\hypertarget{fatalism-ii}{%
\section{Fatalism II}\label{fatalism-ii}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``What is it if not sorcery, that I can tax a single belltower in
Salia and set half a dozen cities ablaze?''}

-- First Princess Anaïs of Cantal, referring to the incident that began
the First Liturgical War. Later became the Proceran shorthand of `Salian
belltower', referring to a small act carrying disastrous consequences.
\end{quote}

As a girl Cordelia had made a deep study of ruling, knowing that she
would day inherit Rhenia and intending to serve her people as best she
could. Her few journeys south had made her feel the limits of Lycaonese
wisdom acutely, and so she had sought answer beyond the traditions of
her people: not to simply discard the lessons of her forbears, but to
pair them with the learning of other realms. She had looked far, in
acquiring tomes. There was little literature of worth out of Callow,
save for Jehan the Wise's sharply-tongued memoirs, but the the Free
Cities and the Thalassocracy had borne greater fruit. The Ashurans had
led a remarkably stable state for centuries in the face of episodic
warfare with Nicae and its allies, and their admittedly dry records were
worth the reading if one could stomach the tediousness of the minutia.
The islanders, however, had few lessons to offer beyond those touching
on the establishment and maintenance of a strong bureaucracy. In matters
of ruling philosophy, they either parroted the faraway Baalite
Hegemony's onw sages or lapsed into the mysticism particular to their
national cult. The League, on the other hand, was a treasure trove of
learning and scholarship.

Of contradictions also, though that was only to be expected of such a
fractious people. The \emph{asekretis} of Delos had bled rivers of ink
on the subject of the ideal state, attempting myriad reforms as opposing
factions of the ruling Secretariat came to power, and from both failures
and success there had been much to learn. Cordelia had modelled the
examinations now necessary to enter civil service in Salia on those
required to rise higher in the Secretariat, and found them more than
adequate a method to root out the highborn parasites who'd infested the
city and replace with previously unknown talents. From faraway Penthes,
ever bickering with its two closest neighbours and stirring uneasy in
the Empire's shadow, she had learned the value of leveraging gold and
treaties where force of arms would fail. By the most famous Tyrants of
Helike, Theodosius and his always ambitious brood, Cordelia was taught
the art of sowing dissent and fear to humble greater opponents.

She considered herself to have first crossed a line when she'd obtained
Praesi works, all of which were illegal to possess within the
Principate.

Yet there had been wisdom in those as well. Not in the rants and rambles
of the most colourful foolsto climb the Tower, but in the likes of the
first Dread Emperor Terribilis and Dread Empress Maleficent the Second.
It would only be years later, after she was crowned Prince of Rhenia,
that her reach grew long enough to acquire more recent Praesi works.
Dread Empress Malicia's treatise `The Death of the Age of Wonders' had
cost her a fortune and over sixty dead to acquire a mere incomplete
transcription, and what she'd found had been a chilling read. It'd been
a lucid, strategic look at the historical failures of the Dread Empire
followed by laying out foreign policy that would prevent such disasters
from happening again. The suggested rapprochement with Ashur had been
the greatest danger among those put to ink, and the cause of many a
sleepless night after Cordelia became First Prince. To her dismay, the
Prince of Rhenia had found that much the Empress deemed the path to a
better Praes was eerily similar to what she herself intended for the
Lycaonese principalities. Strengthened internal trade, central oversight
of crucial resources, the establishment of common institutions that
would make old regional conflicts irrelevant.

The Evil now dwelling in the Tower was unlike any the Principate had
faced before, she'd then understood. She had learned what she could from
the enemy, and kept those lessons close. Even in those days she'd known
there would be a reckoning with the East.

When she'd grown old enough to undertake the diplomatic missions her
mother had always disdained and largely allowed to lapse under her
reign, Cordelia had immersed herself in the teachings of broader Procer.
There was an old and proud contempt for southern squabbling, among her
people, and Lycaonese as a rule paid little heed to the ways of the
Alamans and the Arlesites. What did the debates of the Highest Assembly
matter to them, they argued, when no matter the ruler no soldiers ever
marched north to help hold the passes against the dead and the rats?
There was truth in that, but also bitterness that blinded. Beyond the
complex tapestry of marriage alliances and shifting interests, Cordelia
had found the the heart of Procer's art of rule had been birthed by two
books. The first, and oldest, was the work of Sister Salienta of the
House of Light. Once royalty in Salamans, after taking her vows she had
spent years penning her life's work, the \emph{Faith of Crowns}. One
hundred and three pages over which the former princess had attempted to
lay out the duties and responsibilities of one ruling over others as a
child of the Heavens. It was beautiful prose, in truth, and thought at
times it was more liturgy than practical it had very much been intended
as manual for blessed rule.

Salienta had been the first to argue that the Right of Iron, the ancient
prerogative by which the princes of Procer could war as they wished, was
no simple allowance: that regardless of permission, only a just war
should ever be waged. She'd spoken of the right of those who toiled over
land to own it, of the unholy greed behind taxes serving to enrich
instead of serve. It'd been highly contentious at the time, but after
open endorsement by the House of Light it had grown wildly popular and
the book had since grown to permeate political discourse in Procer.
Cordelia herself had drawn on the \emph{Faith of Crowns} when declaring
the Tenth Crusade, qualifying it as a just war according to the third
definition laid out by Salienta. Still, as much as the writings had
resonated with her it was what had come from them she'd studied closest.
How, in essence, the royalty of Procer had found ways to follow its
instructions to the letter while violating their spirit. The manufacture
of `just cause' to enable wars of expansion, allowing common folk to own
the land yet to keep it only for a fee, the complex array of moral
pretexts to justify often gouging taxes.

Salienta's work had always been closely linked with the power of the
House of Light, and so in a way it was no surprise that its first
written rebuttal was offered after the last of the Liturgical Wars came
to a close. None had ever claimed authorship of the small work simply
titled \emph{On Rule}, yet it was an open secret in Procer that its
father was Prince Bastien of Arans, the same man who later became the
very first of his homeland to be elected First Prince of Procer. Where
the \emph{Faith of Crowns} had been a religious and moral guide to
dominion, \emph{On Rule} was a dispassionate study of the acquisition
and preservation of power. To this day, it was considered impious to a
copy of the book, for within it Prince Bastien baldly observed that the
House of Light was an earthly force like any other, with interests and
obligations, and should be treated no differently. The book
pragmatically advised that guile and treachery were functional tools, if
sparsely used, and that it was usually better to be a victor of
ill-repute than a saintly cadaver. Going even further, it argued that
moral law was a matter different from a ruler's interests and on
occasion even opposed to them. There were few princes and princess in
Procer who would admit to having such a volume.

Cordelia had never met any royalty south of Neustria who did not.

Therein lay the dichotomy at the heart of the Principate, she'd thought,
and she was hardly the first. \emph{To have} \emph{Salienta's tongue and
Bastien's hand}, the saying went. Spoken like an insult, an implicit
accusation of hypocrisy, yet it was observed more scrupulously than many
laws among Alamans and Arlesites. And herself as well, she was honest
enough to admit. There was beauty in the \emph{Faith of Crowns}, but it
was no shield for the vicious intrigues that thrived in the Highest
Assembly. As the years passed, however, the blue-eyed prince had come to
look at the treatises differently. Less as exercises of philosophy and
more as inheritances from different eras of Procer. One where the House
of Light had been entwined with the ruling class of the realm, another
where it had stood rival and opponent. Since the year \emph{On Rule} had
been written, the nature of the pillars holding up the Principate had
shifted. Though in many ways the victors of the Liturgical Wars, the
priests had been estranged from the halls of power just as the
once-powerful mages had been. They had kept their wealth, their ancient
rights, but their foes had not forgotten the dangers of allowing the
House too much influence and so slowly uprooted it from the tallest
peaks of Proceran authority. Cordelia had scrupulously observed this
habit, save in one matter.

That mistake, she thought, was now coming home to roost.

``Someone organized this,'' the First Prince of Procer spoke with
deliberate calm. ``Of that there can be no doubt. The last recorded
conclave involving the full priesthoods of the west dates to
Triumphant's conquest, gentlemen. This is not \emph{happenstance}.''

Three men shared her solar, this morning, none of them younger than
fifty. All were Alamans whose tenure as the heads of the informal
triumvirate of largest Proceran spy networks preceded her second
crowning. Her eyes lingered on Louis de Sartrons, a skeleton of a man
with rapacious features and a bald head. As far as the Principate's
records were concerned, he was a middling official in the lower ranks of
Salia's diplomatic service. In truth man was the highest patron of the
Circle of Thorns, an ancient cabal of Salian officials whose charge was
to run the foreign spies of Procer. The Circle had a long tradition of
abstaining from politics, providing unflinching service no matter who
sat the highest throne of Procer: at the height of the Great War, before
it had been clear Cordelia would triumph, the man across from her had
provided regular briefings to all major contenders without playing
favourites. The blonde did not particularly like him, but she could
respect his dedication and sharp competence. The depths of his failure
in this particular instance was made deeper disappointment for it.

``We were blindsided,'' the old man admitted in a rasp. ``I've had my
people in the Thalassocracy and the Dominion scrambling for answers, but
as far as we can tell there is no Ashuran committee behind it and we all
know the Majilis has not held session in months. Or even informal
council, for that matter. It could be the Seljun, Your Highness, but his
position remains weak. He should not have the pull or coin to arrange
something so far-reaching.''

The Seljun of Levant carried a dozen fantastical titles, though the only
one that truly mattered to Levantines themselves was the last: First of
the Pilgrim's Blood. Direct descent from the most revered of the
Dominion's ancient founders made the ruling line of Levant effectively
sacrosanct to its people, but that respect did not historically extend
to lords and ladies obeying a Seljun's instructions beyond half-hearted
lip service, if even that. The current figurehead ruler of the Dominion,
the Most Holy Wazim Isbili, was impotent even by the standards of his
predecessors. He was an unlikely culprit in this, Cordelia was inclined
to agree. If there was a foreign agent at work, she suspected it would
be a committee buried somewhere in the convoluted maze the Ashurans
called a government. Still, the failure now at her door was not the
Circle of Thorns' alone. Cordelia's gaze shifted to Balthazar Serigny, a
hirsute bear of a man with a thick black beard and eyebrows almost
defiantly large. Balthazar the Bastard, as his subordinates often called
him without a speck of fondness, was former fantassin of common birth
who'd ruthlessly risen to the top of the Silver Letters by blackmailing
and discrediting his every rival.

He'd thrived there, unsurprisingly, as the Silver Letters were a vicious
band of thieves and murderers who'd been skilled enough at the work that
over a century ago they became the left hand of the rulers of Procer.
The Cordelia's most recent predecessors had used them to keep an eye on
the unrulier princes and occasionally sow internal dissent when a
faction in the Highest Assembly grew dangerous, though she herself
employed them as knives only to remove Eyes of the Empire. Of this
shadowy triumvirate, it was Serigny she had the worst relation with.
Unlike the Circle, the Silver Letters had taken sides during the Great
War and several times tried to assassinate members of her inner circle
on Constance of Aisne's behalf. She'd given serious thought to having
him hanged after taking the throne, but it would have antagonized the
web of informants she now needed the most to remain in power. Instead
she'd made it clear he was on a very thin leash, and that he would
immediately begin training the successor she had chosen for him.

``It's not us, First Prince,'' Balthazar the Bastard grunted, unmoved by
the unspoken reproach. ``I've shaken every tree in the Highest Assembly
and nothing fell out. The Lanterns almost caused a diplomatic accident
when they passed through Orense, so they weren't expected in the
slightest. Been keeping an eye on our own temple rats ever since, but
they're closing ranks. Not a peep out of the priests. They've got a hand
in this, sure as day.''

``There hasn't been a word out of the House because your pack of thugs
was caught out, you blundering fool,'' Simon de Gorgeault hissed. ``Do
you know how many pointed questions I've had to answer?''

The man was in his seventies, closely-cropped silver hair topping an
angular face that had been a poor fit when he'd still been named Simone
but a reputably popular one after the oversight was corrected. He was a
lay brother of the House of Light, and unlike the other two men the
organization he oversaw was only one foot in the shadows. The Holy
Society was more informal channel to the leadership of the House of
Light than true web of spies, an association of nobleborn lay brothers
and sisters who facilitated dialogue with the throne and occasionally
passed along whispers the priests did not prove willing to surrender on
their own. He was diplomat as much as he was a spymaster, and Cordelia
had sometimes wondered where the man's loyalty truly lay. He'd been in
her service for only a few years, while his friendships in the House
were decades old.

``I have some questions of my own, Brother Simon,'' the First Prince
said. ``It is somewhat offensive that before arranging a conclave the
House would not reach out to me.''

The silver-haired man grimaced.

``I've told them as much myself,'' he said. ``Yet it appears they
consider this to be a religious matter, not a political one, and so
consider the throne's involvement to be unnecessary.''

``Which begs the question of what exactly that \emph{matter} is,
Simon,'' Louis de Satrons' reedy voice mused. ``It's customary for a
conclave to be proclaimed openly and the subject of debate announced
beforehand.''

The leader of the Holy Society sucked at a loose tooth, as if hesitant.

``I am told this is to be a closed session,'' Brother Simon said. ``By
the request of a Chosen.''

Cordelia stilled. One of the heroes? The Chosen had no formal authority
over any priesthood, save for those come of it, yet it would be a lie to
say they had no influence. And yet none of the Chosen had caused
ripples, when they had first gathered in Procer at the eve of the
crusade's first assaults.

``Which one?'' the First Prince coldly asked.

``I was refused that knowledge,'' the silver-haired man admitted. ``And
warned any meddling by the throne would be severely censured by all
participants.''

The House of Light could be handled, Cordelia thought, and the Speakers
were more mystics than political force, but the Lanterns? The Levantine
priesthood considered strife to be a holy duty. If prodded too harshly,
they would bare blades without hesitation. That would be utter disaster,
the kind of diplomatic incident that could begin a breakdown of the
Grand Alliance if it was not carefully handled.

``We will set that offered slight aside for now,'' she said. ``What is
the to be the subject of the closed session?''

``Heresy,'' Brother Simon said. ``As pertaining to Callow.''

Cordelia did not close her eyes or sigh. She was better-mannered than
that, and showing weakness in front of these men would bring no good.
The temptation remained there, however, even as her mind raced. A lesser
conclave in Salia had already declared Catherine Foundling to be an
abomination in the eyes of the Heavens for perverting the sacred act of
resurrection for the purposes of Below. This was not a minor thing, yet
it carried no true legal consequences and was essentially empty censure
unless the declaration was also adopted by the House of Light in Callow.
Which it had not been.

Unlike its Proceran cousin, the priesthood of Callow was no monolith of
shared practices and beliefs. Distant regions of the kingdom stubbornly
denied the leadership of the influential cohort of priests in Laure, who
had seen said influence sharply decline with the end of House Fairfax.
In the latter years of the imperial occupation, the priesthood of the
southern half of Callow had effectively become a separate entity from
the rest. The Doom of Liesse had shattered that state of affairs,
however, leaving behind disparate packs of clergy preaching stances on
the Black Queen that were just as disparate. The centre had largely
fallen behind her reign, and parts of the east as well -- Marchford
heart and soul, as she remained wildly popular there, Summerholm more
reluctantly and she was mostly spoken of there as a preferable
alternative to Praes. The rest was lukewarm of opinion, though many
priests in the south had involved themselves with Hakram Deadhand's care
of the refugee tent cities.

Proceran priesthood often spoke of its eastern counterpart as a
backwards cousin, considering its refusal to bestow titles to its own
greater than Brother or Sister as archaic and its insistence to rely
only on the Book of All Things as scripture as rather misguided.
Callowan priests were ever quick to remind their western cousins that
their practiced dated back to the founding of the kingdom, when the
Principate had been nothing but a mess of warring tribes, and did not
shy from sharp reminders that faith could only be tainted by involvement
in earthly matters. Still, save for the occasional minor squabble the
relationship between the priesthoods had been largely cordial over the
last two centuries. It helped, Cordelia, had often thought, that
Callowans priests were often more interested in arguing with each other
than foreigners. Off-hand, she could think of only one thing that would
make them band together.

Foreign meddling.

``Dread Empress Malicia is Arch-heretic of the East,'' the First Prince
carefully said. ``Only one person can carry such censure at a time.''

``She is \emph{presumptive} Arch-heretic, as the woman who holds the
Tower,'' Brother Simon corrected. ``In the absence of a formal
declaration, the matter is not writ in stone. And even if it was, the
decision of a Proceran lesser conclave would be overturned by a true
conclave's own proclamation.''

The man was not a fool. He'd immediately understood the first measure
she would turn to in order to prevent the blunder: rustling up enough
Proceran priests to declare the Empress the current Arch-heretic,
preventing the same title from being granted to the Black Queen.

``Atalante is a renowned stronghold of faith in the Gods Above,''
Cordelia said. ``Could such a debate be delayed until representatives
from its priesthood arrive?''

They would have to travel by land, the Lycaonese thought, likely through
Tenerife. The ruling princess of that principality was a close and
trusted ally, who could be counted on to arrange gentle delays. If the
First Prince was able to slow down the proceedings, the conclave could
still be persuaded to turn aside from this mistake.

``That matter was already settled by secret ballot,'' Brother Simon said
ruefully. ``As the Hierarch of the League is of Bellerophon, a city long
in the service of Below, it was determined that the priests of Atalante
should be considered lapsing in the faith. The same holds for Delos and
Nicae, much less Penthes -- which all known to be suborned by the
Empire.''

No word was spoken of the Titanomachy, yet Cordelia knew better than to
try that particular avenue. Levant had ancestral ties to the Gigantes,
while the giants still slew every Proceran to approach their lands. Any
approach there by a First Prince would carry \emph{great} dangers.

``Then the House of Light in Callow should be sent for,'' Cordelia said,
struggling to sound calm. ``To justify its anointing of the warlord
Catherine Foundling.''

``That cannot be,'' the silver-haired man said quietly. ``For I am told
the priesthood of Callow is to stand judgement as well, for that very
blasphemy.''

Her worst fears in this, confirmed.

``Brother Simon, this is a \emph{grave} blunder,'' the First Prince
quietly said. ``There are better ways to return Callow to the embrace of
the Heavens. This will be seen as an attack, a spiteful blow in the wake
of defeats on the field.''

The man stiffened like an angry cat.

``We speak of holy conclave, Your Most Serene Highness,'' he woodenly
replied. ``Servants of the Heavens do not concern themselves with the
sentiments of mundane powers, only that their acts are just in the eyes
of Above.''

\emph{What is this, if not an act of mundane purpose?} Cordelia thought.
She could not treat with the Black Queen, if she was condemned a heretic
by every signatory of the Grand Alliance. Worse, there would be no
treating with \emph{Callow}. The pattern of history there would cut too
close to home. After the Fourth Crusade, when a young Principate had
turned on Callow after being unceremoniously thrown out of the Wasteland
by Dread Emperor Terribilis the Second, there had been attempts to crown
one the the slain king's children as a puppet to ease occupation until
the pretence could be safely discarded. Juliana Fairfax had instead cut
her own throat at her own coronation, immediately after declaring her
rebelling cousin as heir. King Henry Fairfax the Landless had promptly
been declared to be Damned by a lesser conclave in Salia, a plot that
was deeply reviled in Callow to this day. The recipe here was different,
yet too many ingredients were the same: a young ruler who'd fought Praes
with distinction, heavy defeat followed by a Salian proclamation of
heresy and the perceived collusion of priesthood with an invading force.
That the Lanterns and the Speakers joined their voiced to the conclave
would change little, she thought. How many Callowans had ever seen an
Ashuran or Levantine? The kingdom had been closed, under Praes, and now
the only living memory of either people was as a Proceran ally. Even
those who despised the Black Queen's reign would have to bow to popular
sentiment and fall in line, lest they be accused of collusion with the
Principate. And worse yet\ldots{}

\emph{Woe, Cordelia. Woe to the north and to the south.}

``I must urgently address the conclave, Brother Simon,'' the First
Prince said.

The old man frowned.

``That would be difficult to arrange,'' he said.

``Allow me to be perfectly clear,'' Cordelia Hasenbach said. ``It
matters not to me how many favours you must call upon, how many bridges
must be burned and quiet threats made. This is no longer a question of
diplomacy. It is now a question of survival.''

Brother Simon's face smoothed out, though not before she read scepticism
in the cast of it.

``I understand that the Callowan question of of import to the throne,''
he slowly said.

He paused to choose his words carefully, and as as backhanded reminder
of who answered to the other Cordelia smoothly placed answer to a reply
unfinished.

``There is more to this than the affairs of Callow,'' the First Prince
said. ``See it done, Brother Simon. By evening tomorrow. Or choose the
abbey to which you will retire, after designating a successor less prone
to dithering.''

She would not allow the Kingdom of Callow to be driven into the arms of
Below. She could not.

Not after Agnes had told her the Dead King would be on the march by
winter solstice.
