\hypertarget{chapter-41-ante}{%
\section{Chapter 41: Ante}\label{chapter-41-ante}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``It is the nature of gambling that the scope of one's victory is
proportionate to the scope of all others' defeat. So is it with empire,
and near as subordinate to chance.''}

-- Dread Emperor Venal
\end{quote}

I studied the Rogue Sorcerer closely as he hobbled forward, not out of
any great affection for the man but because the state of him was a piece
of information that'd allow me to discern the nature of Kairos
Theodosian's game. When the Tyrant had turned on us, had he gone for the
kill or for a more amicable form of betrayal? The Sorcerer's face was a
canvas of bruises and scratches and he looked like he'd been sent
tumbling down through a thicket of brambles, but aside from that and a
wounded knee I could see no great damage inflicted. While the Pilgrim
saw to the other hero's pain, I considered the private conversation that
Kairos Theodosian and myself were having through the particulars of the
Rogue Sorcerer's escape and return. If he'd wanted to break with me
permanently the Tyrant would have killed the man -- or at least made a
serious attempt to do so, which did not seem to have been the case -- to
lure out the Pilgrim's lone aspect-resurrection. He'd taken the crowns,
that much was obvious, and likely whatever artefacts the Sorcerer had
been carrying on him. That appeared to include the casting rod, and
likely Black's soul as well. Kairos had deigned to use the opening I'd
left for him and done it without burning bridges with myself or with the
heroes in a way that could not be overcome down the line. Which meant he
was still open to turning on the Dead King in our favour, if we seemed
the horse to back at the latest hour. Assuming he didn't turn on both us
and the Hidden Horror in favour of some still-inscrutable aim, which
given who we were dealing with was very much possible.

``- he had me thrown off a balcony by gargoyles after declaring that was
the last we'd see of me,'' the Rogue Sorcerer said, snatching back my
attention.

\emph{Really, Kairos? That's a little on the nose even for you}, I
thought. If the Tyrant was going around throwing heroes off of cliffs
then he definitely wasn't trying to kill anyone. I paused for half a
beat and looked the absurdity of what I'd just thought in the eye,
though being absurd made it no less true. I tapped the bottom of my
staff against a broken pavement, claiming the attention of the returning
hero.

``He took the crowns,'' I said.

``He did,'' the Sorcerer agreed. ``And-''

The man flicked a hesitant glance at the Pilgrim, who nodded in
allowance.

``- my teacher's soul,'' I finished instead. ``That cat's been out of
the bag for some time, wizardling.''

He watched me warily at that, as if the revelation that he'd been going
around with my father in a bottle would be enough to have me strike at
him out of nowhere. While even these days I relied on being
underestimated to get away with gambits, on occasion it was irritating
to be taken as this kind of second-stringer. I wasn't some cackling
Dread Emperor from the Age of Wonders, Sisters bless, and even if I'd
actually intended on betraying these people I wouldn't have been an
\emph{amateur} about it.

``He intends to coerce you with it, I suspect,'' the Grey Pilgrim
solemnly said.

There was sympathy in his gaze I did not particularly deserve or want.
Not from the man who'd ordered Black's soul cut out and bottled for his
own manner of coercion. I might hold Tariq in higher esteem than Kairos,
but I'd say this for the Tyrant of Helike: when he slid the knife, he
did not pretend it was anything but that.

``He'll try,'' I simply said. ``Sorcerer, did he speak anything else
before throwing you off the cliff?''

``Balcony,'' the man corrected.

``She's right,'' the Saint grunted, almost amusedly. ``If a villain
tossed you down, it's a cliff in every way that matters.''

I suspected the old killer had been thrown off, or leapt down, more than
a few in her time. The dark-haired man cocked a brow but did not argue.

``He loudly lamented your lack of foresight,'' he told me. ``In some
detail.''

So, Kairos had left a message for me. Kind of him.

``In what way specifically?'' I asked.

The Grey Pilgrim grimly smiled.

``You think he revealed his plan by monologue,'' the old man said.

\emph{I think that if he took the bait I offered, it was for a reason,}
I thought. \emph{He just gave me a way to get everything I want the way
I want it. He won't have done that without a reason, and if we're to
continue negotiating through you then he needs to have his counterstroke
made known}. If the Pilgrim wanted to take that as Kairos making a
Name-induced mistake instead of moving through something that had the
shape of one, then that was his miscalculation to make. I dipped my head
the slightest bit, then silently invited the Sorcerer to keep talking.

``He castigated your ignorance of precedent, Black Queen,'' the hero
almost apologetically said. ``And insisted there are reasons people
don't `go around pulling swords from stones, if you'll forgive my
language'.''

It took me an embarrassing four heartbeats before I put the pieces
together. Shit. \emph{Shit}, that heinous little bastard. There was no
way he should be able to know about -- no, Hells, he'd been talking with
Neshamah for months now hadn't he? And Neshamah could pick Masego's
brains whenever he wanted. It was quite possible that the Tyrant knew
when I'd pulled the sword from the stone at First Liesse I'd done so
while presenting myself as the heiress to the tacit king of Callow of
two decades: Amadeus of the Green Stretch. That was a crown, one I'd not
considered until now and one I could not afford to lose. If my teacher
was inflicted the curse that was losing that `right to rule', who was
going to unfuck Praes into a halfway reasonable nation for me? I'd come
to trust Akua to an extent I would have thought inconceivable a few
years ago, but I couldn't trust her anywhere near the Tower: it'd be
like locking a drunk who'd just begun weaning into a wine cellar. And
Malicia, well, regardless of the political considerations that prevented
allowing her to remain in that seat if the Empress had wanted this to
end in any way but one of our heads on a pike then she shouldn't have
started assassinating my friends. I needed Black as, if not Dread
Emperor, then someone in a position to resolve the mess in the Wasteland
before the cauldron tipped over and fucked us all over while we were
stuck looking north.

``He's threatening to have Black as the one, to cut the grass under our
feet and give Larat his due,'' I said. ``Possibly in my name, possibly
on his own -- hard to tell at this point. I shouldn't need to tell you
that'll be a disaster.''

``You mean the most desirable way for this to end, save you chucking
down your own crown,'' the Saint of Swords bluntly countered.

``Laurence,'' the Pilgrim chided.

He did not, I noted, disagree. Of course he wouldn't. Tariq had
considered Black enough of a threat that he'd been willing to unleash a
plague to corner him, even if I was right and he'd gone after my teacher
with the deeper intent of baiting a pattern of three between us. The
Pilgrim wasn't the kind of man to resort to those means unless he
thought the enemy dangerous enough to require it. The heroes knew my
teacher as the Dread Empire's red right hand, the monster who'd torched
the heartlands of Procer to starve an empire into collapse when he'd
judged he could not defeat its armies on the field. And he was that, it
must be said. But he was also a great deal more: the architect of the
Reforms, the lid that'd been put on the worst impulses of the Wasteland
for nigh forty years and a stubborn madman who'd fought a bitter,
thankless struggle to end the cycle of death that'd bound Callow and
Praes for millennia.

If I was to have peace in the east in my lifetime, and the kind of peace
that would last \emph{beyond} my lifetime, then Black was one of the
keystones for it. As Warlock had once told me, for all that the man saw
himself as a replaceable cog in a great machinery he was in truth the
beating heart of the dream for a different Empire. If I lost him, there
simply wasn't anyone else who'd do his work anywhere a well, as
comprehensively or as reliably -- more than just personal ability, there
were his personal \emph{relationships} to consider. Who else had his
pull on the Legions, on the Clans and the Tribes? Had Kairos glimpsed
that, I wondered? If so, he was even more dangerous than I'd suspected
for he was perhaps the first of my foes to truly understand the world I
wanted to make. Or it might be simpler, I thought, a scheme as plain as
it was effective: I would want to preserve my father, the heroes would
want to cripple him. Conflict would ensue, sure as dawn rising.

``Theodosian can't be allowed to get his way,'' the Rogue Sorcerer spoke
up. ``Especially if what the Black Queen suggests is true.''

``You walked through the same empty towns as us, boy,'' the Saint
harshly said. ``The further the man who wrought that is from a crown-``

``We do not want the man who schemed that to \emph{shape this realm},''
the Sorcerer hissed back. ``That is the last crown's purpose, Gods be
merciful, and we'd trade what -- a petty blow at a woman trying to be
our ally for what could be bloody disaster?''

Huh. I'd genuinely not seen that coming.

``Roland,'' the Pilgrim intervened, tone calming. ``No such decision was
made. There is no need for backbiting among us.''

``There is, Peregrine,'' the hero furiously said. ``I've kept my tongue
through low ebbs -- and there have been a great many of those, since
this wretched crusade began -- but what sort of black madness is it that
the only one here who has attempted to save lives over the last months
is the damned \emph{Black Queen}?''

I wondered what it said about me, that instead of being touched by that
I was immediately suspicious. If you sat in a high seat long enough, I
thought, trust sickened and died until all that was left was the strange
kin to it that Malicia has famously coined: trusting people to act
according to their nature. And I did not know enough of the nature of
the Rogue Sorcerer -- Roland, to hear Tariq put a name to him-- to trust
anything coming from his lips. Gods, though, even if he might be playing
me it was nice to hear someone say it.

``She's playing you, Sorcerer,'' the Saint told him.

The echo, I thought, was ironic in all the worst ways. My father would
have laughed of it until tears came and muscles ached.

``I don't care, Saint,'' the hero said. ``This is\ldots{} this is
beneath us. All of us. That even in the face of doom we take each other
as foes instead of a having a single forthright conversation to protect
the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who put their lives in our
hands.''

``There is a conversation to be had,'' the Pilgrim tiredly conceded.
``Yet now is not the time for it.''

``Respectfully, Peregrine, I disagree,'' the Rogue Sorcerer said.

Though his knee had been healed by the Pilgrim along his bruises, it
must still have been tender by the way he was careful when turning
towards me.

``You have a plan,'' the dark-haired man said. ``This has been evident
since you cowed two armies into truce and stripped rule from a third of
the Highest Assembly. What is it that you need done, Queen Catherine,
and how can I help?''

And it might be, I thought, that he was honest. That the was speaking
from a place of genuine disgust for the way cloak and dagger struggles
were still being had even when, as he had said, hundreds of thousands of
lives hung in the balance. If that was true, if the Rogue Sorcerer
really was as appalled by it as the glimmer in his eyes said he was,
then this was the first breath of the newborn Liesse Accords. An
agreement, however implicit, that there were some monstrosities that
even foes should and would band against. That a form of restraint could
be enforced, by the fear of utter opposition from all others if nothing
else. It was something I longed to hear, more than any praised or
recognition of my bitter efforts to avoid bloodshed, and so damned as I
was I distrusted it immediately. Because I'd seen him hobble back to us,
leaning against the Saint in quit conversation. Because I knew near
nothing of the man under that sweep of dark curls, and if I was trying
to trick Catherine Foundling I would have done it just like this.
Splitting with the others on root of principle, not for sympathy of the
villain but contempt at the actions of my own side. That he'd been a
little too castigating, a little too bitter, only made it all the more
believable: I'd learned from High Lords that anything too smooth was
likely to be false. It might be, I thought, that this was all play by
the heroes to get a better glimpse the lay of my intentions.

\emph{Does it matter?} I thought, taking a cold-eyed look at the
practicalities of it. I was, in the end, surrendering little I would not
have to reveal down the line. And if I was wrong, if this was an earnest
tirade, then that early surrender was well worth the price of
encouragement. I breathed out, slowly, and then slipped two fingers to
my lip to whistle. The shrill cry sounded loud and far, followed by
silence and veiled gazes.

``I need a company to tear through the Ducal Palace's front door, loud
and hard and drawing attention from the dagger,'' I said. ``Which will
slip in through a hidden path, to get at the Hierophant directly and pry
him awake from the Dead King's influence.''

``I tread close to the palace,'' the Rogue Sorcerer said. ``It's a
fortress of wards and enchantments. Brute force will flounder, but I
have ways to finesse the locks.''

``Good,'' I said, inclining my head. ``I'll be there, as the moment
we're in we'll need to move on the Tyrant and I've some notion of how to
deal with him.''

``This \emph{dagger} you speak of,'' the Grey Pilgrim said, ``if you do
not guide it through the hidden path, how will it know of it?''

``Who do you think told her about that to begin with?''

Saint's blade had cleared the scabbard before the end of the first word
and even the Peregrine shifted his footing to have an easier time
slinging Light if it came to a fight -- which seemed, if anything, to
amuse Indrani all the more. To have come so soon after I whistled, she
must have been shadowing us from even closer than I'd thought. Archer's
long leather coat whispered against the ground as she moved to lean
against a half-broken pillar, hazelnut eyes bright in the gloom of this
city she'd seen both breaking and broken. The way her fingers rested on
the handle of her long knives was too casual to be a threat, but there
was not a hint of fear in her bearing at the thought of tangling with
any of the heroes.

``Archer,'' the Pilgrim said, inclining his head in greeting. ``How long
have you been trailing us, I wonder?''

Indrani grinned, sharp and unpleasant.

``I'm just here to guide you poor lost souls through this nightmare of a
city,'' she said. ``Nothing to read into.''

``Should I be appalled that even after all this you had yet another card
up your sleeve?'' the old man said, glancing at me. ``How many more are
left, Your Majesty?''

``One more, Tariq,'' I said, lips quirking. ``That's the trick: always
one more.''

``Spare me,'' the Saint of Swords said. ``Fine, if you need warm bodies
for a dagger crew then I'll bite.''

``You'll be a lot more useful in the assault crew,'' I politely replied.
``The Pilgrim would be a better fit.''

``We don't trust you not to cut our boy's throat at first occasion,
`cause you're vicious old bat,'' Indrani cheerfully translated. ``You're
not going anywhere near him without Cat to keep an eye on you, get me?''

I glanced at the Pilgrim. We had, after all, struck a bargain. The
reason for which he might hesitate to leave the Saint alone with me --
she'd try to end me and run headlong into grounds I'd prepared to kill
her -- should be seen to now.

``I am sure young Archer will prove sufficient muscle for the pair of
us,'' Tariq agreeably said. ``We both know, Laurence, that your talents
are best suited to less subtle tasks.''

``Getting your way in all of it, are you?'' the Saint darkly said,
matching gaze.

``Wouldn't have to, if your way wasn't so godsawful,'' I replied.

``You might be the single worst ally we've ever had,'' Indrani told her,
sounding kind of impressed. ``And I'm counting secret Malicia in there,
since at least she had panache when batting us around.''

``Secret Malicia doesn't count, she was just impersonating an ally,'' I
said without missing a beat.

``So that's the Woe,'' the Saint said, eyes flicking between us and her
lips quirked into a hard and unimpressed smile. ``Murderers and sowers
of ruin, but that's all right because you're \emph{clever} and you're
\emph{droll}. Like that's not just a fig leaf on the obscenity of what
you are.''

``Gods Above, Regicide,'' the Sorcerer said, ``how much time must we
lose to incivility in the face of cataclysm?''

``You want civil tongue, boy?'' she snorted. ``Fine. Foundling, what has
you so convinced that the dusty vagrant you just revealed can do a
single damned thing to `wake' the Hierophant? What is she going to do,
put an arrow in him in a friendly way?''

Hardly that. There was a story between the two of them that was old and
worn and could be put to purpose, but it would have been stripping bare
something of Indrani in front of strangers that were still half foes. I
saw no need to sate the curiosity of Laurence de Montfort at the expense
of one of mine.

``There's a method,'' I flatly said. ``You don't need to-``

``There's two people close enough to Masego to pull him back from the
brink,'' Archer interrupted me without hesitation, ``and of the two I'm
the one in love with him.''

Ah. Well. I kept a wary eye on the Saint, for if she laughed now I
thought that Indrani might very well try to kill her. She was proud, my
friend, and to have something so fragile mocked would sting all the
more. Instead the old woman silently nodded, face shuttering closed.

``For the dagger to have chance at making it into the deeps without
running into entrenched resistance, the assault crew will have to wreak
the kind of havoc that simply can't be ignored,'' I said, passing over
the discomfort with forced composure. ``Sorcerer, you said you have a
method to pass through wards?''

``I can bring them down,'' the hero agreed.

``Then, given who it is that's going to be making up this crew, I'd say
the time for subtle has passed,'' I frankly said. ``Let's smash through
the front door and pick every fight there is to be picked.''

It would, as an additional boon, attract the Tyrant the way honey would
flies. He'd never be able to let pass an opportunity to meddle in that
kind of a brawl, not even if it was to his advantage, and he and I still
had a conversation to conclude. I'd put out the crowns and the soul
though the Sorcerer, and he'd claimed that. That was the seed of a
story, Kairos betraying us and my recovering crown and father from his
grasp when we fought. He'd offered the mordant rejoinder of taking them
but making it clear he was ready to spend them all before I could
reclaim anything. If he'd genuinely meant to go through with that,
though, I wouldn't have received a warning. Which meant he was, in his
own way, inviting me to make a counteroffer when we next met. Which gave
me until then to figure out what it was that the Dead King had offered
him -- besides the pleasure of betraying us -- and beating that with an
offer of my own.

``Now you're talking my language, Black Queen,'' the Saint of Swords
said, crooked teeth bared. ``Into the breach we go, blade high and let
the dark cower at the coming it.''
