\hypertarget{chapter-46-denouement}{%
\chapter{Denouement}\label{chapter-46-denouement}}



\epigraph{``Never wound a man you do not intend to kill.''}{Extract from the personal journals of Dread Emperor Terribilis II}



\emph{It was a strange thing, to bury a man. Of the Praesi only the
Soninke shared the custom, and even then only the highborn who boasted
ancient labyrinth-mausoleums of baked mud to receive their own. Peasants
and Taghreb burned their dead instead, save for those who had sold their
remains to corpse-raisers while they still lived. There were no ancient
mazes in the Green Stretch, and the dues to the dead were different for
Duni. It was said that some of Amadeus' people still kept to the Gods
Above in hidden places, conducting rituals even without priests to bless
them, but his family had not been so twisted. Mother had proudly served
in the Legions, after all, and thought little of the ornate boot-licking
westerners called religion. Yet Duni buried their dead like Callowans
did, the nature of that half-stolen custom changed by centuries upon
centuries of Praesi rule and all that came with it. The Squire's shovel
patted the surface of the freshly turned wet black earth, the last grave
he would dig today.}

\emph{There were four of them. Father, Clarent, Belladona and Valerius.
He'd not spoken to any of them since deserting the Legions, and the
first time in three years he'd laid eyes on his family had been to see
them crucified by the burnt-out husk of the farm. The Heir had not
needed to sign his work, for he had already boasted of it. Discipline,
he'd called it, for a mudfoot who did not understand his place in the
world. The Soninke had not well taken his defeat in Callow, the way
Ranger's knowledge of the lay of the land had allowed Amadeus to lead
the paladins to his enemy's camp instead of his own. Sabah had offered
to help him dig, meaning kindness though the offer was ignorant. Wekesa
had not, no more learned in Duni customs but instinctively knowing the
offer would be crossing a boundary. It was Hye, in her own cold way, who
had honoured his family. She'd stood vigil at his side in silence as he
dug, a sacrifice of hours freely offered to people she had never met.}

\emph{Amadeus wedged the shovel into the ground and stood by the
unmarked graves he'd dug by the side of Mother's. Silently, he
unsheathed a knife and split open his palm. Passing from grave to grave
he trickled droplets of red the way he had been taught even as his
companions stood behind him, still and quiet. There would be
incomprehension on their faces, he knew. Praesi knew well the power of
blood, but were wary of spilling their own. There were many rituals a
skilled mage could work, with such a reagent. But there were no
consecrated grounds in the Stretch, to prevent corpse-theft, and the
Tower did not care to chastise necromancers that kept to the practice if
their birth was high enough. The spilling of blood, to Duni, was an
oath. `They who marked that grave in red will seek redress, should this
grave be disturbed.' He could have spoken the word, but he alone stood
pale-skinned on this field. There would have been no meaning in it.}

\emph{He had wept, taking them down from the crosses, but the tears had
dried and left nothing behind. Amadeus did not recognize his own voice
when he told the others to leave him to the vigil, to be stood until the
moon rose. It was too raw a thing to be his, absent of calm and thought.
They deferred, though before long Ranger returned to his side. Hye knew
no commands but her own desires.}

\emph{``We'll kill him for this,'' she whispered, standing at his side.}

\emph{The green-eyed man smiled.}

\emph{``The Heir,'' he said, ``meant to cloud my mind. Fill it with
grief and anger. Unusually clever of him, truth be told. I lose much if
I lose my distance from it all.''}

\emph{``It always turns on them, plots like this,'' the half-elf said.
``They get more than they bargained for.''}

\emph{Amadeus studied the palm he had cut mere hours ago, finding it
perfectly smooth. It would not scar. Wounds on Named rarely did, lest
they were dire or meaningful. He wondered what kind of man it made him,
that this was not meaningful to him. He wondered if he should grieve
that he could not manage to care. Had he been this cold, before he
became the Squire? It was hard to remember.}

\emph{``He made a mistake,'' the Duni said. ``Not the one you believe
this. This is just\ldots{} insufficient.''}

\emph{Ranger did not answer. She'd always had a talent for that, knowing
when to fill silence and let it stand.}

\emph{``I believed I loved them,'' Amadeus said. ``But I killed them,
Hye, the moment I claimed my Name. I always knew that. Stories require
clean breaks. We cannot have homes to return to, however humble they may
be.''}

\emph{``You absolve him for this act?'' the honey-skinned woman asked.}

\emph{``No, not that,'' the man murmured. ``Never that. One must stand
responsible for one's actions. But it would be unseemly, to blame solely
his hand for this end. If not him, Creation would have seen to the
matter otherwise. Paladins venturing deeper into the Stretch, perhaps.
Or wisps of a faraway ritual poisoning them in agony. Foe would have
been provided, Ranger. Evil ever grows through conflict.''}

\emph{``You could have fought it,'' she said.}

\emph{``And lost,'' he replied. ``Creation can be gamed. We have proved
this. But it cannot be overturned. There are lessons to be learned from
the Tyrants of old. Power is not earned with clean hands. Their mistake
was only to think bloodying them anew will always bring gain.''}

\emph{He saw Ranger's lips quirk into a rueful smile.}

\emph{``And now you debate philosophy over fresh graves,'' she said.
``Your grief lasted as long as the tears.''}

\emph{``I began grieving them the moment I became the Squire,'' Amadeus
said. ``This will not turn my path, Hye. A loss has been added to the
tally, that's all. There will be many, many more.''}

\emph{``And love?'' she said.}

\emph{``A sweet thing, to be sure,'' the Squire said. ``But love is not
what I bared my blade for.''}

\emph{She laughed, quietly.}

\emph{``You're not boring at all, are you?'' she said. ``The blood you
spilled, what does it mean?''}

\emph{``An oath,'' Amadeus said. ``A warning.''}

\emph{Ranger's knife glinted silver in the dark as she cut her palm,
joining her blood to his own on the dark earth. He met her eyes and
wondered what was watching him back, that hard and blazing thing that
had his heart skipping a beat.}

\emph{``And now what, Squire?'' she teased.}

\emph{``I read a play once,'' Amadeus replied. ``Forbidden by Imperial
decree. There is a part I enjoyed, and it goes like this-''}

\emph{His voice carried, without ever rising in tone.}

\emph{``Be fearful now}

\emph{tremble; for}

\emph{my reach is long}

\emph{my wrath is great}

\emph{patient but}

\emph{unrivalled}

\emph{above or below.''}

\emph{Hye's answering smile was a thing of death and Amadeus looked
away, staring up at the stars and letting his grief ebb to the sound of
grinding wheels of steel.}

I woke to a riot of light. I was naked, I promptly noticed, and on a bed
of stone. I did not feel the cold in the slightest, which I did not take
to mean much considering I similarly felt nothing of twin clamps and
scalpel someone had shoved into my chest. Masego, unsurprisingly sitting
at my bedside with his brow creased, idly dismissed a rune that had
formed to the side of his head without looking away.

``Don't move,'' he ordered. ``This is precision work.''

``Good morning to you too,'' I croaked, forcing myself to remain still.

``It's past Noon Bell,'' he noted.

It said a lot about my life these days that I was largely unmoved by the
sight of a man sitting by my naked body elbow-deep in my chest without
my say-so. His free hand reached for the scalpel, delicately set aside,
and the fingers I couldn't see pivoted something inside my body. There
was a click, felt though not heard, and I felt Winter bloom through my
veins. The well, I realized with widened eyes, was not gone. The mantle
was still laid upon my shoulders. Taking out something that looked like
a torturer's tool out of me, Hierophant clicked his tongue in
satisfaction. He prodded with a long rune-covered stick at what should
have been my lungs, by the angle, and though my body felt nothing I
could feel something pressing against Winter. With a nod, he set aside
the stick and removed the clamps.

``It'll take at least a sennight to settle properly,'' he said. ``But
the working was successful.''

``Now,'' I said, ``would be a good time to explain what exactly you
did.''

I was a little amused that neither of us cared all that much about my
nakedness, but set that aside in favour of actually learning what the
Hells was going on.

``Neither your soul nor your body could support the title without the
metaphysical stabilizer the king replaced your heart by,'' the blind man
said. ``Your power began destroying your body the moment he removed it,
and the edges of your soul were fracturing.''

``You predicted as much,'' I said. ``Didn't you carve some sort of
protection on my ribs when you tinkered with the moon?''

``My calculations were inaccurate,'' he said, and he sounded deeply
pained. ``The runes shattered within the first hour. You are the last
titled entity of Winter, Catherine. That had unforeseen consequences.''

I rose to a sitting position, and spied neatly-folded clothes on a chair
to my right. \emph{Ah, Hakram, you prince among men.} I put a shirt on,
though I couldn't be bothered to hop around putting on trousers and
underclothes before I got a full explanation out of Masego.

``So things got fucked,'' I summarized. ``How'd that translate to `get
elbow-deep inside Catherine without even buying her a bottle first'?''

``I wish you would rephrase that,'' he sighed. ``I created an artificial
framework around your soul to support the power. To anchor it properly
into you, there was need for some surgical work.''

``So it's all good,'' I proposed.

``To an extent,'' he conceded. ``The power is no longer entirely
intrinsic.''

``What do entrances have to do with this?'' I said, grinning wretchedly
and with full awareness if what I was doing.

He visibly twitched, to my delight.

``Intrinsic,'' he insisted. ``Meaning-``

``We all know what entrances are, Masego,'' I interrupted smoothly.
``What does that mean, practically speaking?''

``That the framework can be attacked,'' he said through gritted teeth.
``Through sorcerous means. It can also only withstand the fullness of
your power for some time, at least until I've put together a stronger
array. That may take months, there is no precedent for this I am aware
of.''

``So you put scaffolding around my soul,'' I mused.

``An uneducated yokel might describe my work in such a manner, yes,'' he
said.

``And mages can take an axe to the scaffolding if they know what to look
for,'' I continued. ``Which would be bad.''

``Yes, Catherine, someone ripping out a working \emph{attached to your
very soul} would be `bad','' he hissed. ``How astutely deduced of you.''

``Are we talking decked in the face by Captain bad, or `oh shit I just
mouthed off to the Hashmallim' bad?'' I squinted.

``That is not a quantifiable scale,'' he began, but rallied valiantly.
``Are you familiar with the concept of cascading failures?''

``The Wasaliti doesn't have falls on it, Masego,'' I told him helpfully.
``You really should have paid closer attention when you studied
geography.''

The dark-skinned man opened his mouth, closed it, then rose to his feet.

``I wash my hands of this,'' he announced. ``We'll finish this talk when
you're capable of taking anything seriously.''

``Don't be like that, \emph{Zeze},'' I grinned.

I put my hand over my heart in a solemn oath.

``I promise not to yank your chain anymore,'' I lied.

He studied me for a long moment.

``You always say that,'' he complained. ``But you never do.''

He was learning, I would give him that much. He promised to send in
Hakram on his way out, after giving me long enough to get dressed so I
would not offend Adjutant's delicate orcish sensibilities. I'd screwed
with him mostly because it amused me, but there'd been the shadow of
another intent in there. A little time alone to process the Name dream I
still remembered with eerie clarity would not go amiss. There was a lot
to parse there, aside from a few revelations I could have done without
-- namely that watching Black turn into the Carrion Lord had got Ranger
going and that she probably saw taking out knives as foreplay. I was not
overly surprised on either count. My Name had always been heavy-handed
with the hints and I knew better than to always follow the vague advice
the dreams carried with them, but this one had been particularly direct.
My teacher had buried his family, and odds are before the day was done
I'd have to light John Farrier's pyre\emph{. A sweet thing, to be sure,
but love is not what I bared my blade for.} Fresh on the back of my
hesitating to ask Nauk's healing as a boon, that struck particularly
close to home.

There were dangers to caring for my men, and considering setting aside a
war-winning trump card for a single man to wake again made them stand
out starkly. My Name was telling me to grow harsher. That the moment I'd
let the Lone Swordsman go I'd begun a path that would be paved with the
corpses of foes and friends alike. There was truth in that I could not
deny. If what I set out to accomplish was greater than any of the myriad
souls that made the whole, I should not flinch in the face of
sacrificing any of them. To do otherwise would be crippling myself from
the onset. The priests of the House of Light would have called that
embarking on the path to damnation, but oh that ship had sailed long ago
hadn't it? I found it hard to reconcile the smiling man I trusted with
the man bathed in starlight speaking those quiet words, but they were
one and the same. Neither false, perhaps, but if they ever came at odds
I knew which would win. I had seen the Black Knight's face bared of the
pretence of civility.

``You're telling me to let go,'' I murmured.

I'd never been particularly good at that. I wasn't sure I wanted to
start. You could win wars, I knew, without thinking like him. Without
tallying it all in my mind, staring at Creation through the prism of
gain and loss. But I remembered the sight of the burnt skull of a man
who'd trusted me, believed in me, and I could not help but wonder if I
might have avoided that if\ldots{} Some Empress or other had once said
that the worst sin a villain could commit was hesitate. She'd not been
wrong. Every moment I spared to gaze at my hands and ask whether there
was too much blood on them or not enough, my enemies were moving.
Growing in strength as I stood still. \emph{There is a point where
continuing to ask a question makes it meaningless, because Creation has
already passed you by.} Diabolist would not care for my qualms. Neither
would the Empress, or the First Prince or whatever greater threat lurked
behind them because wasn't there always something larger? I smiled
bitterly. I was, in the end, a practical woman. It mattered more to live
than to be someone I could live with.

I slipped on the rest of my clothes in silence, and was fitting my boots
when Adjutant rapped his knuckles against the door. I called out for him
to enter.

``Cat,'' he said, studying me closely. ``How are you feeling?''

``Like the war's not over,'' I said bluntly. ``Report.''

``You were under for a day and a night,'' he said. ``The Deoraithe are
getting restless, you'll need to settle the Duchess soon. I've had
Robber watch them, there's more to this than just wanting to strike at
Diabolist. The Watch are acting oddly.''

``Akua's making her move,'' I grunted. ``I suppose I should be thankful
she didn't show up in the middle of the battle to fuck everything up.''

``She is no longer in a position where she can move quietly,'' Adjutant
noted. ``She must be very, very careful. If she slips now, even once, it
will be the end of her.''

``Fifteenth?'' I asked, steeling myself.

``Casualties were significant,'' he grimaced, unknowingly baring fangs.
``The fight for the upper ring bled us dry.''

``Give me numbers,'' I said.

``Aisha's still tallying them,'' he said.

I frowned.

``You don't have to coddle me,'' I said flatly. ``It's been more than a
day. The captains will have handed in their reports.''

``We had another situation to deal with that delayed matters,'' Hakram
replied. ``Diabolist sent envoys. They're currently awaiting audience
with you outside the city.''

I heard the leather rip as my fingers tightened around it. Fuck. One of
these days I was going to be able to take a nap without waking to a fire
urgently in need of putting out, but evidently it wouldn't be today.

``Get me another pair of boots,'' I sighed.
