops and Helike keeps testing
Princess Francesca's borders.''

``Helike's just blustering, they always do when a Tyrant gets in
charge,'' Klaus dismissed. ``They won't take on the Principate now that
the civil war's over. The rest of the League wouldn't have it anyway.''

``That still leaves Levant,'' Cordelia spoke. ``The Dominion has been
itching to take a bite out of Orense for decades. They would swallow the
entire principality if they thought they could get away with it.''

``If you're that worried, lend them the gold to rebuild their army to a
decent standard,'' her uncle spoke flatly.

The First Prince of Procer rubbed the bridge of her nose, allowing
herself the impropriety only because there was no one else in the room
to see it.

``I cannot do that without removing lending restrictions for all
principalities,'' she told Klaus.

And that was not something she could do. Not when her position was still
so weak. No power could challenge the newly-founded Hasenbach dynasty as
of yet, not with the kind of backing she had, but should the south be
rebuilt\ldots{} There were just so \emph{man}y people living down there,
compared to where her power was based\emph{.} Her enemies could afford
to fill the ranks with fresh recruits, if they lost a battle. She could
not. \emph{And for us every loss on the field is one less soldier to man
the walls when the Chain of Hunger comes again, one less watcher keeping
an eye on the Kingdom of the Dead.} The south could not be allowed to
regain its footing just yet, not before she'd secured the throne.

``You know I hate agreeing with the likes of Amadis on anything,'' Klaus
spoke quietly, ``but he's almost got a point. This rebellion gambit is
risky. And even if they win, it won't amount to much. Liesse is an
incompetent wastrel, Cordelia. He's got no business being in charge of a
chamber pot, much less a kingdom.''

The ruler of Procer sighed and forced herself not to fiddle with her
hair. It was a bad habit, and it had taken her chambermaid the better
part of an hour to style the blonde locks that morning.

``Pour me a glass, would you?'' she said.

Her uncle's white brows rose in surprise. She rarely drank, mostly
because she disliked the loss of control that came with being drunk.
This time, though, the conversation ahead of her warranted the
indulgence. Klaus wordlessly filled a cup and handed it to her.
Technically speaking it was illegal for a prince to hand anything to the
ruling First Prince of Procer, but when it was just the two of them she
tended to ignore those little formalities. Odds were her uncle had never
bothered to learn them. Regardless, she had no intention of allowing a
cupbearer into her solar when they could overhear state secrets.

``We are running out of options, uncle,'' Cordelia admitted. ``The
longer we delay, the more the Empire strengthens their grip on Callow.
The reports are unanimous: outside the cities, most of the Kingdom no
longer cares it is under occupation. They do not think the Legions of
Terror can be beaten and the standard of living for the peasantry under
Praes is \emph{better} than it was under the Fairfax dynasty. They have
no stomach for rebellion and if we wait a few more years I am afraid
they might actually resist an attempt to liberate them.''

The prince of Hannoven looked like he was about to spit in distaste
until he remembered where he was sitting.

``We're not ready for a war with Praes,'' Klaus told her, though it
visibly pained him to say it. ``Not when they've got people like Black
and Grem One-Eye on the other side. If we send a host through the Red
Flower Vales, they'll savage it and set the border principalities on
fire.''

Cordelia took a deeper sip, letting the sweet taste of the honey-wine
linger in her mouth.

``We can no longer afford \emph{not} to be at war with the Empire,'' she
replied. ``And for all that you worry about the likes of the Black
Knight, Malicia is the real danger.''

Klaus scoffed.

``Malicia's been spending all her time keeping her nobles in line,'' he
scorned. ``And she's not the one the Legions are loyal to.''

``If the Knight was intending a coup he would have already made his
attempt,'' Cordelia noted. ``Regardless, the Augur is adamant: the
Pravus Bank was Malicia's doing.''

At the beginning of the civil war most participants had expected it to
be an affair of a single year, two at the most. Wars of succession in
Procer were not unheard of when the Highest Assembly proved unable to
elect a First Prince, but usually when one of the claimants proved to
have a decisive advantage the principalities fell into line. Weaker
rulers and regional power blocs stayed down after being inflicted a
major defeat, treasuries too empty to make another bid. And yet, this
time, principalities on the brink of defeat had always seemed to manage
to find the funds and the weapons to stay in the Ebb.

Cordelia had been thirteen when she'd first seen how. She'd been on a
diplomatic mission to Lyonis, as its prince had managed to carve out
alliances neatly encircling the northern principalities, but by the time
she arrived in the city the man's armies had been broken on the field by
the betrayal of the princess of Lange. He'd refused to meet with her for
the first few days, and when they'd finally talked he did not face her
with the kind of despair she would have expected of a man in his
position. He'd recently come into a great deal of gold, he'd told her,
and was already raising another army with the funds. He'd even managed
to secure several wagons of dwarven weaponry to equip it.

Cordelia had left the city after being assured the man had no designs to
open a new front to the north, mind awhirl at the sudden change in the
other ruler's fortunes. Where had the gold come from, she wondered? Year
after year, news trickled in of similar reversals. Even when alliances
collapsed the strongest ruler among them somehow always ended up with
the just the funds and the weapons to launch a counter-offensive. This
was not, she had decided, a coincidence. Someone was purposefully
fanning the flames of the civil war. From there, it had only been a
matter of narrowing down the suspects. The name her agents found was the
same every time: the Pravus Bank.

It was based in Mercantis, but that meant nothing: the City of Bought
and Sold had a long history of being used as a cat's paw in
international politics. Cordelia's initial attempts to find out more
were met with polite misinformation and the much less polite slitting of
her agents' throats. By then she'd been the ruler of Rhenia and de facto
the leader of all four Lycaonese principalities but her reach that far
south had been\ldots{} limited. Which had been when an unexpected
windfall fell into her lap. Her cousin Agnes from one of the Hasenbach
branches came into the Name of Augur, overnight turning from a quiet
girl overly fond of bird watching to the holder of a Role that granted
indirect access to the very Heavens. And so, one augury at a time,
Cordelia had narrowed down the source of the gold flowing into Procer.

\emph{Praes.}

That had been\ldots{} unexpected. Dread Emperors and Empresses broadly
fell into two categories: the laughable and the terrifying. Thankfully
for Calernia, the latter were few and far in between. For every
Maleficent and Terribilis, there were ten Sinistras -- whose notorious
attempt to ``steal Callow's weather'' had resulted in the devastation of
half her realm instead. The point was that, most of the time, the Dread
Empire was comically inept. They used undead plagues and flying
fortresses, sentient tiger armies and invisible invasions. Those grand
projects inevitably failed and most backfired spectacularly. Of the
Empire's seventy-odd attempts to conquer Callow only two had succeeded.
And that first success was why people still thought of Praes as more
than an international laughingstock: Dread Empress Triumphant. The only
person to ever conquer all of Calernia and she'd done it in \emph{ten
years}. Every time some madman climbed the Tower, there was the risk he
or she was cut from the same cloth.

And yet Triumphant's conquests had collapsed within five years, while
Malicia's annexation of Callow still stood twenty years later. That made
her an entirely new breed of Evil. Slower, more careful and in some ways
even more dangerous. The Augur had found that the plan being implemented
went much deeper than a mere escalation of the civil war, and Cordelia's
blood still ran cold whenever she remembered her cousin's words:
\emph{the Tyrant seeks to end Procer}. Once she'd known what to look
for, the patterns had emerged. The Pravus Bank systematically enabled
regional powers to fight above their means, but not enough that they
would be able to expand outside of their borders. As the years passed,
the Principate had become a handful of petty kingdoms in all but name,
perpetually waging war on each other. And Malicia had intended for them
to stay that way, forever asunder.

And so at the age of nineteen, Cordelia had gone to war. She was not a
particularly gifted warrior, she knew. Like all Rhenians she was
expected to man the walls if the Chain of Hunger tried to cross the
Grave again, but military training had never particularly appealed to
her. Instead she'd studied history and etiquette, the ways of diplomacy
and intrigue -- all the arts of ruling that her father had held in
contemptuous disinterest. And while her uncle killed southerners, she'd
made alliances. She'd schemed and betrayed, and for once the proud
Alamans princes had found that their opponent's cunning ran just as deep
as theirs. Six years of running battles and backroom deals, playing
Creation's most elaborate shatranj game against the Tyrant in the Tower.

And, Gods forgive her, but it had worked. There was enough blood on her
hands for a hundred butchers, but it had worked.

``I do not expect Liesse to succeed, though the Lone Swordsman might yet
surprise us,'' Cordelia admitted quietly. ``The rebellion is a tool
crafted for a specific purpose: getting the Deoraithe into the war.''

``I know the Watch has a reputation, but not even them can beat all of
Praes on their own,'' her uncle said.

The First Prince of Procer took a hearty swallow of mead and closed her
eyes.

``They will not have to, Uncle Klaus,'' she replied. ``Liesse will last
a year, perhaps two. It will be enough.''

The prince of Hannoven's vivid blue eyes narrowed.

``Enough for what?''

``For Procer to be ready to launch the Tenth Crusade,'' she whispered.

All of her problems, neatly solved with a single announcement. The
Dominion was at least nominally Good, and would not nibble at their
borders while they were fighting the Empire. The League of Free Cities
would either keep their more Evil-inclined members in line or erupt into
civil war, either of which would keep Helike busy. And while the First
Prince did not legally have the right to command the private armies of
the principalities, all of them were by custom bound to contribute to a
Crusade. The troops of her political opponents would be abroad for
years, where they could not interfere while she stabilized the
Principate. Tens of thousands would die. Callow would be broken for a
generation, as the prize being fought over. But it would keep Procer
together.

Cordelia loved the Principate, for all its flaws. At the end of the day
it remained the greatest force for Good on Calernia, and though its
history was full of mistakes and mishaps Procer was what kept the
surface together. If it collapsed\ldots{} Those twenty years of civil
war had been but a taste of the bloodshed that would come if the
Principate split. Like crows to carrion, all its neighbours would feast
on the corpse of Procer and madness would seize the continent. So let
Malicia plot her schemes and send her blood-soaked Knight to reap his
harvest of lives. Let all of the traitors and the monsters come for her
head. She was the First Prince of the Procer, the Warden of the West.
Cordelia might be a Hasenbach by blood, but her mother had raised her to
the ancestral words of the rulers of Hannoven, the old retort thrown in
the teeth of the Enemy when all its grand plans came to naught.

\emph{And Yet We Stand}.
