\hypertarget{chapter-30-weaver-woven}{%
\chapter{Weaver; Woven}\label{chapter-30-weaver-woven}}



\epigraph{``Just as planned.''}{Inscription on the front gates of the mausoleum of Dread Emperor
Traitorous}



The locals called them `Mavian prayers'.

Centuries ago, before these were lands of princes and plots, what was
now called Iserre had been the cradle of a war between the Arlesite
\emph{regales} of the south and the proud Alamans chieftains of the
heartlands. The few respectable books written on the subject in that era
-- penned by Atalante or Stygian scholars, when not by Ashuran officials
-- agreed that the Arlesites had been on the winning side more often
than not. The current lay of Iserre itself spoke to those victories:
though many of its people spoke Chantant, it was Tolesian that was the
most common tongue and Arlesite customs that were most kept to. The land
has been won by the aggressive southerners leading warbands out of their
stone keeps, Alamans tribesmen slowly forced out of their ancestral
holdings by a thousand lost skirmishes. Those old tribes must have had a
hundred names, but as a tapestry of tightly-knit kin and cultures they'd
been colloquially known as the \emph{Mavii}. And though eventually
forced into flight further north, these Mavii had left behind the marks
of what had once been a powerful and wealthy confederacy. The so-called
`Mavian prayers' were more common sight in northern Iserre, it was true,
but even in the rest it was not uncommon to see long rows of grey raised
stones sketching out some symbol or meaning now long lost.

Iserrans now insisted those stones had been raised as prayers to the
Gods Above, each representing a passage from the Book of All Things, but
the Wasteland books I'd read on the subject of Procer had expressed a
great deal of skepticism on the subject. For one, the Alamans had not
kept to the House of Light as it was now known. Every tribe had elected
priests and kept faith to the Hallowed, as in those days they'd called
the Heavens, but personal worship of great spirits and angels nominally
beholding to them had been just as prominent. Some of these spirits, I
now suspected, had not been lesser gods or remnants of wilder ages but
instead wandering lords and ladies of Arcadia. The suspicion had grown
from the shapes I glimpsed of these raised stones, how they had been
pleasing to my eye in some ineffable manner even now that I'd broken
ties to Winter. It had been good as confirmed, however, when I'd found
this particular `prayer'. It was a barrow, or a tumulus as those were
called in Procer, though one larger than any I'd ever heard of in Callow
and crowned by a strange pattern of great stones. Three concentric
rings, the stones of them interlocking to give the illusion of a full
and complete circle when one stood at the foot of the barrow.

Standing at the centre of it, I'd felt a whisper of the sensation that
had once filled me when shaping gates into Arcadia with the strength of
Winter. This had been a thinning of boundary once, I thought, a place
enshrined in some eldritch manner. Whatever power had coursed through
these grounds vital and vivid in olden days had long died out, but it
had left behind a taste of itself. Like a desiccated ancient riverbed, I
decided. I could have run my fingers along the traces of the old
currents carved into what was now stone and dry sand, charted their
shapes and guessed at the intents, but there would be no bringing back
the old waters. The world had moved on, the stars were no longer
aligned. Whatever patron the Mavii had once bargained with had abandoned
the game for fresher ones. Still, there was something about the place
that appealed to me. It would serve for what I intended.

``There,'' I said, idly pointing with my staff. ``Gently.''

The four legionaries awkwardly moved to the side. All were orcs and
warrior-fit, so the large table they were moving might as well have been
a sack of feathers, but amusingly enough they were having to be careful
of not wrecking the table instead of labouring under the weight of it.
They set it down in the snow with a muted crunch and I met their salutes
with a nod before they retreated to the bottom of the barrow. Where more
work would await them, for it was a veritable procession that was
setting up my headquarters at the heart of this Mavian prayer. Chairs
and smaller tables, along with precious maps and a library's worth of
scrolls and reports. A writing desk, with quills and ink and all wax for
seals. Last of all, the same sinfully comfortable armchair I'd stolen
from the Count of Old Oak a few years back. Hakram had proved, as
always, that he was a prince among men when he'd revealed he'd had that
little piece of furniture brought along for the Proceran campaign. It'd
been kept with Juniper in the First Army, whose supply train was the
largest, but now that all four of the divisions of the Army of Callow
were reunited I had wonderful cushions to sink in once more. Vivienne
wandered in with the last of the additions, seemingly amused at the
burrow I'd had assembled.

``And when it starts snowing or raining, shall you bravely retreat?''
she drawled.

Leaning against one of the tall stones, long skirts swishing against her
boots as she tread through the snows, Vivienne looked like some noble's
daughter gone on a ride more than the former Lady-Regent of Callow. The
pales shades of her blouse and dress made the laughter in those
blue-grey eyes seem lighter, somehow, more innocent. \emph{Or perhaps
simply less weighed upon}, I thought.

``I've already had the outskirts of the barrow warded by our mages,'' I
said. ``For wind and quiet.''

``One of Masego's patterns?'' she asked, idly pushing off the stone.

``Yeah, though I'm told they can't get it to work the way he said it
should,'' I noted. ``He has a very unique definition of `elementary
knowledge', our Zeze.''

That some of our senior legion mages had outright admitted the scrolls
Hierophant had left on the subject of warding might as well be gibberish
had served as a fresh reminder that I'd been dealing with some of the
finest mages on the continent since becoming a villain and I that I
should temper my expectations accordingly. The rituals he'd taught my
mages lines in the days of the Fifteenth had since become the standards
large-scale sorceries of the Army of Callow, but not all of them could
be used without him guiding the casting and there was no real
replacement for Masego to be had. Talented mages were costly and
time-consuming to raise, and unlike the Wasteland I didn't have
centuries of teaching methods and arcane knowledge to dole out to raise
any even should I find talented individuals -- which I \emph{couldn't},
because unlike Praesi I didn't have well-trained agents out there
looking for the signs of young children with the Gift. Add onto that the
fact that the Legions of Terror had picked clean the most obvious
magical talents in the kingdom after the Conquest, and it was no wonder
that so few of my mages were of Callowan stock.

``And for the wet wrath of the Heavens?'' Vivienne idly asked, leaning
over one of the tables to have a look at the scrolls stacked on it.

``I dabbled,'' I shrugged.

It was one of the more abstract uses of Night I'd resorted to, which had
been interesting in its own way. Spinning threads of a miracle I had
seen before -- the bubble of stillness the Sisters had forged around me
when we'd tried to gate out of Iserre -- I'd crafted a sort of
intangible roof and bound it to the stones. Komena had perched herself
atop one long enough to call the work `clumsily-executed but clever in
principle', which was the closest she'd ever come to complimenting
something I did with the Night. Vivienne hummed, and pursued it no
further.

``So,'' she said. ``Are you going to tell me why you've called a halt to
the march and ordered the Hellhound to establish a fortified camp?''

Leaning on my staff, I began slowly limping around the edge of the
raised stones. It was a fascinating thing, the way the interlocked slabs
allowed me to glimpse down at odd angles. Revealing the sight of my
armies camped below, raising palisades and digging ditches.

``Because we'll be fighting a battle soon,'' I said. ``And there's no
point in running around until we know we can win it.''

``How do you know we'll be fighting a battle?'' Vivienne asked, brow
furrowing not in disbelief but in curiosity.

Wondering what she'd missed that I had not, how she could remedy that
failure when the chance next came. It had not escaped me that she'd
taken my tongue-lashing differently than Juniper. My Marshal had judged
the fault to be in herself, and so that the mending of it must come from
herself as well -- Juniper had turned back to books and discussions with
other commanders, the familiar whetstones of her mind. Her art of war
had been found insufficient, and so she would better it until this was
no longer the case. Vivienne, though, had been harder to gauge. She
was\ldots{} learning, if there was any word that could be used for it.
Looking at the successes of others like she was trying to squeeze out
the essence of them to make it her own. It was a little unnerving, at
times, and at others frustrating. Mostly for me, when I found the
whisper of my instincts a hard thing to explain.

``Because we are headed to a pivot,'' I said, ``and this\ldots{} isn't
enough. Our army and the Pilgrim's, that's too small a scale compared to
the magnitude of power gathered. It might be that it starts with simply
us, but it won't stay that way.''

``Because the story,'' she slowly said, ``requires more than simply us
and the Pilgrim. Yet you have fought battles before where-''

I raised a hand to interrupt her.

``The breaches, Vivienne,'' I said. ``They make a lot possible and
therefore those things will happen -- because once the groove is there,
the possibilities will flow into it like water.''

I cleared my throat.

``We can have that talk later in more detail,'' I added. ``Council won't
be for hours yet and I don't want to have repeat myself.''

She nodded.

``I should see to the Jacks, anyway,'' Vivienne said. ``Adjutant's
coming to join you?''

``Eventually,'' I said. ``I've sent him to get me a proper suit of plate
fitted.''

``It \emph{has} been odd to see you limping about without one,'' she
admitted.

I snorted and waved her away. As she walked away I propped up my staff
against the side of my armchair and lowered myself onto it with a sigh
of pleasure. I sat facing rings of stones with an unobstructed view,
tables at my sides groaning with the documents I'd sent for. It wasn't
long before I caught the slight sound of leather on snow, my only
advance warning that I once more had company.

``You have the supplies?'' I called out.

``And you claim you don't have the fae hearing anymore,'' Robber
complained. ``Bullshit's what I say.''

My minion popped into sight, leaning against the left arm of my chair. I
was rather impressed he'd made it that far without my picking up on it
even when I'd known he would be coming.

``You're just getting old,'' I mocked, because it was always a bad idea
to give so much as an inch to a goblin.

He should be around sixteen now, I thought. Goblins rarely made it
beyond forty, and that was for the better bloodlines -- of which Robber
was not, and that was setting aside the harsh lifestyle of service in my
armies. Thirty was likely when his body would start breaking down,
barring rituals to stretch out his lifespan, and at that thought I
suddenly regretted the quip.

``You're telling me,'' the Special Tribune complained. ``Only cowards
make it to fifteen, but I just can't seem to croak. I've had to make my
peace with the fundamental truth of this world, Cat: I am simply
\emph{too good to die}.''

I smothered my grin, the earlier regret chased away as quickly as it'd
come.

``A heavy burden to bear,'' I solemnly agreed. ``I know it well.''

He eyed me rather skeptically.

``Didn't you die that one time?'' he asked.

``I think I'm on three now,'' I muttered. ``It's not one of my better
habits.''

He snickered.

``No wonder you sent me after these, then,'' he said.

I had sent off Special Tribune Robber on a most important errand, and as
I pawed through the knapsack he'd brought me as tribute I had to concede
he'd done his duty well. Two bottles of Vale summer wine were set on the
table to my right while I squirrelled away the satchels of wakeleaf into
the many pockets of my cloak. Save for one, which went to stuff my pipe.
Passing my palm over the herbs had them lit with the slightest touch of
Night, and I inhaled with pleasure before lying back in my seat.

``All right,'' I said. ``Serve as my hands.''

``I figure Archer might object,'' the little wretch cackled.

``You might notice I didn't send for a footrest,'' I warned him.

He hurriedly made elaborate apologies that coincidentally happened to
insult Indrani more often than not, but I put him to work. Against three
stones, three sheets of parchment were put up: one for the Grey Pilgrim,
the Tyrant of Helike and the Black Queen. Robber skittered around with
ink as I dictated to him, his handwriting godsawful but honestly not
that much worse than mine.

``The Pilgrim wants a draw with the Black Queen,'' I said. ``The Pilgrim
wants to preserve the Grand Alliance armies. The Pilgrim wants Procer at
war on only one front.''

Robber's sloppy drawing of the Peregrine as bearing a heavy mustache and
a crooked nose was physically inaccurate, but in the interests of morale
I allowed the misrepresentation.

``The Tyrant wants leverage on the First Prince,'' I said. ``The Tyrant
wants the means to position the Hierarch. The Tyrant wants there to be
no victor in Iserre.''

Kairos' illustration had him either bearing horns or with his head on
fire, it was hard to tell, and I was fairly certain that his arms ended
in fingers and not crablike pincers. Still, I decided it wouldn't do to
infringe on the vision of so accomplished an artist.

``You going to tell me what you're after now?'' Robber asked, sounding
genuinely curious.

``That doesn't matter,'' I said. ``It matters what they \emph{think} I'm
after, because that's what they'll plan according to. We're not the only
ones scheming here -- if we plan assuming that everyone else will be
passive we'll just be wasting ink.''

``So what do they think we're after?'' the goblin said.

``The Black Queen wants to preserve her armies,'' I said. ``The Black
Queen wants leverage over the Grand Alliance. The Black Queen wants the
soul of the Carrion Lord.''

Which were all things I did want, but not necessarily in the manner
they'd think I did. I wanted Black back not to make him my foremost
general or use him against Malicia, but because he was my father in all
but name and I'd not allow his fucking soul to be snuffed out by the
blind machinations of the Pilgrim. I wanted leverage over the Grand
Alliance not to force treaties advantageous to me but instead to get
everyone at the table for the Liesse Accords: the intent wasn't hostile,
and to be blunt if there were other ways of getting there I'd much
prefer using those. As for the preservation of my armies, while it was
true whether that assertion came back to bite them or not would depend
on how well they'd assessed my degree of ruthlessness. I didn't want to
get any of my soldiers killed if I could avoid it, but that didn't mean
I'd shy from battle either if it was the best means to get what I
wanted. Sadly, I was dealing with the Peregrine and a madman who'd
tricked the likes of the Wandering Bard. I'd assume, at least in
principle, that they had a decent read on my personality.

``And now one more parchment,'' I said. ``The pitfalls we have to avoid,
how we'd lose.''

``Folding on those wouldn't be losing?'' Robber asked, skeptical.

Nimble fingers flicked `my' parchment, though mercifully there was no
representation of me sketched aside from a hastily filled-in crown.

``It'd be a defeat, certainly,'' I said. ``But put that parchment above
the others, because botching any of those would be \emph{the} defeat.''

It went above Kairos, and to my amusement the goblin had to drag a chair
and climb it so he could both hang it and write on it. Dipping the quill
in an inkpot, he turned to me with an expectant look.

``The Grey Pilgrim cannot die,'' I said.

Inconvenient as that line was, it needed to be drawn. If Tariq died and
we'd killed him, a death feud was struck with Levant. If Tariq died and
the League killed him, eighty thousand Levantine troops would be
marching east instead of west. If Tariq died by accident, well, likely
I'd get blamed somehow. I pulled at my pipe and spat out a mouthful of
smoke.

``The western and eastern coalitions cannot lose more than a fifth of
their forces,'' I said.

He let out a low whistle at that. The quill scratched, though his gaze
kept flicking back to me curiously. I sighed, and explained after
another drag of wakeleaf was released.

``For us, a fifth would be about twenty thousand dead,'' I said. ``For
them it'd be somewhere between fifteen to thirty, depending on whether
or not they can merge their armies before the fight. If either of us
loses more than that, we're crippled as a field army for at least
several months. We can't afford that, given the situation up north.''

``And the League?'' he asked.

``Can't be considered reliable in any sense so long as the Hierarch and
the Tyrant are running it,'' I said. ``Preserving its armies isn't a
priority -- to be honest, I'd feel safer if we carved away them by at
least a fifth.''

I drummed my fingers against the arm of my seat, staring at the fresh
ink on the parchment. I worried my lip thoughtfully and only after a
long silence did I speak.

``The Grey Pilgrim cannot have get a draw against the Black Queen,'' I
finally said.

I could not, in the end, trust him with that kind of power over me. Not
even for the sake of making an alliance. Robber finished the words with
a flourish, as if a twist of the wrist could make his calligraphy look
anything other than cramped and sickly. I had not exactly picked the
most able of scribes.

``Finished?'' Robber asked.

I nodded. He scuttled down, quite blatantly pilfering the quill and
inkpot before putting away the chair.

``And now?''

``Now,'' I murmured, ``I \emph{think}.''

The parchments, those tidy little triumvirates of desires and pitfalls,
hung in front of me but I did not need to look at them. Putting them up
had served the purpose I'd had it done for, allowing me to place it all
together as a structure instead of a series of abstractions. I closed my
eyes, let it all fall together.

``I can leave, Boss,'' Robber quietly offered.

``Don't,'' I said, chewing on my pipe. ``We're going to play a game, you
and I.''

``Ominous,'' the goblin praised.

The wakeleaf burned my throat, filled my lungs, and for a moment I felt
a strange joy go through me like a spasm. I was enjoying this, I
realized. This feeling, like my mind was full to burst and empty at the
same time. Like I'd been filled with jagged edges, glittering pieces of
madness and brilliance and that there was a solution to the crawling
chaos, a twisting and winding formula that would bind it all to my will.
I breathed out, smoke and heat leaving my lips, and smiled. Eyes
fluttering open, I snatched the staff and hobbled to the
parchment-bearing stones with feverish energy.

``Now,'' I said, ``to a layman's eye, it might seem we're in a spot of
trouble.''

``If have a few of those, if you need spares,'' Robber offered.

``But if you look at it closely, we have angles,'' I continued. ``For
example, though the Tyrant will stab anyone who looks about to win in
the back he is in fact our \emph{ally}.''

The goblin choked.

``What was that, Boss?'' he said. ``I can't believe I heard it right.''

I knocked the butt of my pipe against barely-dry ink under the drawn
caricature of the Tyrant.

``Kairos can't accomplish what he wants if there's no truce,'' I said.
``Think about it, Robber -- if his whole reason for getting into this
war is getting leverage on Cordelia, then he needs room to actually
\emph{use} that leverage. He can't do that from Iserre while openly at
war with her. If blunt coercion was all he needed he could have gone
after her armies to force her hand, but he didn't. You know what that
tells us?''

Robber's eyes narrowed in thought.

``The cripple's not willing to hand this war to the Dead King,'' my
Special Tribune said. ``He'll duck and weave, but these are matron games
-- a knife here and there before we all sit smiling.''

``Aye,'' I said. ``And one thing more: he needs me at that table, the
wretched little bastard. If I don't agree to truce talks then all his
schemes are dust. He can't make a separate peace with Cordelia, not when
he's trying to twist her arm. He needs to be the kingmaker in this
threesome of ours, not the sole enemy, and that means having all of us
at the same conference where he can play us off each other.''

``What's he mean to use the Hierarch for, anyway?'' Robber asked.

``I'm not sure yet, but it doesn't matter right now,'' I said. ``What
does is the fact that the moment I try to push for a peace conference
he'll back me to the hilt regardless of all other considerations. See,
no victor in Iserre is only important for him insofar as it'll affect
the conference that follows the fight here. Balance of power and all
that. But if I make it clear that the only way he gets that conference
is walking my line, you know what follows.''

``He walks, like it or not,'' the goblin finished. ``He's our borrowed
knife.''

``So he is,'' I grinned. ``Now Tariq, Tariq's what Black would be if
someone ripped out the part of his mind that itches to fix things and
shoved a Choir in there instead. If a situation goes south on Tariq, he
won't double down or throw a fit: he'll measure the risks, and if
there's no worth to the strife he'll cut his losses and prepare for the
next round.''

``Hate to tell you, Boss, but the situation hasn't gone south on him
yet,'' Robber reminded me.

``It doesn't need to, that's the beauty of it,'' I told him.

I spun on myself, lightly tapping the Pilgrim's parchment with my staff.

``See, the only thing in there I can't allow is the draw,'' I said. ``He
wants to preserve the Grand Alliance armies? So do I. He wants Procer to
be able to turn north? So do I. To get what I want out of this, I don't
actually need to screw him out of most of what he wants.''

``As I've been given to understand,'' the Special Tribune mused, ``he
also wants to slug you in the story real bad, so to speak. And he's
really a bastard kin of the Carrion Lord, he'll have schemes afoot and
blood that's lizard-cold.''

``Ah, and so we get to the tricky part,'' I conceded. ``If I walked up
to the Grey Pilgrim right now and offered him everything he wants save
for the draw, he'd refuse. But that's not because he's a fanatic,
Robber, although he is. He's not your average screaming, barn-burning
zealot: he's the exemplar of the long view. The Pilgrim is what the
Heavens use to make sure the forest fire doesn't become like, well, the
last few years essentially.''

``He'll come after you quiet and sudden, Boss,'' Robber said. ``And
you're good at the second, but the first famously ain't your
wheelhouse.''

``You're missing the point,'' I said. ``He's the broad view hero,
Robber. They don't have another one of those, it's the entire reason
he's so influential in the first place. Fighting him at all is a
mistake. The key to handling Tariq is twisting his arm in that same
broad view: making it clear to him that if he actually takes a swing at
me, the costs will make even a success so \emph{utterly ruinous} it'll
defeat the entire purpose. And the moment he knows that\ldots{}''

``He takes the wins he can,'' the goblin said. ``And cuts his losses on
the rest, drawing back for the next round.''

I drew back myself, coincidentally, emptying the ashes of my pipe onto
the snow and gazing at the loose constellation of sentences.

``You know, Robber, there's a story back home that in the old days there
was an Alban king who went mad,'' I said. ``Thought he was made of
feathers, so he ordered all the palace windows nailed shut and all the
doors closed. Wouldn't even take off his cloak, since he was convinced
without it the slightest breeze would disperse him into a million
tufts.''

``So he `fell down some stairs' and an ambitious daughter succeeded
him?'' Robber snickered.

``He was an Alban, even if mad,'' I chided. ``No, they suffered his
whims intent on waiting him out. Until one day a window broke in a
storm, and he dropped his cloak in fright but did not dissolve. The old
king, the morning after, summoned the court and announced he realized
now he had been mad and was cured of his madness.''

``That's distastefully uplifting,'' Robber opined.

``Story's not over,'' I said. ``You see, the king had realized he was
not \emph{made} of feathers. He simply had a coat of them, for he was in
fact a bird.''

The goblin grinned.

``So what happened to him?'' he asked.

``Oh, they settled him down,'' I said. ``But a few weeks later he
climbed the highest tower in the palace and leapt down to take flight.''

``Did he?'' Robber asked.

``We have a saying about it,'' I smiled. ``A king can fly-''

I shrugged.

``-but not for long.''

Amused, the Special Tribune bared needle-like fangs in approval.

``See, the thing is,'' I murmured. ``I always thought that he must have
deep down known he was mad. Because if he \emph{hadn't} known, if he'd
really believe that with all his heart\ldots{}''

I chuckled.

``Now and then, Creation has been known to grant the mad a pair of
wings,'' I said.

``So what's your Callowan folk wisdom leading to, Boss?'' Robber asked.

``Let's find out, my dear minion,'' I said, ``if we are mad enough to
fly.''
