\hypertarget{interlude-stairway}{%
\section{Interlude: Stairway}\label{interlude-stairway}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``Though official records state that the Principate fought a mere
score civil wars, it should be noted that this does not include wars
fought between less than five principalities. Should the definition be
amended, Procer has on average fought a civil war every decade since the
year of its founding. No single nation has ever spilled so much Proceran
blood as the Principate itself.''}

-- Extract from `The Labyrinth Empire, or, A Short History of Procer',
by Princess Eliza of Salamans
\end{quote}

The trouble with this war, Prince Klaus Papenheim had told his niece
since the first day, wasn't that it wasn't going to be a war. It was
going to be half a dozen of them, fought all across Calernia more or
less simultaneously. That was the great danger looming within the Tenth
Crusade, that once all the forces had been put in motion there was no
adjusting the blows. Cordelia, bless her soul, had taken his warnings
seriously. The face of warfare had changed while the Principate clawed
itself bloody, and now Procer had to change with it or be left behind.
He'd never asked how his niece had gotten her hands on the Praesi. It
was for the best, he'd decided. The Prince of Hannoven had been raised
with death as mother's milk, but the fight against the Plague was clean
in a way the games in the south weren't. They made sport of men's lives,
down here, and he'd never had the stomach for that. Regardless, the ten
Wastelanders had offered up the most precious secret of the East: the
rituals of scrying, that old Praesi trick turned into a lethal tool of
war by the Carrion Lord. The spells that allowed armies with entire
kingdoms between them to move as one, taking apart hosts twice their
size with surgical precision.

Gathering wizards to learn them had been costly, he suspected, and it
must have been more so to keep the magelings in the Principate's service
after. Though in Lycaonese lands spellcasters were prized, for their
sorcery was a mighty thing wielded from walls against the ratling
hordes, the southerners had a more complicated relationship with
spellslingers. Wizards and witches had once owned a seat on the Highest
Assembly, in recognition of their great contributions in easing the
alliance between Arlesites and Alamans that first founded the
Principate. Yet in the centuries since they had fallen out of favour.
Their great influence, often second only to the rulers of
principalities, had been seen as a threat by the royals of the south.
Meddling in an election had turned on them when the candidate they
opposed, Louis Merovins, managed a narrow victory. The man had spent
most his reign suppressing them after revoking their Assembly seat in
retaliation, a struggle finally brought to an end two rulers down the
line when the mage association known as L'Oeuil D'Or was forcefully
disbanded.

Since then the casters had become tradesmen like any other, offering
charms and potions for coin -- though never healing, as the House of
Light frowned upon any infringing upon their hold in that domain. Some
cities in the south still had informal assemblies, he'd been told, but
they were toothless things and kept that way by ancient decrees banning
the collection of dues while still imposing heavy taxes. Until now.
First Prince Cordelia Hasenbach of Procer had, in the wake of her speech
announcing the Tenth Crusade, founded the Order of the Red Lion. An
congregation of wizards and witches exempted from the old decrees, in
exchange for sworn service to the crown. Hundreds of them, who might be
passable war casters at best but all knew how to scry with a degree of
skill. Klaus had a hard laugh, when he learned the charter binding the
Grand Alliance together had specific provisions for such an order
without ever naming it. His niece had been moving her pieces into place
for near a decade now.

The Prince of Hannoven was pleased with the addition of the mages to his
war council, though not because of their pleasant personalities. Near
all of them were strutting Alamans pups, drunk on the shiny new heraldry
and fresh importance. None of them seemed to understand they were not
the sudden dawn of wizardly resurgence but instead a glorified pack of
messengers. They had no say in where they were deployed, Klaus having
decided the arrangements himself after consulting some of his own --
much more trustworthy -- Lycaonese mages. Dozens had been sent south to
the Dominion, to keep the mustering armies of Levant pointed in the
right direction, and near a hundred sent in little linked clusters his
wizards called `relays' to make it possible to keep the lines open to
the Ashuran fleets even as they sailed. The rest had been spread with
measured weighing of priorities, linking first to Salia where his niece
ruled but also to the forces that Prince Amadis had schemed his way to
leading. The Iserran weasel needed a close eye kept on him, and Klaus
would have preferred to lead those armies himself if he could. He knew
why he could not, though.

In the Red Flower Vales awaited the two men he considered to be the
greatest field commanders of this era: Marshal Grem One-Eye and the
Carrion Lord.

Sending the likes of Amadis against them would have been like throwing
oil at a fire, and Cordelia had reluctantly told him that the man had
intrigued too well to be entirely side-lined from command. The Prince of
Iserre, however, had been too clever for his own good. With him were the
armies of the remainder of his pack of intriguing malcontents, and every
unruly fantassin his niece had been able to scrape together. Nearly
fifty thousand in total, a host almost as large as the one Klaus was
commanding. But it would be the Queen of Callow that Amadis tangled
with, and the Prince of Hannoven had heard much about that one of late.
He'd once dismissed her as a nobody, during the Liesse Rebellion, but
he'd been made to eat that dismissal raw since. She'd gone from victory
to victory in the last few years, and if half the rumours about what her
pack of villains was doing to heroes making their way into Callow were
true\ldots{} Well, there was one in every generation. Klaus' had borne
the Black Knight that awaited him in the Vales, and the great monster of
Cordelia's own looked to be the murderous orphan who'd set her throne
atop a sea of corpses.

Prince Amadis would win, he suspected. The shit had more than a dozen
heroes at his back, and two old forces of nature among them. It'd been a
pleasant surprise to find out that Laurence was still alive, old sack of
piss and vinegar that she was. The Saint of Swords was an army unto
herself, and the Grey Pilgrim that went with her was supposed to be some
kind of legend in Levant. No, Amadis would come out ahead. But the
villains would bloody him and wreck the armies of his allies -- and as
the commander of that host, all the blame would fall on his shoulders
afterwards. There'd be no more agitating the Highest Assembly for the
Prince of Iserre, after that disgrace. Klaus spat to the side in
disapproval, alone in his tent with the latest correspondence. It was
sinful that good, honest soldiers would die in that mess but that was
the nature of war. The Veiled Lady not discern between deserving and not
when she claimed the butcher's bill. Enough of Amadis' backers knew
their way around a battlefield that a real debacle would be avoided, at
least. There was noise outside the prince's tent and he set down the
latest supply census -- Brabant had cut corners on what they brought,
the fucking cheapskates -- to rise to his feet.

``What's the racket, men?'' he called out.

``Your Grace, I have-``

The voice yelped instead of finishing, preceded by the sound of a
spear's butt hitting a foot none too gently. Klaus passed a hand through
greying hair and sighed. That was one of his wizards, he was certain.
The eager shits were still under the impression that military protocol
did not apply to them since they served under the First Prince instead
of the army itself.

``Victoria, let him in,'' the Prince of Hannoven said.

``Bertrand de Guison, officer of the Order of the Red Lion,'' his guard
announced, her tone darkly amused as she parted the tent's folds.

Klaus would need to have a talk with her. Her dislike for southerners
was well-earned -- her two sons had died on Alamans fields fighting to
put Cordelia on the throne -- but the magelings were too useful to be
roughed up over petty offenses. The wizard entered limping, his heavy
robes emblazoned with a rampant red lion on pale. He couldn't have been
more than thirty, Klaus thought, and that he believed that to be young
suddenly reminded him how old he'd gotten. Even his niece was closer to
thirty than twenty, now. \emph{A Papenheim hold vigil until death
relieves them}, his father had always told him, but the Veiled Lady had
seen fit to spare Klaus longer than he'd believed possible. So few of
his time were left, save for enemies.

``Your Grace,'' the mage bowed. ``I herald news of great import.''

He'd called out in Reitz when he was outside the tent, but now the boy
was speaking Chantant. The Prince of Hannoven squinted. He'd had lessons
as a child and spoke the Alamans tongue well enough, but never quite
managed to shed his Lycaonese accent. It made him sound like an ignorant
brute, he was well aware. Just for that, the mage got to stand
throughout the conversation.

``I'm listening,'' Klaus said.

``The chapter of the Order assigned to the \emph{Rightful Due} has
contacted us,'' Bertrand eagerly said. ``Admiral Hadast has struck the
first blow of the Tenth Crusade.''

That would be Magon Hadast's son, Klaus noted, not the Ashuran ruler
himself. The head of the Thalassocracy was too old and fragile to
campaign himself. The `Rightful Due' -- Gods, the fucking Ashurans and
their ship names -- was the flagship of the Thalassocracy's first war
fleet. It'd set sail more than a month ago, and true to their reputation
the Ashuran ships and their wind mages were striking with impossible
haste.

``A victory, is it?'' Klaus asked.

The mage nodded.

``One for the ages, Your Grace,'' he said. ``The Tideless Isles were
seized with but a handful of Ashuran ships sunk, and ten times as many
prize hulls seized from the corsairs. What few are not dead or in chains
fled for the Wasteland.''

And so the first battle of the Tenth Crusade was fought hundreds of
miles away from the Empire, Ashur snatching anchorage for its fleets
before it began attacking Praes from the coast. It was beginning, Klaus
thought. Now the Praesi would have to move troops to protect their
coastal cities, denying reinforcements to the western front even as
Ashur burned and looted everything within earshot of waves. Now that
Hadast was in place, armies could finally begin to march.

``Contact your fellows in the Northern Army,'' Klaus told the mage.
``Pass this message to Prince Amadis: the seal is broken, climb the
stairs.''

``By your will, Your Grace,'' the man bowed elaborately.

Gods, Alamans. They turned every conversation into a bloody play.

``That aside,'' Bertrand continued, ``your guard-``

``I didn't see anything,'' Klaus grunted. ``There's a war on, boy. Get
moving.''

The wizard looked like he'd swallowed a lemon, but learning some
humility would do him good. The prince waited until the mage was gone
before speaking again.

``Victoria,'' he called out. ``Get yourself relieved and come in to pour
yourself a drink.''

Prince Klaus Papenheim frowned.

``And find the White Knight and his gaggle too, while you're at it,'' he
said. ``I'll want a word with them before we march on the Vales.''

---

Prince Amadis Milenan's fingers drummed the table lightly. The sound of
it was soothing, and well worth the expense of having brought the
furniture from his summer palace in Iserre. Amadis had ruled his
principality for more than twenty years now, and steered it unfailingly
through troubles and civil war largely because he had a knack for
telling which way the wind was blowing. At the peak of the civil war,
he'd been considered a key supporter of Princess Aenor of Aequitan while
secretly corresponding with both Princess Constance of Aisne and Prince
Dagobert of Lange -- before the latter's grisly demise at the hands of
Hasenbach's northern savages, anyway. No matter who triumphed he had
been positioned to become one of the most influential princes in the
Highest Assembly. By refraining from pressing his own claim while
keeping close ties with neighbouring principalities, he'd ensured that
Iserre would come out of the strife wealthy and pristine: from there, it
would have been child's play to trade marriages for concessions and
arrange for his kin to rule Procer when the time came. Then the Battle
of Aisne happened, and Cordelia Hasenbach broke the board.

He'd not been there himself, preferring to send one of his many cousins
to command the levies he had sent to aid the coalition. But he'd heard
stories. Of entire allied armies turning against princesses he'd
considered among the most cunning and dangerous alive halfway through
the battle. Of the brutal slaughter the Lycaonese had visited upon the
flower of the south's manhood. That defeat sounded across all of Procer,
and in the wake of that sound Amadis found his careful plans lay
shattered on the ground. Still, he'd come out of the disaster better
than any of his former allies and set to work leveraging that sudden
prominence. His ties in Orne and Cantal served him well, soon bolstered
by generously termed loans to Creusens and wedding his youngest daughter
to the heir to Segovia. The aging Princess Luisa has sided with
Hasenbach after she broke Prince Dagobert and remained a close ally
after, reaping the benefits of her early support, but her son had
greater ambitions than being the loyal dog of a northerner First Prince.
Princess Aenor's successor, Princess Rozala, eventually joined his
alignment as well after she found her mother's old supporters closing
their doors to her in an attempt to curry favour with Hasenbach.

Six principalities stood behind him, out of the twenty-three that formed
Procer. Twenty-four, counting Salia, but as it was the seat and personal
domain of whoever claimed the crown its officials avoided partisanship.
It was a greater portion of the realm than it seemed. The four Lycaonese
principalities to the north were ardent Hasenbach supporters, but
estranged from the courts of the south and forced to spend what little
coin they had seeing to their borders with the Chain of Hunger. Cleves
and Hainault had turned inwards after their disastrous adventures in the
civil war, fearing the Kingdom of the Dead would catch scent of their
weakness and begin raiding their shores again. Over a third of the
principalities still relevant to rule of Procer stood behind him. Amadis
did not have the votes in the Highest Assembly to dismantle Hasenbach's
position, not unless she blundered and angered rulers keeping aloft. But
he was now widely considered the second most powerful ruler in the
Principate, and even the hint of his displeasure gave other princes
pause.

Not that the First Prince had been idle all this time. She was, Amadis
would concede, a much defter hand at the Ebb and the Flow than any
Lycaonese should be. That clever bit of diplomacy with Levant had tied
Orense to her with a debt of gratitude, and his own admittedly
lacklustre military record meant that Salamans and Tenerife preferred
looking for protection against Helike with the First Prince than his own
faction. Their support had borne fruit, with twenty thousand men being
sent south to guard the border even as the rest of the Principate
gathered for war. Yet for all her cleverness, Hasenbach was not beloved.
Her heavy-handed reforms of the bureaucracy in Salia had won her no
friends among the highborn who had once enjoyed lucrative sinecures
close to the heart of Procer's power. The decrees she had passed trough
the Highest Assembly to disburse funds for the upkeep of fortresses
guarding the borders with the Chain of Hunger and the Dead King's realm
were similarly unpopular with the impoverished south, though she'd had
the votes to force them through regardless.

Still, Amadis had never considered the woman a true threat to his rising
ascendance. Watching the massive undertaking she had apparently managed
to prepare under his nose without a single soul noticing, however, he
was coming to reconsider that assessment.

There must have been at least five hundred mages involved, he thought as
he left his tent and came to stand in the field. That meant easily
thrice that number in servants and tradesmen supporting them, the sum of
it making a sizeable town on its own. And there must have been soldiers,
to ward off anyone curious even in this distant stretch of the
Principate. The Prince of Arans must have been involved as well, for all
this was taking place amidst his lands, and never had Amadis unearthed
so much as a hint that the man was one of Hasenbach's. Neither had his
people in the treasury found trace of the sizeable amount of coin that
must have been allocated in seeing such an undertaking through. Had the
gold come through the Lycaonese principalities? Fielding their armies
south in the civil war should have nearly beggared them, it should not
have been possible. Unless, of course, Hasenbach had falsified the books
in Salia. The Prince of Iserre hummed. He could have her censured for
that. The measure was mostly symbolic, and required simple majority to
pass. Would it be worth it to call in the favours? It would certainly
blacken her name, but to make such a play as a crusade unfolded might do
the same for his own.

Someone came to stand by his side, and a low whistle was let out.

``She plays a deeper game than we thought,'' Princess Rozala of Aequitan
said.

Barely twenty, Amadis thought, with all her mother's beauty yet none of
the grace. Being raised in a time of war had done nothing for her
manners, a shame given the past glories of her hallowed line. Iserre and
Aequitan had been foes as often as they were allies, over the centuries,
a complicated dance of love and hate that saw the lines between rivalry
and alliance ever blurred. No one understood better than his people that
a skilled enemy could serve as better ally than a friend.

``I discern the Prince of Hannoven's hand in this,'' Amadis said. ``It
is too\ldots{} martial a measure to be the First Prince's own thought.''

``It certainly explains why she had us getting drunk near the border
with Bayeux instead of mustering with the Iron Prince in Orne, anyway,''
Princess Rozala mused. ``And here I thought she merely wanted to keep
you from getting your grubby paws all over her allies.''

``A mark of weakness, that she would find it needful to do so,'' Amadis
said with a thin smile. ``Too many of her backers see the sense in what
I say.''

``There's no great brilliance in pointing out that Callow is ripe for
the taking, Amadis,'' the Princess of Aequitan snorted. ``Anyone with
eyes can see it. It's the division of the spoils that's going to set
tongues wagging. Assuming we can even wrest the right to dispose of
them.''

``Enough of the Highest Assembly took command of their armies we can
convoke a session in Callow without her,'' the Prince of Iserre
murmured. ``With the right promises we could circumvent her entirely.''

Neither needed to say that if this took place, Hasenbach's reign would
never recover from the blow. It was one thing for a decree to be
defeated in the Assembly -- not even the most beloved of First Princes
had avoided that indignity at least once -- but for a ruling First
Prince's known intent to be defied that openly? She would barely even
qualify as a figurehead, after. The disgrace might be enough for her to
abdicate and flee back north with her tail between her legs. There were
other ways to chance the face of the Principate's rule than mere
warfare. The two of them stood in uneasy silence afterwards, looking at
the work of the mages. The ritual had begun with dawn yet was not even
half-done by his reckoning. The harsh slopes of the mountains separating
Procer from Callow burned away under constant sorcerous fire, leaving
behind smoking steps of stone stretching ever further. Now that the
Prince of Hannoven had given his leave, Amadis had been filled in on the
full details of this little scheme of the First Prince's. Though no
great commander himself, the Prince of Iserre knew enough of martial
endeavours to be aware that the Kingdom of Callow's great advantage in
war had always been that the only path of entry from the west was the
Red Flower Vales. Narrow passes and valleys, whose fortifications had
only grown more expansive since the Wastelanders had annexed Callow.

This was no longer true.

The Stairway, as Hasenbach's lieutenant among the mages called it, was
the work of years in ritual preparation and planning: an exhausting
labour that would carve a way through the mountains between the
principality of Arans and northern Callow at the narrowest point in the
mountains. The planned point of emergence was to the north of the city
of Harrow -- which was, he'd been assured, essentially undefended.
Amadis had been ordered to take his host through the Stairway and begin
a march south, shattering every army in his path until he took the
defences of the Red Flower Vales from behind while the host of Prince
Klaus Papenheim assaulted them from the front. He'd also been mandated
to establish negotiations with the Duchy of Daoine, though it had been
made clear to him treating with Duchess Kegan would be handled by one of
the First Prince's personal envoys. In this, he was not worried. Callow
was such a lawless place, these days. Envoys could meet with all sorts
of accidents as they journeyed. And if they did, well, was it not his
duty as a loyal subject of Procer to fill that void? A diplomatic
victory with the Deoraithe would do much to solidify his position before
he convoked the Highest Assembly within Callow. The higher is fortunes
rose, the lower Hasenbach's fell.

``The wizards tell me the ritual will be completed within two days,''
Prince Amadis of Iserre told his accomplice. ``We must swiftly steal a
march afterwards.''

``Steal a march,'' Princess Rozala repeated mockingly. ``My, how
commandingly you speak to me. One would almost believe you to be the
leader of this glorious host of ours.''

Amadis smiled at her.

``How \emph{is} your brother these days?'' he asked. ``I hear his
talents as an orator have thawed even the First Prince's disposition.''

The woman's face turned dark, and she looked away. Rozala did need the
occasional reminder of how flimsy her position in Aequitan truly was,
with her younger brother currying favour at court. Hasenbach was
unlikely to be so gauche as to directly intervene in a principality's
affairs of succession, but she could do a great deal to help the boy's
cause without tipping her hand.

``Let us not quarrel, Your Grace,'' Amadis said. ``Can you not feel it?
We are going to make history, you and I.''

The Prince of Iserre's smile broadened as he watched the Stairway grow.
The world, he knew, was on the eve of great changes. And Amadis Milenan
would be at the heart of them.
