A Practical Guide to Evil - Book 7

David Verburg

Prologue

“Twenty-two: do not forget the rest of Creation in the pursuit of your nemesis. Small kindnesses are the seed of grand consequences. Evil stays, Good compounds.”

– “Two Hundred Heroic Axioms”, unknown author

The entire Hirshwald, where she had once hunted with her cousins, was now painted grey. Teurshen and its lively muddy streets, Kleinach with its pretty green houses, Senken River where every spring people from miles away had come to fish. It was all grey.

Cordelia Hasenbach, First Prince of Procer, watched day by day as her realm died on beautifully painted map.

Word trickled in from every front, following the scrying lines she had laid down through the Order of the Red Lion, and with every dawn the court painter drew a few more leagues of the Principate grey on the map at the heart of the Vogue Archive. Hannoven was now bare of life, likely beyond recovery in this lifetime. Her own Rhenia was entirely in the hands of the dead save for the besieged city-fortress that was its capital. Only its first two layers of defence had been lost, last she heard from her commander there, but scrying had since been cut. Twilight’s Pass still held – the Morgentor had been lost twice, but the Kingfisher Prince and Otto Redcrown had led daring offensives to take it back both times – yet that was meaningless when the last fortresses of the Hocheben Heights had fallen and the dead were pushing deep in Bremen.

Ashen grey, death’s breath grey, spread through towns and villages that Cordelia had ridden through as a girl.

“The north fell the moment the Heights did,” the Forgetful Librarian told her the day the news came, bluntly but not cruelly. “There won’t be a living soul north of Brus come next winter.”

Cordelia thought of striking her but held back. It was not untrue, and these days she had come to rely on the Librarian’s propensity for brutal truthfulness. Most people would have held back when warning her of the effective end of her people as more than refugees and soldiers of fortune, but Cordelia no longer had time to spare for being handled. Clarity was a priceless luxury when every hour, every decision had lives on the line.

Saale, a small fortress first raised under the Iron Kings. The seven adjoining villages called the Shwestern, which Cordelia had once developed with coin in the hopes that they might grow into a small city. The valley of Kaninchenbau. Grey spread on the map, like a maw opening to devour the world whole.

“The refugees cannot stay in Brus,” Cordelia said, watching the end times take shape.

Her eyes had misted, when she’d heard that Frederic Goethal had opened his gates wide to all Lycaonese. Brus was not rich, its lands hardly any better than those of its northern neighbours’, so the Prince of Brus had effectively bankrupted himself when he’d welcomed four principalities’ worth of teenagers and children. More than that, too. Every piece of bread shared with her people could not fill the belly of his own, and these days no one had granaries to fall back on. He had sacrificed a great deal for innocents. A crown is not a privilege, she’d once told Frederic when they’d been younger. Unsure of their power, of where they stood. It is a duty. He’d not asked a damned thing for any of it, the Kingfisher Prince.

Cordelia had known few men worthier of being a prince than Frederic Goethal.

“Brus will soon begin seeing fighting,” the Librarian agreed. “The captains in Neustria sent too many reports of their fortresses being bypassed by raiders. We send your refugees further south, then. Segovia?”

“The ships will make a difference in evacuating further south still, should the principality collapse,” Cordelia mused, and so it was settled.

The Highest Assembly had voted her emergency powers allowing her to settle refugees wherever she wished in the Procer, so long as part of the financial burden was shared by the high throne. She’d nearly faced a revolt in the Chamber over the motion, which stepped on the neck of all traditional conceptions of royal sovereignty, but they’d not quite had the nerve. Cordelia had unearthed too many of the skeletons her princes had buried for them to want to risk it. When she’d passed a measure allowing her to appoint superintendence supervising the collection of princely taxes, the First Prince had gotten a closer look at their finances than any of them were comfortable with.

No wonder they’d been willing to fight her tooth and nail over the motion: a little over half of them had been cheating the high throne on taxes. In times of peace that would have been a minor scandal, but in times of war? Cordelia had the authority to have their heads for it, and that wasn’t even the part that terrified them. All she needed to do to ruin them was spread word to the street: entire cities would riot, screaming for the blood of the traitors. The way she kept ramming measures through was making her no friends, and even losing her allies, but Cordelia Hasenbach was not reigning for pleasure or friendship. If there was enough of Procer left to rebel against her after the war ended, she would walk to the headsman’s block with a smile.

The Lafran Stretch, Belles Collines, Faudefer and Patrin. The last two had still been full of people when the dead tunneled under the walls. Grey spread across the map, and not only to the north.

Cordelia’s dying homeland was but a third of the war, if even that, and dooms never came alone. Hainaut had come out the best of it, irony of ironies. The Black Queen had stripped the principality of most her armies before retreating, but she had left her last general – Lady Abigail Tanner – in a solid defensive position at the Cigelin Sisters. The grounds won against the dead by the victory at Hainaut had been promptly lost anew, the dead claiming them quicker than they could be defended, but the White Knight had broken the bridge to the north and so ended the immediate looming threat.

The Chosen had followed that up by scoring an upset victory at Malmedit that collapsed the tunnels and anchored the eastern defence line before dedicating himself body and soul to the war on Keter. He had led regular sorties into enemy territory to break up their forces before they could mass in large numbers, to great success. The White Knight had in truth been so effective there’d been talk of trying to seize and fortify the ruins of the capital to secure the locked Hellgate there, though General Abigail had forcefully stamped out any such notions. Once Cordelia would have enjoyed the White Knight’s successes, the way they proved Damned were not the only ones who could lead in dark times, but no longer.

Hanno of Arwad had crossed a line in the Arsenal, when he’d made the choice to stand in the way of the preservation of Procer. If it had been only a moment of hard-headed principle divorced from the realities of the situation, in time Cordelia might have grown to forgive it. Trust would not have resumed, but wariness would have ebbed. But it was not as simple as that. Cordelia could not think of the way the White Knight had refused to negotiate, to compromise, without hearing in those terse answers the echo of another Chosen’s voice. Laurence de Montfort, the Saint of Swords, feet on the table as she told Cordelia that the Procer must burn so something better might come of it.

Would Hanno of Arwad let them burn too, for his principles? Cordelia found she was not sure of the answer, not anymore. There could be no trust there, no relying on the Chosen. As in so many things she stood alone.

“The Heights were a body blow, but it’s Cleves that will kill us if anything does,” the Librarian sighed on a cold winter morning, sipping at a mug of tea.

The third and last front, Rozala Malanza’s. For years it had been the story of victory, the proof that the dead could beaten back that’d been so instrumental in keeping Procer from sinking into despair. And to her honour the Princess of Aequitan had stubbornly held even in the face of a Hellgate yawning open while she still suffered the siege of a great army of the dead. She could not be everywhere, though. The northern point of Cleves still held, and parts of the eastern shoreline as well, but Keter had swept out of Lake Pavin and devoured whole the western shore.

Tertre, Sengrin, Lagueroche. Grey spread like a sickness in the blood.

The walled city of Atandor was now under siege, and should it fall then the dead would have a way into the lowlands of Cleves. More terrible still, the forces of the Kingdom of the Dead would find nothing in their way as they spilled further south onto the plains of Brabant and Lyonis. And Atandor would fall, in three months at the latest. Agnes had been clear on that, as clear as the Augur could ever be. Its defenders had not run out of valour, but they had run out of food.

When the dead made it that far south, the war was over. Even if all they did was burn the crop fields before retreating, the ensuing starvation would collapse the Principate. Then even should the Kingdom of Callow be willing to starve itself feeding Procer, which was highly dubious, in practice the grain simply could not be moved and distributed quickly enough. There was a secret truth behind it all, though, one Cordelia had grasped in the wake of her uncle’s death at Hainaut: the war was already lost. For Procer, anyway, if not yet the rest of Calernia. This was no longer about winning, it was about saving what she still could. Who she still could.

“We will have to recall Princess Rozala and her army before Atandor falls,” the First Prince said.

It was giving most of Cleves over to the grey, but then it had already been made into a wasteland by Keter’s Due when the Hellgate was opened near Trifelin. With so many of its best farmlands blighted, the principality could no longer feed itself.

“If she puts up a defence line around Peroulet it could hold for a few months while the dead are still massing,” the Librarian muttered. “It won’t be a popular decision, mind you, but it’s the right one.”

It was more than the army Cordelia wanted to salvage. Should she get assassinated – and it was becoming more likely that she would be with every measure forced through the Highest Assembly – then the only other royal in Procer that could feasibly be elected to the high throne without too much quibbling was Rozala Malanza. The Princess of Aequitan might be one of the finest generals left to Procer, but she was now simply too valuable to keep risking in Cleves. Malanza would hate her for the order, but what did it matter? She had hated Cordelia to the bone since the Great War, and there would be no mending a hatred born of a mother’s death.

“Gods forgive me,” the Librarian suddenly said, “but we’re not going to win this war, are we?”

Cordelia went still, for a heartbeat. She had not thought anyone else had noticed, not quite so soon. She needed a few months still before it became known, before panic and chaos spread-

“It’ll be out east it’s decided, in Praes,” the Forgetful Librarian continued. “If the Black Queen can bring back diabolists and reinforcements in time for a strike at Keter to still be feasible.”

The First Prince did not allow her relief to touch her face.

“Catherine Foundling will do what she must to settle the East,” Cordelia said, dimly surprised to find she meant every word. “We must simply keep Procer afloat until she returns and the last gamble of this war can be taken.”

That, though, was a lie. There was one last gamble awaiting beyond that, if arms failed and it all came down to the spectre of annihilation looming over all of Calernia. The First Prince had found the funds and the men, ensured all that could be done was. The corpse that had been dredged up from the depths of Lake Artoise could be awoken, the priests had promised her. It could be used as a weapon. One that would destroy Procer, perhaps, but Procer was already halfway into the grave. If it all else failed, Cordelia Hasenbach was not only the First Prince of Procer: she was also the Warden of the West. She had a responsibility to ensure at least some of Calernia survived the Dead King’s fury.

And that responsibility, now, was as a finger laid against a trigger.

—

Alaya did not enjoy war.

It’d surprised her when she had understood as much about herself, as she’d believed herself a harder woman than that. No tyrant had ever climbed the Tower to less than a stairway’s worth of corpses and she had certainly been no exception, so she’d wondered what it was about war that made her balk. It was not the violence, surely, for Alaya was no stranger to the use of it. Rarely by her own hands, but to a Dread Empress of Praes assassination was no less a necessary tool of ruling than laws or taxes. Was it the magnitude, she had wondered? Edmund Inkhand had once written, in that sardonically pointed manner so typical of his journals, that men only disapproved of murder so long as it did not involve banners and great numbers.

Yet though Alaya had enjoyed reading the old king’s writings as a girl and then differently so as a woman, she simply did not have it in her to care for people – strangers, people in the abstract – the way that he so obviously had. Grief at the human condition was not burden she had to bear, so what had been the source of her unease? It was the indiscriminate nature of it all, Alaya had later come to understand after decades of wondering. The Conquest had been one of the cleanest, most efficient wars in living memory: it had been largely soldiers that died during it, no cities were sacked and the countryside was not ravaged. And still the entire exercise had been like a stone in a shoe.

War could not be controlled, not really. It could not be contained the way that assassination and intrigues could, risk and results balanced like lines of a ledger. To Alaya’s eyes, using war to achieve one’s ends was rather like setting fire to a house to kill a man: dangerous as much to you as the enemy. No without reason was it an old saying in the Wasteland that a lit blaze knew neither friend nor foe.

Knowing all this about herself, Dread Empress Malicia found herself darkly amused that she had regardless spent the last five years and change at war with other powers to various degrees. Most ironic of all was the civil war that Praes was still in the throes of, which she had spent no small amount of effort to start and then maintain in order to preserve her interests and that of the Empire. Perhaps that was why even going from success to success had somehow only increased her unease.

The dark-skinned beauty ran a finger across the obsidian table at which the Imperial council sat in session, admiring how it was all sculpted out of a single piece. Reputedly it was the work of Regalia II, carved when she’d been out campaigning in Callow. Given her death abroad it’d never been used by the empress herself: it was her successor, Maledicta II, who’d been the first to sit at it. In some parts of Praes there was even a turn of phrase about the tale: ‘carving an empress’ table’, which meant undertaking an effort that would benefit only your successor.

Alaya was not particularly fond of the sculpted rim, which was a parade of twisting devils and kneeling foes, but she had fond memories of the table itself. She’d spent many hours seated at it during some of the best years of her life, those heady days after she had climbed the Tower and she had set to reforming Praes with the people dearest to her in the world. Back then the heart of her council had been made up of a trusted few: Amadeus, Wekesa and Ime. On occasion others had been brought in for a few months or years so that particular issues might be settled with their expertise, but they had always been temporary additions.

Nowadays Alaya found her council was little like the old one, for all that Ime and a Black Knight still sat on it.

The mirror above the ever-burning fireplace in the back subtly fogged over, the polished bronze growing clouded as the old enchantment bound to the hallways outside the council room were triggered. Malicia retreated towards the end of the table, ensuring she would be seated by the time the first of them entered – she took the time to array herself in the throne-like seat, draping the folds of her bronze and green dress in a way that she knew lent her a regal air. Ime was the first to enter, as was her habit. Malicia’s spymistress was visibly aging these days, the alchemies and spells that had slowed the ravages finally unravelling.

It was not an unusual thing in highborn, who all suffered the same fate when their flesh inevitably grew inured to the alchemies and began rejecting the spells. Some became desperate and began dealing with devils then, but only the foolish dared and Ime was nothing of the sort. It was a graceful aging, too, for all that the spymistress resented it: though her hair was now turning white and her skin creasing, she remained in good shape and firm flesh. Not that Ime would see it that way, of course.

Alaya was well aware that Wasteland aristocrats had an instinctual disgust towards the signs of old age, most of them having come to associate it with the lowborn as a consequence of being raised by ageless and seemingly forever-young relatives. It was a self-reinforcing shame, as highborn visible aging tended to retreat from good society to maintain the illusion of agelessness through their discretion. Malicia’s spymistress offered a short bow, her modest blue robes whispering against the floor as she did, and wordlessly headed for the seat to the empress’ left as she had for decades. The other woman she had been awaiting took longer to arrive, and took a different route.

It was necessary, given that Malicia’s current Black Knight was an ogre and so physically incapable of squeezing through most doors.

High Marshal Nim – raised above other marshals after coming into her Name – was a very deliberate individual. The eastern door had been heightened and broadened for her but even so the ogre opened it slowly, as if she were afraid of slamming it into the wall. The Black Knight lowered her head to pass the threshold and only straightened when she was under the heigh ceiling of the council room, her plain armour of dark steel plate pulling taut against her. She wore no helm, leaving bare two dark braids framing a tanned face as the rest of her hair went down her back untied. Her large eyes were a pale brown that leaned into pink, and her face seemed pulled into a permanent frown that made her large nose even more prominent.

She looked like something of a brute, as all ogres did, but Malicia knew better. Amadeus, on one of their evenings drinking terrible wine together, had noted that while Grem One-Eye was likely the finest general in the Dread Empire the ogre was a closer match to him than Ranker by a significant margin. Nim inclined her head and chest in the approximation of a bow, taking her prepared enchanted steel seat at the end of table facing Malicia. If there were others the Black Knight would have been seated at the empress’ right, as was customary, but there was no need for such pageantry when it was only the three of them. There would be no fourth: Malicia had not allowed the honour of the Warlock’s seat to any of the mages serving her.

The empress opened the council herself, voice ringing out.

“We have word from Foramen,” Dread Empress Malicia said. “The Confederation of the Grey Eyries was… emboldened by news of the Black Queen’s coming. They have resumed their attacks against Foramen and High Lady Wither.”

Nim grimaced, thick lips pulling at thicker skin. All expressions looked exaggerated on ogres, by virtue of their size. It often made them seem foolish or stupid, so most who left the Hall of Skulls learned to school their faces into neutrality to avoid the impression – and so now their kind was known as being inexpressive instead.

“That tangles up the entire south for us, Your Dread Majesty,” the Black Knight said. “Wither won’t move while the enemy is at her gate, and Kahtan will be looking to sink a knife in her back.”

High Lady Takisha of Kahtan would no doubt phrase it differently, Malicia thought, but Nim was essentially correct. With Thalassina a blackened ruin and Foramen in goblin hands, Kahtan had become the last high seat in the hands of a Taghreb highborn and so incredibly influential among their people. High Lady Takisha was much more interested in putting that influence to use in reclaiming Foramen for one of her kin that fighting battles on Malicia’s behalf, not that the empress had pushed hard for such contributions. Until recently, it had suited her for Kahtan to largely sit the war out: it lent credence to the perception of stalemate between Sepulchral and the Tower that had been the keystone of her diplomatic strategy. Malicia has bled Kahtan dry of gold and mages as recompense for the feet-dragging, too, both of which had been useful in pursuing her plans abroad.

“High Lady Takisha has called her vassals to Kahtan,” Ime shared. “Most Taghreb nobles in Praes will be there, considering she’s the last human high seat in the south. We could skip her and attempt to muster them directly when they’re gathered.”

“It would be hasty to attempt as much,” Malicia said. “We’re not intending on extended fighting against the Grand Alliance.”

And once peace was made the empress would be able to use Takisha Muraqib’s absence as a reason to draw heavily on her troops for the Empire’s contribution to the war on Keter. It would weaken her significantly going forward, hammering down one of the last nails that might potentially stick up to challenge Malicia’s authority in Praes.

“We can settle this without the Taghreb,” the Black Knight calmly agreed. “The key is making sure the Black Queen doesn’t end up backing Sepulchral for the Tower. That would be an alliance difficult to beat on the field.”

“From what we’ve intercepted of their correspondence,” Ime said, “it seems like the Grand Alliance is keeping High Lady Abreha at a distance. Not hostile, but hardly allied.”

“That could change,” Malicia said, “should we damage Foundling’s armies too much. If Amadeus were there to back I could not fathom her choosing Sepulchral’s candidature over his, but he remains in the wind. Incidents will have to be arranged to turn that distance into enmity.”

And sometimes Alaya did wonder if that wasn’t the very reason Amadeus was absent: so that nothing could coalesce around him too early. If he was not putting pieces into place without binding himself to them, getting forces in motion without himself needing to be at the helm. But if that was truly the case, where was he? Even now, with his old apprentice at the gates, there was no hint of a plot in sight. Malicia knew better than to believe a man like him would disappear quietly into obscurity. It was worrying, that even Ime’s best efforts had not been enough to find his trail.

“Assuming Callow begins by linking up with the deserters in the Green Stretch, as is most probable, I’ll have infiltrators in place by the time the Army of Callow begins marching north,” Ime said. “Given the positions our people in Sepulchral’s ranks, arranging those incidents is achievable.”

“It won’t be enough,” the Black Knight said. “Foundling didn’t fight half a dozen wars to roll over for the Tower at the first sign of trouble, Your Dread Majesty. We’ll have to bloody her before she even considers terms.”

“It will take more than that,” Ime frankly said. “It’s been personal for her since the Night of Knives. If she’s not forced to choose between drastic consequences and dealing with us, it’s my belief she will absolutely keep pushing.”

Neither of the two looked at her, even though the so-called ‘Night of Knives’ had been ordered by Malicia personally. It’d had unfortunate long-term consequences, she would admit, but the notion had been sound at the time. It’d been only tangentially a reprisal for Foundling’s assassination attempts of her in Keter, after all. The most important motives had all been political in nature. After securing the Dead King’s aid to keep Procer in check, Malicia had believed that the last major loose end to handle was Callow. She’d had allies in the Free Cities and ways to collapse that alliance’s coherence, meaning that the last potential territorial threat to Praes had been a resurgent Kingdom of Callow under Catherine Foundling.

Decapitating the small but skilled cadre of individuals that the young queen had been relying on to rule her realm and carry out her reforms had only been logical, and in that aspect worked exactly as intended. Unfortunately, instead of returning home and licking her wounds the Black Queen had instead disappeared for a year and re-emerged as high priestess of the drow with a set of fresh armies at her back. There had, in Alaya’s opinion, been no way for her to really predict that. It had effectively set the balance of power in the other direction and begun a cascade of events that’d made Callow into the most influential member of the Grand Alliance, which had in turn forced the empress to implement drastic measures to compensate.

And it might have been dangerous, it might have been hard and Alaya had more than once hesitated, but her plans had borne fruit. Foundling was now here in Praes, on grounds Malicia had prepared for years and desperate enough to accept terms when she was brought to the table. Now Malicia only needed to walk the path a little further still and it would all fall into place – she was, in other words, in one of the single most perilous positions of her entire reign. The last inch to the finish line was always the most treacherous. Alaya would know, considering how many people she’d killed there.

“I do not disagree,” Malicia finally said. “I naturally leave picking the battlefield entirely to you, High Marshal. All of the Tower’s resources are opened to your office in the pursuit of bringing Foundling to the table.”

“A great honour, Your Dread Majesty,” the Black Knight said, bowing her head.

Ime seemed about to speak when she suddenly closed her mouth, and a heartbeat later there was a polite knock at the door. Malicia’s spymistress glanced at her and the empress nodded permission. Ime slipped out a few moments and Malicia made small talk with Nim about her eldest son, who had recently wed, until she returned. Both women gave the spymistress their full attention when she did.

“The Black Queen has arrived in Praes,” Ime said, closing the door behind her.

Malicia smiled. Finally.

“How close to Satus did she gate out?” the Black Knight asked.

Ime’s lips thinned.

“She is not in the Green Stretch at all, High Marshal,” the spymistress said. “The word came from High Lord Sargon: she’s less than a day’s march away from Wolof.”

Dread Empress Malicia went still. Wolof, which was on the other side of the empire from any sort of ally of Callow’s. Wolof, whose high lord she held in her thrall. Wolof, where Malicia had laid seeds for a great victory – the filling of a fourth seat at this very table.

Someone had just made a mistake, and to Malicia’s sudden disquiet she was not certain whether it had been her or the Black Queen.

Announcements

Hi!

And with this chapter we’re started on Book VII, the last of the series. I hope you’ll enjoy reading the last stretch of Catherine’s journey as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thanks again with all of you reading and supporting the Guide, especially those of you who’ve been here from the start.

This month’s extra chapter won’t actually be one of the Guide, it’s instead the first two chapters of the project I’ll be working on when the Guide ends. The series called Pale Lights, and you’ll get to the summary of both the series and the first book by clicking here. Table of Contents gets you to those two chapters. Have a look, you might up enjoying the new work! I’ll be returning to regular updates after that until the end of Book VII.

While on the subject of extra chapters, I’m making official a change. As those are a Patreon reward in the first place and they’re not necessary to understand the books, I’ll be making them Patreon-exclusive from April forward. That means they’ll be posted only on my Patreon, accessible only to people supporting me there. The extra chapters already currently up on the site will be staying there.

EDIT

Slight adjustment to the policy outlined above: as an additional perk for the people supporting me financially, which extra chapter is next written will be decided by a patron-only poll on Patreon where anyone can vote on a selection of options. On the flipside, once Book VII is finished its extra chapters will be added to the rest on the public site. Think of it more as an advance for supporters than a paywall.

Hoping you’ll enjoy the last book,

E.E.

Chapter 1: Debut

“The trick is to always invite an unrelated highborn idiot to every council. When you inevitably execute them, all the other highborn idiots will behave for the rest of the discussion.”

– Dread Emperor Vindictive I

It was an impressive watchtower. All red brick and stone, three stories high and jutting out of the hills with an elegant silhouette. It’d fallen victim to that unfortunate Praesi tendency of having an open-sky spellcasting platform instead of a rooftop, but that was the most common practice in the Wasteland. The Sahelians had clearly shelled out good coin for this place, which made it all the more amusing that they’d not done the same for the force garrisoning it. The two dozen soldiers had prudently begun to leg it long before my first knights reached the bottom of the hills, so now it was my personal banner flying in the wind.

The phalange who’d pulled down the golden lion banner of the Sahelians and replaced it with the Sword and Crown was gone, leaving the four of us to look out at the view spread out below, and even though it was a thing of beauty I found myself growing irritated. No, not ‘even though’. Because.

Wolof was beautiful, and it kind of pissed me off.

“This is ridiculous,” I complained. “I read the reports, they had a goddamn demon loose in the streets just a few years ago.”

“Ah, the old Wasteland special,” Her Grace, Princess Vivienne of Callow, drawled.

I rolled my eye at her. Being a magnanimous soul, I was not bitter in the slightest that she could wear a nice pale blue dress with simple silver circlet over her milkman’s braid instead of, you know, being stuck in full regalia and the Mantle of Woe. Truly, why would I envy anyone the privilege of not wearing a fucking cloak in the Wasteland’s heat? It wasn’t like I’d seriously considered weaving a miracle that’d warm her with Night, much less almost done it twice.

I was a better person than that, and also she’d probably notice.

“That’s actually civil war,” Hakram noted. “Though considering the demon incident came at the end of a brutal war of succession, you’re not entirely wrong.”

Adjutant was standing on his prosthetic limbs comfortably, not needing to lean against the crenellation in the slightest, and like it often did the sight had my lips quirking into a satisfied smile. He wasn’t going to be winning footraces anytime soon and I’d not send him into too rough a fight, but Hakram was far gone from the days of hissing pain and being wheelchair-bound. Masego’s work on the arm and leg had been extraordinary, the shifting parts of steel and leather that mimicked muscles returning much of what he had lost to the tall orc. He no longer wore the whole set of burned plate he’d once been known by, instead keeping only the breastplate and the skirt, and his black hair was worn shorter than I’d seen it in years.

“You can never go wrong betting on civil war, when it comes to Praes,” Vivienne conceded.

“Don’t you two go pretending this is normal,” I insisted. “I mean, look at the place!”

Almost half of Wolof’s population had died when Sargon Sahelian rose up to overthrow his aunt, Lady Tasia, and the situation had gotten bad enough in there that the Legions of Terror had seen no choice but to forcefully invest the city. Something their doctrine specifically warned against attempting unless there was no other choice, when that city was a High Seat of Praes. Now, though? You’d never know unless you were told. Tall walls rose elegantly from the dusty ground, all sun-drenched stone and pale red brick, but from our position here atop a distant hill we could see a stretch of the city itself and it was impressive.

Wolof as it now stood had little to do with the village sprouted around a ritual site it’d supposedly grown out of. The modern city had actually shed those old grounds, part of them ending up as a handful of riverside villages that served as an informal port called Sinka and the rest now a closed compound to the north of the city that the locals called Zaman Ango: a great mass of mazes and pyramids hidden behind mud brick walls, ancient places of power that the Sahelians kept to themselves and their favourites. The actual city, surrounded by the greater walls, had instead been cut away at and remade until it was as glorious as its rulers believed themselves to be.

Broadly speaking, Wolof was a thin half-circle with the flatness facing north and two parts jutting out of said flatness: towering noble palaces and the set of fortifications surrounding an aqueduct. Avenues criss-crossed the length of it like arteries, tying together gates and districts by a pleasing design, while that great aqueduct – much too ornate to be of Miezan make, with its stele-like pillars – swept down from a great hill to the north-east like a raised river of stone. Cisterns and smaller water funnels covered rooftops, spreading out like a web of stone and copper, while three-story houses on tall steps stood so close together their backs were as walls. Windows were curved and often thick pillars of stone jutted out of walls, like strange handholds for giants to climb.

It was the colour that staggered me, though. Wolof was said to be the greatest vault of magic in all of Praes, its libraries and spell repositories rival to the Tower’s if not even greater, and unconsciously that’d made me think of it as dark and dreary. Black magic made into a city. Instead it was a riot of red and yellow, some paints fading but others biting fresh, and everywhere subtle lines of green were woven in. Rooftop gardens gathered around cisterns and pools were adorned with bright banners – green and yellow, orange and purple, cream and blue – hung to look like shivering walls. It was a gorgeous, thriving city that somehow made Laure look like half a hovel even after being half-razed by godsdamned demon of Madness. It was infuriating as it was impressive.

The last of us, correctly interpreting my vehemence as a polite and reasonable request of explanation, broke the almost melancholy she’d been in as she watched her childhood home in the distance.

“My cousin Sargon was made to study wards as a young man,” Akua said. “For a time it was a fad with the great families, after Wekesa the Warlock came to prominence. Everyone fancied they would raise a mage to beat him at his own game.”

I snorted. Yeah, they would. Never mind that Masego’s father had been apprentice – and Apprentice – to the last Warlock as well as a frankly ridiculously talented man in a lot of regards. No doubt there’d been an expectation that gold and a noble pedigree would beat out any peasant mage’s effort at anything.

“How’d that go?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“Corpses and screaming, mostly,” Akua noted. “Warding becomes a rather dangerous art when one reaches the heights of High Arcana.”

“And this leads to the city looking pristine how?” Vivienne impatiently asked.

My successor, made a genuine princess by some truly inspired wrangling of Callowan law courtesy of Hakram, kept a civil tone as she spoke. Much of the venom had gone out over the years, though Vivienne quite clearly despised the Doom of Liesse – who was not particularly above needling her when she could, I’d admit.

“Though Sargon was only ever a passable practitioner of the Art,” Akua continued, “he did take to the paired engineering studies impressively. He was often called on for work in Zaman Ango because of this, and evidently his experiences there proved of use when rebuilding the city.”

A grunt of acknowledgement was her only answer, while I allowed my own gaze to wander around.

It was a nice morning, I thought. The sun was warm, the wind lazy and the company more than decent. It was hard to enjoy nice mornings, though, when I knew the world was coming closer to toppling into the dark with every breath we took. Hasenbach was still keeping Procer together, but the cracks were spreading and I couldn’t be sure how long it would be before the Principate collapsed. Still, at least the view was stunning. The watchtower the four of us stood on was maybe an hour’s ride away from the city, set on few hilly sloped. South of Wolof, these were as close to heights as you could get for a dozen miles.

Behind us the Army of Callow and its auxiliaries were encamped in force, palisades already half-raised, while to the west the raging waters of the Upper Wasaliti roiled. The east led deeper into the Wasteland, into the lands of the closest families sworn to the Sahelians, while between us and the city there was nothing save roads and farmland. Not the kind of fields you’d see in Callow, though. Small hills of stratified stone and dust rose gently, with vividly green small ‘valleys’ filled with orchards or crops nestled in between. I couldn’t see much wheat here, but sweet potatoes and cucumbers were common and I saw fruits that would be worth a fortune in Callow – lemons, dates and pineapples, to name just a few.

“Those small green nooks,” I said, studying a few of the closer ones with a narrowed eye. “There’s raised stones around them. Those aren’t wards, though, are they?”

It’d be a frankly absurd amount of magic, if they were, and even people without the Gift or my sensitivities to power would have been able to feel it.

“Not exactly,” Akua hedged. “It is the setting of a metaphysical boundary, but nothing as… decisive as a ward. It is meant to keep the magic of field rituals contained when they are used.”

Right, I thought. They’d need to, otherwise the inefficiency of trying to make the ground cultivable would be a nightmare. The amount of wasted power would make the rituals nigh unusable, and probably wreck the soil too. There was a reason magical healing was dangerous when you did it too much in the same place, and the principles involved here weren’t all that different.

“You’re saying all those gardens of green were made with blood?” Vivienne asked, sounding horrified.

“The grounds around Wolof are not so poor,” Akua replied, shaking her head. “Perhaps a tenth of these are made fertile by ritual killing, on a good year. It is only when the weather spoils crops or the ground sickens that widespread sacrifices are required.”

“And the Sahelians are said to have the finest rituals in Praes,” Hakram gravelled. “Fewer deaths required and the ground is healed longer.”

Akua laughed, the motion pleasing to watch in the conservatively cut but tightly fitting blue and orange dress she’d elected to wear as her form. As had become her habit she wore no jewels, even her black and orange cloak kept closed by a simple iron brooch.

“You can simply ask, Adjutant,” she said. “It is true enough my kin’s ritual rites are superior, though the mages of Kahtan yet make our attempts to manipulate the weather look like the work of fumbling children. My ancestors parlayed their advantage into expanded influence: we could usually afford to spare sacrifices as gifts, which in turn spared lords the costs of relying on the Tower instead.”

As a young girl I would have been sickened to the bone by the thought of human sacrifice, and in truth part of me still was. Akua was talking about trading people like cattle – and the laws that restricted that fate to criminals only were rather recent to Praes – and consigning them to ugly deaths so magic could be squeezed out of their lifeblood. I’d sent too many people into the grinding gears of wars to be able to speak on that without the hypocrisy choking me, though. How many people would a Praesi lord kill like that, in a lifetime’s span? A hundred, three hundred? I’d spent more of my people on skirmishes leading up to battles without batting an eye.

I could tell myself it was soldiers I’d spent and I’d not opened their throats like lambs headed for the spit, but that was just dressing up the truth. And so I stayed silent, did not allow my lips to curl in disgust. If a practice offended me, I ought to either act to end it or shut up. Empty condemnations served no purpose but patting yourself on the back. Establishing a solid grain trade between Praes and Callow would do more to kill the practice than the most convincing sermon in the history of sermons, and I fully intended on securing that by treaty before I left the Empire. Among other things. Praes had been left to moulder for too long. That mess didn’t look like it was going to fix itself, so all that was left was getting my hands dirty.

“Horrid,” Vivienne flatly replied. “Though it seems to have bought loyalty. My Jacks believe none of High Lord Sargon’s vassals have turned on him.”

“Not openly, anyway,” I muttered.

“Scribe was in agreement, before you sent her away with Archer,” Hakram reminded me.

“Scribe lost control of the Eyes in the empire to Ime,” I said. “She’s got people around here, but she’s not all-seeing.”

The Webweaver, like every other kind of spider, needed a web to crawl on.

“In the wake of my mother’s death and the financial difficulties that preceded it, I expect the Tower’s spymistress to have sunk deep hooks in the region,” Akua sighed. “My cousin proved to be a fine enough lord, but his seat was shattered and he had to spend time to consolidate power. The Eyes will not have missed the opportunity.”

We weren’t blind in the region, far from it, but it couldn’t be denied the opposition had better eyes on most everything. That was fine: I’d gotten used to fighting that sort of war. The trick was to hit hard and move quicker than the enemy could follow.

“The real question is how many of his vassals will bring their armies if he calls,” I said. “Only a third of his personal forces are with High Marshal Nim’s field army, but that doesn’t make what he’s got here a large force. He’ll need his lords if he wants to do more than hide behind his walls.”

We believed Sargon Sahelian to have forces in the area of five thousand soldiers in the city and its outskirts, which in most cases would have been a pittance compared to the sixteen thousand Callowans and auxiliaries I’d brought with me. The trouble was that this wasn’t a petty border fort, it was Wolof. If we tried to take that city by force our numbers might genuinely not be enough. High Seats were always full of nasty surprises, and this one would be worse than most.

“If it comes that, we’ll have to take the city before they get here,” Vivienne said.

“I do not recommend trying the Sererian Walls,” Akua frankly replied. “Repairing their wards will have been my cousin’s utmost priority after his ascension, it will be long done. His mages will hammer away at any force we send from behind their protection.”

“Juniper doesn’t believe we can take the city in fewer than six months,” Hakram noted. “Even if we seize the fortress in the northern hills and cut off the aqueduct there, there are too many wells inside the walls. We would be betting on food running out instead of water if it comes to a siege.”

Which would be quite the gamble, considering we had no supply lines of our own. We might end up hungry before the enemy did. My army was carrying its foodstuff with it, in the Legion manner, but aside from the rare convoy through the Twilight Ways there wouldn’t be more coming. If we’d emerged further south, closer to the Blessed Isle, it might have been possible to arrange a supply line out of Callow. I’d chosen otherwise, though. First because down south was exactly where Malicia and Sepulchral wanted us, but also because I didn’t want to set up that supply line in the first place. I couldn’t really afford to, when I needed all that food and people headed west instead for the greater war still being waged there.

So instead we’d emptied granaries and grabbed everything we could before moving out east. In practice we had about six month’s worth of food with us, though with the planned convoys we would maybe manage to stretch that to seven in a pinch. That would be enough if everything went according to plan, which pretty much meant it wasn’t enough. So the Hellhound and I had gotten… inventive.

“We don’t actually need to take the city,” I said. “It’s not what we’re after here. There’s going to be a battle before this campaign is over, but it won’t be in Wolof unless something goes catastrophically wrong. We’re here to rob Sargon Sahelian, not kill him.”

Funny thing about Wolof, these days: it was probably the only High Seat in the whole of Praes that had a significant food surplus. After its losses during the war of succession its population had been massively lowered while its farmland remained largely untouched, and it’d kept trading heavily with Callow until relations broke. Throw in that the field force it’d had to feed had been relatively small – by virtue of large chunks of the Sahelian household troops either dying at Second Liesse or when the Fourteenth stormed the city – and the city was currently the Wasteland’s undisputed queen when it came to the fullness of her granaries.

I wanted that grain to feed my army, so naturally I was going to trick a High Lord of Praes out of it.

“Banners are approaching,” Vivienne sharply said.

I followed her gaze, eye narrowing as I found what she meant. Riders, maybe twenty of them, and a half dozen banners between them. I murmured a short prayer to the Crows before drawing on Night, a sluggish handful of power answering my will after a moment. I sharpened my eyesight with it, wasting not a drop, and studied the approaching men. The golden lion of the Sahelians flew highest, standing out starkly on the elaborate banner of that line: an oval filled with curved swaths of black and red, stripes of small white teeth cutting through looking outwards. I saw a blue stork and purple dog flying lower, while the other banners were entirely patterning of colour.

“The stork and dog are the Bassa and the Chenoi,” Akua explained after I shared. “The two closest houses to the east. They must have already had a presence in the city when we arrived.”

So Sargon was sending us a message that he wasn’t standing alone. I rather admired how quickly he’d gotten over the surprise of our arrival, considering my army had begun moving out of the gates south of Wolof barely an hour before dawn and it wasn’t even noon. In a few hours he’d put together enough of a plan to feel comfortable sending an embassy to me, which I took as a healthy reminder that underestimating anyone who’d been able to claim and keep a High Seat of Praes was a good way to end up dead. I watched the riders approached and smiled, rolling my shoulder as if to limber it.

“Finally,” I said. “Let’s go see what your cousin has to say, Akua.”

—

I waited for them at the top of the shallowest slope, easy to see from a distance.

Hakram and Vivienne stood at my right, Akua at my left and around us the Order of Broken Bells sat the saddle in utter silence. Like statues armoured in shining steel, lances raised like a whispered promise of violence. The envoys dismounted at the bottom of the hill. Not all of them, though, only three: two men and a woman, all Soninke and no older than thirty. Akua leaned closed to whisper in my ear.

“The man in the centre is Chikodi Sahelian,” she said. “He is my cousin twice removed, but more closely related to Sargon. They were at odds as children.”

I inclined my head in thanks, her breath still warm against my cheek. The other two were nobles too, going by the golden eyes, so at a guess I’d say they were from the Bassa and the Chenoi. The rest of the delegation stayed mounted like my knights, their horses well-disciplined and their colourful scale armour of fine make. Career soldiers, those, career killers. That was fine. I had those too, and mine were better. Chikodi Sahelian, a strikingly good-looking man almost as tall as Hakram, took the lead of his party and rose halfway up the slope before offering a perfect courtly bow.

“This one humbly greets you, Queen of Callow,” the noble said.

Ugh. I glanced at Akua, who looked amused. She’d only ever used formal Praesi diplomatic language with me the once and it’d been mostly to mock me, something I found myself belatedly grateful for. Not the mockery, the other thing. If he stuck to that the whole time this was going to be irritating.

“So, out of curiosity,” I said, allowing a Laure drawl to slip into my voice. “What is it you did that made you so eminently expendable you got picked?”

Chikodi’s face blanked. Ah, how nostalgic. As if him aggressively not giving me a reaction wasn’t already one.

“This one begs your pardon, mighty one,” Chikodi calmly said, “for he does not understand your meaning.”

“He used to shove Sargon down the stairs in the Western Palace,” Akua noted. “And spill ink on his parchments just before we had assignments due. There was also enmity between their fathers over the position of seneschal of Sinka, I believe.”

“And Sargon sent him here over that, knowing there was a decent chance I’d just crack open his skull and rip out whatever I wanted to know?”

Chikodi’s face did not change, though a slight tremor went up his leg. Akua elegantly shrugged.

“We are Sahelians, dearest,” she reminded me.

“Cold,” I replied, not without appreciation.

Small slights and all that. I’d never been one to mind a bit of petty retribution.

“Gods Below,” Chikodi hoarsely said. “It is true. You really are Lady Akua returned, as the stories said.”

The woman at his side, soft-skinned but sharp-eyed, let out a small hiss of surprise. I glanced at her hand and found a few fading motes of magic there, reluctantly impressed she’d been able to use even a minor spell without my noticing.

“And unbound,” she said. “A shade, yet unbound.”

The conversation might have unravelled further, if someone hadn’t stepped in.

“You used a spell on one of us under truce banner,” Vivienne said, tone even.

All three of them froze. It wasn’t necessarily a breach of truce terms to do as much, in truth, but it was… toeing a line.

“Not on any of you, not directly,” the woman began, but I interrupted with a snort.

“What an auspicious start,” I said. “Fine, I’ll let this one go.”

She looked relieved for a moment, before smiling and bowing and thanks.

“Break your fingers,” I casually said. “Five of them. Same hand.”

The smile went away. A moment of silence passed, all eyes on me. I cocked an eyebrow.

“Well?” I asked.

Golden eyes sought me out and found not a speck of sympathy. You couldn’t let Wasteland nobles get one of you, not even a small thing. And you could never just let it go without answer – they’d lose all respect for you immediately, see you as someone that could be crossed with impunity. The fingers would heal easy enough, she might even be able to do it herself if she was a fine enough mage. It was the pain that was the price I was asking. The pain and the humiliation. She looked through the rest of us and found no purchase, no willing intercessor, and her face stilled.

“As you say, Black Queen,” the mage replied.

There was a sharp crack, as she began with her thumb and swallowed a scream. Granting her no further attention, I moved my gaze to a shaken Chikodi.

“You’ve got my attention,” I said. “What does High Lord Sargon want?”

“The High Lord desires only peace and friendship, mighty one,” Chikodi said. “And shares that this is the will of Her Dread Majesty herself, not merely his own wish.”

“Huh,” I replied, unimpressed. “That’s quite polite of you, really, but I happen to have come over for a spot of war. Whether or not that involves me sacking your city and putting every Sahelian not in my service to the sword is up to Sargon, but I’ll be honest – we’re not looking good at the moment.”

It was surprisingly cathartic to threaten Praesi nobility like this, I found. I really should do it more often.

“The Sererian Walls have never fallen,” Chikodi evenly said. “This would be-”

“They fell to the Legions, when your lord was raised,” Adjutant interrupted.

Anger flickered on the nobleman’s face, the most visible reaction so far. It took me a heartbeat to understand why he would likely be more offended at Hakram interrupting than the rest of us, and my fingers tightened around my staff when I did. Ah, Praesi. The remembrance of why I’d despised so many of them as young girl had begun to fade but here they were, so kindly restoring it for me.

“They have never fallen when the city was not at war with itself,” Chikodi curtly said.

“Not quite as impressive a boast,” I noted. “All right, this is beginning to turn into a waste of my time. What exactly is it that Sargon’s offering as terms so I don’t torch his home to teach the Tower a lesson?”

Chikodi’s eyes moved to Akua, but she only faintly smiled. She had asked no mercy of me when it came to Wolof or her kin. I was still uncertain whether that was before she did not believe it would be needed or because she did not believe it deserved. I glanced at the mage, who had finished breaking her fingers, and coldly smiled. She flinched.

“High Lord Sargon requests nothing of you, mighty one,” Chikodi said. “He only offers tokens of his friendship and esteem, as well as his help to achieve your intent in these lands.”

“So a bribe,” I said, rolling my eye. “Disappointing. Give the numbers on offer to Adjutant, I’ve been bored enough for a day.”

I didn’t even bother to give goodbyes before turning my back on him, limping away. It was hard to see properly under the helms so I couldn’t be sure, but what little I could glimpse told me that more than a few of my knights were grinning like sharks under their helmet. For all that they looked dignified, they must have been enjoying seeing Praes being under the boot after keeping it on our throat for over half my life. Vivienne fell in at my side, abandoning the talks just as indifferently. We’d never had any intention of negotiating with the first envoy the High Lord sent us.

“We’ve given enough slights that Sargon should be livid when he hears,” Vivienne said.

Which was good, because right now we wanted him angry.

“He’s a Sahelian,” I reluctantly said. “He won’t be that easy to bait.”

If he were, he’d be dead by now. I had little good to say of the way Praesi highborn raised their own, but I’d not deny that their methods were cruelly effective at weeding out those who could easily be manipulated.

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing, Catherine. I know Juniper wants him goaded into an attack, but we don’t need that to get what we want,” Vivienne said. “So long as he believes you meant what you said, that we came for Wolof to burn out Malicia’s allies, we have our foot in the door.”

That had been the point of mistreating and mocking the delegation so much, after all: getting across the impression that was utterly uninterested in talks. Making sport of envoys was the sort of thing a half-mad warlord might do, if she really had come here to sack the city so that Malicia would lose her strongest northern supporter. Why bother to keep to the niceties when you were talking to torch fodder? What Juniper had wanted out of this was more military in nature. She was hoping the insults would either anger Sargon enough to risk a night attack on our camp or make him desperate enough that he resorted to one anyway to improve his bargaining position.

We’d be waiting for him if he did.

“If we catch him out while he’s trying a sortie and wipe the attacking force, it only strengthens our hand,” I said.

The first part of robbing someone was putting their knife at their throat. People were disinclined to part with gold and goods unless you made it clear they had something a lot more precious to lose. It was why the Army of Callow had crossed into Creation so early: I wanted our fortified camp built, finished with some time to spare for the men to rest. My soldiers wouldn’t be getting a full night’s sleep: under cover of dark, we would be going on the offensive.

“So long as we come out on top of that skirmish,” Vivienne said. “If we lose, it’s us who’s pushed on the backfoot.”

“Best we don’t lose, then,” I simply said.

Wasn’t that always the way? Some of my officers still insisted that the Battle of Hainaut had been a victory, but I knew better. In a strategic sense, the battle had brought us to the ragged edge: a major defeat either here in Praes or on any Proceran front was now all it took for the house of cards to come tumbling down on our heads. Besides, there was another plan behind all this that my friend didn’t know. One I was keeping closer to my chest: it had not been a mistake that Akua was there for the envoys to see, so verifiably unbound. I was dangling bait for someone to catch.

“More than you know,” Vivienne said. “I got word from Archer before joining you with the delegation.”

My limping steps stuttered to a stop.

“And?” I asked.

“They’ll be here tonight,” the blue-eyed princess said. “I expect losing a fight while they’re watching would rather undermine our cause, so caution is in order.”

I grinned. Splendid timing, this. A little too splendid to be natural, in this case it was no accident: I’d sent Archer and Scribe ahead counting on ‘coincidence’ ensuring they came back at the right time. I’d not yet known what the right time would be, but what did that matter? The day didn’t matter, so long as I knew where the step was in the dance. I knew my grin had turned a tad savage, but I didn’t mind. This had been overdue. Malicia had had herself a grand old time these last few years, lighting fires in all our backyards while she rode out the messes she caused hidden in the Tower. Safely away from the fray.

It was time I returned the favour and started lighting fires of my own.

Chapter 2: Perplex

“People are never easier to fool than when they believe they’re fooling you.”

– King Alistair Fairfax, the Fox

When was the last time I’d gone even six months without sleeping in a tent?

The thought amused more the more I thought about it. Elizabeth Alban, the ol’ Queen of Blades herself, had conquered the closest thing there ever was to a Callowan empire before the Watch slit her throat in her bed. My war record had led people to compare us on occasion – apparently there was a ballad and everything – but I actually figured I had more in common with her successor: Richard the Elder. They only started calling him the Elder in later histories, see, after he named his eldest son Richard as well. At the time they’d called him ‘Richard Saddlesore’. The sobriquet was well-earned, considering he’d spent nearly all his reign moving from one side of his realm to another putting down rebellions.

Most everything the Queen of Blades had conquered west of the Whitecaps rose up the moment she died, and then Callowan nobles afraid of the growing power of the Albans promptly crowned his cousin the moment he crossed the mountains to handle said revolts. Praes had inevitably thrown its hat into the ring when they smelled blood, of course, never mind that they’d just gotten whipped back into the Wasteland under Regalia II. King Richard the Elder had actually done pretty well at staving off the collapse of his inherited ‘empire’ for a generation, only ceding independence to a few western territories, but by the time he’d died in his late thirties it’d been almost a decade since he’d last set foot in his own capital.

It’d been much shorter than that, for me, but I couldn’t deny that I’d spent most of my reign as Queen of Callow outside my kingdom. There was always another fire to put out, wasn’t there? I raised a small cup of wine in the air, drawing a raised eyebrow from Akua.

“You and me both, Richard,” I muttered. “May we rest our buttocks in the next world.”

There was a moment of silence.

“I’m not touching that,” Vivienne decided.

Hakram, the sole loyal soul in this nest of traitors, raised his cup of water to match my toast and we drank. The four of us had convened in my tent, around the beautiful table that Indrani was still adding to. The last relief was parts of the Battle of Hainaut, and I was always careful to sit on the other side. Robber would have loved the sight of him striking a match and the Dead King’s plans going up in flames, but I still couldn’t look at the carved goblin face without my gut clenching. There were quite a few seats prepared, since even before most of us stayed for the upcoming war council we had a report to entertain. We couldn’t really finalize our plans for the night without Masego’s seal of approval.

The phalanges had notified us he’d returned through the Ways and Zeze wasn’t the type to go wash and change before reporting, so I wasn’t even halfway done with my cup by the time he swept in past my guards. His informal pupil followed, my waved hand stopping the legionaries from taking issue with it, and I rolled my eye at Masego as he dropped himself into the seat across from me. The black robes he still wore had a subtle gold filigree, nowadays, but aside from that little of him had changed since he’d first become the Hierophant.

He still bore the same long braids inlaid with trinkets, wore the same black silk eyecloth over his burning glass eyes – nowadays a match to the one I wore over the eye the Hawk had taken from me – and wore the same comfortably worn old boots. The only change was that he’d begun to grow a beard: still glorified stubble, for now, but it rather suited his face and made him look older. A little like his father, actually, though the Warlock’s beard had been much fuller. He looked tired but in a good mood, which I took as a good sign.

“The warding scheme has changed from what you outlined, Akua,” Hierophant said.

Behind him, already forgot, his recent shadow was shuffling about on her feet awkwardly. The Apprentice, the young Ashuran mage known as Sapan, was coated in dust from head to toe and visibly exhausted. He’d probably made her do all the groundwork, I thought with a twinge of amusement. She looked hesitant to take a seat at my table without an explicit invitation, so I took pity on her and caught her eye before nodding in invitation. She bowed her head in thanks, sliding into a chair even as Masego helped himself to a pitcher of magically cooled water with equally magically obtained lemon quarters floating in it.

If you counted sending a cohort of goblins to empty High Lord Sargon’s orchards as magic, anyway.

“It was a possibility, as I mentioned when we discussed the matter,” Akua replied. “Yet the central patterns remained the same, I expect?”

Masego drank deep of his cup of water, filling it again almost immediately and not noticing Apprentice’s hand inching halfway towards it before she drew back with a sigh.

“More or less,” Masego agreed. “They mostly made changes to more strongly close off entry by Arcadia or the Ways. Recent modifications, about as old as the Arsenal. I imagine the city will have received the same work.”

We’d expected as much, but it was useful to know both those options were off the table if it came to an assault on Wolof.

“You managed it anyway,” I said, half a question.

Under the cloth he rolled his eyes at me.

“It was not that sophisticated a ward,” Masego said. “Of course I cracked it, Catherine. It’s done, and it was subtle enough they won’t notice.”

He mulled over things for a moment longer, dutiful in his attempt to make a report – though apparently not dutiful enough to ever read the text about how to give them the Legions had written. Not for lack of opportunity, since Juniper still had a scroll thrown into his tent at least once a month. I was pretty sure Indrani was making a pyramid.

“Sapan crawled uphill for half an hour under an illusion to place my artefact against the bottom of the wall,” Hierophant noted. “She did well. She should get a raise.”

Apprentice look startled and a little flattered, but there was one detail wrong there. I cleared my throat, but Hakram took one for the team and spoke up first.

“We don’t actually pay her,” Adjutant informed him.

Masego eyed me skeptically, brow rising.

“Is that slavery?” he asked. “We’re against that, I feel. I’m against that.”

“We’re against slavery,” I confirmed. “There’s laws and everything.”

He seemed pleased at me personally, like I actually had anything to do about that.

“Experience could be considered to be her compensation,” Akua suggested.

Well, she had been Evil for decades. That was bound to leave marks.

“Spoken like someone who’s never had to pay taxes in their damned life,” I muttered under my breath.

Her lips quirked in a sly smile but she did not deign to answer my accusation. Gods, now I had to pay the girl otherwise fifteen-year-old me would have slit my throat over it. Mind you, that girl had never been one to mind a bit of knifing so it wasn’t as strong a remonstration as you’d think.

“We’ll put aside a stipend for you on top of what the Grand Alliance already offers,” I told Apprentice. “Your help in this is much appreciated, Sapan.”

The dark-haired girl licked her lips, nervous, and nodded.

“May I – Your Majesty – could I… trade that for an hour a day with Lord Hierophant’s grimoires?” she hesitantly asked.

I turned an eye to Masego, who actually looked rather charmed. He’d taken well to her since Hainaut, I suspected it was half the reason Hanno had agreed to lend her to us – the other half being Arthur had come along too and the two were thick as thieves.

“Keep her out of the dangerous stuff,” I said.

“Of course,” he immediately agreed, sounding surprised.

Ah, my mistake.

“Akua,” I said, “please go with them and tell him what the dangerous stuff is.”

“I feel like the situation has gone in someway disastrously wrong, when I am called upon as the voice of sorcerous restraint,” the golden-eyed shade noted, but she was still smiling.

“Tell me about it,” I sighed.

She rose smoothly, offering me an ironic bow I rolled my eye at, and linked an arm with Masego as he did the same. They immediately started arguing in Mthethwa about what qualified as ‘safe’ – Zeze was insisting that the smiting spell was exactly that, so long as you kept it aimed at the enemy – while Sapan followed suit after affording me a deeper bow.

“I’ll see to the stipend,” Adjutant gravelled. “And extract a fuller report out of them while you two handle the war council.”

Though the Night had been shattered and broken first by the Dead King’s sorcery and then Hierophant’s even harsher mercy, I had still been bound to the power in a deep and intimate way. Night came slower these days, and it was granted only by the will of the Sisters where once it had flown freely, but the mark of Sve Noc on my soul had not waned. I could still sense the coming of night like a sixth sense, through that strange instinct that was inhumanly accurate. And what I sensed told me that, as usual, Hakram was right. Nightfall was only two hours away, which meant we’d be cutting it close if we didn’t split to attend to our duties.

“Much appreciated,” I replied.

We rose to follow the others after scratching a few notes on parchment with his bone hand, sending in a few phalanges after him to prepare the tent for the war council. Juniper, as was her habit, came in half an hour early to make sure everything was to her tastes. I’d forgotten how tall she was, in our years physically apart: she still had almost two feet on me, and she was built thick. With that grim, broad face and the sharp white fangs she made for an even more imposing sight than before now that we were older. Which made it all the more of a contrast when Aisha followed in behind her, the very picture of a quintessential Taghreb beauty with her carefully styled hair and elegant smile.

“Move the maps away from wine carafe,” Juniper ordered a phalange in a growl. “Whose bright idea was that?”

“Good evening, Catherine,” Staff Tribune Aisha Bishara greeted me.

The faint exasperation at her friend and superior’s growling about was a worn and beloved habit, almost made a game between them from years of use.

“Aisha,” I grinned back. “Juniper.”

She turned to look at us, almost surprised, and nodded.

“Catherine, Vivienne,” she curtly replied.

Vivienne was no more offended than I, the two of us well used to the Hellhound’s ways. At times, though, it felt like she was being twice as hard as she used to be to make up for the way she’d been knocked out of the war for two years. Even now Aisha had told me that she visibly trembled when exhausted and slept uneasily at least a few nights a month. I wouldn’t have placed her in command if she were any worse, even if she would likely never have forgiven me for that, but sometimes I was still… concerned. I kept it to myself, though. There was no doubt in my mind that she’d see it as an insult.

Our war council streamed in, either early or on time. General Zola Osei, Hune’s successor who’d ended up as Juniper’s second in the cobbled together First and Second Army we’d taken east – some had taken to calling it the Fifth as a jest. Grandmaster Brandon Talbot for the Order, and for the Dominion the two lordlings that Tariq had placed in my care before his death: Aquiline Osena and Razin Tanja. Named, too, though their seats were lesser ones. Alexis the Argent, the Silver Huntress, and Arthur Foundling with her. The Concocter didn’t usually show to meetings like this, but the Barrow Sword did and seated himself by Vivienne. Ishaq would have been a good pick to leave out west, but I had a purpose for him here: it wasn’t a coincidence I kept making him work with the Blood. The Grey Pilgrim had asked three boons of me, and I intended on seeing all of them through.

“Let’s not waste time,” Marshal Juniper of Callow began, voice rough. “Night’s coming and we have a schedule to keep. We received confirmation from Hierophant that the assault on Jinon is feasible, so we’ll be going through with it.”

Wolof was, in part, fed water by an aqueduct whose source was in the hills to the northeast of the city – the Jinon Hills. The place where the structure connected with the city walls was fortified, naturally, but so was the source in in the hills that the water flowed from. A small but solid and heavily warded fortress had been raised there, over an underground basin where overflow could be directed to when heavy rains struck the aqueduct hard. There shouldn’t be more than two or three hundred soldiers there but all my officers were in agreement that the fortress of Jinon – I’d yet to get a definitive answer on whether the hills were named after the fortress or the other way around – would be a nightmare to assault.

Tall and heavy walls, steep slopes all around and there was bound to be a heavy mage contingent garrisoned. We could take the fortress by assaulting the walls, there was no doubt about that. We had the numbers. But it would be very costly in casualties and we honestly couldn’t afford that. We were already going to be starkly outnumbered in the latter parts of this campaign, throwing away lives on a hard assault would be sheer stupidity. We did need the place, though, in part to pressure Sargon and also because it was crucial to some other schemes I had in mind. Which was why I’d sat with Juniper and Pickler to plot Jinon’s fall, and then sent Masego ahead to make sure what we intended was possible.

“I’ll be leading that part of our offensive personally,” I said. “For that purpose, I’ll be taking two cohorts, our false guards and whatever warband Lady Aquiline deems fit to grant me.”

Which, given how Levantine honour worked, would lead her to…

“I will go myself,” Aquiline Osena replied without hesitation. “And take my slayers as retinue.”

There we go, I thought. One of them with me to keep an eye on, and I’d pass off Razin to Hakram and the Barrow Sword.

“Good fit,” I nodded, and she straightened her back some.

It was true, even if it wasn’t the only reason she’d picked her most prestigious unit to take into battle with me. Levantines were surprisingly good at night work and surprise approaches, I’d found, which I really should have expected given that they spent most of their time raiding each other back in the Dominion.

“Taking Jinon will be tricky work,” Juniper said. “It could go badly for us if Wolof tries a sortie at our back while it happens. Which is why we’ll be drawing Sargon’s attention elsewhere as that attack happens.”

She tapped a finger on our map of Wolof and its outskirts, everyone’s eyes following towards the west. It was the fishing villages by the shore of the Wasaliti she was indicating. Sinka, they were commonly called. There was no port proper for Wolof – nowhere near enough river trade to warrant it – so it was all very informal, with the Sahelians effectively owning one of the villages and keeping their own barges there while the rest of the villages were left in the hands of merchants and locals under the loose supervision of an appointed seneschal.

“The Sahelians no longer have a significant river fleet, courtesy of Princess Vivienne during the Liesse Rebellion,” Juniper continued, which drew some laughs and cheers, “but Sinka is still a major asset to the city. It’s a source of fish and lumber – they send people across to cut from the Greywood – and they import goods from further south through it. It will be a blow for them to lose the district. Fortunately, its defences are limited. General Zola, if you would?”

The dark-skinned woman cleared her throat.

“Our scouts have confirmed a garrison of around five hundred, most of them household troops,” General Zola said. “The walls are mud brick and wood, and only three of the five villages have them. The barracks are reinforced, however, and built to be defended. There are also two watchtowers, so we can safely assume we will be seen approaching.”

From the corner of my eye I saw Arthur leaning forward, itching to ask a question but holding himself back. Going wider, I saw incomprehension in the eyes of the Blood and even Ishaq. I raised a hand, stopping Zola before she could continue her briefing.

“Squire,” I said. “Out with it.”

His eyes widened for a moment, but he gathered himself quick.

“Why are you so sure we’ll be seen, ma’am?” he asked the general. “It’ll be under cover of dark and we have scrying countermeasures.”

Ah, so that was it. I glanced at Zola, silently indicating I was going to cut in. I forgot, sometimes, that he was young. And that some of the people at this table had never truly had to consider what it would mean, going to war with Praesi.

“Aisha,” I idly said, “would you please put your hand to a candle?”

A few people raised their voices to object in surprise and she gave me a dry look for the dramatics, but the tent went silent when she placed her hand over the open flame without so much as a twitch. She drew it away after a few heartbeats, revealing to all smooth skin unmarred by burns.

“This is the Dread Empire of Praes,” I flatly said. “We’ve gotten used to having the upper hand in sorcery, fighting out west, but leave that behind you: we’re now facing the makers of all the spells we cribbed. It’s in the blood here, Squire. If they don’t have a spell then they’ll have someone whose blood lets them see in the dark, or a monster that smells the wind, a pack of flying devils or a hundred other things. They’ll see us coming, count on it. It’s what they do.”

I’d not meant it to, but I caught a certain amount of pride in the bearing of my Praesi officers after the tirade. I couldn’t begrudge them that, I thought. Where you were born, is stayed with you. Good and bad. And in the end, I had not forgotten it was not only my countrymen who had joined the voices to the tune of In Dread Crowned when we marched on Dormer. There was a difference between hating the high lords of Praes and hating Praesi. I passed the proverbial baton back to Zola, who finished outlining what we knew of Sinka’s defences as well as the plan of attack.

It was a fairly simple straightforward thrust with three thousand foot from the south, led by Vivienne but commanded by General Zola herself, with a screen of goblin skirmishers up front. Another two thousand foot, half of them Levantine and under the overall command of Razin Tanja, would move between the city and Sinka to dissuade a sortie. They’d have the two thousand horsemen of the Order of Broken Bells waiting in the wings for support. We’d keep a loose reserve of three thousand to throw at either battlefield, just in case. Afterwards it came to distributing Named, and there I took the lead again.

“The Silver Huntress will lend her skills to our skirmishers, though she will remain an independent command free to act as she sees fit,” I laid out. “Squire and Apprentice will accompany Princess Vivienne, under her authority. The Barrow Sword will go with Lord Razin. The Hierophant will be accompanying me, and as usual the Concocter is not to be considered a combat asset.”

Lady Alexis worked better when left alone when she wasn’t the leader, I’d found. Not unlike Archer, though both would resent the comparison. As for the two young Named, this was as much about them keeping Vivienne’s head on her neck as it was the other way around. Admittedly, when it came to Arthur I did have other motives. Getting him used to obeying my chosen successor was a necessary precaution, as far as I was concerned, especially now that the Jacks had established that a dynastic marriage was a dead end should he become a locus of opposition. Finding that out had been relatively simple: we’d sent one of the Jacks around his age to make advances, he’d gently let her down by telling her he was not interested in women that way.

Adjutant had insisted I could have simply asked, but this was probably safer. The Squire might not easily figure out why he’d been asked the question, but he’d know people with stronger insights into Callow’s politics who very much would.

“Expect surprises,” Juniper gravelled, concluding the council. “We’ll be surprising them too, but don’t forget for the moment they had the same day to plan that we did.”

I toasted to that, finally polishing the last of my wine, and to war we went.

—

I didn’t like being blind, and I didn’t mean in the losing-an-eye-sense.

Although, to be fair, I wasn’t enamoured with that one either. What I meant, though was that I’d gotten used to being able to rely on Night to get a good view of the battlefield even as fights were happening. Unfortunately, drawing on that kind of power so close to mages of the calibre Wolof was going to field would be like unveiling a lantern in a black pit. Impossible to miss. Being robbed of that view was making me restless, though, especially since I was distinctive enough in appearance that I couldn’t be on the front seat of either of the large ox-drawn wagons going up the smooth hillside path. It was pretty comfortable huddled out in the back, at least, except for the part where Masego was absolutely demolishing me at shatranj.

“How is everyone I know so good at this game?” I complained in a whisper, losing my last mage to a pin.

“I still play with Indrani regularly,” Zeze informed me just as quietly. “Although you have always been terrible at this.”

“I’m pretty widely known as a cunning schemer, Masego,” I told him, a little affronted.

I sent a knight forward, hoping to at least make my death throes interesting. If I had to lose to him a fourth time in a row, someone was going to get killed.

“Yes,” he happily acknowledged. “One who just lost her chancellor. Kingtip in three.”

I cursed, and it was an awfully close thing when I decided against the cart suddenly shaking and toppling the board by happenstance. Damned thing was enchanted to stick anyway, I wouldn’t be fooling anyone. The two of us were playing in the dark, since it was as day to our common sum of exactly one meat eye. We were nestled between the kind of barrels and crates that Wolof used to send oil and foodstuffs up to Jinon, though naturally they were actually full of soldiers. Who I hoped we’d been whispering quietly enough had not all heard me getting repeatedly brutalized at shatranj by my own court wizard.

There were only twenty soldiers by wagon, since more would drag noticeably on the road, but we had more forces at hand. Some of them were even visible. Armours the Callowan treasury had kept since the Doom of Liesse had been brought out of the vaults and polished up, meaning that the thirty handpicked Soninke legionaries making up our drivers and foot escort of the wagons were in genuine Sahelian household armour. That ought to sell the illusion some, though I wouldn’t be relying entirely on it. We had more forces out there in the hills, hidden. Part of it was a cohort of regulars we’d walked out of the Ways out of easy detection range and then snuck closer to the fortress, while the rest was Aquiline Osena’s handpicked slayers. Two hundred of them.

Those moved around like shadows, probably the finest human sneaks I’d seen – not quite in the league of goblins, but close.

Our wagon began to slow and I cast a glance at Masego, whose eyes swivelled in their sockets. He nodded. We had arrived. As Hierophant began putting away the shatranj board I swallowed a groan of pain and began wiggling around until I had my elbows on a crate and could discreetly look out the front of the wagon. Sergeant Kadeem was a large and bulky man, enough so that I’d heard a few jokes about him being a dark-skinned orc, but he was deft with the reins. His family were travelling traders, apparently. Moving slightly to the side of him to get a better angle, I had my first close up look at the fortress of Jinon. Heavy stone blocks, I noted, granite that looked to have been fitted together without mortar.

No wonder Pickler had been adamant trebuchets wouldn’t do much.

I studied the gatehouse that’d be our way in closely, as it was the key. Two squat bastions crowded a gate wide enough for a cart to pass and then some, pale yellow magelights hovering above it. There were two sets of gates, both thick wood barded with steel, but they were open: only the portcullis in front of them both was down. From above, the gatehouse rampart, I hard voices hailing us in Mthethwa. It was Captain Diara who answered them – we’d picked her because she was native to Wolof and cold-blooded by reputation – and she put irritation in her voice as she told them to hurry up so she could unload the goods and leave. Masego got closer to me and I glanced at him curiously.

“My amendment to the wards appears to be intact,” Hierophant murmured.

I nodded. So far, so good. The guards above insisted there had been no planned supply run, which was true, but we’d thought ahead: Captain Diara waved around papers she informed them were proof, signed by her superior in the city. Hakram was a splendid forger and Akua had helped get the details right, should they actually bother to look at them. See, if we were infiltrating a Proceran fortress then the papers would be what they looked at. This was a Praesi fortress, though, so when the agitated guards went to get their office the man in question scoffed and ordered one of them to go tell a scrying mage to contact the city for confirmation.

This would be where the plan fell apart, if I hadn’t brought Hierophant along.

We waited for some time, Masego’s eyes on the sky, and eventually there was a subtle ripple of power as Hierophant wrested the scrying spell the slightest pit, pulling apart the magic so it failed. Thrice more they tried it, and Masego played it artfully: on the second try he let it pass through for a moment, severing the connection late. We were pretending that the city was under magical attack, that it was why the spells weren’t working. Captain Diara, meanwhile, pretended to grow increasingly agitated. She asked for names, claimed she would speak to her relatives in the High Lord’s service about this, cursed them for lazy incompetents. I was impressed, she was definitely getting a commendation. We’d been at this for more than half an hour now, so the officer who’d ordered scrying fell back on the tried and true method of all career soldiers: he kicked the problem up the ladder.

“Describe me the armour of the officer they went to get,” I asked Masego.

He did, quietly, and my lips thinned. That was the fortress’s commander, for sure. They’d not wasted time going to the top, then. The woman in question, who introduced herself to Captain Diara as Lady Semira, proved to be a calming presence. She ordered for soldiers to take position behind the portcullis and then told Diara to come forward alone with the papers proving she was truly here under orders. So now we’re putting Hakram’s forgeries to the test, I thought. Diara didn’t hesitate, passing the papers before the portcullis closed anew and they were sent up to Lady Semira.

“These appear to be in order,” Lady Semira said, looking down from above.

If I bent, I could make out a glimpse of her standing above. Tall and imperious, with eyes a hue between yellow and brown.

“Is there a particular reason, Captain Diara, that this run was not handled by Tabansi instead?” she asked.

I tensed.

“Didn’t ask, my lady,” Diara replied. “If it doesn’t help me get back into bed, it’s not my concern.”

“So I see,” Lady Semira replied, tone amused. “It will only be a moment, captain.”

I breathed out. Had we gotten away with it?

“She is gesturing at soldiers,” Masego told me, studying the scene with his eldritch eyes. “One just went towards the barracks. Others are being told to… head towards the gate?”

Evidently we had not gotten away with it. It was the second string to our bow that’d make or break this.

“Progress?” I quietly asked Hierophant.

“Not there yet,” Masego replied.

Sighed. That meant there was only one thing for me to do. I cracked the side of my neck and dragged myself up.

“Signal me when the time comes,” I asked him.

I dropped into the front seat next to Sergeant Kadeem, who hid his startlement well. I pulled the Mantle of Woe tight around me and went rifling through the pockets, finding my pipe with a little noise of satisfaction and unceremoniously beginning to stuff it with wakeleaf. I handed Kadeem a match and he gallantly struck it on his arm before lighting my pipe for me. Good man.

“Tell everyone to be ready to fight,” I murmured around the rim. “Soon.”

He froze then nodded, retreating into the back of the wagon and leaving me to pull at my pipe under the stare of the soldiers up on the rampart. I breathed in deep the of the acrid smoke, letting it sear my lungs before I spat it back out in a stream. Up there, behind the crenelation, Lady Semira was watching me through narrowed eyes as her fingers tightened around the stone until the knuckles paled. Even out east it seemed that my reputation preceded me.

“Black Queen,” the commander greeted me, voice laudably even. “It seems we now dispense with the deceptions.”

I shrugged.

“What was it that gave it away?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“Captain Tabansi was publicly drowned last week, for having stolen Sahelian goods and sold them on the black market,” Lady Semira said. “The entire garrison was made to watch.”

Which, admittedly, would make it difficult to lead a supply run. Not impossible, mind you. This was Praes.

“That’d to it,” I ruefully said.

If we’d had Scribe with us I might have heard of even a relatively minor incident like that, but I’d sent her off with Archer. It had paid off in other ways, but there were costs to everything.

“I am under orders to avoid fighting you if I can, Your Majesty,” Lady Semira told me. “Your ploy was well-crafted, but it has failed. My soldiers are on the walls and my mages awake. I would invite you to withdraw, and offer my oath no attempt will be made to hinder your departure.”

I smiled, because I knew something she didn’t. When I’d sat with Pickler and Juniper to figure out how we might take Jinon as bloodlessly as we could, eventually we’d stumbled unto an interesting question: where did the shit go? Jinon had one source of water, and they couldn’t foul it. It fed right into the aqueduct that Wolof used. So a pit under it? The fortress had existed for several centuries, though, it would have filled by now. If this were Callow it would be a matter of chamber pots and dumping them somewhere far enough the smell wouldn’t reach the walls, but Wolof was rich. Nobles served in its garrison too, people not used to roughing it.

So instead they’d had built latrines, sophisticated little things that dumped their filth neatly outside the fortress into a series of pits.

“You’re polite,” I said, approvingly. “So let me make an offer back: if you and your garrison surrender, you will be treated under Callowan terms for prisoners. No mistreatment, regular meals and you’ll be offered up at the first prisoner trade with your sworn lord.”

It was Praesi who’d built the latrine, so of course it wasn’t that simple. They were a paranoid bunch, Wastelanders. The latrines tunnels were too small for someone to crawl up and they were warded in case someone tried to send devils through instead. The Sahelians had, however, made a small mistake. I breathed in the smoke, the end of the pipe burning like a red eye in the dark, and when I breathed out I let the grey drift upwards. No wind, tonight, so it stayed around me like a crown of fumes.

“I do not deny your power, Black Queen,” Lady Semira carefully said. “Yet the wards of this fortress are old and powerful. You will not find them easy to batter down. And steel will not carry this day if your might cannot. I can only-”

A hand tapped my shoulder. Masego, giving me his signal. I smiled. I’d kept her talking long enough, baited enough soldiers to the walls.

“It’s over,” I interrupted. “You’ve lost.”

Her face tightened with anger.

“Close the gates,” Lady Semira ordered.

There was a long heartbeat of silence as nothing happened. Then I put fingers to my mouth and whistled, meeting her eyes. Barrels and crates cracked open, soldiers crawling out armed to the teeth, and out of the dark came marching the first of the two cohorts I’d brought. Aquiline and her slayers crept up the hill, still unseen. But the killing blow was something else entirely. There was a distant sound of cackling, and a heartbeat later the portcullis began rising to the vivid horror of the Sahelian soldiers manning the gate. The cohort of goblins I’d sent up the latrines had seized the most important room in the gatehouse, the one controlling the portcullis and gates. There would be no preventing our entry. To hammer that point home, Hierophant came out of the wagon to sit by my side and put an end to any hope of wards or sorcery stopping us.

See, the latrines were too small for humans to crawl up them. And the wards had been meant to stop devils going up, not goblins, because the Grey Eyries were on the other side of Praes and no Sahelian had ever had to defend this fortress against them. All it had taken to make my cohort’s infiltration entirely unseen was Masego disabling the small part of the wards that would trigger an alarm if something large entered through the latrines, the kind of small detail that it would take an in-depth check of the wards to notice.

But, as this land of diabolists ought to know, the devil was in the details.

“Sleight of hand, Semira,” I told my enemy, not unkindly. “If you’re watching me, you’re not watching where you should be.”

I breathed in deep of the wakeleaf, then blew out one last breath.

“So,” I said. “Are you going to surrender now, or do I need to… how did you put it again? Ah, yes.”

I met her eyes with my own.

“Batter you down,” I coldly said.

The possibility of violence hung in the air, thick as smoke, while the noblewoman weighed her chances. She eyed my forces once again, then finally grimaced.

“Jinon is yours, Black Queen,” Lady Semira said.

Well, I thought as my men began cheering, it’s a small victory, but it’s a start.

Chapter 3: Wage

“I was privileged to receive audience with a shaman of the Red Shields clan, who after receiving gifts was willing to indulge a few of my questions. My attempts to understand the lay of her people’s statecraft, however, were met with a simple laugh and the quote of a Kharsum proverb that translates as such: ‘throw meat or be meat’.”

– Extract from “Horrors and Wonders”, famed travelogue of Anabas the Ashuran

Jinon fell to the Army of Callow at the price of twelve dead and five wounded.

Three wounded and two dead were of ours. One of the former was, I’d been told, a legionary from the regulars cohort who’d tripped going uphill and broken his foot. He was now being mercilessly mocked by the rest of his tenth, who had tried to get him officially commended for ‘heroic injuries sustained in the line of duty’. I was giving it serious thought – laugh aside, playing along with this sort of thing tended to be good for morale. Most the corpses and wounds had taken place when my goblins infiltrated the fortress, silencing witnesses and taking the gatehouse. That left me to handle the two hundred and forty-three members of the Jinon garrison that had surrendered, a number that included seven minor nobles sworn to Wolof.

One of them was a branch Sahelian, their head mage, and she’d been trying to barricade herself in a fortified room when Hierophant came and stomped out the notion by casually wresting her sorcery away from her. I’d left him to interrogate her and gone to supervise the movement of the prisoners instead. We’d made a gate into Twilight right outside the walls and we were herding the disarmed prisoners across by groups of twenty, into the tender waiting embrace of legionaries waiting on the other side. We’d be marching them straight into a warded prison pit that Juniper had ordered dug inside our camp, where the Jacks and the phalanges would begin interrogating them for news about the state of the city.

I was now leaning against stone on the same parapet Lady Semira had stood on when we’d talked, watching it unfold as I chatted with Captain Diara.

“- moved them to a freehold in the Green Stretch as soon as I could afford it,” she told me, speaking of her parents. “My brother’s still out east in one of the Bassa towns, I think, but we haven’t talked in years.”

“I hear it’s good land down in the Stretch, so long as the levees don’t break,” I said.

“It is, but there are dangers. People were worried it was going to be trouble when you first took the throne, Your Majesty,” Captain Diara admitted. “That’s passed, of course. Now they know that even if comes to steel there won’t be paladins knocking at the doors for ‘tithes’ and pointed questions about troop movements.”

The Order of the White Hand were still considered heroes, back home, tragically destroyed by my father in the first stroke of the Conquest. The freeholders of the Green Stretch had been significantly less convinced of the heroism of said paladins, not without reason. Callow had been occupied by the Dread Empire for so long it was easy to forget that the Old Kingdom hadn’t been saints. It’d not been worse than most nations out there, but it’d not been any better either.

“It’s the Tower my dispute is with,” I said. “It’s the Tower I’ll settle it with.”

The captain slowly nodded, expression hard to read. Whatever she might have said was not to be, as Masego strode out of the stairway with his robes sweeping behind him. He looked in a fine mood, and I could smell the scent of power still on him. He was holding magic.

“Time for me to check on my sergeants,” Captain Diara tactfully said. “It was an honour, Your Majesty.”

“It was my honour to hear you harangue those poor bastards for half an hour,” I replied with a smile. “See you around, captain.”

She offered a salute to Hierophant as he passed, which he returned with an absent-minded nod before coming to stand at my side.

“Got anything good?” I asked.

“Several of the ciphers the Sahelians use when scrying,” Masego said. “It will be of use when intercepting their communications.”

“Cutting High Lord Sargon off from Malicia would be ideal,” I admitted. “It’ll be easier to force his hand that way.”

Malicia had soulboxed him when she’d put him on the High Seat, which meant she could effectively torture him with impunity and at will, but that was the kind of tool she wouldn’t use blindly. If he wasn’t contradicting an explicit order from the Tower when he surrendered his granaries to us, the ruler of Wolof was a lot more likely to fold. There wasn’t a lot I could threaten him that would be worse than what Malicia could do with half an hour and an incantation.

“It will do Sapan some good to study higher order mathematics,” Hierophant mused. “I’ll make her work on the ciphers with me.”

“Surprised she doesn’t know about those already,” I said. “Ashurans are famous sailors and navigation’s all about numbers and stars, way I hear it.”

“She meant to be a healer, so what they taught her of mathematics at that academy in Ashur was insultingly limited,” Masego said, sounding peeved. “Sabrathan sorcery encourages specialization, Catherine, as the knowledge overlap between its different disciplines is supposedly very limited.”

I hummed in understanding. For all that Hierophant had always rather looked down on the sorcery the Thalassocracy of Ashur practiced, what I’d heard of it was rather impressive. They had finer healing mages than the Praesi and they could whip up winds and storms out of blue sky. Sabrathan magic did seem to have pretty stark limits on what could be done well with it, though, so I wasn’t surprised Masego held it in such low esteem. He’d been raised to treat magic as something more than just a tool, a philosophical quest for the truth of Creation. There was little chance of him respecting people who, in his eyes, willingly chose to cripple themselves before even beginning that quest.

“Tell me how it pans out,” I shrugged. “I’m curious how much she’ll take to your teachings.”

I was more curious if she was going to end up a long-term threat to people or places I cared about, to be honest, but Zeze enjoyed talking about his pupil and I enjoyed indulging him. While Masego cordially disliked teaching large groups, the way he had when I’d asked him to make my Legion and later Army cadres into mages capable of battlefield ritual magic, he seemed to be relishing teaching a single highly skilled pupil. It was the kind of teaching he was likely most familiar with, I’d eventually realized. Just like Warlock had done with him.

“I will,” he assured me. “Though none of this is why I came. You earlier mentioned intending to scry Juniper for news of how her warring went. Shall we, before I must release the magic I wrested?”

I’d actually figured it would be one of our mages I relied on for that, but if Zeze was volunteering I wasn’t going to complain. And if this marked yet another instance of him keeping someone’s magic in his hands just a little longer than was strictly necessary, well, part of loving someone was knowing when you needed to avert your eye.

“Please do,” I replied.

It didn’t take long to get a hold of my marshal even though the night’s action was far from over, as she’d been expecting me. After the fortress was invested one of our mages had sent word that things had gone well, but not gotten much in exchange: the offensive had still been happening. After a few moments Aisha’s face appeared in the mirror-like circle of magic that Masego had drawn in the air, offering me a smile before disappearing and being replaced with the Hellhound’s thicker features.

“Warlord,” she greeted me.

“Marshal,” I replied. “How did the attack go?”

“We hold Sinka,” Juniper said. “The garrison in the villages began to retreat after skirmishing against our vanguard and we caught fewer than fifty of them. We didn’t get any trouble out of the people themselves, the seneschal fled after leaving orders to surrender without violence.”

Huh. That was unusually caring, by Praesi standards. Most Wasteland nobles would have sent their people into the grinder without a second thought, thinking a few of my soldiers killed a fair trade for bleeding the populace of a port they no longer held. High Lord Sargon’s orders, or the small rebellion of a decent man in a bad position? Hard to know.

“Any moves from Wolof?”

“They tried a sortie,” Juniper acknowledged. “Two thousand household troops, with mage support and about a hundred walin-falme for vanguard. They hit our screening force head on and withdrew when the Order flanked them. They sacrificed the devils to eat the charge and retreated into the city.”

“That looks like a straightforward blunder,” I frowned. “Only two thousand? It’s a large chunk of their forces, but they have to know we’d eat that on the field. Especially when we have cavalry and they don’t.”

My marshal looked pleased, licking her fangs in approbation.

“It was a pin,” Juniper said. “They were tying down our screening force while they hit the men I sent to take Sinka. They waited until after the surrender, when we’d begun to split the force into the smaller garrisons we’ll be leaving.”

My brow rose. That implied they’d managed a night ambush on open grounds while we fielded goblins.

“They had illusions good enough we couldn’t see through them?” I asked.

“The attackers were in the river,” Juniper grimaced. “Deep enough our first sweep with mages didn’t catch them. They had boats hidden on the far side of the Wasaliti under illusions and some kind of half-fish devil in the-”

She turned a moment, leaning towards someone I only dimly heard speak before nodding thanks.

“Sahelian sends word the devils are called nikyana, and that Wolof usually keeps a few contracts but nowhere as many as we saw tonight,” the tall orc growled. “At least seven hundred of the bastards popped out of the river on our flanks and they would have caught us entirely by surprise without the Silver Huntress giving alarm They don’t use weapons but they’re quick and strong, we lost almost a full cohort before we realized what was happening.”

I winced. Caught out of formation, my legionaries would have had a hard time handling devils. Like with heavy horse, you needed thick ranks and spellfire to handle a charge of those.

“And bleeding us wasn’t even the point of the attack,” Juniper revealed.

My brow rose.

“They infiltrated a mage cadre with escorts to try to grab Vivienne in the chaos,” Juniper said. “The Squire and the Apprentice drove them off, but apparently it was a close thing. The moment the grab failed the entire attack was called off and they retreated into the river.”

I let out a low whistle. That’d actually been a sharp play from Sargon, assuming it really was the young lord’s plan. Vivienne was one of the few people in my army I couldn’t afford not to bargain for, if she were taken prisoner. Should Sargon threaten to put her head on a pike unless I retreated, he would have me in a very tricky position.

“Total casualties?” I asked.

“Between Sinka and the plain, we lost three hundred and twelve,” she said. “Cost them at least two hundred where Tanja held command on top of the forty and so we captured, so there’s that, but they’re keeping to standard Praesi tactics when it comes to soaking up casualties with devils.”

Forty years ago, before the Reforms, orcs and goblins would have been right with the devils eating those Callowan blades, I thought. Bleeding so that their betters wouldn’t. Looking at the hard cast of my marshal’s face, I suspected I wasn’t the only one who’d thought that. I quickly went over the fall of Jinon for her and concluded with the prisoners now headed her way.

“Good news,” Juniper said. “I have mages and the Huntress following the diabolists on the river. We’ll try to hit them before they can retreat to Wolof.”

“Take prisoners if you can,” I said, “but our people come first.”

I wanted diabolists, but I didn’t need them that badly. A handful grabbed off the field weren’t going to be enough to handle the Hellgates, I was going to need a genuine diplomatic concession to secure that many. Juniper nodded, offering me a crisp Legion salute before the spell died and the magic displaying her face dissipated. I rolled my shoulder, sighing. It was already a long night and it was still far from over. I turned to Masego.

“Assuming the prisoners are out, I’ll need to help establish our own garrison here,” I said. “Do you think you could check the wards for nasty surprises?”

The Concocter would be coming along later too, to see if my idea about how get into the city was feasible.

“I will,” Hierophant said, burning eyes swivelling lazily in their sockets, “but I expect you’ll have more pressing matters to attend to.”

“Like?”

“Aunt Eudokia just walked through the gates,” Masego said, “and she looks in a hurry.”

—

Scribe looked both healthier than when I’d last seen her and deeply exhausted. It was the good kind of exhausted, though, the kind you got from putting all of yourself into something you loved. Her back was straight and though as always my attention slid right off her – save for the same detail, the perennially ink-stained hands – I got a sense of vitality from her that she’d lacked when she had first reached out to me in Hainaut. I had come to believe that, more than anything, Scribe thrived on being useful. The cause didn’t matter much, it was about stretching her abilities to the limit. In a way it was like Ranger’s thirst for worthy fights, though neither woman would thank me for the comparison.

“Queen Catherine,” she greeted me, shortly bowing.

“Scribe,” I replied. “Pleasure to have you back with us, though I expected it would be back at the camp.”

“There has been a change of plans,” she said. “The envoys heard there would be an assault on Jinon, and they insisted on speaking with you here.”

I cocked an eyebrow.

“They want to see if I’m strong enough to beard the Sahelians in their own backyard,” I said.

Which was fair enough. Nobody liked backing a losing horse. Besides, orcs respected strength above all and this bunch was more opportunistic than most.

“How long until they’re here?” I asked.

“A quarter hour at most,” Scribe said. “I requested of Archer that she slow their passage through the Ways, but there are limits.”

“She’ll do what she can,” I muttered.

My mind was already racing ahead, putting the pieces in place. I would have preferred having Vivienne here for this, since any deals made would be inherited by her, but that’d be hard to arrange. This wouldn’t end with a single conversation anyway.

“Indeed,” Scribe said. “A stark improvement on her predecessor in every regard, Archer.”

I eyed the villainess amusedly. She’d been less than fond of Ranger even before the Lady of the Lake had put an arrow an inch away from her heart.

“Thanks for the heads up,” I said.

“There is more,” Scribe said. “I received word from my agents in the northeast: the fortress of Chagoro has fallen.”

I took me a moment to place that name in my mental map of Praes. It was one of the main fortresses north of the High Seat of Okoro, an important strategic position since it was close to the two easiest passes into the Northern Steppes. It was the keystone of Okoro’s northern defences, and supposedly one of the thornier fortresses in the region.

“Who holds it?” I frowned. “It is one of the Clans?”

High Lord Jaheem Niri was one of Malicia’s supporters and his domain has been largely spared the depredations that most of Praes had suffered, so this was something of a surprise. The Niri could still field one of the largest private fighting forces in the Empire, and they wouldn’t skimp on their northern defences when there was trouble in the Steppes. A surprise attack by supporters of Sepulchral, maybe?

“No one holds it,” Scribe evenly said. “It is full of corpses.”

My thoughts ground to a halt. What?

“My agents confirmed that the killing was done by blade, over the span of less than an hour, and that the assailants took no casualties,” she continued.

“That’s absurd,” I bit out. “How many soldiers were there in that fortress, Scribe?”

“A little over a thousand,” she replied.

“It can’t be the Dead King,” I frowned, “he’s bound by oath to attack neither Praes nor Callow. Who could-”

I closed my eyes, abandoning the train of thought. It was a dead end, there were too many monsters out there in the wilds that I knew little about. Capacity for destruction, for killing, was not that uncommon. It would instead be much more useful to figure out who gained from Chagoro falling. I did, since it made Okoro a lot more vulnerable to attacks by the Clans, but this hadn’t been a scheme of mine. Sepulchral benefitted as well, arguably, since anything weakening a backer of Malicia’s helped her cause. She shouldn’t have assets capable of something this flashy, though. Could the Empress herself have done it? She certainly had the ruthlessness, but I wasn’t seeing a gain for her to make. Even of Jaheem Niri had been about to turn on her and she wanted him kept busy, there were better ways.

And this timing, I thought, it was too good.

I wanted to bring the Clans into the war, specifically for them to fall on the back of Malicia’s northern allies, and the High Lord of Okoro had been a major obstacle in that regard. With a major gap in his defences, however, there were now chances that orc clans would go raiding even if it had nothing to do with me whatsoever. And it was coming at a precisely the right time, while I was mauling Wolof with the Army of Callow and Malica’s armies were still making their way up from down south. Okoro stood alone and with its pants down. That wasn’t a coincidence, it was too precise for that, and-

“Black,” I murmured. “Black did this.”

“Ranger is powerful, but not so powerful as that,” Scribe objected.

He shouldn’t have the resources to pull off something like this, that much was true. It was pretty much just him and the Lady of the Lake out there, wasn’t it? He’d not even picked up that nice army of deserters waiting for him in the Green Stretch – though I had my doubts about that, it seemed a little too convenient – and taken them in hand. Archer and Akua had believed, I recalled from the last time we’d discussed the matter in council, that he couldn’t take up such a position. It would be a death trap to be visible, since Ranger was being hunted by the Emerald Swords. My thoughts stalled for a moment after that, as the realization sunk in, because surely he hadn’t.

It was the kind of reckless play I would have made, nothing like the calculating and cold-blooded man who’d taught me. And yet.

“Eudokia,” I quietly said. “Your agents, they said it was done with blades. Did they get a read on the number of assailants?”

“No,” Scribe admitted. “All they could give me was that it looked like halfway through the fight soldiers began fleeing and they were run down to the last.”

And that wasn’t much, wasn’t a confirmation, but it fit.

“Fuck me,” I said. “He used Ranger as bait, Scribe. The Emerald Swords did this. He drew them there to clear out the fortress.”

She blinked in surprise, then after a long moment sighed. Tellingly, she did not disagree. Silly me, how could I not have expected my father would find a way to turn his sole companion being hunted by ten of the most dangerous people on Calernia into an advantage. I’d come by my bastardry honestly, I shouldn’t have forgot. And against my better judgement, I found my lips twitching. Welcome to the war, Black. Finally making your move, are you?

“So he wants the Clans going on the offensive too,” I mused. “Interesting.”

What exactly my father wanted and how he intended to achieve remained unclear to me, and likely would for some time. If he’d wanted to speak with me, he would have by now. I cast a look at Scribe, who had remained silent as I thought.

“If you offered your services again,” I said, “I’m not sure he would refuse you a second time.”

I was under no illusions that our months of collaboration in any way trumped decades of close friendship. The Calamities had been tightly bound, before they began dropping dead.

“You worry of my loyalties,” Scribe said.

“I don’t,” I said. “I know exactly where they lie. And it’s not empty words when I say that there would be no rancour, should you-”

“I am not a good or pleasant woman, Catherine Foundling,” Eudokia the Scribe said and for a heartbeat I saw brown eyes flashing with anger, set in a tanned and freckled face. “I do not pretend otherwise. I have little use for the morals you espouse or the causes you champion, save when they intersect with my own diversions.”

“But,” I said.

“But I am a woman of my word,” Scribe said. “I believe in contracts and the worth of promises. Even should I decide to leave your side – and if I do it will not be like this, like some beaten dog crawling back to her master’s feet – even then, I would no more reveal secrets learned in your service than I have revealed you those I learned in his.”

I clenched my fingers, then unclenched them. How much of that had been truth and how much of it a lie? It was the proportions that made the difference between poison and medicine.

I was going to be betrayed at least once before the month was out, but would Scribe make the second?

“I believe you,” I lied, and we prepared for our guests.

—

Sometimes diplomacy was about making a point.

That was why, when five orcs passed through the gates of Jinon following Indrani, they stopped and stared at the sight awaiting them for a beat. It was not the throne that caught their eye, though shaping it out of roiling Night had lent it a certain imperious look. It wasn’t the deadwood staff across my knees either, or crow-shaped shadows perched above my shoulders. It was the piles of arms and armour that filled the courtyard, glittering and ornate Praesi armaments spread around like a carpet of steel. Hundreds of swords and shields, of cuirasses and helmets, and not a corpse anywhere around to be seen. Only steel and silence, with the moon high above and dark walls around us.

That was my point: I took this fortress, and I did not even bleed for it.

Archer was hiding a smile as she walked to us through the path. I had a small honour guard around me, a simple line of regulars, and though Hierophant was somewhere above on a parapet it was Scribe who stood behind me on my left. There were five seats awaiting, for the five orcs that the clans I’d reached out to had sent. Scribe whispered the names into my ear even as they approached, their body language wary. Asny of the Graven Bone Clan, taller than even Hakram and sister to her clan’s chief. Valborg of the Stag-Crowned Clan, stooped but strong and eldest raid leader of the Stag-Crowned. Skarod Longaxe, the small but nimble husband to the chieftain of the Blackspear Clan. The twins Sigvin and Sigvun of the Split Tree Clan were the last, rumoured to both be shamans and shapeshifters.

It was the clan I needed on my side the least that’d sent two envoys, ironically enough. The Blackspears, the Graven Bone and the Stag-Crowned were the three largest southern clans, but that wasn’t actually why I’d reached out to them. I had decent relations with the Red Shields and the Howling Wolves – Juniper and Hakram’s clans – and they were among the great orc powers too. No, those three were here because Malicia had raised them over other orcs by ennobling their chiefs as Lords of the Steppe and empowering them to collect tribute on behalf of the Tower. The Split Tree twins, on the other hand, were here for slightly more complicated reasons.

Their clan was respected and well-connected, boasting a number of genuine spellcaster shamans, and it’d made the Split Tree Clan an important part of the alliance that’d formed around the Lords of the Steppes. Those three clans had… mixed reputations. The Split Tree being part of the alliance lent it respect it badly needed, considering when the Howling Wolves – currently the largest and most well-respected of the clans – were at the head of the alliance opposing the Lords of the Steppe. For me that meant having them on board was much to be preferred, if a bargain was to happen, but they weren’t strictly required. Archer left their side after offering me a grin, coming to stand at my right. As the orcs approached a legionary came forward with a plate holding a large cut of salted pork and a mug of beer.

“I offer you meat and drink from my table,” I spoke in Kharsum.

They each took a bite and a sip – I noted that the Blackspear envoy, Skarod Longaxe, went first – and only then did the wariness leave them. I’d just formally given them my hospitality, and though the custom was not as ironclad with orcs as it was with Taghreb it wasn’t something to lightly cross.

“Good, we’re done with the shite then,” Asny of the Graven Bones grunted, spitting to the side. “Hail, Black Queen.”

“Hail, Asny of the Graven Bones,” I replied, faintly amused. “And to you all.”

It got growls in answer, rough acknowledgement.

“You wanted to have talks, Black Queen,” Skarod Longaxe said. “Talk, then. You’re not the only one with a war on.”

“That one’s her war too, unless she’s stopped trading weapons to our enemies,” Valborg of the Stag-Crowned peevishly said.

I hadn’t. Hakram’s revision of the proposal that’d troubled me so much had proved viable in arming the clans we wanted armed in the Steppes. We’d taken to buying dwarven weapons through Mercantis, which while relatively low-quality were cheap and came in large crates. We traded them to friendly clans in the north for amber, furs and raw iron ore – which we then traded back to Mercantis at a mark up, making a small but tidy profit. We could sustain that trade route for years, considering Callow had nowhere enough trading barges to flood either market to the extent that prices would lower. The kind of diplomatic flourishes I’d gotten used to trotting out in Procer would be useless here, so instead I leaned into my natural instinct.

“You hitched your chariot to a dying horse,” I bluntly told them. “It’s time to cut loose before it drags you down with it.”

Asny barked out a laugh.

“You’ve got guts, Queen, I’ll give you that,” she said. “But it’s a little soon to make that claim, yeah? Tower’s still standing.”

“There are many who have fought Dread Empress Malicia, over the years,” Sigvin of the Split Tree said, voice soft for all that she was built like barn door. “Some even had the better of her, for a time. None still remain.”

I smiled at them, all teeth and malice.

“If my armies are at the gates of Ater, what use do I have for any of you?” I said. “When the Tower falls – and it will – what reason do I have to care about your enemies butchering every last one of you? If you’re of no use to me, you’re meat. Now is when you earn your worth.”

Skarod Longaxe, envoy for the Blackspears, spat to the side on some soldier’s shield.

“So you want us to kneel to your little favourites,” he said. “Which will you crown, Black Queen, the Howling Wolves or the Red Shields?”

He bared his teeth, contemptuous.

“Will you make one of your servants chief first, just to tie it up neat?” he mocked. “Your own little puppet king in the Steppes, ready to do your bidding.”

“Fuck that,” Asny of the Graven Bones growled. “We’re too many corpses deep in this feud to roll over for the Wolves.”

“Little has been offered,” Sigvun of the Split Tree Clan mildly said. “Much has been demanded.”

I drummed fingers against the arm of my throne.

“Did I ever speak of surrendering to anyone?” I asked, irritated. “The next person to put words in my mouth will be made to swallow them.”

“We’re under hospitality,” Skarod Longaxe harshly said.

“Hospitality keeps you your life, Longaxe, not your teeth,” I replied.

Asny and Valborg laughed, though the twins looked unamused.

“Are these talks not meant to broke peace between us and the Howling Wolves, then?” Sigvin of the Split Tree asked.

“I’m here to broker a war,” I said. “If you want to make peace with the Wolves, make peace with the Wolves. It’s the business of the Clans, not Callow.”

I stared them down from my throne, the crows stirring at my shoulders. The attention of the Sisters was not in the shards, leaving them as little more than creatures of shadow, but they still made an intimidating sight.

“What I want to know,” I said, “is why you’re fighting other orcs for snow and grass when you could be biting deep in the riches of Okoro instead.”

“We didn’t choose to feud,” Skarod Longaxe snorted. “The Wolves did.”

Bullshit. The Blackspears had wasted no time in using the powers Malicia granted them to try to extort all their neighbouring clans, they’d known it would come to war. They’d just figured they were going to win it.

“Okoro’s belly is well-guarded,” Sigvun of the Split Tree pointed out. “Much of its armies have remained north, its walls are tall and its devils many.”

“We could take them,” Asny of the Graven Bones scoffed. “If we didn’t have to keep half our warriors home to fight off raids, we could smash through Okoro.”

“The only thing you’d smash in Okoro is your skull on Chagoro’s walls, pup,” Valborg of the Stag-Crowned dismissed. “That fortress has broken more warbands than you’ve had lays.”

“Chagoro,” I calmly said, “has fallen.”

Five pairs of eyes went to me, stillness hanging in the air like haze.

“There is nothing left between those walls save corpses,” I said. “Do I now have your attention?”

“You lie,” Skarod Longaxe accused.

I glanced at Scribe, who took a single step forward.

“It is the truth,” she said. “My agents have confirmed it.”

That took the wind out of Longaxe’s sails. The Calamities weren’t necessarily loved by orcs, but they were respected. Scribe putting her weight behind this wasn’t something they’d dismiss. Hells, it was the reason I’d sent her with Archer into the Steppes in the first place. Indrani wasn’t known up there, but the Calamities? That name still turned heads, even with most of them in the ground. It’d made them take me seriously enough to send envoys in the first place.

“That changes things,” Valborg of the Stag-Crowned admitted, clicking her fangs in hesitation. “Without Chagoro in the way, we could make it past the fortress-lands.”

“We can’t mount a raid worth a goat’s spit with the Wolves up our asses,” Asny of the Graven Bones said.

“Okoro’s wealth isn’t worth kneeling to our enemies,” Skarod Longaxe said, but his tone was more careful now.

Less hostile, I decided. He still didn’t think much of me or my offer, but the thought of raiding Okoro’s holdings appealed. As I’d thought it might.

“Offer truce,” I said. “If you do, I will back you under threat of ending sale of arms.”

“Truce isn’t peace, but it won’t be easy to swallow,” Asny growled.

“Fight for a thousand years, for all I care,” I snorted. “But do it rich. Do it with great herds of cattle, with granaries of grains and the wealth of a hundred tributes. Do it wielding enchanted blades. You think you’re the only ones who want to sink their teeth there? How many warriors from the Shields and the Wolves do you think would rather raid south than fight you?”

That was why I was sitting with these five instead of clans I could more easily have made allies of, in the end. I could back those friendly clans all I wanted, but it wouldn’t cost Malicia anything. What did she care that there was a civil war in the Steppes, so long as it didn’t spill over anywhere that mattered to her? It wouldn’t conclude quickly enough to be a threat. I actually suspected she’d meant her raising of the Lords of the Steppes to trigger that very civil war, since if the orcs were fighting each other they weren’t making trouble for her. She’d picked clans with badreputations to raise, too, and that didn’t look like a coincidence to me. They were the same clans that were almost guaranteed to have gone raiding at her unprotected back, were they not busy defending their noble titles.

If I turned these, though, not only would the betrayal be a public slap in her face but close to the full might of the Clans would come into play in the greater Praesi civil war.

“And if this truce was sought by your alliance,” Sigvun of the Split Tree said, “you would support it?”

“I’ll even send an envoy at the talks,” I smiled, hiding my triumph.

I said it like it was a concession. Like it wasn’t what I’d been after from the start. Like the moment the rest of them began to agree, as they hesitantly did, I’d not gotten exactly what I wanted: an army that, though it didn’t know it yet, was going to march on Keter with the rest of us.

Now I just needed to figure out why my father had wanted this too, and if the two of us were at war too.

Chapter 4: Stock

“It is unseemly to poison an ally in the first month, wear white at an assassination or use the same curse more than once per decade. Fashions will change with year and season, but always these three will be a mark of crudeness.”

– Extract from ‘The Behaviours of Civil Conduct’, by High Lady Mchumba Sahelian

The way Indrani and I kept sharing a bed was the longest I’d ever been involved with anyone.

It wasn’t a love affair, at least not in the sense that I was in love with her or the other way around, but it was no less meaningful for it. More than that, it’d become a creature comfort of sorts on top of being very enjoyable. My part of the arrangement was probably the easiest to navigate, which honesty compelled me to admit might be for the best considering how things had ended with Killian. My time with my former Senior Mage had ended with frozen silence and avoiding each other, which didn’t bode well since aside from the occasional tumble before I became the Squire that was pretty much the sum of my relationships. Indrani didn’t ask much aside from a place in my bed, which was just fine by me. That much I could handle.

It was what bound her and Masego that I found interestingly nuanced. The two of them were distinctly ‘involved’, but it was more an intimate partnership than anything like the chaste marriages people without inclination to sex sometimes entered in. Masego wasn’t inclined towards that either. Zeze seemed happy with the arrangement, anyhowm, and Indrani certainly was. While she’d let him set the lines, aware he hadn’t been made of quite the same clay than she and I in this regard, she’d not been afraid to speak up when she wanted something. It was how they’d come to share rooms in the Arsenal. Masego also considered anything she and I got up to as not related to him in the slightest, I’d confirmed on the one awkward instance where I’d tried to broach the subject with him.

He’d been confused at my bringing it up in the first place, since it struck him as a private affair, and once I’d made sure he was both aware and indifferent I’d been more than happy to drop the matter entirely. It’d been a relief. I didn’t count myself as particularly shy, but as I aged I’d noticed that I was getting more closed up about intimacy. There were just too many ways it could be used against me if it came to light.

Indrani’s part of this that was the trickiest. She was the one who had to draw lines and figure out limits. Distinctions. It was in the small things, like the way that after returning from a long trip, as she had yesterday, she always spent the night with Masego. She’d also been out in the wilds for about two months, though, so pretty early the morning after she came to visit me and I strengthened the privacy protections around my tent with Night. Quite a while later, we had a breakfast together. I was seated at the end of the table on my favourite seat, picking at the plate of sliced fruit my attendants had brought in and occasionally passing Indrani a cut of mango or passion fruit while I read through the papers Adjutant had sent me.

High Lord Sargon had sent a messenger to arrange talks, much as we’d expected he would, and they’d been set for midday on relatively neutral grounds. The envoys from the Steppes were settled in, I read, and soon we’d have the second round of talks so we had all the details hashed out before they left. Hakram would have to be there for those, as I fully intended for him to be my envoy up north.

Indrani was sitting cross-legged on the ground, absent-mindedly munching on the pieces I put on a plate in hand’s reach as we chatted and she carved at the underside of the table. I was careful with my sleeves as I devoured the mango – one of the few sweet things I liked, and so rare back home – since the green tunic I’d put on had long ones. It was a little warm for this weather, but I didn’t feel like having to explain the slight rope burn around my wrists should someone see it. Especially when the reasons for it had me in such a boneless, lazy mood. It was a rare enough these days, I wasn’t going to spoil it.

“So the two ducklings you picked up,” Indrani began, knife chipping away out of my sight.

I finished a piece of passion fruit, licking my fingers clean.

“Sadly,” I slowly replied, “you’re going to have to be more specific than that.”

She snorted.

“Really living up to that whole Queen of Lost and Found title, huh?” Indrani said.

I rolled my eye at her.

“Which ones do you mean?”

“Razin and Aquiline, the duckling lords,” Archer elaborated.

“What about them?” I said, cocking an eyebrow.

“Shouldn’t they be married by now?” Indrani said, then clicked her tongue.

She dipped deeper under the table, knifepoint scratching against the wood furiously. Missed a detail, had she? I pushed a few more slices of fruit onto her plate and slid it across the table closer to her.

“They’re going through with it after we take Keter,” I informed her.

“Bold,” Archer said, tone approving.

Actually very cautious of them, and so likely Razin’s idea. He tended to be better at that part. If they got married right now, they’d be a power bloc that the other two great lines of the Blood – the Champion’s and the Brigand’s – would feel strongly threatened by. With the Pilgrim’s Blood gone the way of dust, the Dominion no longer had an even theoretical ruler. Which meant after the war Levant would either fracture into smaller warring fiefdoms or another bloodline would take the Tattered Throne. An alliance between the Osena and the Tanja would be the clear frontrunner in the race, always a dangerous position to be in. As things stood, though, Lord Yannu and Lady Itima were a lot more likely to bet on one of them biting it in the war than try a knife in the back.

Why take the risk, when the Dead King might yet do the work for them?

“It’ll make for a damn good story, if they pull it off,” I admitted.

It was the kind of foundation a dynasty could be built on if they played it right. Indrani made an approving noise.

“You ever wonder what stories they’ll tell about us?” she asked, tone light.

“Probably that fucking story about me castrating an ogre,” I grimly said. “That one’ll follow me into grave, mark my words.”

“Don’t undersell yourself,” Archer said, and I heard the grin.

There was a beat of silence.

“You castrated him in single combat,” she said. “That makes it all the more impressive.”

I groaned, making an obscene gesture she didn’t even bother to look at.

“Our jaunt to Keter’s going to make a good one, I think,” Indrani mused. “It’s got all the good ingredients. The five of us and Akua, a journey into the Hells and the worthy enemies.”

Metaphorical Hells, since it’d been Arcadia we traipsed through. Hopefully chroniclers wouldn’t ask too many questions about the plan in Keter. I’d yet to live it down, though in my defence it had sort of worked?

“The Princess of High Noon,” I suggested. “That was a good one for retelling. Masego found his eyes and all five of us had a hand in that win.”

It’d ended on a sour note, but that was war for you.

“Still can’t believe Vivienne didn’t even try to pawn that sun,” Archer grumbled. “What kind of a thief was she? It would have fetched us a fortune in Mercantis.”

“I think in a way she did,” I said. “It’s on her personal arms now, did you know?”

A white sun on Fairfax blue. If there was to be a Dartwick dynasty after me, I figured they were as good arms as any.

“My sources informed me,” Indrani mysteriously said.

The effect was somewhat spoiled by the way she groped blindly above the table to steal a few pieces of fruit I’d laid out to scarf them down noisily. Well, that and we both knew that by sources she just meant Hakram. The gossipy bitch.

“After Zeze pulled out that echo of the sun in Hainaut, people started telling the story again,” I mused. “Pretty sure it’s spreading quicker than it naturally should, too.”

Indrani’s head popped over the edge of the table, brown face openly curious.

“Hakram’s building her a legend?” she asked.

“He probably is,” I said, “but I don’t think it’s entirely natural, if you catch my drift.”

Names could form in a lot of ways, but one was the most common: like a boulder rolling downhill, gathering weight and momentum. In that moment in Hainaut, when the hour had been at its darkest and she’d ridden out to turn the tide, I believed Vivienne had sown the first seeds of a Name. I had mixed feelings about that, to be honest. It would be the final nail in my hopes of having the Liesse Accord ban Named rulers, should my guess turned out accurate. But if I was going to trust anyone Named with my home, it’d be Vivienne Dartwick. And the chances of that measure going through are getting slimmer by the day, so I might just have to water my wine there.

“I did notice people called her a princess even before you made that official,” Indrani said. “But it can be a thin line between the start of a Name and simple reputation.”

I grunted in agreement.

“Pretty sure I’m standing in its way, whatever it is,” I admitted. “I think it’ll only coalesce properly when she’s got the crown.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Archer said. “You’re looking at Names and Roles of Old Callow, and sure enough she doesn’t fit those properly, but if you go simpler-”

A guard popped in his head through the tent’s flap, and I realized with mild embarrassment I’d never loosened the Night-workings I’d put around the tent. I wouldn’t even have heard it if there was a hurricane outside.

“The Concocter to speak with you, Your Majesty,” the legionary said.

Ah, good. She’d finished her tests then.

“Let her in,” I replied.

The Concocter’s appearance had changed since she’d accompanied us to Praes, which I’d been told was a regular occurrence with her. Her hair was now aquamarine blue, pulled up in a bun behind her head, with matching lips and golden-yellow eyes. Though often sullen, for once the alchemist seemed in a pleasant mood. She offered me half a bow and Indrani simply a droll look, which Archer returned with an indolent wave of her hand before helping herself to the rest of the fruit.

“Your Majesty,” the Concocter greeted me.

“Concocter,” I replied. “You have results for me?”

“I do,” she said. “Of the three products we salvaged from Sudden Abjuration before shutting it down, two proved functional in the water of the aqueduct. The amaranthine salt rock dispersed too easily, however, so I would recommend the use of the evanescent powder instead.”

I pushed down a grimace. The salt rock would have bee easier to carry and less would have been needed, but I wasn’t going to be take risks with this. Well, not more than the plan involved in the first place anyway. It, uh, wouldn’t be the safest thing I’d ever done.

“How many bags of powder will be necessary?” I asked.

“At least eight, standard Arsenal measurements,” the Concocter said after a moment, calculating in her head. “Assuming the dimensions given by Lady Sahelian are accurate.”

“They should be,” I said. “Just in case, I’d request you make us ten bags. Better to have a margin of error.”

“It can be done by tomorrow morning, if I don’t sleep,” the villainess replied, sounding almost enthusiastic the thought. “As for the breathing potions they’re already done. Four doses, as you asked.”

Good, it was all coming together. Indrani let out a noise of surprise.

“The underwater breathing brew, you actually got it working?” she asked.

“I did,” the Concocter preened.

“Damn,” Archer said, sounding impressed. “It’s been what, over ten years? Congratulations. What was missing?”

The Concocter cleared her throat, seemingly embarrassed. I could understand why.

“Powdered dragon bone,” she said.

Which made each of those four vials she’d brewed me worth more than their literal weight in gold. My pipe was dragonbone, and that little artefact alone would be enough to buy you a large mansion in Ater. Thankfully, at least part of the bill for this was being covered by the Grand Alliance. Indrani laughed at the answer and the Concocter subtly tensed.

“Yeah, not a lot of that going around Refuge,” Archer said. “Makes sense you wouldn’t have figured it out there.”

“I’d had good results with drake blood, it was a hint,” Concocter admitted. “Mind you, those pigs still drowned.”

The tension in her shoulders loosened, and I wondered if Indrani realized how precarious the entente she’d reached there still was. Having the Silver Huntress in camp had been as much a help as hindrance there. Cocky and Alexis tended to argue when left to their own devices, and the Concocter then often sought out Indrani, but the Silver Huntress was openly resentful of that and it was leading to friction between the three – Archer wasn’t the kind of woman who took kindly to being snipped at when she didn’t believe she deserved it.

“Encouraging,” I drily said, and she looked a little embarrassed for a moment.

“It’ll work, Your Majesty, I tested it myself,” the Concocter said.

“Your work has given me no reason to doubt you,” I calmly said. “Kindly send me word as soon as you’ve finished preparing the powder.”

The other villain understood it as the dismissal it was, and after the usual round of courtesies she was on her way out. I’d kept Indrani’s attention, though. I’d figured mention of the water breathing potion would do the trick.

“So, I see you’ve got plans,” Archer said. “Going somewhere, Cat?”

“I am,” I said. “And taking people with me, too.”

“Oh?” Indrani said, with transparently affected nonchalance.

The potion would be a new experience, something she craved like a drunkard craved the bottle, and on top of that she knew I wouldn’t be mauling my treasury paying for those for just any old place. I was going somewhere interesting, and she wanted in. Which made it good thing I’d planned to bring her from the start. While I could have teased her and strung this out, I decided to reward her having interacted with a fellow pupil of Ranger without anyone getting angry or bitter.

I was going to train it into her, I swore.

“Hey,” I asked with a winning smile, “wanna to come with me and Akua to rob a secret Sahelian vault full of horrors beyond comprehension?”

She choked in surprise and delight, hazelnut eyes alight with pleasure.

“You say the sweetest things sometimes,” Indrani grinned.

—

There was no one in the world like the Soninke and their highborn gloried in that.

Our party had come to the orchard first so that we would be able to look for traps before High Lord Sargon arrived. Hierophant led a mage cadre in combing through the spread of tall lemon trees, boots crinkling against the dry earth as the sun pounded down on all our heads. There was not so much as a hint of breeze today, the heat was suffocating. We’d agreed on bringing no more than thirty guards each, so twenty knights of the Order of Broken Bells sat the saddle in good order behind me. Inside those shells of polished and hymn-inscribed steel they must be cooking alive, but they made for an impressive sight. Decked in plate from head to toe, their chargers wearing carapace in black and bronze, they kept their shields close and their lances raised. Their banner hung by my own, dead for the lack of wind.

Masego had wandered off to sit under a tree after looking around, popping open a book larger than my head in what looked like an older dialect of Mthethwa, which left Akua and I to stand under the shade of a tall lemon tree halfway through the orchard. She had decided to wear my colours, today. The dress was a long one, going down to her feet, and it was of a traditional Wolof cut: the neckline was narrow and though it went beyond her collarbone it did not venture far. It clung loosely to her body, tied up at the waist by two sleeves of cloth that were part of the dress. It was black, though from the top of her collarbones to well below her tight there was broad silver-and-gold embroidery. It looked almost like a stole, though it was part of the dress, and the intricate patterns there matched those at the end of her sleeves and the cloth tied around her waist.

There was, as had become her habit, not a single piece of jewelry on her.

Stunning as she was, I might as well have worn rags for the difference it’d make. Still, I’d humoured the notion of royal splendour: though I wore a breastplate and greaves, because I wasn’t a fool, I’d put my hair in a long braid and worn my crown. The Mantle of Woe and my staff served as the regalia of my rule, truer to me than anything I might have dragged out of some dusty Fairfax vault, and instead of an aketon I had worn a thick black tunic touched with silverwork around the edges. Nothing as intricate as what Akua had on her, but then my bloody clothing wasn’t made out thin air. We made a memorable enough sight, I figured, and drew the eye enough that the little surprise I’d kept up my sleeve shouldn’t be noticed.

Then Sargon Sahelian’s party came riding into the orchard, and it was an effort not to stare.

All thirty of the high lord’s bodyguards were mounted on pale horses, a breed short-backed with a high-set tail, but little of the coat could be seen: long quilted armour in red, black and white covered them all the way down to the lower leg. The patterns were eye-pleasing, sharp triangles and long stripes colourful enough the thin strands of copper woven into the quilt were hard to make out. Enchanted, I thought. Those were definitely enchanted. The riders themselves were no less splendid. Their segmented steel lamellar bore a single pauldron on the right shoulder lined with lion’s fur, while from the left hung a long sash whose patterns matched those of horse’s armour – if you did not pay attention, your eye might be tricked in thinking them a single creature.

They each bore a spear, a shield, and curved sword and three javelins. All glittered with rubies and ivory. Light cavalry, I thought. They’d break under a charge of my knights, but my men would die of exhaustion before catching up and those javelins looked nasty. Javelins could punch through plate, if you knew how to throw them. Ornate helmets added the final touch, rounded tops bearing bright red feathers with an eye-catching mouthguard made of two ivory tusks atop a coloured veil of mail.

Splendid as they were, though, the soldiers were nothing to the three nobles that had come. To the sides of Sargon Sahelian were mage nobility, amber-eyed and smiling. Over silk coats they wore breastplates entirely decorative – they went only halfway to the belly – but beautifully crafted, inlaid with gold filigree and rib-like white enamel stripes. They wore gorgeous red cloaks bordered in gold, and at their sides were jewel-encrusted swords too pristine to have ever seen use. Each wore a king’s ransom of artefacts as earrings and bracelets, necklaces and trinkets. Beautiful and poisonous, they laughed as they pressed forward their horses.

The High Lord of Wolof made them both look like beggars. For half a heartbeat I thought he had dressed severely, a simple painted scale armour over a red coat, but then the ‘scale’ caught the light. It wasn’t painted, I realized. It was made of precious stones, every last scale: garnets and tourmaline and rubies, sapphires of every tone and colour, onyx and chalcedonies and amethysts. I found the sheer waste fascinating, in a repulsive sort of way. The hem and sleeves of his coat were embroidered with black and white maze-like patterns that were dizzying to look at – enchanted, probably – while High Lord Sargon’s shoulder-length black hair was flecked with pale feathers longer than any bird I knew could grow.

Golden eyed like his cousin, the High Lord of Wolof rode in the shadow of the lemon trees and his retinue followed. The dappled light danced lightly across the colours, making it seem as if they shivered like waves on a pond, and my breath caught in my throat at the sight of them all. Beautiful and terrible, as Akua had once proclaimed at the Doom. There really was no one in the world like the Soninke, was there? Sometimes, about some things, their arrogance was not unwarranted. One of the two nobles peeled ahead of the rest, reining in his mount thirty feet or so away from us. I felt the weight of his gaze sweeping across us for a moment before he offered a short bow.

“You stand before High Lord Sargon Sahelian of Wolof, he who rules over the temples antediluvian and the vaults of forbidden knowledge,” the man announced in Mthethwa, his voice pleasantly rich. “You may kneel in awe.”

How nice of him to give us permission. We were a stiff-kneed bunch, Callowans, so no one took him up on the kind offer. To my surprise, Akua took a step forward. The noble’s eyes moved to her, gone wary the way you would when encountering a venomous snake.

“You stand before Queen Catherine Foundling of Callow, the Black Queen,” Akua announced, tone light and amused, “she who has broken gods and bargained with them, stolen the sun and contended Choirs three. Your boasts are shallow, Naiser Mutinda.”

The man sneered down at her.

“The once-proud daughter of Wolof returns a lackey,” he said. “Disappointing.”

I drummed my fingers against the side of my staff.

“You’re wasting my time,” I mildly said, staring at the man.

He hesitated but Naiser, since that seemed to be his name, wasn’t quite brave enough to mouth off to me to my face.

“High Lord Sargon blesses these talks with standing of truce,” the nobleman said.

The actual reason he’d come, this. Making sure we couldn’t take swings at each other without consequences.

“So do I,” I said. “Now let him talk for himself, lackey, before I begin to lose patience.”

“There was no need for that sort of talk, Naiser,” an urbane voice chided. “My cousin’s return is something to celebrate, not take offence to.”

Sargon Sahelian had dismounted while we entertained his man, the noblewoman to his side having followed suit, and as Naiser deferred to his liege lord I took a moment to study him more closely. The precious scale armour somehow didn’t look ridiculous when worn on foot, which surprised me, but not as much as the realization that the High Lord of Wolof wasn’t actually good looking. His chin was a little weak, the arch his eyebrows uneven and his nose too large for his face. He was far from ugly, but I’d gotten used to unearthly beauty being the norm among Wasteland aristocrats. The pageantry called attention away from it, though, and for a moment I thought of Cordelia Hasenbach.

“Do I pass muster then, Black Queen?” the High Lord of Wolof amusedly asked me.

Huh. It’d been a while since someone had called me out on studying them.

“I’m just amazed your armour doesn’t actually seem to be uncomfortable,” I replied, half-serious.

He laughed, revealing white but slightly crooked teeth.

“My great-grand uncle was vain but not foolish,” High Lord Sargon said. “He knew he’d have to wear the artefact after ordering it crafted.”

“He also ate tiger hearts for supper every other day,” Akua noted. “Let us not hasten to the conclusion of wisdom.”

While I was morbidly curious as to why anyone would eat a tiger heart, much less a regular supply of them – I bet it was a virility thing, always was with wealthy older men – Sahelian family anecdotes weren’t why I’d come out here. I lightly slapped my staff against the side of the tree I stood under, claiming their attention.

“You wanted talks, High Lord,” I said. “You have them. I recommend against wasting that chance.”

The dark-skinned aristocrat nodded, seemingly unconcerned.

“I could dance with words over Wolof not having warred on Callow under my rule, but I imagine that would go against the spirit of your recommendation,” Sargon said.

“Malicia’s my enemy,” I said. “You’re one of hers.”

If Wolof followed the Dread Empress of Praes, I would treat it accordingly.

“That is unfortunate,” Sargon said. “Though I would convey that she does not wish to be at war with you anymore than I do. She seeks to offer peace terms, Queen Catherine.”

“It’s more than a few corpses too late for that,” I sharply replied.

“Are you truly so petty you would not even listen to the terms, Catherine?”

My fingers clenched. Among the riders, one of them had taken off her helmet. It wasn’t Malicia’s real body but the cadence of the words, the presence? The body she was possessing with that ritual of hers smiled at my anger, but I didn’t let it burn hot. It went cold instead, frozen, and I raised my hand to snap my fingers. Malicia’s mouth opened, but before she could speak so much as a word there were a few flickers of light. An arrow streaked through layers of enchantments and tore right through her throat. She fell over, gurgling, and already halfway into the grave. Archer did not miss, not at this range. Even as the retinue began to raise their spears and my knights lowered their lances, I met Sargon Sahelian’s eyes.

His calm had not broken and neither had mine.

“I trust you have a good reason I shouldn’t just burn you all alive for bringing her to these talks,” I conversationally said.

He didn’t even flinch, which reluctantly raised my esteem of him a notch.

“I have on my person three artefacts known as the Weeping Snares,” Sargon replied. “They contain demons, and I have had an artificer bind all three seals to a command artefact in my possession.”

“I have the Hierophant,” I said. “Any leash you have on them will be mine before the first incantation’s finished.”

“There are no leashes on them, Catherine,” Akua quietly said. “It is why my ancestors left them in the vault instead of using them for war. They are simple containers, forged in cruder times.”

I hummed and thought for a moment, Sargon never blinking as he watched me. I could see sweat beading on the back of his neck. Not worth the risks, I eventually decided. Even should I weight that it was worth the damage to my reputation to break truce and kill the High Lord of Wolof, there was no guarantee that his successor would be more pliable – or that they’d negotiate with me at all.

“Clever,” I finally said. “Talk, then. We both know you came to make an offer.”

“You have seized Sinka and Jinon,” the High Lord said, “and this tightens the noose around my city. Yet we are each aware that Wolof could withstand a siege for longer than you can afford. I do not believe that you want to storm my walls anymore than I want them stormed, Black Queen.”

He shrugged, offering a disarming crooked smile.

“Would you be terribly offended if I offered you a bribe to go away?” he baldly asked.

It’s the teeth that give you away, Sargon, I thought. They were just one step too far. Even in Callow there were hedge mages in some cities that could straighten your teeth. There was no way that the High Lord of Wolof couldn’t get his own fixed, which meant keeping them was a choice. How many of your countrymen fell for that little smile, Sargon? Its just honest enough to trust, to believe coming out of a lesser branch’s son. How many saw it coming before you slid the knife? Aisha had warned me once, about charming Sahelians and the dooms they wrought.

“We can call them war reparations, somewhat overdue,” I mused. “I’m interested.”

“That is… pleasing to hear,” Sargon admitted.

He looked faintly relieved, though I wondered how much of it was feigned.

“I’ll want your granaries,” I idly told him, “your treasury and a pledge that Wolof will withdraw from the civil war.”

With each addition his smile grew more strained.

“Some of this can be haggled,” Sargon tried. “The last cannot. If the Webweaver is truly one of your followers now, I imagine you know why.”

Malicia had soulboxed him and was unlikely to be pleased if he abandoned her cause. Terrible torture would ensue, presumably. It was an opening I’d been waiting for, though, and half the reason I’d made the demand in the first place.

“Hierophant can cut the city off from scrying,” I said. “She wouldn’t know until much too late.”

I saw him hesitate a fraction, then push through.

“Wolof has secrets beyond the ken of Wekesa the Warlock’s knowledge, or that of his son,” Sargon said. “Your premise is untrue.”

I hid a smile. I’d given something by revealing Masego could put them in a box if I wished him to, but without knowing it he’d given me something too: he was afraid of Malicia personally, not as an abstract. Not through scrying, assuming I even believed his vague talk of secret Wolofite magics that Hierophant couldn’t dismantle. She still has another body in Wolof, I thought. My fingers clenched with something that was neither quite fear or triumph. It was too strong an investment for me to be the sole reason for it. I had put out my bait in the right place.

“It seems we’re at an impasse, then,” I shrugged.

“I can still offer great… reparations of gold and foodstuffs, Queen Catherine,” High Lord Sargon said. “Can a bargain not be had?”

“Of course – I’m a reasonable woman, High Lord Sargon,” I lied. “I just want your entire treasury and all your food.”

I paused.

“And also the armour you’re wearing,” I whimsically added. “As a polite reminder that if you ever try to bring a Named capable of mind control to truce talks again, I will brutally murder you as an object lesson.”

I was going to have to get everyone checked for hooks in their minds, which would be a pain. That’d cost him.

“Well,” High Lord Sargon muttered, “at least it is a succinct sort of extortion.”

“And to think they tell me I can’t do diplomacy,” I brightly smiled.

“I can’t imagine why,” Sargon amiably replied, not batting an eye. “I will have to discuss your terms with my advisors, Queen Catherine. Perhaps negotiations can resume at a later date.”

I shrugged.

“If you want,” I said. “Until then, I’m under oath to offer you an exchange for the prisoners taken in Jinon. As you have none of mine imprisoned to trade, I’ve set ransoms instead. Akua?”

She offered the scroll, which without hesitation the High Lord of Wolof took. He unfolded it, eyes scanning the lines. I’d set truly extortionate rates, ten year’s pay for every soldier and officer as well as massive lump sums for every highborn. Even for someone as wealthy as the High Lord of Wolof, it’d be a costly racket. My bet was on him bringing home only the highborn, part of the reason I’d jacked up their ransoms on principle. The rest was that I had a godsdamned war to pay for, and it wasn’t going to pay for itself.

“Yes,” Sargon Sahelian briskly said. “I’ll send the sum to your camp by cart before nightfall. I trust you will return them to the city at the earliest convenience.”

I hid my surprise, but not quite quickly enough he didn’t notice it.

“We’re a greedy breed, Sahelians,” the High Lord crookedly smiled. “The coin I’ll make again in time, Black Queen. People are not so easily replaced.”

Huh. That was the closest to respect I’d felt for him all day, even knowing he might be playing me. The talks ended without further ceremony, and it was in a pensive mood that I rode back to camp. I felt like I’d missed something, though I couldn’t put my finger on what.

So far, we hadn’t missed a beat.

—

I woke up in the middle of the night to the screams and smoke.

Chapter 5: Incursion

“The Heavens pick the victor, my friends, but the Hells detail the aftermath. How else can it be explained that when a battle is won we most commend the general – that is, the only man in the army that can be relied on not to have picked up a weapon?”

– Captain Thierry the Acerbic, addressing his company before the Battle of the Twelve Routs

It was tempting to just run out sword in hand to find out what was happening, but I resisted the urge. I’d learned the hard way that recklessness could have permanent costs – like half someone’s total supply of eyes, for example. I put up my hair in a loose ponytail and strapped on my armour, not without fumbling, and only after putting on a helmet did I finally limp out. Sword at my hip and deadwood staff in hand, I looked out into the night and found entire swaths to the south of my camp aflame. Had Sargon played me with the ransom payment? It shouldn’t be. Hierophant had inspected the ingots personally and they were in a warded pit anyway. It made no sense either, considering I hadn’t even given him back his prisoners yet. I’d kept them overnight as a precaution against foul play and he had to know I might hang them as an object lesson if he tried something.

Sargon Sahelian hadn’t struck me as the kind of man who pissed away either gold or lives.

I made my way to the tent closest to mine, where Adjutant had placed a station of his adjunct secretariat, but there were no phalanges there. I found a line of regulars hurrying south through the dirt avenue passing by my tent, however, and wasted no time approaching the lieutenant in charge. A young Taghreb, no older than twenty and rosy -cheeked.

“Your Majesty,” he breathed out, before snapping into a more professional salute.

“Lieutenant,” I said. “What’s happening? I’m not hearing the alarm wards.”

“Our wards are down, ma’am,” he replied. “All of them. And we’re under attack by giants.”

Our wards were down? I felt a shiver of unease. Not even the Dead King had managed that so easily. The mention of giants, though, had me skeptical. I seriously doubted the Gigantes had anything to do with this. Ogres, though, I’d be willing to believe. I had less than a tenth of ogres left in the entire Army of Callow – our campaigns had not been kind, and none lost were ever replaced – but the Dread Empire would not be so limited. That would mean a Legion raid, which did nothing to settle my discomfort. I’d learned enough at the feet of the Legions of Terror to know how brutally skilled they were at what they did.

“What did they hit?” I asked.

“I don’t know, Your Majesty,” the lieutenant admitted. “My orders are just to head at the southern rally point with my line and await further orders.”

I smothered my irritation. It wasn’t his fault I wasn’t aware of what was going on and taking it out on the kid would help no one.

“Let’s go then, lieutenant,” I evenly said. “There’s no time to waste.”

I pulled at Night – and how crisply it came now that dusk had passed, almost as easily as before the Ruination – and killed the pain in my bad leg so I would be able to keep up with the brisk pace of the legionaries. We passed through a sparsely manned checkpoint, but there was no way the sergeant in charge would know more than the lieutenant I was with so I pushed on. At the second checkpoint, I found Adjutant waiting for me. He was armed and armoured, with an axe in his dead hand and a broad shield in his steel one.

“Catherine,” he gravelled. “Apologies, by the time my phalanges reached your tent you’d already left.”

I waved it away and didn’t bother to ask how he’d known where I would go. There were lines between us where there once had been none, but he was still my Adjutant.

“What’s happening?” I bluntly asked.

“The Legions of Terror are hitting us,” Hakram gravelled. “Less than a hundred, nearly all ogres. They gated out of Twilight a foot away from the outer palisade and smashed through, then used some sort of artefact that fried our wards. Hierophant and Akua are working on getting them up again.”

“Fuck,” I eloquently said. “Do we know what they’re after?”

“They split into two forces,” Adjutant said. “The one lighting the fires is going straight for our supplies and Juniper’s mustering men to drive them out. The other force – smaller, we think – is headed west.”

My eyes narrowed. West had Sargon’s soldiers and the rest of the warded pits we’d dug. Was this a rescue operation? That made little sense. The High Lord of Wolof had already paid their ransom and they’d be handed over come morning. Something didn’t fit, and that made the second force the odd hand. The one to watch out for.

“That’s the one we’ll intercept,” I decided. “Where’s Archer?”

“She’s-”

“Disappointed you didn’t hear her coming, is what she is,” Indrani drawled.

My hand was halfway to my sword when I recognize her voice, and my muscles stayed tense until she’d moved out from the tent she’d used as cover for her approach. There was some alarm as legionaries began to notice her, but it didn’t last long. She was a known quantity for my soldiers.

“That’s what we have you for,” I retorted. “Vivienne, Huntress, the kids?”

“Vivienne is with Juniper,” Hakram said.

“Alexis went to guard Cocky,” Indrani said. “I’m not sure for the kids.”

For a moment I almost sent Adjutant to look for them – he had the right aspect to Find the needle in the haystack – but I held back. He might see it as him being sent away from the fight, one which would be hard enough without shedding off a third of our Named before we started.

“Send one of yours to Vivienne,” I ordered Hakram. “I want them kept from getting into too much trouble.”

Entirely out of trouble was sadly more than could be reasonably asked for, given that they were Named. Hakram nodded and saw to it, even as I checked my gear one last time. I made a note to have a bag of goblin munitions prepared for me and kept in my tent. Now that Scribe’s scheme had paid off and we’d essentially bought out High Lady Wither’s stocks of munitions – with the blessing of the Matrons, who saw it as weakening her military strength even if our grain helped her maintain control in the short term – I could afford to start using them again. The moment Adjutant was back we headed out together, moving fast. Since our wards were down and we had an idea of where our enemies were headed, we took a shortcut through the Ways to try to intercept. We sidled through instead of using a gate, since Indrani found us a path in moments, and it allowed us to skip over all the barricades, checkpoints and mustering soldiers.

The advantage of fighting people as tall as ogres was that, given the average height of tents in our camp, we could easily see them from a distance. Within moments of leaving Twilight I had my eyes on maybe twenty towering silhouettes, all decked in pitch-black plate engraved with runes and wielding massive flanged maces. Those were not Legion heavies, not any kind I’d ever seen.

“Archer, go around,” I said, already pulling at the Night. “Begin on my signal.”

“Gotcha,” she said, pulling down her hood.

She slipped into the shadows, swift-footed even as she began to string her bow.

“Adjutant,” I said, shaping the Night, “I want you to bait them. Take the front and draw them in.”

“Warlord,” Hakram replied, flashing his fangs happily.

I finished the last touch on the ‘eye’ of Night I’d made and threw it up in the air. A shadow on black, it remained unseen to our foes even as I closed my physical eye and made myself see through that one. It didn’t tell me much more about the enemy force itself, but it did give me a bird’s eye view of them moving around the camp. They’re not headed towards the prisoners, I realized. They’d walked right past an avenue that led to their pit, and I doubted it was because of the two lines of regulars manning the palisade around the prison pit. They were after something else and moving like they knew they layout. Which they would, of course, since the Army of Callow pretty much used the Legion layout with a few modifications. It sunk in a moment later.

The ransom. It was further east in a guarded pit as well, and the group – twenty-one ogres and two humans, I counted – would soon get to an avenue that’d lead them straight there. But why the Hells would Malicia care about the gold? The empress still collected taxes from most of Praes, she was positively rolling around in coin she couldn’t spend for lack of friendly neighbours. I set the question aside for now, as I had more urgent cats to skin. I checked Adjutant was on the right path to reach the enemy, which he was, and then prepared to disperse the eye. There was no point in even trying to find Archer, I knew that from experience.

Then the night lit up with a flash of sorcery as streaks of flame hit one of the lead ogres, scarring the black plate, and I caught sight of two small humans getting in the way of the enemy.

“Fuck,” I cursed.

The kids were there and getting in over their heads. These weren’t Bones or a handful of necromantic monsters, they were a well-armed Legion strike team. I broke into a run without hesitation, knowing that if I lingered for too long they might be dead by the time I arrived. So much for springing an ambush. Calling on Night, I formed a rough wedge of power in front of me and ran straight through the tents in my way. It was a quick approach but not a subtle one, as was made clear when one of the ogres grabbed a javelin the size of a small tree and threw it my way.

I twisted the Night into a different working, catching the weapon in flight and turning it around before tossing it back. A miss, I saw, but hopefully it’d discourage a repeat. I formed another wedge and immediately another ogre threw a javelin at me. I cursed, resorting to the same trick and this time scoring a glancing blow against an ogre’s breastplate. They weren’t trying to kill me, I grasped, they were slowing me down. The bastards weren’t even intending to fight us, were they? They’d just do what they’d come for and then retreat.

Gods but I hated fighting against well-trained soldiers.

Thankfully, I could fall back onto the sage lessons of my childhood: if the other guy had a better plan, you just had to sock them in the face real hard until they forgot it. I abandoned the idea of the relatively harmless wedge and instead of drew deep on the Night, waves of heat emanating from me as I formed a massive ball of blackflame and tossed it in a straight line in front of me. It burned through tents and barricades, clearing me a straight path and smashing into one of the ogres. Even as I ran, my brow knotted when the flames cleared and I saw my working hadn’t actually broken the ogre’s plate. It’d blackened it further, half-melted it, but the fire had only gone through the armour’s visor. It was still enough to have the soldier screaming and clawing at his face.

Archer put an arrow between the hands and straight into the skull a moment later, dropping the ogre.

I unsheathed my sword as I crossed the last of the distance separating me from the melee, the flash of flames flickering at the edge of my sight and bathing the silhouette of the closest ogre in light. The great flanged mace rose, and Night or not there would be no parrying that. I struck out with my staff, black flames boiling out of the top as I aimed for the visor again, but I was forced to abandon the working when another ogre used drove a javelin like a spear into my flank. I hastily backpedalled out of range, almost eating the mace blow from the first as I did. Redirecting the black flame into striking the side of the mace’s head got me out of it, but the ground shook as the flanged head tore into the earth besides me. Worse yet, more and more of the ogres were converging on me.

A few I could handle, but ten? That was going to get tricky.

Then Adjutant came out swinging from their left flank a heartbeat later, proving once more that splendid timing was written into his very Role. The surprise earned me a moment to shape Nigh,t in between ducking away from a wild mace swing, and I threw up another eye so that I could see through it and grasp the lay of the entire melee. It was only the beginning. Power coursed richly through my veins even as I saw one of the ogres draw back his arm to throw a javelin, but I grit my teeth and kept weaving my miracle. My eye in the sky stayed focused on my enemy’s arm, spellbound. Almost there, I thought, watching as the plate-covered arm flexed and the tree-sized javelin went flying. I breathed in and out, listening to the instincts trained into my body by years of war.

A half-step to the side, the movement precise enough I felt the steel head of the javelin brush against my side, but I’d done it. I was finished.

“Bang,” I grinned, staff coming down against the floor in a strike.

I kept the eye for just a second, long enough to place the ten orbs I was capable of handling at one time. Night formed out of thin air in front of ten visored faces, looking like spinning orbs for half a heartbeat before they burst and air was sucked in. I’d first used the air explosion trick against demons at the Arsenal, but I’d improved it in the months since. This time, at the heart of the ‘orb’ there was a seed of blackflame. The air getting sucked in pulled in the ten ogres, just in time for the blackflame to grow unstable and explode in their faces along with the sharp burst of air. The result was a brutal blow of physical strength and fire that dented the visors before delivering the blackflame through the opening. Most of the ten died instantly and those that didn’t began to scream in pain.

From the corner I saw Adjutant take a blow on his shield, aspect pulsing as he withstood the strength as if it were a breeze. He struck with perfect timing as the ogre withdrew, toppling his foe down into an already-trampled tent. He had that under control, I decided. I could push through to the kids.

I ran past a slowly falling ogre, clutching at her broken and burning face, and as she struck the ground behind me like a small earthquake I found myself frowning. There had been two humans earlier, mages presumably, but I couldn’t see them in the melee at the moment. Where – the only warning I got was the feeling of the air being moved, and I wasn’t quite quick enough. My staff was struck as I got pushed away, the silhouette of an ogre coming into sight for a flickering second as I was blown of my feet and my staff went clattering in the distance. Fuck, I thought, rolling away as I felt the air move again and the ground was hammered in front of me. One of the mages was using illusionary enchantments. I rose back to my feet lurching about, grasping a handful of Night and throwing it blindly ahead.

It stuck, as I’d hoped, and a blotch of darkness appeared on what looked like the side of the mace trying to smash me to bits. It’d do. Slicing behind me with my blade, I opened a gate into the Ways and stepped through. I glimpsed greenery and felt gentle wind before crossing back into a warm Wasteland night, coming out on the side of the mace I’d tagged and spinning out chords of Night. I hooked them around the mace, forcing it and the ogre back into flickering visibility, and then wrapped the chords around the shoulders and helmet of the ogre. Hands tight on the bonds I twisted, Night obeying my will as the ogre struggled to keep the mace away from their helmeted head and I tightened the noose. I was cheating, of course. It wasn’t strength I was using to tighten the chords but willpower, weaving Night, and the limits on my will were lesser than those on the soldiers’ body.

With a third twist of the wrist I tightened the chords into a vise and the side of the mace went through the helmet with a loud crunch. I wasn’t sure how far it’d gone into the skull beneath it, but the ogre was out of the fight regardless. That freed me to go forward, where I saw Arthur Foundling being battered down with brutal efficiency by an ogre. His shield was already a crumpled ruin and one of his shoulders obviously broken. The Apprentice was shooting darts of fire and spears of lightning at the ogre, but all it did was slow them some. Not even a mark was left on the armour, which had me staring. Even enchanted plate would have marks after that, and my heartbeat quickened when I saw the ogre kick Squire in the stomach when Arthur tried to slide behind them.

He’d been moving with Name quickness, unnaturally swift, but his opponent had begun moving the exact moment he did. No one was that fast without a Name, I knew, without leaning on that set of reflexes that came with a martial Role. From the corner of my eye I saw an arrow hit a man in the throat, the spell he’d been halfway through – aimed at Adjutant’s back – dying with him, but I looked past the corpse and found that four ogres were covering the last mage’s hasty retreat. I moved to the side, climbing over an ogre corpse to get a better vantage, and cursed. The pit where we’d left the ransom gold was now empty. They’d brought a caster that could use High Arcana and shoved all the ingots into a pocket dimension, the tricky fuckers.

As if I’d allow that. I drew on Night.

I heard Arthur Foundling scream as he was smashed into a barricade by a blow, and for a heartbeat I weighed the choice. The gold might keep a lot of my people alive, keep them fed and armed for the war on Keter, and the Squire was still a potential threat to Vivienne in the coming years. If I pursued the last mage instead now… The thought was ugly, but ugly wasn’t enough to stay my hand anymore. I needed better than that – Name, I thought, mind racing. He was in a fight of Named, one he’d stumbled into through heroic providence. That could be a potent tool, used right. Eye tearing away from the fleeing mage, I broke into a run. Ribbons of lightning struck at the back of the tall ogre with impotent fury, making the enchanted steel glow but little more as I shaped Night into thick tendrils.

The looming ogre raised their mace as the Squire rolled to the side, grasping for his sword. He’d be too slow. The flanged mace came down and the boy’s face paled but his fingers closed around the handle of his blade anyway. He’d die trying. Or not die at all, preferably. I struck out, tendrils of shadows layered over my arm like some sort of skeletal armature, and the strength of it was just enough to slap aside the mace before it could crush the boy’s skull. I stood between the two of them, Night wafting off me like smoke as I prepared another trick, and cocked an eyebrow.

“So Malicia’s picked up a Named,” I said. “Which one are you, I wonder?”

Our foe – a woman, I glimpsed through the visor – did not answer. She raised her mace again, drawing back to make space for a swing, but I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth.

“Not Warlock,” I mused, “or you would have seen that coming.”

The Night-smoke I’d had trailing along the ground solidified around her feet as shackles, so when she finished the movement of striking the imbalance tripped her. I stepped to the side as she began to topple forward, tapping the side of my sword against Arthur’s flank tell him he should follow suit. An arrow whistled, aimed straight at the gap in the plate between the neck and the helmet, but with unnatural deftness the massive mace swept up to bat the killing blow away just before the ogress hit the ground face first.

“Martial, and not a transitional Name if you have control that fine,” I noted.

I raised my sword, calling Night to it even as the ogre grunted with effort and burst through my shackles with brute strength. And yet I was not worried in the slightest. I knew, somehow I just knew, that the timing would work out perfectly. I could see it as if it were written in the air, as if it were inevitable. As if some grinning devils down Below had put their coin on me and their fingers on the scale to match.

I was following my Role, and so the tide of Creation was on my side.

“None of that,” I chided my foe, bringing my blade down on her back as she tried to raise.

The Night struck out from the point of my sword like a needle, shattering the backplate, and then like cracks of ice my power went skittering in every direction and shattered the enchanted steel. The ogre was smashed back down into the ground. I heard bones break and froze in surprise. I’d not hit her that hard, not for a Named, and that was the moment if fell into place. My limbs grown strong with the touch of my growing Name, I moved forward and flipped over the gasping ogre. She did not resist, broken. I stripped off her helmet and a single look at those dark eyes was enough to confirm my suspicion: the power in there was fading. Not because I’d killed its wielder, but because I’d damaged the vessel too badly.

“Black Knight,” I greeted. “So what’s the aspect you’re using, I wonder – something like Deputize, Mandate?”

I wrinkled my nose.

“No, you’re clearly Legion,” I said. “You’re using mostly ogres, too, so I’d guess you’re Marshal Nim. ‘Commission’, maybe?”

It clearly wasn’t her full strength she’d put in the body, else the kids would be dead twice over. The ogress hacked out a cough, dying, and I sighed. Wouldn’t get anything out of her. I sheathed my sword, but halfway through the gesture the almost-corpse suddenly lunged. A single massive hand reached over my shoulder, grasping the Squire’s throat behind me, and she began to squeeze – I felt horror swell, I wouldn’t be quick enough with the Night I was reaching for – she went still. It was not luck that did it, but the eerily silent arrow Archer had loosed that went through her eye. I roughly dragged Arthur away by the scruff of his neck as the body dropped, the boy moaning in pain. As well he should, he was basically a mass of bruises and bloody wounds. He sagged against the ground.

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” he got out. “I owe you-”

“Nothing,” I cut in, tone sharper than I meant it to be.

I refused to feel guilty. I was long past the luxury of clean choices, and just because today I’d chosen to keep him alive didn’t meant that tomorrow would see me make the same decision. The boy looked like I’d slapped him and I sighed again.

“Consider this a wake-up call,” I said. “This is what fighting with real Named and not Revenant puppets feels like. The Black Knight on the other side used a single aspect, not even in her real body, and she still nearly pulped you.”

“You’re not going to tell me it was foolish to fight?” the boy asked.

“It wasn’t a foolish fight, you just fought foolishly,” I corrected. “You likely saved a lot of soldiers’ lives by stepping in, the part that needs work is the one where you almost died doing it. You won’t be helping anyone when you’re in a grave, maybe keep that in mind.”

“Nothing we did got through her defences,” Arthur admitted. “Even at our best we were simply holding on.”

And in that sentence, in the anger – the unspoken urge to do better next time, the certainty that there would be a next time – I saw an opportunity. A tool. And I was enough of a monster to make use of it, even when I was using a boy barely more than a child.

“So prepare yourself,” I challenged. “Train. Make tactics.”

He was silent for a moment, exhausted and in pain, but eventually his blue eyes went steely. He nodded, brushing back a black lock stained with sweat and blood.

“I won’t lose, next time,” Arthur Foundling swore.

And with those words I’d invited, with the weight of them spoken by his lips, I knew I had made myself a sword. Because unless I was wrong, a Squire and a Black Knight had just fought. And the Squire had begun that fledgling, fragile pattern with a defeat.

If I stoked those embers just right, that story would end with my enemy’s blood on the floor.

—

In the wee hours of the morning, I sat with Vivienne and Juniper to go over the butcher’s bill. The good news was that, as far as dead bodies went, our losses were light.

“Ninety-three dead,” the Hellhound said. “Most of them regulars. We can thin some cohorts to make up for it, we still have the numbers to absorb that.”

“And we inflicted eighty-two casualties ourselves,” Vivienne noted. “Considering it was a surprise attack fielding almost entirely ogres, we made off decently in that regard.”

I grunted in agreement. The attacked had escaped, but not without taking losses equivalent to about eight out of ten.

“We’ll see if Masego can crack the enchantments on the armours,” I said. “It’s unlikely there will be enough of those to equip more than a handful of elite units, but that would be troublesome enough on its own.”

I got grimaces of agreement. Ogres were bloody difficult to kill, unless you had either magic or munitions to deploy against them. It was a clever decision for Marshal Nim to focus on stripping the sorcery option from us, considering the Army of Callow had been in chronic munition deficit for essentially its entire existence.

“Losses in supplies were not as grave as they could have been,” Juniper continued. “We changed the layout of the supply depots compared to standard Legion camp templates-”

She had, actually, making a point of it before we began marching, but my marshal wasn’t the boasting type.

“-so our current tallies have the losses mostly in dried meat and grain, about a third of our total stock,” she continued. “If our numbers stay roughly the same, Catherine, we’re now down to roughly four months of food.”

From six to four, huh. Four months for an army that could use the Ways was a very different beast than for an army that couldn’t, but this had still been uncomfortably costly. A lot of food had gone up in flame tonight.

“If you had to guess,” I said, “were they able to figure out what our total amount of supplies would be?”

She flicked her fangs uneasily.

“It’s likely,” Juniper admitted. “They might be slightly off, but the quantities were roughly even between depots and there are only so many places in a camp to put those.”

Which meant that by morning High Lord Sargon would know that we couldn’t afford to siege Wolof if we were going to do anything else this campaign season. There just wasn’t enough food in our possession to spend months besieging him and then war elsewhere. In other words, our negotiating position with him had just been dealt a severe blow.

“We’ll hit Wolof tomorrow, then,” I said. “There’s no more time to waste. The moment the Concocter is done with the powder I’ll set out.”

“It’d be for the best,” Juniper agreed.

“Sargon’s unlikely to ask for talks when he has the advantage, so in a way this lends us an additional dose of discretion,” Vivienne noted. “Yet that brings me to the last of our outstanding issues: the prisoners for Wolof.”

“They’ve been ransomed,” I said, though my tone was neutral.

It wasn’t a commitment so much as a statement. The High Lord of Wolof had paid the gold I’d asked for, and promptly too.

“We don’t have that ransom anymore,” Juniper said, “and it was taken by his empress. That’s on him too.”

It was, I wouldn’t disagree with that.

“You want to keep them?” I asked.

“That or hang them,” Juniper bluntly said. “We’ve been taken for a ride, Catherine. Maybe a point needs to be made.”

“I don’t think Sargon actually has anything to do with this,” I admitted. “This has all the telltale marks of a Legion operation and he would have no pull there. This seems like an attack by Marshal Nim on our supplies that got a secondary objective tacked on.”

“Malicia would gain from our going back on our word here,” Vivienne said. “It would make Praesi lords warier of striking bargains with us.”

My eyes narrowed as I followed the threads.

“She wins if we give them over too,” I spoke through gritted teeth. “Rubies to piglets that ransom gold is going straight back to Sargon’s coffers, and very publicly. She’d be proving she can score victories against us and that she’s still protecting her vassals.”

Hells, the way it neatly landed her a win no matter what we did had me more convinced this was a Malicia ploy than anything else I’d heard tonight. It was exactly the kind of plot she liked use. I passed a hand through my hair tiredly.

“We release them come dawn, as I promised,” I finally said. “I’d rather let her flash her feathers than risk burning bridges we’ll need to cross when treaties are made.”

For all that I’d come here with an army, it wasn’t conquest I was after. And if I started letting Malicia bait me into hanging prisoners, she’d keep doing that until Praesi considered me not worth negotiating with. Or I’ll have to let things ago after taking a hard stance the first time and changing tacks will make me look witless. Fucking Malicia. She really was a devil to deal with, when she had a good general to play off of. I could only imagine how much worse it would be if she still had Black under her. Angry as I was at how we’d been had, I mastered myself. Fine, she’d stuck a knife in us and it had stung. This was the kind of game she most excelled at and we were in her own backyard.

Tomorrow, we’d do things my way.

Chapter 6: Retaliation

“And so a great host came to stand before the Sererian Walls, led by four kings and three queens who meant to raise Aslam Isbili as king over Wolof. Their envoys were scorned by High Lady Akua of the Sahelians, and so in great anger did they storm her walls. Seven times and one was the army driven back, broken by sorcery until corpses stood tall as hills. Only then did High Lady Akua answer the envoys, speaking thus: ‘Have you come to win a crown, or lose seven?’”

– Extract from the Scroll of Ruin, twenty-fifth of the Secret Histories of Praes

There were eleven different secret passages into the city of Wolof and all of them were traps.

Akua had told me that one of her distant ancestors, after discovering several made by disloyal vassals aiming to overthrow the Sahelians, had decided instead of walling them up to make several more. High Lord Kofi had then seeded rumours about their existence, fake traitors and secret scrolls, and sat back waiting for all his enemies to come at him by where he’d see them coming. The number of passages had grown over the years as people outwitted Sahelians for a time, but in the wake of those victories the family always reclaimed the fresh weakness and added it to their centuries-old ploy. I’d been halfway to admiring High Lord Kofi, until Akua noted he was also famous for his habit of throwing one of his cousins in a maze every summer solstice. Along with starved lions. It kept everyone on their toes, he’d claimed.

Praesi.

If there were no secret passages to use and storming the walls was too costly for us, then that left us few options to enter the city. Sneaking in as part of a delegation had been considered, but we’d be watched like hawks and likely kept under wards the whole time. Assuming we weren’t just betrayed. Pickler had narrowed in on the aqueduct that fed the city as our way in, but her suggestion had been… overly bold. She’d wanted us to cut the water and send in goblins with munitions through the stone channel. They’d blow their way through the wards at the end and we’d funnel troops into that foothold by the dry aqueduct, taking enough of the city by surprise that Sargon was forced to either negotiate or suffer a sack. Problem was, I had my doubts that we could secure that foothold.

The aqueduct whose source was deep in the Jinon Hills was squatted over by the fortress of the same name, then whipped across the valley in straight line, but welcoming it into Wolof was yet another set of fortifications. The Sahelians weren’t fools, they’d known the running water was the weakness in their wards. The place was fortified thoroughly and garrisoned through day and night: even if we did take the soldiers there by surprise, I figured it was a toss up whether we’d win the fight. And if we lost it, well, that’d get bloody. So a somewhat quieter way in was needed, which had led me to our current scheme. Namely, my old Everdark crew resurrected for one more jaunt: a more subtle infiltration of the city through the same weakness Pickler had identified.

I’d needed the Concocter to make it feasible, since without the ability to breathe in water that was a very long swim, but those vials and ransacking through the remains of the old Sudden Abjuration project had gotten me the right tools. Cordelia had been the one to most benefit from the emptying of the Arsenal, since she’d been able to take all the half-finished projects and throw them at the Dead King on various fronts, but taking the Concocter east had paid dividends for me. I knew the First Prince appreciated me not drawing too heavy on the pool of heavy hitters among Named, too. She’d not be so grateful if she knew I’d not shortchanged myself in the slightest, simply picking mine for stories instead of raw war potential. The Barrow Sword so that I could tie him up with the Blood, all of Ranger’s surviving pupils for when it inevitably came to blows with her, two kids approaching the time of their transition into a more settled Named – hanging swords I could bring down, pulling at the right strings. It was a pretty little arsenal, though it would not be of use here in Wolof.

No, here it was an older company that’d be taking the field again.

“I’d always imagined that if I crossed the Sererian Walls again it would either be as Empress or as bones,” Akua said, eyeing the shape of the city in the distance.

“Well, you’re slightly bones,” Indrani mused. “You know, in a poetic sense.”

“Ah, bones,” the woman who had once been the heiress to Wolof drawled. “Those famously incorporeal body parts.”

She made her shape turn shadowy for a moment to hammer the point home before returning to her usual guise.

“Poetry’s all about metaphors, Heirloom Haunt,” Indrani sneered. “It’s a mark of your inferior education you don’t know that.”

Akua’s face creased with what appeared to be genuine outrage.

“You were raised in the woods,” she replied.

“I guess it must just be the gap between our natural talents, then,” Indrani airily replied.

“There was a time where I would have had had you drowned for that sentence,” Akua noted.

“Well,” Indrani said, eyeing the aqueduct. “Day’s young. Give it a shot.”

Idly, I wondered if it was too late to replace one of them by Hakram. Sure, given how much metal he wore these days he’d swim about as well as a rock but I was having to weigh the prospect of dragging him along the bottom the whole time against at least a day of this.

Convenience narrowly won out.

“All right, let’s get this going,” I said. “The timing will get tricky if we linger.”

I got a mocking salute from Archer and a graceful nod of acknowledgement from Akua, sparing one last look for the distant shape of Wolof before I left. The ramparts up here did have an amazing view during the day. We headed down into the belly of the beast, and I split from them to have a short conversation with the commander leading the garrison. He confirmed that Hierophant was already getting started on his ritual, which meant we needed to get going. I ordered him to get the gears moving and followed my companions below, to the source feeding the aqueduct.

It was bare-bones, for such a crucial location, a cube of stone split in the middle by a rectangular ‘river’ that fed into the channel that would lead all the way to Wolof. The water actually came from further out, an underground spring deep in the hills, and this room had been raised for maintenance purposes. The stone conduct on raised steles – Pickler had commented unkindly on the way the Sahelians had been forced to fortify the stone with enchantments to compensate for not using arches the way the Miezans had – was dotted with warded “hatches” on the ceiling through which mages-engineers could enter to have a look at any blockage or foulness, but it wouldn’t help the three of us: there wasn’t enough space between the top of the channel and the water for anyone to be able to breathe reliably.

I would have been able to get around that with Night, probably by making a bubble around myself that let in air but not water, but the garrison would have seen us coming if we did. It would have tripped half a dozen wards on the aqueduct and destroying those would have tripped further defences. No, to go in quietly the solution was the water breathing potion. The three of us did a last check on our equipment before going into the water, professionalism finally shining through. Archer had been forced to abandon her usual bow, as it would be too large as well as enchanted, so she had a simple waxed shortbow with the backup strings stashed in a watertight bag along with her arrows. I’d shed the Mantle of Woe for this, settling for a simple grey cloak over my usual sword and armour.

Akua’s clothes were sedate, and what she carried was not equipment meant for herself. The Concocter had finished the last of the ten bags of evanescent powder I’d requested half a bell ago, and they’d been brought straight here. The shade had them all, held in segmented bags held by complicated knots. One pull at the right place and they’d spread out while the bags opened, which was our way in. Sudden Abjuration had been the Arsenal project to create an alchemical substance capable of mimicking the effects of holy water. We’d never managed to make one that’d make it affordable to go through with the plan behind the project, turning all the lakes between us and the Dead King into holy water, but we’d had some successes nonetheless.

The evanescent powder, for one, would wash out active sorcery on contact. Like wards and enchantments trying to keep us out of Wolof.

“Everyone ready?” I asked.

“Bit of a swim without the potion, Cat,” Archer grinned.

I rolled my eye, then glanced at Akua.

“At your disposal, my heart,” she said.

“You should be more like her,” I told Indrani.

She let a deeply insulted gasp, as I’d known she would, and I shoved a small glass vial into her hand. I’d thought about throwing it, but I was not going to roll the dice on this entire operation just to be flippant. It’d taken the Concocter long enough to make four doses – two to enter, two to leave – that I was not going to risk it all just before we left. I took out my own vial, glancing at the pale blue liquid inside. It looked almost milk-like, which was not appetizing in the slightest given the hue. I uncorked it and raised the vial in a toast that Indrani met, and it was bottoms up for the both of us. The entire thing tasted foul, like chalk cut with refuse, but I forced myself to swallow. I breathed in a few times, trying to get myself used to it.

On the surface it didn’t feel like anything changed, but my lungs felt… heavier. Like something had grown.

“We only have an hour,” I said. “Let’s not waste it.”

I want first, even though I wasn’t the strongest swimmer – Indrani – as I saw best in the dark. And it was only moments before it was all pitch black, all the worst parts of swimming and crawling in a tunnel put together. A few strokes forward and already my lungs were burning, and I find myself fighting breathing in the water even though in principle I knew that I’d survive it. I ended up swallowing it all in a gulp, but the water didn’t go any further than my mouth: a thin membrane had sprouted and it served as a filter, letting through air and not water. It was uncomfortable, unnatural even, but it worked so I grit my teeth and kept swimming forward. I could feel Akua right behind me, patiently waiting.

Shades didn’t need to breathe, which at the moment I felt to be somewhat unfair.

Like most adventures, it didn’t feel all that exciting as we did it. It was work, tiresome swimming through a tunnel-like channel of fresh water. I was wet and cold and my arms quickly grew tired. Now and then we encountered small lights as we passed under maintenance hatches in the stone, which were warded instead of sealed tight, but aside from that it was swimming forward in a gentle, almost unnoticeable slope. It was hard to tell how long it took us. We’d estimated half an hour at a brisk pace, maybe three quarters of an hour in practice, and my finely detailed sixth sense telling me how close I was to dawn and dusk helped measure how long we were taking.

We were slower than anticipated, so we had about a quarter hour left before the potion ran when we finally arrived at the gatehouse. I gestured for the other two to stop, studying the steel grid in front of us. The builders of this gatehouse had been faced with a problem when raising it, namely that you couldn’t actually raise wards over running water. There were wards on both sides of the channel I could see going into the gatehouse, a large stone room where I could glimpse torchlight through the water’s surface. In the water itself, though, the Sahelians had been forced to instead use three enchanted metal grids to prevent infiltrators going through.

That was our opening, actually. As with all fortresses, its true weakness was not in the walls or the gates but in the petty demands of maintenance. In this case, should debris large enough to go through the bars of one grid got stuck on the bars of another grid there needed to actually be a way for someone to get it out. Preferably without, you know, this turning into a major undertaking involving knocking down walls or parts of the aqueduct. So the builders had put ‘doors’ in the grids, large enough for a small person to swim through if they held themselves horizontally. Those doors were held fast with very physical steel padlocks and more eldritch keyed enchantments, and they were our way into the city of Wolof.

Archer swam forward, elbowing me in our narrow confines, and had a close look at the pair of padlocks on the door. She offered me a nod, which was a relief. She believed she’d bee physically strong to pry those open using her Name, then. Tempting as it would have been for her to try it, we couldn’t afford to right now: the damn things were enchanted to glow if anyone touched them. Sahelian paranoia was truly inspiring. The two of us awkwardly made room for Akua to swim past us, which she did with unearthly elegance in the middle of this cramped hellhole, and golden eyes met mine to ask for the permission to begin. I nodded and the shade turned her back to the grids before pulling at the right rope, releasing all the knots holding closed the bags of evanescent powder.

It wasn’t all that flashy a sight: the pale powders spread out in great clouds that faded quickly, and then the only sign they’d been used was that the water looked slightly thicker. The current guided it down, past all three grids and then beyond. Akua withdrew without a word, making room for Archer, and I clenched my fists as I watched her dart forward. After an agonizing moment she closed her fingers around the padlock and nothing happened at all. No glow, no alarm. I grinned. It’d worked. Indrani ripped open the padlocks methodically and swam through the door to get working on the second grid. Even after the unpleasantly long swim, I now felt full of energy: I took my sword off my belt, pulling it close so it wouldn’t get in my way when I swam through.

Ahead, Indrani broke the last padlocks and I was gesturing for Akua to go ahead when I caught sight of shapes moving above the water. Hissing in dismay I flattened myself against the side of the channel, Akua doing the same behind me, but it was Archer in danger of being discovered. If she’d been in the dark she would have been fine, but moments later a long wooden staff was plunged into the waters and I saw that at its head was a stone enchanted to glow with light. Indrani had moved before she could be seen, hiding on the side of the wall in the dead angle, but the grid… I started with surprise. Oh, that canny wench. While I’d been panicking, she’d put the padlocks she’d broken on the last door back. They were still busted, but she’d hung them at an angle where it was hard to see.

There was the indistinct sound of people talking, at least three voices, and one seemed to be mocking another. The staff was suddenly withdrawn and I sagged in relief. If it’d come to a fight here, it might have gotten ugly. We waited as long as I dared, far after the voices had gotten distant. Our last quarter hour was thinning out dangerously and there was still more swimming ahead of us, so reluctantly I gave the signal again. Archer opened us the path through and we got moving, myself last and hanging the padlocks behind me as I closed the doors so that it would be hard to tell we’d passed. We had an even better cover for our tracks coming, but best not to get sloppy.

Hugging the bottom of the channel we went past the open channel in the torchlit room, into a squeezing tight tunnel that dropped downwards precipitously. Barely swimming at that point, I let myself be dragged forward and then swam up when we ended up where we’d meant to: the first of the three great reservoirs where the water from the aqueduct would be kept before going out into the city itself. The reservoir, little more than a large cistern, wasn’t entirely full: I breached the surface to moist air, finding Akua and Archer already climbing up towards the hatch at the top.

“Fuck me,” I muttered, “it actually-”

I bit my tongue at the last moment. I refused to tempt Fate like that.

“You’ll be all right climbing?” Archer asked in a murmur.

I glanced at the handholds they were using, little more than indents into the side of the wall – people had to be able to come down to check for leaks or trash – and grimaced before I nodded. The herbs I’d taken for the pain in my leg were beginning to fade, but I’d make it up. It just wouldn’t be pleasant, during or after. Indrani tried to push open the stone hatch but it didn’t move. I cursed under my breath. Breaking that open wouldn’t go unnoticed. Akua, however, had a solution. Her arm turning to mist, it slithered through a crack and I heard her work on the hatch from the outside. Moments later it was hoisted open, Archer catching it and popping her head out to look.

She gave us a nod and a grin: the way was clear.

Indrani went out first, leaping down soundlessly, and Akua followed as I climbed up. My bad leg was burning, but only dimly. I closed the hatch behind us, twisting it into some sort of rough lock, and just like that we were in the city. Well, a fortress within Wolof anyway, but as far as I was concerned it counted. We were dripping all over the floor, save for Akua, who covered out tracks: she passed a mist-like hand over us and we found ourselves mostly dry. She pulled the same trick with the trails of wetness we’d left, and though we were still damp at least we wouldn’t be leaving tracks.

“You remember the way out from here?” I softly asked.

“I’ve never been in this part of the fortress,” Akua admitted, “but I have memorized the plans, same as you. It will be enough.”

I nodded. It’d have to be. We were in a closed off section inside the fortress, but one that was relatively close to a way out. There ought to be a hall outside the reservoir room that’d go straight to a crossroads. Taking a left there would lead us straight to a bastion, and from there it was possible for us to leap down three levels into a large courtyard whose gate would lead us out in the city streets. The issue was that we hadn’t known the guard schedules, so there was no telling if there were people in that bastion or not. And we couldn’t afford to take our time here, because soon the Army of Callow was going to ‘attack’ the city.

“Take the lead, then,” I ordered.

She nodded, her form rippling into that of a young Soninke soldier in Sahelian livery. Archer and I wouldn’t be half as inconspicuous, unfortunately, so she’d be going ahead alone. The two of us hid behind the reservoirs, waiting for what seemed like an hour. She returned, footsteps silent and with a grave expression on her face.

“Only three in the bastion, but one is a mage,” Akua said. “I would like Archer to kill him, I am at… risk otherwise. If he’s a skilled enough caster, he could tap into the fortress wards.”

“Indrani, you’re up,” I said.

“Ah, that ought to be bracing,” she grinned. “See you in a bit, Your Graceful Regaliness.”

“I hope you get caught,” I sweetly replied, “so I can consciously choose to leave you behind.”

She flipped me off, a sure sign of surrender if I’d ever seen one. The two of them disappeared into the hallway, eerily silent, and I was left to bite my thumbs. It’d been a while since I’d had to rely on others to do the dirty work, hadn’t it? In Wolof, though, I would have to. In the city proper I’d be able to use Night again, in small doses, but in the heavily warded parts like the fortress it’d be like sending up a flare. I’d forgotten how boring actually doing things the right way tended to be, I thought with half a smile. I was considering how to dispose of the corpses – if we dragged them out of the wards, we could stash them in my shadow – when I heard the sound.

Someone was tuning a lute.

My hand dropped to the grip of my sword. The sounds of strings being plucked at methodically continued to echo in the room, and though I was tempted to remain hidden there was no point to it. The Intercessor already knew I was here, else why would she be? Pushing off the wall of the reservoir I’d been hiding behind, I loosened my cloak around my shoulders and took my hand off my sword. What would a blade do against the likes of the Wandering Bard? Putting a lazy smile on my face, forcing the tension out of my shoulders, I strolled out of hiding. She was not difficult to find. The Intercessor was seated on top of a reservoir, legs dangling as she finished tuning that shoddy lute. Fair-haired, this time, with deeply tanned skin and starry blue eyes. She was barely taller than I was, if at all, though she had curves I could only envy. And when I came out she raised a finger, putting that old silver flask to her lips and drinking deep. I waited, but the finger stayed up and she kept drinking. I cocked an eyebrow.

After an insulting amount of time, she pulled away the flask and smacked her lips before letting out a pleased sigh.

“Alavan pear brandy, Catherine,” the Intercessor revealed. “Gotta drink while it’s still the good stuff, you get me?”

“Never took to brandy,” I idly replied. “Though I once knew a man more than passingly fond of that particular drink.”

It’d been a barb, a test, and for it I got a pained grimace.

“I actually thought of him as a friend, you know,” the Intercessor said. “Tariq was one in a thousand, even for Named. Even when every part of him was worn down to the bone, he never lost that thing. The spark. The part that makes a man take the lash so someone else doesn’t have to. I don’t think any of you ever appreciated how staggeringly rare that is.”

“He probably would have kept kicking around a few years more, if you hadn’t given our plans in Hainaut to the Dead King,” I harshly said. “How many graveyards’ worth of friends have you buried, Intercessor?”

She pulled at a string, smiling at the broken side.

“More than you’ve had meals, Catherine Foundling,” the Intercessor said, not denying or admitting a thing.

And the horror of it was that I believed her, believed her with bone-deep certainty. How many people you loved could you bury, before the only human thing about you was the guise you were? A hundred, a thousand, ten thousand? In that smiling woman’s shadow was an empire’s worth of graves.

“I’m a little disappointed the Arsenal only bought me a year without you,” I said.

More or less, leaning on less.

“Praes is where the fun’s at, these days,” the Intercessor shrugged. “All those fires full of irons, all those old wounds never closed. It’s in the air here, you know? The… sincerity. The Tower’s the closest thing Below has to a smile. If you wanted me out of your hair, you should have kept away.”

“Had a thing or two to get done hereabouts,” I replied. “What – actually, have you got a name for me to use nowadays?”

She plucked at a string.

“Yara,” the Intercessor smiled.

“Of?” I pressed.

“Oh,” she shrugged, “nowhere in particular.”

Well, wasn’t that just fucking ominous.

“So what are you dropping in for, Yara?” I asked. “You got a horse in this race?”

For a moment her face was split between wonder and surprise. I hid my confusion, and like a firefly’s flicker in the night her expression was wiped clean. Almost quick enough to make me wonder if I’d really seen anything at all.

“Eh, you could say that,” the Intercessor said.

“Malicia or Sepulchral?” I asked, tone forcefully nonchalant.

It wouldn’t be my father, if he became Dread Emperor he’d put an entire division of mages on figuring out how to permanently kill her. Captain’s death was not something he would ever forgive.

“Oh,” the Bard smiled. “That’s cute. You think I give a shit about who’s screaming their lungs out from the top of the Tower. I really, really don’t.”

“Come for the weather?” I drawled. “I suppose they do have a bit of everything, if you stand in the Wasteland long enough.”

“You know, this is usually where I get cryptic,” the Intercessor mused. “Give out a few hints – most of them lies, just enough truth I don’t get bitten for it – and send you chasing ghosts while I line up the knife.”

“But not this time?” I pressed.

“There’s really no point,” the Wandering Bard smiled, strumming the lute. “See, when you drop two starving hounds in a pit the time for subtlety is past. Now is the hour of tooth and claw.”

“I killed you last year,” I said. “Crows be my witness, next time I’ll make it stick.”

“That’s the stuff,” Yara of Nowhere laughed. “Come at me, Foundling. You want to know why I dragged my carcass to Praes?”

My answer was the whisper of my sword leaving its scabbard. Lute tuned at last, the Wandering Bard played the first few notes of an air I recognized, the beginning of ‘Stars From the Sky’.

“The only reason I’m here is to kill you, Catherine Foundling,” the Intercessor grinned. “We’re done fucking around, now. There’s no more room in this game for the likes of you.”

And though I had never seen her wield a blade, never seen her do a single thing other than speak words and drink, in that moment I felt a shiver go up my spine. She had always been my foe, but this was… different. This was war, without pretence otherwise. Yet I would not be cowed, not today and not by the likes of her. I met her eyes, brown to blue.

“Take a swing,” I smiled back, all teeth and malice. “See where it gets you.”

She laughed, loudly, and then swept into a drunken bow. She fell forward, off the reservoir, and as she did she screamed out at the top of her lungs. I struck out at her, blade aimed for the neck, but before she could touch the ground she was gone.

A heartbeat later, the alarm wards triggered with a loud screech.

Chapter 7: Expatriate

“A journey ends with two strangers: time changes the hearth no less than the traveller.”

– King Richard the Elder of Callow

What else could I do but run?

I shot out of the reservoir room, sword in hand, and into the hallway beyond. A dozen strides had me at the crossroads I’d spied on the fortress plans, where I slowed for a heartbeat as my cloak swirled around me. A squad of armed guards – good mail and helmets, longswords, the calm part of me assessed – was hurrying towards me from the right side, blades bare. I was already pivoting towards the left, though, down another hall that ought to be bring me to the bastion that was our way out. The door to it was open and it looked empty, not a single rack of spears disturbed or table toppled. Archer’s head popped out with a wary look on it a heartbeat later, which at least told me the two of them had won their scrap inside.

“Bard’s here,” I hissed, rushing through the doorway.

Three corpses, cleanly killed, waited for me inside along my two companions. Archer began stringing her shortbow, a grim look on her face. Akua was leaning over the edge of a bare stone window overlooking the courtyard, the rope end of a fastened grappling hook in hand. She withdrew, cocking a questioning eyebrow at me.

“Bard,” I simply repeated. “Courtyard?”

“Unfortunate,” she said. “Seven guards. There were more but the alarm ward drew them in.”

That was a sort of silver lining, I supposed. I hesitated for a beat. Keeping the corpses in my shadow was now meaningless, since the defenders already knew there’d been intruders. Discretion was out. This could still be salvaged if we got into the streets and hit the ground running, though. Wolof was a big city and Sargon’s people couldn’t be everywhere. Besides, our arranged distraction should be starting any moment now.

“We punch through,” I ordered. “Leave the bodies.”

Akua nodded.

“Two mages,” she said, glancing at Archer.

“Got it,” Indrani easily replied.

She took the rope Akua offered her and hoisted herself atop the windowsill before dropping down.

“I’ll go after,” I said, idly closing the door into the bastion behind me. “Bring the rope when you follow, would you?”

“How very frugal of you,” she replied, eyes amused.

I toppled a table, shoving it in the way of the door, and rolled my eye at her. What, did she think this stuff grew on trees? Good rope was expensive. I sheathed my sword, hearing the sound of hurrying soldiers catching up, and headed to the window. I got to the edge just in time to see Archer leap out of a smooth slide down the rope, an arrow nocked and loosed before anyone could notice. By the time I’d begun climbing down she’d landed smoothly on the ground, having loosed a second and killed twice. There was shouting from the rest of the guards. Without the mages in the way, though, Akua could move freely. I let myself go into a controlled slide that burned at the palms of my hand, hearing the door burst open when I was barely halfway through.

Swearing, I looked up and saw Akua flow over the edge of the window. She dislodged the hook, narrowly dodging a sword blow, and I swore even louder as my slide turned into a freefall. I pulled at motes of Night, whispering a curt prayer – grant me at least a beggar’s miracle, you stingy carrion sisters – and dragging the slightest bit to me. I shaped a thin downwards panel of darkness and angled my fall, tumbling down atop it into a disastrous roll that scraped my trouser against stone. It’d shaken and almost broken: the fortress wards were disrupting it, making it unstable. I rose to my feet, bad leg burning, and even as the Night-working evaporated behind me I was forced to hurriedly unsheathe my sword.

I caught the blow at a weak angle, the side of my own blade almost biting into my shoulder, but I spun as I took a small step to the side. The pressure from the taller and larger dark-skinned soldier trying to hack at me was turned against him, making him stumble, and I finished it with a manoeuvre I must have practiced a thousand times. As he stumbled forward I finished my spin and withdrew my sword, so that when the soldier steadied his footing and began to turn I was already hacking into the exposed side of his neck. It was a quick blow, and quite lethal. Without batting an eye I moved on. Archer had killed two more before a survivor got close enough to make her drop her bow and unsheathed her longknives, I saw, and the last one was coming for me.

Brave of him not to run, I thought, but not particularly wise.

Akua landed behind me, the soft noise of it entirely on purpose, and in the moment that drew his attention I struck. He was a big man, muscled, but clearly used to fighting with a shield he didn’t currently have. When I feigned at his left he overcommitted, hacking at a blow that didn’t come, and instead I quickly stepped into his guard and slammed the side of his chin two-handed with the pommel of my sword. He dropped, stunned but still conscious. From the corner of my eye I saw movement at the window above, but the arrow that was fire was knocked off-course by the one Archer loose in answer. Too quick to even be able to tell who they’d been aiming at. Time to go.

I glanced down at the soldier below, saw the fear in his eyes and hardened my heart. No witnesses: the guards above hadn’t seen us up close and we wore cloaks, but this one would have descriptions. My arm rose, but a soft hand laid against it. I looked at Akua with surprise.

“There would be no point,” she spoke in Kharsum. “Sargon will have the corpses upstairs raised to interrogate them.”

I hid my startlement. It was not so rare a thing for her to preach mercy, not compared to the way she’d been when we were younger, but I’d not expected it here and now. I looked at the soldier, lowering my arm.

“Looks like it’s your lucky day,” I said in Mthethwa.

He grimaced, mouth bloody form my blow.

“I traded for this shift,” he replied. “So not that lucky.”

I grinned, brushing past him, and overheard him whispering something to Akua as he inclined his head. Miyetham Sahelian, or something close to it. No idea what it meant, aside the fact it looked like he’d guessed Akua’s identity even through her disguise appearance. People spoke Mthethwa differently here than they did in Ater and among the Legions, I sometimes had trouble with their pronunciation. She did not answer and we wasted no time fleeing into the street before the archer up in the bastion could start shooting at us again. The street outside the bastion was board, almost an avenue, but mostly empty of people. The two young girls carrying urns of water made themselves scarce when we came out, Akua wordlessly taking the lead.

We’d barely run ten feet when lights began pulsing in the sky above the fortress. I almost grinned. The timing was a little off, but it looked like our distraction was finally happening. Hierophant would be hammering at the city through a ritual using the waters of the aqueduct as a battering ram to smash the inside of the fortress, even as troops began emerging from the Ways in a position to capitalize on the breach should it happen. The plan was for the Wolofites to repulse the assault and blame any damage on the aqueduct grids we’d nipped coming in on Masego’s assault, but we’d strayed off path some. Still, the threat of an outright attack ought to bump us down Sargon’s priority list a bit.

At the very least we’d have fewer pursuers, since the commander there would want to avoid thinning their garrison.

Pursuit still poured out of the same gate we’d used before we’d even turned the corner. I wasn’t much of a runner these days, but I grit my teeth and pushed through the pain as we followed Akua into the neat labyrinth that was the streets of Wolof. Our enemies weren’t any slower than we were, but we could take shortcuts they couldn’t – three brave souls followed even when Archer took me by the waist and leapt atop a wall, climbing as quick as they could, but we lost them three streets down when we got to a rooftop. It was one of those gardens I’d seen from afar, a lovely little shaded enclave where flowers and cabbage grew, and the three people in it when we intruded froze.

The oldest among them, a white-haired old man, deliberately looked away from us and began to speak of the weather with the younger pair. I snorted, taking it as the tacit invitation to move on that it was. The old man ignored Archer’s friendly wave, stubbornly looking away, and Akua guided us southwards through rooftops and streets until we found a deserted corner. We paused there, catching our breaths and allowing our heartbeats to slow.

“We are near a bazaar, unless Sargon change the trade-rights for this district,” Akua said. “The two of you will be able to change clothes there.”

“You could go buy them for us,” I suggested. “It’d draw less attention.”

She shook her head.

“There are city guards at the bazaar,” she said, “and it is only a matter of time before the fortress garrison sends warning to all companies, if they haven’t already. There are scrying posts at regular intervals in the city, all with runners at hand. They will begin looking around soon, and this is not a true hiding place.”

I felt a sliver of envy at the system described. Laure was nowhere as well-organized. It wasn’t that we didn’t have the ability, at least not in principle – we had the people and the magic. Callow just didn’t have the coin to spare for something that sophisticated, not when there were a hundred other things being neglected that were arguably more important.

“I’m not keen on splitting up,” Archer said, “but in that little description you did mention that there were guards at that bazaar you want us headed to.”

“Only entrances and exits, most likely,” I noted. “She thinks it’ll be easy to disappear into the crowd and come out less conspicuously dressed.”

“My very thoughts,” Akua smiled.

It always startled me how easy it was to understand her, to think along the same lines. Hakram probably knew me better, but sometimes I wondered if I didn’t understand her better than I did him. It made him a better right hand, of course – his ability to think differently than I did, to see what I didn’t, was a priceless asset – but the ease with which I could follow Akua Sahelian’s thoughts felt oddly intimate. It made it dangerously easy to feel close to her.

“It’s boring when you two agree,” Indrani complained, then turned serious. “Let me have a look at that entrance, at least. I want to be sure they’re not already looking for us.”

“Good idea,” I admitted.

Akua offered no objection, and after she gave a brisk description of the easiest path to the bazaar Archer was gone. I leaned against a rough brick wall, earning a raised eyebrow for it. Even when it wasn’t her face it was still her mannerisms, which made it a little uncanny to look at.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Just curious,” I grunted. “The guard we spared, what was it he said? In don’t know what ‘miyetham’ means.”

“It is an archaic form of the words,” Akua said. “What he said was ‘mile thaman’.”

My brow creased.

“Always good?” I hazarded.

“Ever worthy,” she corrected, then hesitated. “It is a turn of phrase here in Wolof. It is… praise for my family, in a way.”

Ever worthy, Sahelian, I mentally completed. That was what the man had said. Considering she’d likely saved his life I wasn’t inclined to argue.

“I sometimes forget your High Seats are actually liked by the people here,” I admitted. “I’m so used to seeing them as the enemy that it’s hard to conceive of anyone looking up to them as protectors.”

“We know better than to be devils to our own, Catherine,” Akua smiled, almost ruefully. “It is why we do best with enemies. That we may pour the venom outwards, while the wonders we bring back to our homes.”

“Dragons risible

Our claws, swords

Stealing miracles

To better hoard,” I quoted, the Taghrebi stiff on my tongue for lack of practice.

Something like delight flicked across her face, gone in a wink.

“One of Sherehazad’s,” she said, approving. “Not without reason was she titled the Seer.”

A moment of comfortable silence passed.

“You ever miss it, this place?” I asked, half on a whim.

Her expression was hard to read, and not for the shade of the alley.

“Sometimes,” Akua quietly said. “Parts of it. Others I am not so sure I could suffer now that I have known the world beyond the Sererian Walls.”

I slowly nodded.

“And you?” she smiled. “Do you miss Laure?”

I clenched my fingers, then unclenched them.

“No,” I admitted. “Laure’s just a different fight to me, now. It’s the court and trying to keep Callow whole. I miss the parts I loved when I was a kid, but the city? No.”

It hadn’t been home in a long time, though it galled me to admit it even in the privacy of my own mind. I’d never felt as more than a guest in the old palace of the Fairfaxes, a child putting on adult’s clothing, and these days what I loved most in the world was condensed into the shape of a few people. I was still fond of the city, it had been my home once, but I would not weep to leave it after the war ended. The conversation ended with Archer’s sudden return, but to me it felt only half-done. Like we’d left bits of it still hanging in the air. Now was not the time, though, so when Indrani informed us that the handful of guards at the bazaar entrance looked too bored to have been warned I went with the flow.

We were waved through nonchalantly by the pair of guards standing in the shadow of the arch leading into the marketplace, neither bothering to look if we were armed. Akua noticed my surprise as we entered the bazaar and leaned close for an explanation.

“Our clothes are of fine make,” she explained. “It is expected of us to bear weapons.”

“They thought we were highborn?” I asked.

“Not that fine a make,” she laughed. “They believed us mfuasa, likely. Some lord’s retainers.”

I nodded and follower her, letting the noises of the bazaar wash over me. I’d thought it would be a strange and exotic place, somewhere out of a dream, but I found the reality of it rather more sedate. The stands were a great deal more colourful than back home, and often made with only bare bones of wood while walls and roofs were dyed cloth, but aside from that it was mostly the goods sold that made a difference. There was no food to be bought here, as sale of such goods was strictly regulated in Wolof and contained to specific markets in every district, but there were enough spices on display to make a Callowan merchant weep for the wealth.

Jewelry was terrifyingly common too, copper and silver most of all but some gold and precious stones as well. Everyone seemed able to afford it. Clothes and cloth hung everywhere, small glassworks and the kind of petty trinkets that every market in the world must sell. The other great surprise was the sale of enchanted goods, and I wasn’t talking about magic swords. For every glinting dagger there were a dozen ever-sharp kitchen knives. I saw stone coldboxes engraved with runes, prettily sculpted magelights and even alchemical brews. They were bartered over like cabbage in swift-spoken Mthethwa, like it was the most natural thing in the world to have a cure for the cold bottled in a bazaar stand. Maybe it was, I thought. There were no priests here – where else were people meant to go, when they were sick or wounded? It was still surreal, to see magic taken as something so… common. Nine in ten of those people wouldn’t be mages either, it was just that magic was utterly mundane to them.

Perhaps the bazaar was a strange place after all, under that veneer of familiarity.

Akua took the initiative to buy us clothes and cloak and I was disinclined to argue. Or particularly surprised she did not even need to press clothes against me to know whether or not they’d fit. We paid in Imperial coinage, silver denarii that Malicia herself had pushed into Callow some years past in a bid to bind us more closely to the Tower, and Akua got us bags for our old clothing too. I left in a burnished yellow cloak and matching tunic, keeping only my boots and trousers, while Indrani ended up in a nice pale green. I got the impression from some of the looks the merchant gave us that he believed us to be, uh, consorts that that a young noblewoman was dressing more to her tastes. We picked up a few tricks to hide our appearance too, cosmetics that were quickly applied.

We slipped out of the market through another entrance and took to the streets, the two of them already knowing where we needed to go without my saying: we’d come to steal two things, after all, and one would be easier to get at than the other.

—

Within moments of having a good look at the granaries, it was plain we weren’t getting into them today.

The Sahelians had their own private reserves near the palaces, according to Akua, but the ‘city’ granaries were a set of seven large interlocking warehouses surrounded by a low stone wall. There were three large avenues leading out, each large enough for two wagons to pass on them simultaneously, and a handful of smaller doors. The whole place was warded up to its neck, though it wasn’t all about keeping people out. A lot of it was mundane utility: wards against vermin, or to keep the warehouses dry and cool. The thresholds weren’t too strong, considering wagons had to be able to come in and out easily for distribution, but the walls were anchors for some pretty nasty stuff even by Praesi standards.

Still, we’d planned for this. The granary was one of the few places that’d been kept entirely intact during the mess that saw Sargon replace High Lady Tasia, so the wards there hadn’t changed in the slightest since Akua had last seen them. We’d schemed a way in a weakness, as with use of the right magical trinket we believed we could trigger the ward in very specific manner and cross before it reset, and even prepared an escape plan. It was all useless now. The entire district was on high alert, even a fool could have seen it. Hundreds of household guards had come to reinforce the garrison and what must be a staggering amount of mages with them: there were balls of light hovering ten feet above the wall, at least a hundred of them, and the spell was one known to Akua.

“The colour will change if there is movement where the light extends,” she said. “It should last for at least an hour, and if they’ve any sense they will have staggered putting the spells up so that they can be smoothly replaced.”

High Lord Sargon had been distastefully competent so far, so I’d go ahead and assume they had. I still sent out Archer to have a closer look. Even if I had my doubts she’d find a blind spot, learning more about the defences in place couldn’t hurt. There was no way to tell how long Sargon would keep the reinforcements there and we could only risk staying in the city for so long. Our foes were looking for us, and eventually our luck would run out. Archer came back after half an hour, looking displeased.

“The place is sealed up tighter than a tomb,” Indrani reported. “They’ve actually closed up all the small access doors, the only way’s in through the big gates now.”

“That’s a problem,” I admitted.

We simply did not have the strength to smash our way through here.

“Did you get close enough to eavesdrop?” Akua asked.

Archer nodded.

“Nothing too exciting, the usual whining and a bit of fear at the notion of facing us,” Indrani said. “I think I’ve figured out why the bazaar guards hadn’t been warned yet: a lot of them complained about being yanked away from other assignments in the city and sent here in a hurry. I’m thinking Sargon put his scrying stations to work sending people to this place instead of looking for us.”

My lips thinned. I did hate fighting clever opponents, they were always such a pain. Akua’s cousin was proving to be one of that breed, having correctly deduced what we’d come here for and that it was a better bet to protect it than comb through half the city looking for us.

“We’re not going to make it in there,” I finally said. “And I’m betting he’s going to be willing to keep his people here as long as it takes while he’s looking for us.”

If we were threatening an assault on his walls it might force him to pull away people, but we both knew the Army of Callow wasn’t going to try anything of the sort. He could afford to keep his mages here instead of manning the ramparts, the tricky fucker.

“He will have the treasury vaults under reinforced guard as well,” Akua quietly said. “This is something of a setback.”

It was. We’d come here for grain and gold, and now it was looking like we were going to have to leave without either. Considering Marshal Nim had torched a third of our supplies, coming out of here empty-handed was going to be a blow. Not necessarily the end of our campaign, but it’d stiffen odds that were already against us. Even aside from simple logistics, running away from Wolof with our tail tucked after we’d swaggered wasn’t going to be a good luck when we were courting allies. Some of the Clans might reconsider raiding, if it looked like Malicia was winning this war, and I needed the orcs south for more reasons than I’d admitted. I bit my lip, mind spinning in circles. I couldn’t see another way, much as retreat would be a bitter pill to swallow.

“We shouldn’t stay here,” Archer said. “Let’s find a place to settle for the day, yeah? We can figure out our next move then.”

I nodded, silent, and followed them deeper into the city. There had to be a way, right? I tried to put together another plan, another trick, yet all I could think of was the sound of an old monster tuning a lute.

—

The search was spreading out.

There were parties on the streets now, squads of twenty with two mages. The caster regularly stopped and cast a spell with no visible manifestation save a spinning circle of golden light, and it was magic none of us knew. Archer wandered close once or twice as we headed towards the southwest of the city, but she got nothing out of idle chatter.

“I’d wager the circle is a focus mark, not unlike a rune,” Akua mused. “The purpose remains rather more elusive.”

“It’s got to be a detection spell of some sort,” I said. “Sargon has to know finding us in a city this large will be Hells otherwise, especially when we have you guiding us around.”

“What it might detect is the question, then,” Akua said.

We had no answer, so steering clear was the best move. We were nearly at our destination anyhow. When I’d first been told that Wolof did not have slums, I’d naturally been pretty skeptical. All cities had slums, even walled ones, it was just a matter of how large they got. Wolof wasn’t as much of an exception as Akua believed it to be, but she’d not been entirely wrong either – even Scribe had agreed. The Sahelians had a pair of districts called the Yumban in the southeast of the city, where people who’d usually end up on the streets or in slums were assigned to live. Accommodations were provided, if very basic ones, and food from the city granaries regularly doled out. It all sounded very charitable, which naturally meant it wasn’t the whole story.

Any people who lived there were essentially at the mercy of the Sahelians. By law they could not refuse military service if called on, or a servant’s station, and they could even be traded to other lords so long as work was guaranteed by the receiving lord. People regularly made it out of the Yumban into higher station – mages in particular – and Wolofites were proud of such success stories, but the truth was most people didn’t. By design, presumably, so that if the Sahelians ever had an urgent need of manpower they had a source at hand that drawing on would not cause unrest. Conscription in the city would be taken badly, but who would object to the Yumban being emptied? It was clever, in a heinous sort of way, which I was coming to learn was the mark of the must successful nobles of Praes.

Most of the people in the Yumban now weren’t actually from Wolof, though. I caught the difference as we crossed into the edge of the districts. They favoured greens and dark oranges over the yellows and reds I’d seen earlier, the cadence and wording in Mthethwa was different – easier to understand for me, it was closer to the Ater-and-Legion standard I’d learned – and there were almost no weapons anywhere. Sargon had taken to raiding the northern hinterlands of Aksum on Malicia’s behalf as part of his support in the civil war, and I was looking at part of the loot he’d carried back with him: people. It wasn’t just Aksumites, of course, that was a riot waiting to happen. But I’d wager that we were looking a the ‘prizes’ who’d not had a trade he could offer them a shop for

Day labourers, farmhands, those whose trade was not lacking in Wolof.

They were not mistreated and I saw little resentment, not the kind you saw back home when a town despised their lord, but I could almost feel it from the air that Sargon Sahelian’s authority ran thinner here. Perhaps not much hatred, but not much love either. Their abductor had not delivered them unto a paradise. There was a lot of room, at least, since entire streets of the Yumban were still empty. The city had not entirely required from the brutalities of Tasia’s fall. Akua guided us carefully, keeping out of sight where we could as she explained what she was looking for.

“We’ll pick a place near a kufuna,” she said.

I knew the word, though I’d never seen one myself. Black had mentioned that sometimes people from them had trouble adapting at the War College, where the ways were rather different.

“Those are the noble-backed schools, right?” I asked.

The Tower had ‘free’ schools of its own, where people could be attend in exchange for sworn years of service – it was how Tyrants could recruit mages without asking them of High Lords or drawing on Ater – but kufuna belonged to noble houses, without anyone else having a say in their running or what they taught.

“It is more nuanced than that,” Akua murmured. “But you are not incorrect. People in those streets will be used to strangers coming and going, less likely to pay it attention.”

“Never did get to see one of those,” Archer mused. “We should have a look.”

She demurred, but I was curious myself. We settled on studying one from a distance, but it turned out to be even easier than that. Such a ‘school’ was in session on large paved open grounds between two sets of houses and we found good lodgings in a second-story place that had a window looking down over the lesson. It was little more than a large room meant for eating and two adjoining smaller nooks for people to sleep in, but the narrow stairs to the rooftops had us sold. Building were smaller in the Yumban than in the districts around it – I felt, impossibly that the rest of the city was somehow looking down on us – but within the districts themselves it’d be a good way to get around. After dark, anyway.

We dropped our packs and settled in, quickly figuring out why both stories of the building were still empty even though the convenience of closeness to the kufuna must have made it in demand: one of the nooks had been fouled by an animal pretty disgustingly. That could have been cleaned, even if it hadn’t been, but the way the light pit in the middle of the combined house had a wooden cover that moved in the wind and slammed with a bam-bam-bam sound out of nowhere sometimes would have been trickier to handle. I could already tell it was going to get on my nerves. I went into the clean nook, which had the overlooking window, and cast a curious look.

It wasn’t that large a window, so when Indrani and Akua came too we had to squeeze pretty tight.

They were doing mathematics, the poor fuckers. Maybe thirty ‘students’ whose ages looked to vary between eight-ish to fourteen were sitting on the ground, using nice writing slates and chalk. The teacher was an old woman at least into her sixties, who leaned on a cane – lucky her, hadn’t been able to bring my staff – and had cataracts in her eyes but looked pretty spry otherwise. She guided her students through the end of a lesson on multiplication, and it was when students were called on to answer questions that the difference to what I was used to came in.

“The only a kid handling with the black stone can answer,” I muttered. “Why?”

It wasn’t always the same, either. Sometimes children answered two questions in a row before passing to another, sometimes it was immediate but never once did the teacher actually order it passed.

“It is because of jino-waza,” Akua said. “I am not surprised the rules are unclear to you.”

I frowned. It was familiar, the words. I’d read them before, if only in passing.

“The clear-eyes,” Indrani snorted. “The Lady talked about it. It’s a little like the way we did thing in Refuge.”

“I can’t see them keeping score over anything,” I said. “What’s it do?”

“It is not a game, not exactly,” Akua hesitated. “It is philosophy, at least in part. To display your skills, your knowledge. To assess where you stand in regard to your peers. The stone and questions are just a tool to ease this.”

I studied the students, eyes narrowed.

“They’re all eager to answer,” I said.

Which was not my experience with studies. The tutors the orphanage made us sit in front of were used to squirming pupils wanting to be elsewhere, and they used questions as a way to keep us in line. Listen, learn, or you’ll look like an idiot in front of the others.

“So they win something by doing it,” I said. “Esteem, maybe? They can’t trade that for something useful, though, and it’s a little abstract for kids.”

“It is training for the world beyond the lessons,” Akua said. “The teacher, she will remember the one who distinguish themselves. What they are good at. And when my family – or someone with a trade and no children – sends someone, wanting a candidate for a scribe’s apprentice or kitchen attendant, she will give those names. She holds opportunities.”

I chewed my lip.

“So the stone, it’s part of the test too,” I finally said. “Jino-waza. Sure, a clever kid could keep it for a long while – but then you hog the opportunity, and no one will ever pass you the stone. They’re trading it like adults would trade favours.”

“Exactly,” Akua grinned. “A student who oversteps might even find themselves sabotaged, as it often is with those who act in such ways in higher stations. It teaches balance, to take opportunity without making enemies.”

“Teaches who’s worth making allies with, too,” Archer quietly said. “Not everyone’s good at the same things, you can scratch each other’s back in a way that everyone wins.”

She had a strange, almost fragile look on her face as she looked at the kids. Was she thinking of Refuge? I spoke up to move the conversation along, even knowing that Akua was unlikely to ever be so uncouth as to comment on the look that’d seized our friend’s face.

“Everyone you’re allied with, at least,” I scoffed. “It’s not without sense, but it’s a very Praesi way of doing things.”

“I have seen the schools of your people, dearest, what few you have,” Akua reminded me. “They are as menageries. Kufuna are a better way. Your nobles have their tutors, as we do, but learning is simply not prized west the Wasaliti the way that it should be.”

“I came out of my schooling just fine,” I replied, a tad defensive. “And orphanages gave educations even before Black stepped in, he just ensured they were good ones.”

He’d also raised the number of them tenfold, but that was another discussion entirely. It wouldn’t do to forget that my father had made a lot of Callowan orphans along with those orphanages.

“Come off it, Cat,” Indrani snorted. “How much of what you came out having learned you learned in classes? You’re like a truffle pig, you just dig into books about the stuff that you want to learn about and ignore the rest. You barely even had help when you learned Chantant.”

“Thank you for the description, woman I will never sleep with again,” I drily replied as she stuck out her tongue at me. “And I could have gotten more out of those classes if I’d cared about them. It was my choice not to gain, because I thought it was pointless – it’d be the War College that was make or break for me.”

“Failure to motivate your student to learn is very much failure,” Akua replied. “Jino-waza ensures that every student knows the worth of their lessons.”

“It also teaches your kids to always compete with each other,” I flatly said. “That they’ll need to squabble with each other to gain the attention of the highborn, that it’s the only way up. It sets in the bone that you swing at the people around you, not upwards. It teaches skills, too, I won’t pretend otherwise. But I’m not exactly surprised those schools are backed by nobles.”

“You do not understand,” Akua gently said. “Jino-waza goes beyond the schools. It is everywhere, applies to everything. The lack of a stone does meant it ceases, the stone is a teaching tool. It is how a family knows which of them should benefit if a favour is called in, whose marriage should have the most coin spent on to arrange, who gets to eat the most when the months are lean.”

“Parents do this?” I replied, aghast.

“Well, yeah,” Indrani said, brow creased. “Makes sense, I’m not sure why you’re so offended. If you get a windfall, you don’t waste it on someone who won’t do shit with it. Even parents can tell who’s going places, Cat.”

“You’re not supposed to play favorites,” I bit out. “Everyone gets a fair shot, that’s how people who aren’t obviously good at things get their chance to shine.”

Did they not realize that what they were describing, it only ever benefitted the slightest bit of the people involved? Talented people would band together and help each other up while having all the incentive to kick everyone else down. And above those games you had the highborn, playing an even more lethal take on it with each other – and the ingrained notion that they should never, ever let anyone below them come up. It could only be at their own expense.

“That’s nonsense,” Indrani bluntly replied.

“She is Callowan, Indrani,” Akua said, and when I turned on her a thunderous scowl she raised a hand in appeasement. “I mean no insult. I am only saying that it is because you come from a land of plenty that think this way, dearest.”

I blinked at her. A land of plenty? Had she seen what they sold in the bazaar. Not even the enchanted stuff, just the spices and dyes would – I stopped, elbowing aside the sharp irritation and forced myself to look at it from the Wasteland’s eyes. Food, I got almost immediately. She meant food.

“It wasn’t your nobles that made this,” I finally said. “It’s a survival teaching.”

“When is the last time Callow had a major famine?” Akua asked. “It is different here. We kill to eat, to drink – the Taghreb fight wars to steal clouds from each other and make them into water! You come from a place that has the luxury of fairness, but Wolof does not. Few parts of Praes do.”

“That’s not the way to do it, though,” I said. “You don’t claw at each other, there’s no winning that when it starts. You sit and figure it out together. Ration, share. Something like a famine, you’re all in it together.”

Splashing the mud on the others so they were deeper in wouldn’t actually get you out of the pit.

“It a pleasant sentiment,” Akua replied, “but it does not help to choose which belly should be filled by the rice bowl. Jino-waza does. It lets you make the decision with clear eyes – and they will have to make it in their lifetime, Catherine. Everyone in this city older than forty, before Callowan grain was brought in, has known hunger.”

“Not the nobles,” I sharply smiled.

“Not my kin, the Sahelians are too wealthy for it,” she agreed. “But lesser lords, ruling over poorer lands? It is not as uncommon as you think. The fields feed everyone, Catherine, and no granary lasts forever. We make many wonders, but not even we can make wheat sprout out of rock.”

It would have been a better use of their skills in magic to learn that rather than fucking diabolism, I thought, but that was unfair. Destructive magic was easier. You needed to know a lot less to toss a fireball than, say, heal a broken bone. I could see it writ in the long of history, how it would have gone: the people and places inclined to the peaceful solution, to make wheat sprout from rock, they wouldn’t last. Not when a less scrupulous rival could come in, throw a few fireballs and take everything. It wasn’t as easy as raising castle walls with this. Magic was expensive, and Praesi were rich but not with bottomless purses.

So you got better at the magics that could protect you and destroy your rivals, and then maybe if you rose high enough that you were beyond most threats you could afford to go looking for wonders. Answers beyond eating the other crabs in the bucket. It was not happenstance, I thought, that the Sahelians had the finest field rituals in Praes. But by the time you got safe enough to look for those wonders, were you still the same people who’d wanted them in the first place? I felt an unpleasant shiver of sympathy at the thought. I was not an unfamiliar tale I was spinning there.

“It doesn’t need to stay like this,” I said. “Older than forty, you said. We had two decades of peace and trade, and that changed things.”

“It did,” Akua murmured. “Mother used to think it softened us, made us lose our edge, but I disagree. It freed us to pursue different things. To consider beyond the immediate.”

I cast a long look at the kids below, fingers tight against the windowsill. The teacher had move on from mathematics, she was speaking of early Praesi history – the campaigns that brought the Grey Eyries into Praes not so long after its founding – as she regularly stopped for questions and jino-waza considered to unfold before my eyes. I couldn’t have fixed this place even if I thought it was my duty to do it, I admitted to myself. There was so much of Praes that was still unknown to me. Parts of I knew like the back of my hand, the Legions and the lore and bloody embrace with my own home, but it wasn’t enough. Akua had thought I might be Dread Empress once, climb the Tower, but it would have been madness.

I was glad I had not heard the song in years.

No, what I was meant to do out east was not put on some saviour’s cloak and pretend I had the answers. I was here to bind the Dread Empire to the Liesse Accords, to the war against Keter, and to topple the empress who’d been such a thorn in our sides. Beyond that, I must remember restraint. It was not my land here, and in some ways I just… thought differently. And did not quite understand how they did. There was more to the differences between Callow and Praes than weather and colours. I shook my head, shaking off the thoughts.

“We should plan out our next move,” I finally said, pushing away from the window. “We’ll want to move under cover of dark.”

“A shame I cannot use the family library,” Akua said. “Half an hour there and I would know the nature of the spell the patrols are using to hunt us.”

Indrani snorted.

“Yeah well, if we were in there we could just stroll up to the gold and take it,” she said.

I smiled, only half-listening.

“The library is in an entirely different wing than the treasury vaults,” Akua chided. “It is much too-”

I turned to look at her so quickly my neck almost cracked.

“Wait,” I interrupted. “The library, you told me it was over the vaults.”

“The artefact vaults, yes,” the shade said. “The treasury is nowhere near these. It is not the cleverest of notions to keep demons near one’s coinage.”

Oh, I thought. Oh. Sargon thought we were going for the grain and the treasury, so that was the parts he was protecting. But he had to be stretched tight with people, going all out on the defence of those two places and looking for us in the streets with yet more mages. He couldn’t cover everything, so he’d focused on guarding what we were after. That meant thinning the defences elsewhere. And though we could get to neither the granaries nor the treasury, what was more important than either of those things to the enduring power of the Sahelians? I met their gazes with my eye, grinning wide.

“I have a plan,” I said.

Well, I could have done without the groaning.

Chapter 8: Access

“Note: Cousin Onoko’s assertion that ‘blood is thicker than water’ was in fact correct, despite my initial assumption otherwise. Add in the silence that followed the experiment, and it can be considered an unequivocal success.”

– Extract from the journal of Dread Emperor Malignant II

The ruling seat of the Sahelians was called the Empyrean Palace. Pretentious fucking name really, even if it was probably as fancy as it sounded, but no one had asked me. Not that it’d ever stopped me from sharing my thoughts before, or in this particular case. Strangely enough, Akua disagreed with me. The palace’s foundations were the oldest in the city, and though it’d begun small over the centuries it had turned into a real behemoth of a place. That was an advantage in the sense that it was difficult to entirely prevent entry into it, as there were simply too many entrances and too many people using them, but the rulers of Wolof had seen to their defences with characteristic thoroughness. Akua drew at knifepoint in the dirt of our quarters’ floor, first outlining three squares in a loose but noticeable curve.

“The Empyrean Palace is divided into seven different wings,” she said. “These three are the outer section, the easiest to access. The central wing contains greeting halls, but the rest is places of little importance – servant quarters and stables, courtyards and gardens.”

“We’d planned to go through the eastern wing, right?” Archer asked, crouched over the drawing.

With her unstrung bow kept on top of her knees, she looked like she was crouching by a campfire instead of a loose plan.

“We did,” I agreed. “And odds are we still will. It’s heavy on gardens, so it’ll be easier to sneak through.”

“The difficulty begins when we are inside the western wing,” Akua said.

She drew small lines connecting the three squares, standing for open paths and halls.

“Getting into any of these wings from the outside is achievable, but movement between the wings is strictly limited,” Akua elaborated. “Each of them has its own largely independent staff, largely to prevent infiltrations like ours – unknown faces are simply not allowed through. Which leaves us only one direction to go in.”

She drew a rectangle vertically, nestled against the squares like a hammer’s handle, and the deftly connected the three squares to it by single strokes.

“This is the Grand Gallery,” the golden-eyed woman said. “It is the sift through which sneaks and agents are removed before they can reach the vital sections of the palace. It bears the great hall where formal banquet are held. Adjoining it are both the public kitchens and a set of private parlours. No guard or servant can enter the Gallery without holding an enchanted token, given out by the steward of another wing. Being caught without one means arrest if you are lucky, but most often summary execution.”

I went fishing through the bag where the last two vials of the water breathing potion were and produced three small copper amulets. Detailed engravings were around the rim, and at the centre a single pearl bore a small enchantment. I set them down besides the plan.

“Scribe obtained these tokens for us,” I said. “They’re imitations, but very good ones. Eyes of the Empire have used them with success in the past.”

The enchantments usually changed every few months, I’d been told, and Sargon had kept to that pattern. In the wake of his chaotic ascension to power, however, the Eyes had been able to subvert people in a few key mage cadres. The fakes were current, as even though Scribe had lost control of the spy network in Praes to Lady Ime she still had… contacts. Favours for call in that she’d kept for a rain day.

“That gets us into the Gallery,” Akua agreed. “But not forward. To leave the Grand Gallery and move deeper into the palace, one must pass through one of the three threshold-gates. Each is warded, and there is no enchanted ward key: the only way not to be affected is to be keyed in with blood at the appropriate ward stone well beyond the corresponding gate.”

She drew three small arcing slices above the rectangle, then a square facing each. The moment she finished, she cut through the left square with a decisive stroke.

“Issa’s Garden has served as the personal quarters to the ruling Sahelian and their direct family for the last century and a half, but it was where my mother made her death-grounds,” Akua calmly said. “Even after years of ritual purging, there are still motes of taint and so the ruins remain unused.”

She drew a stroke through the centre square.

“The Empyrean Hall is the heart of the palace,” she continued. “It holds many of the wonders my kin have accumulated over the years, including the enchanted ceiling for which the palace is named. Sargon will be using the old formal living quarters that were raised there and it is also where the treasury vault.”

“We had an in there,” I said. “I have a bottle of blood from a servant who is keyed into the wards, and I’ve learned a Night-trick that could exploit that to sneak us in with a little help from my patronesses. The trouble is that right now that place will be fucking packed to the gills. Forget the wards, it’s the guards that would be a problem.”

Akua withdrew her dagger, smoothly rising to her feet. As if to distance herself from the entire mess, she even took a step back to lean against the wall and arc an eyebrow at me.

“So you want us to hit the last wing,” Archer nodded, looking at me.

“The Vaults,” I said. “It’s partially a mage village, partially a large library and underneath are all the artefacts the Sahelians believe too precious to see the light of day.”

“Or too dangerous,” Akua pointedly said. “If Sargon succeeded at binding Insipientia again, its artefact-prison will be there. The Weeping Snares he used when he came to parley are kept in a vault there, and so are over a dozen other makings in the same league.”

“So we what, release all these beasties into the library?” Indrani asked, frowning. “I guess it’d be a kick in the guts – Hells, if they get loose it’ll bring the city to its knees – but it doesn’t sound like your usual plans. Gonna be a lot of dead servants to go with the dead soldiers and the dead mages.”

A lot worse than that, should a demon be loosed in the city once more.

“No,” I said. “We’re going to steal the library, Indrani. All of it. And then, to make it clear I’m in a foul mood, we’re going to rob the artefact vaults too.”

Indrani laughed, openly delighted, but this was a more calculated move than she might think. I’d be holding two knives at High Lord Sargon’s throat by clearing those out, though he wouldn’t realize quite how bad it was until we sat at the negotiating table again. Akua cleared her throat.

“I have no opposition to such a plan in principle,” she said. “But in practice, I have a question: how are we going to get past the ward?”

She pointed at the threshold-gate leading into the Vaults. You know, that gate we didn’t have a handy blood vial for that’d maybe allow us to trick the wards. Servants never got keyed into two wardstones, presumably in case of this very sort of situation.

“I don’t have a way to get us past the ward,” I bluntly said.

The admission took them both aback.

“But,” I continued, “I know some people who can get past them.”

The Eyes of the Empire had people in the mage cadres that enchanted the tokens for the outer palace, and those mage cadres lived in the Vaults. Meaning that the Eyes had an in. And, as it happened, we knew where their safehouses in Wolof were – it paid to have the woman who’d first set them up in your service.

“And how are you going to get them to help us?” Akua skeptically asked.

“I am going to use,” I toothily grinned, “tact and diplomacy.”

—

Night sunk deep into the wood, spreading out in wavy cracks, and a heartbeat later the floor shattered.

We dropped down in a rain of shards and broken floorboards, landing in the middle of what looked more like some tavern’s common room than the spy hideout it was. I landed on the table, swallowing a moan of pain – Gods but I wished I could have brought my staff into Wolof – while Archer threw herself on a surprised man and knocked him down. Akua already had a knife at the throat of a second when I checked, which left me the two seated at the table on which I now stood. Wait, no, only one. The woman in the dress had been knocked unconscious by a falling floorboard. That left only the bearded man in front of me, who was currently gaping and bleeding from the face where a wood shard had flown into his cheek.

“Good evening, Eyes of the Empire,” I cheerfully said. “Who’s in charge here?”

The young woman – barely more than a teenager – that Akua had a knife on began tearing up. She was shaking, obviously terrified.

“Please don’t hurt us,” she hurried out. “We’ll be Eyes if you want us to, I’m sure you’re right.”

“I curse you to be silent,” I spoke in Crepuscular, and Night flared.

Her mouth kept moving, but not a sound followed. The flash of horror in her eyes then was significantly more genuine than the previous theatrics. The man at my feet had his hand on the handle of a knife, but he stopped short of unsheathing it when he saw I’d caught him.

“So not her,” I said, cocking an eyebrow. “Did she seriously think that would work?”

It wasn’t like we’d picked this place out of a hat.

“She is young,” the bearded man sighed. “Good evening, Your Majesty. For the sake of this conversation, you may consider me to be in charge.”

Meaning he likely wasn’t. I glanced at the unconscious woman to his left and then at the poor bastard that Archer had in an absent-minded stranglehold, then decided there was no point in pushing for someone else to speak.

“Name?” I asked.

“I am Ekon, Your Majesty,” he said.

I met his eyes with mine.

“If I have you a choice between doing me a favour and having your soul fed to Sve Noc, Ekon,” I said. “Which would you end up leaning, d’you think?”

He swallowed drily, but his face remained admirably calm. He must have been his forties, I thought, but his age was not wearing hard on him. Spying must pay well.

“All things considered, Your Majesty,” he said, “I would be inclined to the favour.”

“Good man,” I smiled, and moved to easy myself down the table.

I dropped down the floor by the unconscious woman, studying her in passing just to be sure she wasn’t faking. No, it looked quite genuine: her head was swelling where she’d been struck, which would be very difficult to fake, and her hand was not clutching a knife but a… pipe? I leaned in close and sniffed. Well, I’d be damned. For the what, probably the third time now? Still, Below was smiling on me tonight. I snatched up the pipe, which was already filled with wakeleaf, and offered my good friend Ekon a smile.

“Don’t worry about it, I’m not asking you to turn on Malicia,” I said. “Nothing quite so troublesome.”

“I am glad to hear it,” the man cautiously ventured.

I passed a hand over the pipe, fire flickering in its wake, and grinned around the mouth of my pipe as I breathed in deep of my vice. Ah, that hit the spot.

“Now,” I said, “let’s talk about how you’re going to get us into the Vaults.”

Huh, I’d never seen a spy freeze in horror before. That was probably a good sign, right?

—

Ekon had been most helpful, for a man who was going to betray us before this was over.

Under cover of dusk we crept through the gardens, weaving through pools and flowerbeds laid out intricately under the shade of old, twisting trees. Stretches of lilies in pink and pale, delicate orchids in beds whose every rock was sculpted, hibiscus and hyacinth and candelabra flowers. Among them were more… exotic breeds, flowers whose petals slowly changed colours or who moved without need for the breeze. Some even had veins of light, or sweated droplet of mist-like purple instead of dew. We steered clear of the menagerie, for it was well-guarded and there were creatures within that even we should stay wary of, and past a curving pool whose waters were full of nenuphars we took a servant’s entrance into the western wing.

The pair of guards by the door studied us as we came in but said nothing. We wore servant’s livery, after all. I had discarded my eyecloth in favour of a painted stone replacement from the bazaar for my missing eye, knowing it might get me recognized otherwise, and a touch of cosmetics had seen Indrani and I pass as vaguely Taghreb. The days out in the sun had tanned my skin deeper than usual, it was more the cheekbones than the colour that gave me away as being of Deoraithe extraction.

Once we were inside the western wing proper, not the outside part, we hugged the length of the servant quarters as we headed deeper in. At this time of the evening they were mostly empty, save for the children and the kinsmen raising them, so simply looking like we had a purpose was enough for the few servants we encountered to steer clear of us. Twice we encountered patrols, a handful of soldiers in Sahelian livery who lost interest in us immediately the moment Akua showed them a fake token. I was too on my guard to truly allow my gaze to drift around, but I did get glimpses of our surroundings. Tapestries were common and colourful, with complicated patterns whose motif changed from corridor to corridor. Painted wood was used as a sort of gilding along walls, and we had yet to encounter a single torch: it was all magelights.

It was almost bafflingly easy to make it into the Grand Gallery. We showed our tokens to the guards manning the hallway leading to it, faked smiles when a young man tried a joke about our ‘coming here often’ – he was eyeing Indrani pretty hard, but it wasn’t exactly the kind of inspection we should be worried about – and were sent in. Within half an hour of having set foot in the Empyrean Palace, we we’d reached the Gallery. Akua had only described it in passing as having statues of her ancestors, but she’d undersold it significantly. The Grand Gallery was at least half a mile long and maybe half that in length? More than that, the ‘statues’ were in full armour and almost eerily lifelike. They were on tall pedestals, and a quick glance at the names under them told me what I was looking at: former High Lords and Ladies of Wolof.

I didn’t dare linger, moving across the white and pink marble floor as quickly as I could without drawing attention. There were more people here, but the Gallery itself wasn’t really bustling: it was the side parlours and the kitchens that were alive, swarming with people. I leaned closer to Akua, eyeing one of the statues wearing colourful scale and a short sword that looked like a decent fit for me.

“Think we could grab from those before we head into the Vaults?” I murmured.

We’d had to leave behind arms and armour, which had me feeling very naked at the moment. The servant livery was pretty nice, red and white cloth with black accents, but it wouldn’t stop so much as a kitchen knife – much less good steel.

“It is all cursed,” Akua replied in a murmur of her own. “Every single piece. It is a rite of passage for any Sahelian capable of magic to devise a curse of their own and replace one of the fading ones when they are fifteen.”

Of course it was all fucking cursed, I sighed. Mildly curious, I cast a look around.

“So who’d you curse up?” I asked.

“One of my namesakes,” she smiled. “The third of that name, and most distinguished – she held Wolof against foreign armies in the wake of First Crusade.”

“So what’d you put in?” Indrani asked, looking enthused. “Is it rot? It’s always rot with you Praesi types.”

“Partial bone liquefaction,” Akua replied, sounding proud. “And I tweaked the curse so that the most common counter-spells would work, but then trigger a second curse that liquefies the skin instead.”

I wrinkled my nose even as Archer let out an impressed noise. Nasty stuff. Definitely a no on nabbing weapons. We got stopped five times. The first was a simple token check, the second a warning by a pair of guards to avoid the Green Parlour – noble guests were using it – but the third almost outed us. Not because of an interrogation, but because an older servant ordered us to help him and another man carry a large wooden table into a parlour. The weight on my bad leg was atrocious, and though I kept the pain from my face the older man complained of our slow place several times. Akua begged us off as needing to report to the Master of Ceremonies as soon as she could and we made a getaway.

Twice more we were asked to show tokens, and I noticed we were being asked more frequently than the people coming and going. I pointed out as much to Akua, who nodded.

“Our guards are trained to ask the token the moment they do not recognize a face,” she explained.

Made sense, and so far the deception had held. We could only hope it’d continue to. It was near the end of the corridor, by the statue of High Lord Nassor, that we waited. Archer asked, and so we learned that the man was Akua’s great grand uncle, whose daughter had been assassinated and usurped by Akua’s own grandfather. Amusingly enough, Sargon was related to the man through his own mother and so it could be considered that their branch had somewhat returned to power. Sahelian family politics were like a rolling wheel of murder, it sounded like. I caught sight of someone passing through the threshold-gate to the Vaults from the corner of my eye and stiffened.

“That’s her,” I said. “Green stone necklace and grey robes, like our friend said.”

Taiwo Bauna was a stout and respectable-looking woman into her middle age, with pale brown eyes that often saw her taken as more highborn than she actually was. By all reports, she was a fairly skilled enchanter with a good position among the enchanting cadres of the Sahelian vassal mages. She also liked losing a dice games and racking up debt doing it, apparently, which had been how the Eyes got to her. There were two guards by the door, and neither spoke a word as she passed them. She found us without difficulty, having been told of where we would be waiting. Her face was blank as she took us in, not bothering with greetings.

“You’ll be bringing treats the kitchen I ordered,” she said. “Honeybread, which they don’t make in our own. Follow and be silent. I can only buzz the wards for three heartbeats before it triggers one of the deeper alarms, so you’ll have to cross quickly.”

“Understood,” I simply replied.

It must not have been the first time she did this, I thought, for the wrapped and warm honeybread was waiting for us when we arrived in the kitchen. My leg complained of having to double back halfway through the Grand Gallery, but I kept myself under control. We were close, now was not the time to whine. She led the way as we returned to the threshold-gate, where we slowed. Moments before she crossed the gate, colourful lights began to swirl in the open air. The guards glanced at each other, then her. Taiwo sighed.

“I’ll talk to Lord Luba,” she told them. “It’s been happening too often for it to be happenstance, the anchor patch must have been flawed.”

“Please do,” a tall man said, voice smooth. “I apologize for the delay, but you will have to wait until the lights fade before crossing.”

None of us argued, and moments after the last splash of colour faded we followed Taiwo past the threshold. There was no smell of ozone, no movement of power, not a damned thing. We were in. We walked quickly, hurrying down an ornate hallway until we’d reached a great antechamber that Akua had described as the beginning of the Vaults. Taiwo turned towards us, snatching the wrapped honeybread out of Archer’s hands.

“Tell Alazi that this settles the debt,” she said. “And if she hasn’t arranged someone to take the fall, I’ll be selling you all out before I’m even thrown in a cell.”

“Of course,” I replied. “She’ll be in touch.”

“She better not,” Taiwo Bauna darkly said, and walked away.

Well, I thought, it was a good thing we already had someone who knew her way around here. I unwrapped the honeybread, biting into the warm loaf and feeling it crunch under my teeth pleasantly. I grimaced a heartbeat later, though: way too much cinnamon and honey. Too sweet for me. I passed it to Archer, who took a bite of her own and let out a little moan of pleasure. We hadn’t had time to eat, so I really wished Taiwo had picked up bowls of stew or something instead.

“Let’s get moving,” I said. “Akua, you know the way to the library?”

“In my sleep,” she drily replied.

Not exactly a surprise. Much like Masego she was a natural talent in matters of magic, but talent wasn’t enough – to become as good as she had been, when she’d still had magic, you needed to work. We followed her. Archer ate the entire honeybread, purely to avoid question being asked she assured us, and I let my gaze wander through the empty halls of the Vaults. Most of the mages would be eating around now, or out on duty: it was some time before we encountered another soul, and even then it was another servant.

There were no tapestries here, the walls adorned instead with mosaics and steles in a style I did not recognize – it wasn’t from the Free Cities, there was no paint, but it was strikingly vivid anyway – while the ceiling above us arced gently into what appeared to be the night sky. It was a lesser form of the enchantment covering the ceiling of the Empyrean Hall, Akua told us, one that changed only between night and day. It was used by younger mages as a practice before they were allowed to work on the real masterwork. How long was it before we reached the library? I wasn’t quite sure, I was tense enough time was hard to parse without focusing. Whatever the truth, we eventually came to stand before great iron gates. Twice as tall and tall as a man, they were sculpted with the figures of twisting devils offering knowledge to men and later being made to kneel to them. I remained at a wary distance, remembering how I’d once nearly gotten myself killed by mouthing off at the Tower’s front door.

“And our way in?” Indrani asked. “I’m not seeing knockers or a lock.”

“It requires a spell,” Akua said. “A variation on a formula taught to all who have the right to enter this hall, and which changes twice a day. Fortunately, there is a trick to it.”

She laid a ghostly hand against the iron door, near a grinning devil’s face, and closed her eyes. Her arm became as dark fog, flowing gently along the iron. The fog narrowed into small tendrils that went along certain lines of the sculpture – a face there, a staff or horns or a tower – and after a long time she breathed out.

“There,” Akua Sahelian said, smirking a moment before a small click was heard at the gates unlatched.

I breathed out, rolled my shoulder.

“All right,” I said. “Archer, you know what your job is.”

“Clean-up,” she grinned.

That was one way to put it.

“Akua, with me,” I said. “I can’t hold the entire thing in the Night, and there’d be no point. It’s not the common works we’re after, it’s those that aren’t in anyone else’s library.”

“I know the sections,” she agreed.

And their defences too, which would be important. There was simply no way that the gates were the entire set of protections on something as essential to the Sahelians as this library. I’d bet they even encouraged young mages to sneak it past this door to sharpen them up a bit. The good stuff, though, would be kept away from where people could easily get at it.

“Then let’s go,” I ordered.

Archer took the lead, opening the door just enough we were able to slip through. I wasted half a heartbeat to the wonder of what I was looking at – this was large as a cathedral, and most of it books! – before focusing on the immediate. Which was a handful of white-robed scholars congregating around a great table near the entrance and paying us no attention, while a squadron of twenty guards kept watch from a raised platform to our right. Those did notice us, but the initial alarm at the sight of us somewhat faded at the sight of Akua following us in: she had changed her appearance to be matching the white robes of the scholars here. We still got a pair of guards coming down our way, frowning.

Akua and I moved towards the scholars and Indrani towards the pair, pace brisk. I scanned the room around us, taking in the tower stacks in the middle of the great hall and the upwards layers on the walls – almost like the inside of a ship – but I found no one looking at us from there. So far our only witnesses were the people I’d seen. Four scholars, I saw, and as we approached one of them turned to us with a cocked eyebrow. He was looking at Akua, trying to place her face and failing. I was, meanwhile, looking at the table. Not the books but the rest. I found something suitable, a paring knife for quills next to an inkwell. Less than a dozen feet between us and the scholars now. From the corner of my eye I saw Indrani pass behind tall stacks, the guards catching up to her there. There wasn’t a sound, but a few heartbeats later she moved out quickly and with a sword in hand. The guards above hadn’t noticed a thing, and likely wouldn’t until it was too late. Only a few feet away from the scholars now, and another one was looking at us with similar confusion.

“My apologies,” the first man said, “but why did you bring a servant here? You ought to know they are not allowed, save with a Sahelian. What is your name?”

Ah, the poor fucker. He’d handed her a line and not even known it. Akua met his eyes and smiled, that pretty little number she liked to pull out when she was about to ruin someone’s day.

“Akua,” she said, hand coming to rest on the neck of a scholar with her back to us, “Sahelian.”

Fear flooded the man’s face, even as the shade idly snapped the scholar’s neck. Calmly, I snatched the paring knife and flicked my wrist after taking a heartbeat to aim – it went right into the man’s eye, and he fell down twitching. Well, at least it’d spare him the embarrassment of admitting that Akua had technically been allowed to bring us here. Talk about awkward. One of the survivors squawked in terror, the other one tipping as he backed away from the table hastily, but we were already moving. Akua flowed over the table smoothly, dropping down on the one who’d tripped, while I claimed a silver inkwell and smashed it into the side of the squawker’s head.

He tried to ward me off with raised hands, but a jab in the stomach had him dropping his guard and I finished the job with another blow on the temple. He was unconscious, not dead, so I went to get the paring knife and finished the man off with it while Akua strangled the last one. I allowed myself one breath of relief after it was done, only then turning to look at the platform above. There’d been no alarm raised while we killed the scholars, which was a good sign. As if prompted, Archer appeared at the edge of the platform with a sword in hand – and going through a guard’s stomach. The man slumped and tumbled over the railing, falling below with a dull metallic bang. I winced at the noise.

“Go hunting,” I said. “We can’t afford being caught too early.”

I was not yelling, but she was Named: she’d be able to hear me anyway. She nodded, vanishing behind stacks.

“Can you hide the bodies?” I asked Akua.

“I suppose,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I’ve never had to dispose of my own kills before, dearest, much less someone else’s.”

I rolled my eye at her.

“I’m sure you’ll manage somehow,” I said.

“And people wonder why we build tiger pits,” Akua muttered.

I hid my amusement, instead closing my eyes and finding my calm. I began murmuring prayer in Crepuscular, Night flowing freely through my veins. I could feel the attention of the Sisters, their eagerness and their hunger. Good.

Now it was time to rob this place blind.

Beatification I

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Chapter 9: Vault

“Eighty-seven: the secret passage your nemesis will use to escape the fortress can be used to enter that same fortress. They never consider that, for some reason.”

– “Two Hundred Heroic Axioms”, author unknown

I kept my arms open wide and my hands flat, as if I were holding open a bag, but all that lay in between my fingers was shadow.

Akua stood slightly ahead of me, dropping one book after another into the dark. Without a sound they disappeared into the hungry maws of my patronesses, the two of us clearing out row after row as quickly as we could. We’d gone for the restricted sections, the forbidden ones: there was no point in my taking books that’d be in every other great Praesi library. Those sections were all trapped and warded, but I was being guided by someone who knew those traps and wards intimately. We’d been at it less than half an hour, as Archer hunted for anyone we might have missed out in the stacks, but already I’d sent hundreds and hundreds of tomes into the embrace of Sve Noc. Akua almost reverently dropped into the dark what looked like the handwritten notes of someone called Olowe, emptying the last of the shelf, and we stopped.

I looked back at rows and rows of empty shelves behind us, what had once been a section on dimensional mechanics and the technicalities of making a Breach. Not a book left, same as we’d done with necromancy, curses, High Arcana conjuration, three sections on diabolism and a dozen more branches of sorcery. It would have been missing the point to say we’d taken a fortune in books, because what we’d stolen was essentially priceless. There was no replacing any of this for the Sahelians.

“That is the last of the sections I would consider essential,” Akua noted. “Unless you want to acquire more common tomes, we are finished.”

“That was it?” I asked, skeptical.

“My family has a personal library, naturally,” she dismissed. “And the most dangerous volumes will be down in the hidden vaults. Yet for the library, I would consider nothing else here irreplaceable.”

I supposed it would have been greedy to ask for a thousand priceless books instead of just a few hundred, I mused, not that it was stopping me. I folded my arms, left over right, and brought them to my chest as I slowly eased my grip on the Night and the darkness faded. The working hadn’t been all that strenuous to maintain, but it had taken concentration: I was glad it was done.

“I’ll take you word on it,” I replied.

If we’d had more time I would have considered emptying the entire place just to make a point, but we didn’t. I was, to be frank, surprised the Eyes hadn’t betrayed us yet. My bet was on there being another game at play here, one I hadn’t quite figured out yet. That tended to be a safe bet when the Intercessor was around. Regardless, we needed to get a move on if we wanted to clear out the artefact vaults as well before this all came down on our heads. We took the stairs down and I cursed every few steps the absence of my staff and the apparently deep and abiding hatred Praesi architects had for handrails. Seriously, would it kill whoever kept building these ridiculous places to throw up a few of those? Take out two of the fucking egg-sized rubies encrusted into one of the wall frescoes and you could pay for those to be done for the entire damned palace. Some of my thoughts came out as grumbling under my breath, I figured, since Akua looked highly amused and offered me her arm for the last few steps. I took it with ill-grace, looking away. I got cackled at for that immediately, Archer popping out from behind stacks with a grin.

“Aw, isn’t that cute,” Indrani grinned. “If we get to robbing the Tower, is it going to make you hold hands?”

She smelled faintly of blood, I noticed. I cocked an eyebrow at her and she threw me a sheathed short sword about my size.

“Lots of stragglers?” I asked, ignoring the jibe.

I drew the blade, testing the weight, and found it good enough. Not as good as something fitted for me, but it’d do. As I fitted the sheath at my belt, Indrani passed a blade at Akua who nodded thanks in return and got a smile for it.

“Five,” Archer replied, “but one of them was a mage. I had to get tricky.”

The edge of one of her sleeves was slightly singed, I found with closer study.

“Good work,” I simply said. “We’re hitting the hidden vaults now. You good to fight?”

“I was promised horrors, Foundling,” Indrani grinned. “Hells, why do you think I’m even here?”

Ugh, I bet that pun was even intentional. I truly did have terrible taste in women.

“I’d assumed because you were dared while drunk,” Akua drily replied.

“Hey,” Indrani replied, offended. “That only works like, a third of a time.”

I loudly coughed.

“Fine, maybe closer to half,” Archer conceded.

Immediately after she turned to Akua with a scowl, jabbing a finger at her.

“And don’t you dare cough too, Petty Poltergeist,” she growled. “Half is all I’ll go up to.”

“I would never dare,” Akua lied, smiling prettily.

It was in a better mood that the three of us moved out towards the back of the great library, where the returned once-heiress to Wolof told us that the easiest path into the hidden vaults lay. I’d expected some sort of archway full of damned souls or a corridor swarming with enchantment, but what our quick march there revealed was actually just a set of tall golden doors. Nicely sculpted, if a little heavy on the Wolof-and-particulary-the-Sahelians-are-the-best-look-at-all-these-fools-we-crushed slant. To my admitted bewilderment, Akua then simply grabbed one of the large iron rings on the doors and pulled one open. It revealed a short hallway of bare stone, leading to a steel grate.

“Wait, is that it?” Indrani asked.

She sounded a little cheated.

“That’s got to be a trap, right?” I asked, cocking my head to the side.

“Oh, it is,” Akua flatly agreed. “There is a secret entrance thirty feet to our left that would allow us to avoid the first two killing rooms, but it would require us to pass through the terror room – and without the proper protective amulets, that would be… unwise.”

“Terror room, you say?” Archer idly repeated, sounding dangerous interested.

Of course she would be.

“Magical terror,” Akua specified. “As close to the demonic emanation as my forebears could manage. Most people die of a stalling heart within the first ten heartbeats. No, the front path is best suited to our needs.”

I considered the stone hall for a moment, humming.

“Floor trap?” I guessed.

“Hand me a book,” Akua asked.

Snorting, I grabbed what looked like a primer on the classical elements – could have used you a few years back, buddy, I thought – and began to pass it to her before pausing and glancing at Archer.

“Don’t tell Zeze,” I said.

“I’d be counted as an accessory,” Indrani solemnly replied.

The book went to Akua’s hand as she rolled her eyes, tossing it carelessly into the hallway. I glimpsed iron spikes emerging from the walls before the golden door shut. Huh. Akua, looking somewhat aggravated, wrenched open the door again and I stood there to watch as the spiked walls slowly closed in on the middle of the room. Door probably couldn’t be opened from the inside, I decided. We stood for a while longer, waiting. Sometimes the walls quickly lurched forward for an inch or two, but most of the time they just… slowly advanced.

“Now that’s just asking for a hero to find a way out,” I sadly said.

“The mechanisms that make the walls move are deep in the stone,” Akua said, sounding a tad defensive. “They can’t be changed without load-bearing walls being knocked down.”

“How do we get through?” Indrani asked, more pragmatically.

The shade stepped into the hall fearlessly when the walls were near through, slipping around the edge of the right one and disappearing. A few heartbeats later there was a metallic wrenching sound, maybe a lever being pulled, and the walls stopped. They stayed extended, leaving a path maybe a foot wide between the iron spikes that led straight to the door in the back. You could have at least pushed the door to the left so it’d be covered when the wall advanced, you hacks, I silently thought. Akua slipped back around the edge of the wall, reappearing with a smile as she dusted herself off.

“And to cross that?” I asked, pointing at the steel grate.

“The Archer key,” the shade gracefully replied.

The Archer in question snorted, stepping forward – Akua flowed around her – and pushing to the end of our little narrow passage. One, two, three, four. On the fourth Name-assisted kick the steel grate toppled down, ripped right off the hinges. I cocked an eyebrow at Akua.

“It is enchanted against blades and lockpicks, not mules,” she shrugged.

“I heard that,” Indrani called out.

Swallowing a grin, I shimmied through and followed the shade over the fallen grate. It brought us to another stone hall, this one rather more ornate than the last. The walls were covered with mosaics in the Sahelians colours whose patterns felt… oddly fascinating – I wrenched away my eyes forcefully – and whose floor was checkered marble in black and white. At the end I saw an open stone doorway and what looked like curving stairs going down. The three of us were huddled in a small antechamber between the halls, and out of curiosity I looked up. Yeah, as I’d figured the stone archway here had small depression in the rocks.

“Stone door falls down here and over there,” I mused. “I’m calling… pit trap?”

“Oh,” Indrani gurgled. “That’s an old one. Is it the black or white tiles that make it work?”

“There are triggers under both,” Akua sighed. “And the floor itself is not trapped. Once the doors close, the mosaic shifts in some places and begins releasing alchemical gas.”

“What’s it do?” Archer asked,

“It was a forgetfulness mixture, when I left,” Akua noted. “Prevented memory recall longer than five heartbeats. It could be anything now, of course.”

“And we beat this how?” I asked.

It was too long for us to jump our way across, although maybe if I used Night…

“The stone doors open again once the monitoring enchantment senses that there is no longer gas in the air,” she said. “I know where the openings are, so Catherine and I simply need to block them until the trap begins to reset. We’ll have a window of four heartbeats to cross.”

“That’s very unsporting,” I approved.

She pointed out where in the mosaics – near what looked like a swirl of pale eyes – we’d need to act and then we moved out. The doors immediately fell down from the ceiling, blocking the paths out, but what followed what almost absurdly mundane. I did not use Night or a Name trick, simply jamming my thumb into the opening and then waiting for a while as the doors began to rise again. We ran, Indrani snickering the whole time, and made it to the stairs before the trap activated again. We went down slowly, catching our breath, and I cast a consternated look behind us.

“I don’t understand why your ancestors didn’t just layer a hundred wards,” I admitted. “This stuff can be beaten, a hundred different layers of protection changed every few years can’t.”

“We are in the Vaults, my darling,” Akua replied. “It is presumed that anyone who made it this far into the Empyrean Palace has the help of traitors within our own. Wards can be crossed in the snap of a finger, with the right helper. This? This cannot.”

I was about to object some more when she silenced me with a finger.

“These were the easiest of rooms, my heart,” she said. “Now that we are below, tricks such as I used will find little bite.”

Straight from the start we were faced with a crossroads, the paths going to the left and right. The left side, Akua explained, was where the other entrance above would have led to directly. The terror room.

“And where we’re headed?” I asked.

The hallway here had mosaics much like those above, dangerous to look at for too long, which I figured was actually pretty clever on the part of the builders. You couldn’t see the traps coming if you couldn’t risk looking at your surroundings for long. Wouldn’t want to be one of the poor fuckers in charge of cleaning this place, though. Maybe they had wards in place to prevent it getting dusty?

“Straight into the illusion room and the duelling room, then we may access the first vault,” Akua replied, leading us to another steel grate.

It required Archer’s tender attentions once more, but when forced off the hinges it did not fall into the room beyond it. Anchored by enchantments, our guide noted, and so we ‘opened’ the broken thing as if we’d used a key. Beyond was a hall that was entirely mosaic, that confounding little number we’d been walking through. Here it covered the floor and ceiling too, though, and led to another steel grate. I risked small glimpsed at the floor, finding pale eyes there like those that’d covered the gas exits above us, but I bit my lip. Something was wrong here, itching at me. I felt the presence of the Sisters fill me like cold water, Komena nudging my chin to look right instead of- the illusion broke and I let out a gasp.

“Fuck me,” I murmured. “The spell here makes you twist left and right for up and down.”

“Yes,” Akua said, sounding pleased. “And so draw the eye away from this…”

She shimmied in front of me, dipping her foot into what my mind still insisted was the right wall, and the mosaic vanished. Under it was a sharp drop and even sharper steel spikes. Ah, lovely.

“There’s a safe way through?” I asked.

“Indeed,” Akua replied. “Archer?”

I turned to look at Indrani, who had her eyes closed and was muttering under her breath. She opened her eyes once, quickly glancing at the floor and then closing them again. Twice more she did that, looking angrier and angrier, until on the third she drew back her sleeve and bit her forearm hard enough blood came out. She looked again, eyes hard, and only then offered me a wild grin.

“It’s fine, ladies,” Archer said. “I can See it now. Mind couldn’t get around trying to believe two things at the same time.”

It was useful now and then to be reminded of how fucking dangerous Indrani actually was. Akua had been raised here and I had goddesses helping me see through this. Her? It was Name and grit that got her through. And somehow, now that she’d seen through the spell, I suspected that no other one like it would ever fool her again. We crossed the floor like children holding hands in dark woods, moving across the complex back and forth pattern that Akua unerringly led us through until we’d reached the door on the other side. Solid copper, this one, and our guide opened it by ghosting a hand through the lock and picking it with her own ‘fingers’. It popped open, revealing another short antechamber leading into another hall.

This one, which she’d called the duelling room earlier, was little more than bare stone and mosaic walls save for the five longswords that’d been sheathed in stands of copper. It was a thick steel door that awaited us at the end of the hall, with no visible lock or pull.

“So we draw a sword and fight an opponent for each one we draw?” Indrani guessed.

“Not at all,” Akua laughed. “Pulling swords only makes parts of the floor fall away into spikes when the monster is unleashed. It is the touch of flesh on the door that begins the duel.”

“And how does the door open?” I asked.

“An enchanted key, which we do not have,” Akua said.

I glanced at the steel door in the back and Archer did the same.

“I’m not sure I can force my way through that with brute strength,” she admitted.

“We will not need to,” the shade said. “The swords are, naturally, all cursed.”

“Naturally,” I drily echoed.

“The second blade from the right should have a particularly nasty rotting curse on it that I believe will damage the door enough to reveal the lock, if pressed in the right place,” Akua said. “I should be able to pick said lock from there.”

“And you have no flesh to rot,” I mused. “All right, that’ll work. That leaves Indrani and I to handle whatever creature comes out. You have any notion of what it’ll be?”

“It used to be giant scorpion, but it should have died by now,” Akua noted. “It shouldn’t be too difficult an opponent, given the breakdown of relations with Aksum. That is where all the most… difficult creatures tend to come from.”

I nodded.

“Can we use the other blades against the beastie?” Indrani asked.

“Alas, it is always bespelled to be protected when put away here,” Akua said.

It was typical of Praesi highborn, I thought, that though a great many of them were utterly and irremediably mad their madness somehow turned out to be in some ways sensible and organized. It was a through sort of lunacy, and all the more dangerous for the thoroughness being married to the absence of sense in most other ways. I unsheathed the blade at my hip, rolling my wrist to limber it and stretching my limbs carefully. Archer gave me an amused look but did the same, Akua patiently waiting for us to be done.

“Where’s it going to come from?” I asked.

The shade simply pointed upwards. Of course it was, I sighed. I looked at Archer, who nodded in approval.

“Get us started, Akua,” I said.

Smoothly she walked up the swords and pulled out her chosen one from the copper stand, darting away afterwards. There was no visible sign of the curse she’d mentioned on the sword, but I could smell the scent of power in the air. She’d not lied when she called the enchantment on that nasty. Three heartbeats passed before a floor panel of about nine feet by three shattered into neat pieces and revealed a spiked pit below even as the ceiling shifted above us. There were three birdlike screeches as a massive form – Gods, large as two oxen as least – dropped down from above between Indrani and I. Two thoughts came to me about at the same time. First off, Akua had been rather optimistic when she’d assumed that the giant scorpion had died of old age.

Second, this was not a noise a scorpion should be able to make.

“Why does this thing have faces on its back?” I asked.

“Better question,” Archer mused, “why are they all screaming?”

I ducked away from a lightning-quick strike of a stinger the size of my head, the massive scorpion trying to trample Indrani as it kept me away. She slid under it, laughing in glee as something in its belly began spitting out acid that she only narrowly avoided, and I chopped away at one of its bony legs to distract it. Bony was the right term for it, I found out, the bloody carapace was hard as bone. And that was just the leg, the body would be worse. That left the eyes to strike at or, urgh, the… faces. Which were still screaming, looking like damned souls sown into chitin and singing out their eternal torment. Hells, they actually might be. It turned its attention to me as Archer put distance between her and the tail, pincers twitching. I kept close to the wall, throwing myself to the side at the last moment when it struck and smiling at the screeches of pain it let out when the pincer hit solid stone.

“I am working the lock,” Akua calmly called out.

“Archer, let’s not fight the damn thing,” I screamed.

“Boo,” Indrani screamed back.

Her shout drew back its attention and it stabbed away at her repeatedly with the stinger, growing angrier as she kept dodging at the last moment, and I darted close to its face to make sure it had to keep its attention divided. The pincers came at me from both sides, but the anglers were predictable. Anger was making it sloppy. It grew even angrier a moment later, when Indrani finally baited it into a stinger strike at the angle for her to cut off the entire thing after she dodged. Even as it screeched I took the opportunity to land a few hacks at its eyes, black fluid dripping everywhere, and retreated as it began to attack blindly.

“Around the spikes,” I yelled at Indrani.

There was a narrow strip between the walls and the floor that’d dropped, and with the scorpion partly blinded now was the time to make us of it. I began to cross towards the latter half the hall, where Akua was kneeling before the door, and Archer did the same a moment later. With any luck the bloody thing would try to follow us and fall to its death. Halfway through I turned to have a glance and had a moment of triumph when I saw the monster was following us, but it was short-lived. The scorpion’s legs unfolded further with a wet wrenching side, and hoisted him up by pushing against both walls. Oh fuck me, I thought as it began to walk on the walls to catch up to us.

“Akua,” I screamed.

“I am nearly done,” she replied.

The tail Archer had cut was leaking black blood everywhere, but it could still serve as a whip. As I discovered when it snapped after me, forcing me to hop forward on my bad leg and nearly fall to my death.

“Akua,” I screamed.

“And done,” she replied.

I heard the door open with a click and threw myself on solid ground, landing in a painful. Archer was already there and she helped me up, dragging me as we broke into a run towards the open door. The monster was behind us, pincers lashing out as it landed on the solid stone with a clattering sound, but Indrani threw me through the doorway and I heard her stumbled through as I flopped on my belly. Akua slammed closed the door, not quite quickly enough to silence the screeches of rage from the monstrous scorpion. All three of us dropped to the floor for a while after that, catching our breath.

“So the scorpion might still be alive,” I solemnly told Akua.

There was a moment of silence, then all three of us began laughing in spasms. The merriment passed, but it’d done us some good. Even better was that we were now going to get into our first vault of the night. The room we opened did not look like the fabulous gold-and-gem-laden treasury my imagination had conjured up. Disappointingly enough, the large vault looked more like an orderly storage house than anything else. The goods were interesting, at least. A dozen enchanted swords and twice as many armours, a bow made of dragonbone – which Indrani pawed lustfully at – and several banners whose cloth was woven with spells that inspired either valour or fear. There was also a saddle made of what I suspected to be human skin, which I almost hesitated to take. Well, the Sisters probably wouldn’t mind even if it was. It was minor artefacts aside from that, mostly enchanted jewelry and amulets.

“Prestige pieces,” Akua told me. “All were crafted by famous practitioners. It is a traditional way to reward a subordinate without overly empowering them.”

“Well,” I shrugged, “into the Night they go.”

It didn’t take long to clear it all out, Archer reluctantly parting with the bow when it was pointed out to her that she did not have arrows to go with it.

“Left now,” Akua said. “It will bring us to three adjoining vaults.”

Huh, that did sound rather tempting.

“What’s in the way?” I asked, and before she could answer I got my response.

It was, uh, remarkably straightforward.

“This is an acid pool,” Archer said, looking down at, well, that.

“So it is,” Akua cheerfully replied.

It was maybe three feet below the threshold we stood at, and there was no way to tell how deep it ran. The length of the hallway was at least thirty feet, which made it a laughable notion to try jumping.

“How do people usually get through it?” I asked.

“They bring a specially crafted silver bridge,” Akua smiled.

“With a mage around you could make a bridge across out of shields,” Indrani noted.

A heartbeat later, there was a little shiver across the room as a pulse of… something went through the air. I cocked an eyebrow at Akua.

“Raw magic,” she said. “It would disrupt any ongoing spell formula. Anyone trying to cross on a shield panel would…”

She glanced meaningfully at the gently simmering acid. Lovely.

“I’m pretty sure Night won’t be disrupted,” I frowned.

“My ancestors did not, in fact, plan for the human herald of drow goddesses to infiltrate their vaults and then use a largely unheard of and poorly understood power to make a bridge across their acid pool,” Akua confirmed, her tone holding the faintest note of sarcasm. “How short-sighted of them indeed.”

I coughed in embarrassment, then got to work. The wards over the palace were still making it hard to call on Night even though we were well past nightfall, and I found the magic pulse harder to deal with than I’d thought it would be. Had to do double layers to avoid a thinning, which made it take longer than I would have liked. It was with sweat beading the back of my neck that I brought us to the other side, where Archer promptly kicked her way through the steel grid. How had the godsdamned acid pool been the trickiest of these so far? It was a good thing the wards hadn’t been updated here in a while, I thought, because a few more layers of whatever made it hard to shape the Night might have managed to lock me out from using it in practice.

Akua stopped us before we could enter the traditional antechamber, dragging an ethereal foot over the floor. Headsman’s blades came out from both sides, cutting into nothing but thin air, and they began to withdraw. Well, that’d been bracing. They’d been building up the impression that the antechambers were safe this whole time, hadn’t they? Tricky fuckers. The hallway beyond was unlike any we’d seen before, which I did not take as a good sign. Every part of the walls, floor and ceiling was covered with angled mirrors, giving the impression that we were standing on the inside of a gem. The uncovered parts were the doors in and out, and somehow I suspected that was only a temporary state of affairs.

“Enchanted mirrors?” I asked.

“They induce nightmare-filled sleep if stared at,” Akua said, “but it is the doors to watch out for. They will shoot out burning rays of light, which then…”

“Reflect every which way,” Indrani finished, sounding a little impressed.

“The enchantments in the mirrors amplify the heat,” Akua said. “There is an upper limit, of course, but after seven reflections it would be enough to incinerate an ogre on contact.”

Given the kind of people these defences belonged to, I suspected it was not a figure of speech she’d used there.

“Night’s not great against fire,” I admitted. “So that’s a problem. How do we get through the door on the other end?”

It was a copper one and Akua had picked one of those earlier but I didn’t want to assume.

“I can get us through the lock there,” she said. “But not before at least a dozen spells have been shot out.”

“These rays, do they reflect off anything or just the mirrors?” Archer suddenly asked.

I breathed out in understanding and so did our guide.

“The side of a sword should work,” she replied.

Indrani shot me a smile, which I forced myself to return. I was getting closer to my Name, but the reflexes weren’t quite there yet. I began to draw Night into myself, murmuring prayers in Crepuscular. At the very least quickening my limbs ought to help. Our swords were bared a moment later and as I grimaced we darted forward. Before we’d even made it a foot forward mirrors moved to cover the entrance we’d left and three spells shot out from the polished copper door. Whooping with glee, Indrani casually batted one away while Akua and I instead prudently moved to the sides. She went straight for the door, even as it began spewing out a second volley, and I took up a position guarding her back.

I narrowly caught a ray that would have hit my chest, reflecting it upwards and then into a wildly careening trajectory. The trouble with all those fucking angled mirrors was that it was hard to guess what path the spell would take when it came back. Archer was still in the middle of the room, moving with a dancer’s grace as she reflected spells in what was too measured a way for it to be random. Eyes narrowed I tried to follow what she was doing, but only figured it out after the third volley of spells came out and two of the rays hit each other in midair, bursting into a ball of flame and smoke. Fucking Hells, was she actually making them hit each other? I could barely keep up with the ones actually coming for me.

That moment of inattention cost me, even my quickened limbs not quite quick enough when a ray I avoided was reflected right back into my shoulder from behind before I could blink. I managed to get it to clip the shoulder instead of bite into the muscle, at least, but I swallowed a scream as a parchment’s depth of my shoulder just turned to ash and the livery over it vanished. Fuck, that hurt. Akua came through for us moments later, the copper door opening, and I was quick to retreat behind it. Archer took her time joining us, twice more slapping away spells before slipping behind the door as I slammed it closed. Her eyes dipped to my shoulder, but like Akua she said nothing. I called on Night to kill the pain and we moved on to the vaults awaiting us.

The first vault looked very mundane, until you had a closer look. The neat piles of wood were all atrociously expensive sorts from the Waning Woods or beyond, the blocks of rock and the gems all gave off the scent of magic without being enchanted – which meant inherent sorcery – and the sealed copper boxes here were all filled with living plants I did not recognize. There was a single potion rack, with maybe sixty vials in whole, but my jaw dropped when I saw a whole half-dozen of them were as red and faintly glowing water.

“Are those actual healing potions?” I croaked.

“They are,” Akua said. “And not even the most precious of the lot. The bottom row is the elixir of long life. Drinking it adds at the very least forty years to one’s lifespan.”

I’d keep one of those for Vivienne, then. I shook my head, still in shock that I was looking at the little red potions that were said to be the closest thing to a panacea that alchemists had ever achieved. They were also said to require the blood of a dragon taken while it still lived to be brewed, which had seen them placed squarely in the realm of legends. The last Callowan ruler said to have drunk one was Elizabeth Alban. It was with petty glee that I cleared out the room into the Night, being careful not to break anything. We wasted no time hitting the second vault, which was significantly less worth smiling about.

Rooms full of demons tended to get that reaction out of me.

I saw the same three Weeping Snares the High Lord of Wolof had stood me off with and promptly stashed them away, to the reluctant acceptance of the Sisters, but they had significantly less qualms taking in the rows and rows of grimoires that Akua told me were contracts with devils. Two silver jigsaw puzzles that supposedly could give a glimpse into how to make a Great Breach when completed went into the Night as well, as well as a dozen more of what Akua called ‘insight’ artefacts, but when we came to a simple copper crown on a pedestal the Crows sent me a wave of wariness.

“Insipientia,” Akua reverently said.

My Old Miezan was rusty, but not that rusty.

“It’s a bound demon of Madness,” I said. “The same one your mother unleashed?”

“Yes,” she replied. “My family has held other demons, over the years, but never was there a binding quite so thorough or a demon quite so mastered as Insipientia has been. Centuries of foes have tried to free and turn it against us, ever to no avail.”

I reached out for it, but the Crows balked. There was something about the crown that spooked them, and I wasn’t one to gainsay the instincts of my patronesses when it came to demonic taint.

“It stays,” I said. “Vault’s clear, what’s in the third one?”

“Nothing, presumably,” Akua shrugged. “It is almost never used. It is the guest vault, and my family has rarely granted the honour of its use to anyone.”

“Hey, worth a look anyway,” Indrani drawled. “Maybe there’ll be loose change there we can toss into the Night.”

I rolled my eye but did not disagree. I wanted to be as through as possible when clearing the vaults. Akua informed us there were only two more left after this, and the paths began to grow complicated- we’d have to double back over the acid pool – when we forced open the warded door, revealing a sight that gave paused to all of us. In the bare stone room there was an altar and a sleeping body on it, but that wasn’t the part that gave us pause. It was the fact that we were looking at a perfect reproduction of Akua Sahelian when she’d died. A shift modestly covered the body, but I’d seen enough of Akua over the years to know that this was looking at a twin. One that was breathing. The shade, face unreadable, took a few hesitant steps and laid a hand on the body. After a moment she gasped.

“What is it?” I quietly asked.

“She has magic,” Akua said. “No mind or memories that I can feel, but the Gift is there.”

Ah, I thought, and the pieces fell into place. The guest vault, huh. So this was the work of the sole person in Praes who might feasibly make this request of Sargon: Dread Empress Malicia, First of Her Name. There’d never been any need for me to lay out bait, I now understood. Malicia had always intended to take it. She was in need of a Warlock and of someone who had a good handle of me and my plans, so she intended to secure both in a single stroke. And there was the deeper game here, the one I was beginning to glimpse. The Intercessor, who had outed us in the fortress but not gotten us captured. The Bard had made sure that Sargon would cover the treasury and the granaries, figuring out one step of me that it would leave me only one place to go.

That the Intercessor too had wanted Akua to be in this room, at this moment, sent a shiver of dread up my spine. Did she know something I did not? Had I made a mistake? Or did I, for once, better understand the nature of the woman we were dealing with than either my opponents? My fingers clenched, then unclenched. None of us would know the answer to that until the very last moment, I suspected. Besides, now that we had seen what we were meant to the Eyes – the dull throb of magic filled the air, a ward being tripped. There you go, I thought, as troubles as I was vindicated. And still I couldn’t shake the impression that I was missing something. That I was still underestimating my opponents somehow.

“We need to get out,” I said. “They know we’re here.”

“Fuck,” Indrani cursed. “Think we should grab the…”

She hesitated. I glanced at Akua.

“No,” she decisively said. “It will be a trap of some sort.”

I nodded.

“We’re still using the way out in the Empyrean Hall,” I said. “Can you lead us there quick?”

“Very much so,” Akua replied. “There is a hall that leads there directly.”

I didn’t bother closing the door behind us as we filed out. We took a left at the end of the hall where the vaults were, which brought us to another large hallway where aside from the mosaics the sole decoration was a tomb of stone.

“That doesn’t look good,” Archer muttered.

“There is no need to worry,” Akua snorted. “For this, I will require neither of you.”

Taking her at her word we followed her in, and predictably enough the tomb’s lid began to open. A strikingly good-looking man in bronze armour began to rise out, smiling eagerly, but the shade met his eyes and straightened her back.

“I am Akua Sahelian,” she said.

The man froze. His eyes were blank, I noticed only then. And I had yet to see him breathe. Undead of some sort? I glimpsed a slender sword in the tomb with him, already half-drawn.

“No,” the man hissed in Mthethwa. “Not after-”

“I am of the blood of Subira,” Akua said, tone flat. “By the ancient compact, I bid you to return to your sleep and grant us passage.”

“Insolent child,” the man bit out, “how dare you-”

And yet, for all his complaining, his limbs were moving. He lay back down into the tomb, and even as he cursed Akua profusely he closed the lid over himself. There was a moment of silence, then Archer cleared her throat.

“So, uh, what was that exactly?”

“Dread Emperor Revenant was not the first Soninke to attempt to rule forever,” Akua replied with a smile. “Merely the most successful. And some of my ancestors had an… interesting sense of humour.”

Well, didn’t that sound ominous. Still, I counted our blessings and followed our guide as we left. The door wasn’t even locked from outside, meant to keep people out instead of in, and we hurried through only occasionally trapped sets of stairs until we emerged above in what looked like a large marble hallway. Above us I caught sight of something staggeringly beautiful: the night sky in all its glory. It wasn’t like the lesser version of the Vaults, this was the real one – the very wonder this palace was named after. I could almost feel the wind looking at the ceiling here, see the clouds move and even the occasional bird fly. It was one of the most magnificent works of magic I’d ever seen.

“We are close to the passage,” Akua said, breaking me out of my thoughts. “Let us hurry.”

Yet even with her navigating for us, this part of the palace had been on high alert. It was mere moments before we came across a servant, who screamed out in alarm at the sight of our swords, and soldiers were on our heels in moments. Arrows and spells streaked behind us as we ran, clattering against tall marble columns and setting tapestries aflame. How many were there? At least sixty, I thought. Archer took an arrow in the arm but she ripped it away without batting an eye, cursing as she did, and twice streaks of flame went through Akua. She came back… weaker each time she reformed afterwards. Tired in away I’d never before seen her be as a shade.

We remained narrowly ahead of our opponents, until we reached the statue of Subira Sahelian that was the mark of one of the eleven secret passages into Wolof. Akua pushed the crown the man held in his hand and the statue began to move, revealing a narrow set of stairs, and we wasted no time heading down. The soldiers were close. The statue moved back behind us, though, which ought to slow them down some. The oppressive weight of a new set of wards washed over me the moment I got onto the stairs but I grit my teeth and quickened my pace. We’d planned to leave through here from the start, though initially it would have been after we robbed the treasury instead of the vaults. See, like all of the eleven secret passages into Wolof this one was a trap.

The narrow stairs flared out into a larger platform where we all paused, and hastily I took out our last two water breathing potions. Indrani idly took two steps down the platform as I did, to trigger what we all knew was coming: moments after her foot touched the lower stairs water began pouring from the ceiling. It was a flood corridor, see. Either the pressure of the flood or drowning would take care of anyone who came through here. Except, of course, if they had prepared potions for this very eventuality. It’d never been an option to come back by the aqueduct again: we would have needed to swim uphill and against the current, and break through the enchanted barriers there again without the evanescent powder to do the work for us.

“Bottoms up,” Indrani said as I gave her a vial.

We toasted and knocked down the drinks. I breathed in, limbering my shoulders for the coming swim. Sooner or later the guards would come down the stairs and try to snatch us with spells even if proper pursuit was impossible, we needed to get a head start. We waited a few heartbeats. And then, hideously, nothing happened at all. The potion did nothing.

“Cat,” Indrani slowly said, but I did not answer.

Instead I closed my eyes. And there it was, the missing piece. Malicia had wanted Akua to see that body down in the Vaults, it was why the Eyes – who had no doubt reported to her body in the city the moment they’d been sure I could no longer kill them for it – had waited so long to pull the alarm. But it’d not made sense to me that she would then simply… let us go. Much as I despised the empress, she was one of the cleverest people I’d ever met. Malicia had been fine letting us go, I now realized, because she’d known we weren’t going anywhere. The return vials of water breathing potion had been sabotaged before we ever left.

Had she gotten to the Concocter? No, I thought, she shouldn’t have the leverage for that. Mostly likely just spies that’d had access to the vials at someone point before they got to my hands. A few foreign reagents would have been enough to fuck up a brew this complicated. And it didn’t matter how it’d been done, I forced myself to acknowledge, just that it had. The Intercessor knew from the start, I put together as my stomach dropped. It was Malicia’s plan, and Malicia is Named. So the old monster had just come in at the right time and the right place to nudge us so her favoured outcome came about. My fingers clenched.

Figuring out my enemies was useful, but what I needed right now was a way out.

“Akua,” I said. “When we came out the reservoirs, you dried us. Do you think you could keep a bubble of air around our heads as we swim?”

There was a long moment of silence, then she shook her head.

“I do not think I am strong enough for two,” the shade admitted. “Not after the spells I was struck by, and perhaps not even at my best. Around one of you, if I meld closely, and even then it will be difficult.”

So Akua and one of us could still make it out. Not quickly, though, I thought. Which meant the person staying behind would have to keep the soldiers off their back for a while. Could I work around this with Night, steal air to bring with me? I murmured a prayer, reaching for the power, but though I felt the Crows reach out to me our fingers… missed. The wards were too heavy here, I realized. Night wouldn’t get me out of this.

“You can’t use Night, can you?” Indrani said, eyes sharp.

I shook my head.

“That settles it,” Archer said. “It’s got to be me. Your Name’s not there yet. I’ll keep them off long enough and you can trade back for me later.”

I breathed out, looking for calm. Forcing it.

“Yeah,” I said.

She slowly nodded, then turned to ask Akua something, and without missing a beat I struck the side of her head. She was quick, and strong, but I was both too and she’d not been expecting it. I caught her in my arms before she could collapse, golden eyes following me all the while.

“They can’t kill me,” I said. “Malicia knows she’d be risking handing the Dead King a victory if she did.”

There was simply no one else that could keep the Firstborn bound to the Grand Alliance and Callow in the war the way I could. Vivienne could maybe talk our soldiers around, but the drow? No, Malicia wasn’t after my life here. She wanted me in her grasp.

I intended to make her rue that notion to her dying day.

Above us the statue began moving, and I handed Archer to Akua. The shade took our friend, coming so close to me for a moment it would have been the easiest thing in the world to steal a kiss from my lips, but she refrained. Shouts from above. There was no more time, and if I was going to make it out of captivity I needed… something. A plan, a workaround. And it came to me, in a flash, as above the first arrow was fired loosely in our direction.

“Takisha Muraqib,” I hissed. “Make the offer for it. And the rest Sepulchral.”

Her hand touched mine, impossibly warm, and she nodded.

“I will,” Akua Sahelian swore.

Moments later she was in the water, bringing Archer with her, as spells began to light up the hall and I turned towards the enemy. Well, Night or not I had a sword and a long history of stabbing people with those.

Time to see how long I could buy them.

Chapter 10: Parley

“Diplomacy is as sailing, catching the way the wind blows.”

– Ashuran saying

There was something deeply disorienting about waking up after having been knocked out. It wasn’t like falling asleep, there was this sense of… confusion, when where you were didn’t match what you last recalled. So when my eyes opened, I made myself breathe in and out slowly as I forced myself to be calm. I did not know this bed, or these sheets – silk – or this room around me, lit with magelights and open windows giving a beautiful view of Wolof spread out below.

I rose from the cushions I’d been leaning on, soft and plump and exquisitely embroidered, and to my surprise my limbs did not pain me. I could feel my left arm was tender, the skin pulled taut in that way it was after mage healing was used on flesh, but even the ever-present dull ache in my bad leg had been made quiet. My clothes were not the ones I had last worn, loose yellow cotton trousers and a matching robe patterned in green, but they were a comfortable fit. I padded onto the stone floor barefoot, finding that a beautifully carved cane of red mahogany awaited my hand. I tried it out and it fit perfectly, the spread wings of the ravens sculpted on the handle comfortably matching my grip. Leaning on the cane, I cast a more elaborate look around.

It was a square room, and though the floor beneath my feet was covered in tiles and my surroundings were panelled in wood I caught it was all stone beneath it. Ignoring the slippers – was that lion’s fur? – that’d been laid out for me, I ignored the rich furnishings of what was no doubt an elaborate prison cell and limped my way to the windows. Three large glass panels, open just slightly but enough that I could feel the faintest breeze coming through. I flicked fingers at them and was not surprised in the least when the illusion flickered and a flat panel of bronze covered by a book’s worth of runes was revealed for a heartbeat. The illusion resumed the moment my fingers ceased contact with the bronze, returning the false but beautiful view of Wolof under afternoon’s light.

I reached for the Night knowing what awaited, and I’d been right: I could not quite grasp it, layers and layers of wards preventing me from drawing it close. The Sisters reached out towards me as well, and though our metaphysical fingers failed to connect their presence was a manner of comfort.

“Is my mind intact?” I asked them in a murmur.

Andronike sent a sense of reassurance, and from Komena I felt only cold anger at the thought that mere mortals might have tried to meddle with their First Under the Night. I let out a soft breath of relief. My thoughts and memories were still my own, then. I remembered fighting in that secret passage, keeping close to the wall to prevent the mages from getting a clean shot at me, but after the first few lives I’d taken it was… something of a blur. I’d been knocked unconscious at some point, presumably, and brought here. I drummed fingers against my cane, letting out a small hum. Had I held long enough for Akua and Indrani to escape? Yes, I decided after a moment. I should have gotten them enough of a head start if the guards had needed to dig me out with swords.

The goddesses in me withdrew, as if coming close had been an effort, and I offered the illusion of Wolof a wan smile. I’d not planned for this little venture to end in my being a prisoner, but I could deal with the change of plans. If Akua had grasped what I’d meant with those few words, near the end, then my sappers were already digging at the foundation of my captivity. Why, I just needed to bet it all on the strength of the understanding of myself between a woman I hated as much as I loved – and who would, before the moon’s turn, betray me sure as the coming of the Last Dusk. Until then, though? My gaze swept the room again. My captivity came with a small rack of wine bottles at least, I found, not to mention bowls of assorted nuts and fruits.

I found a pair of books, too, atop a pretty cabinet. One was a book by a Mistress Adad titled ‘Great Works’, which a quick thumbing revealed was about ancient Soninke architecture. The other, to my reluctant amusement, was a Praesi highborn etiquette guide. Fair. Following the teaching of my Callowan forbears, I picked the book about architecture out of contrary spirit and limped to the table. Huh, was that a fully-stocked writing desk too? Nice. I picked up a bottle of wine on my way, refusing to take one of the gold-rimmed crystal glasses by principle, and wrenched open a bottle of what looked like a Nok red before dropping into a seat and cracking open the book.

It ought to tide me over before Sargon came to talk, I figured.

—

The time of the day displayed by the illusion did not match what my sixth sense told me of the passage of time. It would have been a clever trick to disorient me, otherwise. Before I saw either hide or hair of High Lord Sargon or Malicia – who would be coming sooner or later, I knew – I first encountered servants. Veiled and silent they came thrice a day to bring out delicious four-course meals, fill my wine rack, empty the enchanted water cabinet in the corner. Heated water for washing was in the morning, after breakfast, and not once did any of them even twitch at anything I said. I even shouted at the top of my lungs once, to see if I’d at least get a reaction, but nothing. They might have been deaf, I thought, or at least bespelled for deafness.

I found had little to do but eat, read and drink for a whole day. Though I got restless before the first bell had passed, in a way this was also… relaxing. There was only so much I could do from in here, and how long had it been since I’d had so few demands on my time? Still, I wouldn’t simply resign myself to it either. I inspected my cell but found no opening to it save for the hidden door the servants used, which led to a stone passage I only ever saw lead to a closed steel gate. I wasn’t going to be popping that open with a cane, I knew, though it might be worth checking if I could touch Night while in the passage. Somehow I doubted it, but why leave the question unasked?

On the second day of my captivity, before I could find a good opportunity to try the passage, a servant in Sahelian livery came. No veil on this one, and unlike the others he was feeling chatty.

“This one bears the words of High Lord Sargon Sahelian, Queen of Callow,” the man said.

“I’m listening,” I replied, cocking an eyebrow.

Sargon was asking whether I’d agree to have my midday meal with him, as it turned out. I was tempted to decline just to see what would happen, but I held back. I wasn’t sure if he’d left me to stew in the room for a day just to make sure I’d be inclined to talk, but if so I had to admit it’d worked. I took him up on the offer and was promptly afforded the services of a tailor, which I bemusedly agreed to. The clothes I’d been provided were comfortable enough, tunics in green or yellow with a Callowan cut, but I wouldn’t turn down free clothes. Deciding to indulge a whim I ended up wearing a soft yellow sundress, paired with a short frock in pale green and comfortable shoes. Alas, Sargon was warned well in advance so I did not get to see a look of surprise on his face but the momentary blankness was enough to have smiling as he sat across the table in my cell. He was not so ornately dressed as when we’d last met either, his white and red tunic rich and well-cut but otherwise unremarkable.

He was dressed in that way that those whose family had been rich for generations got dressed, when there was no longer a need to trumpet about the wealth.

“We will be having fey fowl as the main plate,” the High Lord of Wolof amiably told me. “One was caught last month a few miles to the south.”

“I’m going to assume we’re not eating an actual fae,” I replied, cocking an eyebrow.

He chuckled.

“We are not. The birds are descended from experiments of Dread Emperor Sorcerous’ that his successor loosed into the wilds,” Sargon said. “It is said he was attempting to infuse birds with the powers of Arcadia, but only ever succeeded with the basest of their kind. The first specimens were highly toxic, but not so their progeniture.”

“Huh,” I said. “They taste any good?”

“Delicious when braised and served with zaze sauce,” Sargon smiled. “I don’t believe you’ve ever had it before.”

The man kept a damn good table, I’d give him that much. The first two plates were warm herbal bread served with sauces and a spicy but refreshing broth, followed by the fowl-on-rice with the zaze sauce that proved exactly as good as he’d boasted it would be. It ended with a creamy, sweet pastry that tasted of eggs and cinnamon I found paired well with my wine. And none of it was poisoned, an additional point in its favour. The conversation had been enjoyable but light, the two of us pretending I wasn’t a prisoner in Wolof and discussing what I’d read in ‘Great Works’ – I suspected his enthusiasm there was not feigned in the slightest – and a few anecdotes about the city itself. All of it very tame.

When a servant brought me a pipe stuffed with wakeleaf and refilled my wine, though, I knew the real conversation was about to start. Sargon gallantly struck the match for me and lit it, himself indulging instead in a small cup of an amber liquor that smelled strongly of peaches.

“This morning I threatened to have you executed should your army not retreat,” Sargon conversationally said, “but your marshal declined rather rudely.”

“Juniper knows an empty bluff when she hears one,” I shrugged, pulling at my pipe.

Praes couldn’t afford to kill me right now. Much like I was pulling my punches fighting them, as I wanted the Empire’s martial strength mustered against Keter, they too had to pull theirs. If Malicia killed me, there was a very real risk that the western fronts would outright collapse – and much as she liked to pretend otherwise, the empress didn’t actually want the Dead King to want any more than we did.

“Sadly,” Sargon sighed.

I breathed in deep of my wakeleaf as he sipped at his drink.

“I have been advised to torture you publicly in order to force compliance, naturally,” he conversationally added.

I blew out a small ring of smoke, shaping it by making my lips pop. I did not answer. He chuckled, revealing that slightly crooked smile again.

“I know better than to attempt such a thing, of course,” High Lord Sargon said, “though you do not seem worried in the slightest.”

“I had my soul eviscerated by lesser gods once,” I idly replied. “Came out of it mostly sane. Not a lot of torture than can beat that, even if you get inventive.”

And neither Juniper nor Vivienne would fold at the sight anyway. They both knew I’d tan their hides if they did. All it’d win Sargon was my genuine enmity, which he was taking pains to avoid earning.

“I would not dare claim that I can imagine,” the golden-eyed man amiably replied. “You will understand, naturally, that holding the head of a host besieging my holdings prisoner is something of complicated situation.”

Meaning some of his people wanted me dead or at least with fewer things, and that refusing them while my army was camped outside the gates did him no favours. Amusingly enough, it could be argued that in several ways his position had been worsened by capturing me.

“Must be frustrating, having Malicia dictate to you in a way that goes against your interests,” I said.

He thinly smiled.

“Not executing you is in my interests as well, Your Majesty,” Sargon replied. “Greater implications as to the fate of Calernia aside, should I murder the most distinguished Queen of Callow in two centuries I will have heroes coming for my head every spring until I die.”

He sipped at his liquor, sighing.

“I expect several of my more short-sighted cousins are pushing for your execution in the very hope that the Woe will murder me in turn,” he admitted. “Yet I would argue that my greater frustration in all this affair is that I would much prefer to be at peace with you, Queen Catherine.”

“That’s easy enough,” I frankly replied. “Turn on Malicia. You’re only in my way so long as you’re one of the pillars propping her reign up.”

The dark-skinned man laughed, the merriment of it lighting up his eyes. Akua’s cousin, yet so little like her. Even at her most carefree she held something of herself back but Sargon Sahelian was… less restrained. He allowed himself to feel more genuinely, I decided. Would she had been like that too, if she’d not been raised to be the monster of monsters among this most terrible of families?

“I will be honest with you, Queen Catherine,” Sargon grinned, “as every report my spies have brought me insist that it is the approach you best respond to.”

The worst part of it, I thought, was that even knowing what he was doing I still found my lips twitching. Sargon Sahelian might be a monster, but he was a charming one.

“I find it saves times,” I shrugged. “By all means, my lord of Wolof, lay it on me.”

“I am not a good man, Queen Catherine,” Sargon indifferently shrugged. “So long as my city is left to me, so long as my domain is unmolested? I do not much care what happens to Praes, or even Calernia at large.”

Much as I would have liked to damn him for petty apathy while the world was falling apart a mere two nations west, I held my tongue. How much worse was he than Proceran princelings, in truth, or even the squabbling League of Free Cities? I doubted he was any better than them either, but I would not pretend that the careless disregard on display here was some unrivalled pit of evil.

“My support of Dread Empress Malicia rests on two pillars,” Sargon continued. “The first is that, for all her flaws, she remains the individual in Praes best able to deliver a resumption of order.”

She was at least half the reason order needed resuming in the first place, as far as I was concerned, but that was why he’d begun this by making his indifference clear. What did Sargon care that much of this was on Malicia’s hands, if she were still the woman best placed to ensure it wouldn’t spill over anywhere that mattered to him? I puffed at my pipe, blowing out a stream of smoke to the side.

“And the second is that she has your soul in a box,” I finished.

“Indeed,” he politely agreed. “I am loyal to her in the sense that a noble of the Wasteland is loyal to anything or anyone – that is, only so long as the balance of consequence and convenience is not greatly moved in disfavour of continued loyalty.”

The unspoken part was that an army outside his gates, on top of the messes that my presence kept heaping on his lap, was pushing on that balance noticeably.

“Which leaves one important question before this conversation proceeds,” Sargon Sahelian said. “Can your patronesses free my soul, Black Queen?”

I’d known that was coming. It was an obvious bribe to approach him with, a good way to flip a High Lord against the Tower without much military power needing to be exerted. Which had been why I’d first asked Sve Noc as much months ago. It’d not been a coincidence that I’d not made the offer.

“Not from here,” I said, “and not without a price.”

The Crows were sure his soul was being held in the Tower, and they weren’t going anywhere near that place if they could help it. I honestly wasn’t sure even a Choir would be able to bring the seat of Praesi power down – it’d taken the armies of two thirds of Calernia and entire battalions of heroes to get it done, last time.

“Unfortunate,” the High Lord of Wolof murmured. “It would have simplified this all a great deal. I am, alas, not eager to trade a single mortal mistress for a pair of immortal ones.”

“You’d find the payment much more agreeable than expected, I’m sure,” I easily replied. “But that is your right. We will speak again should an opportunity arise.”

“Of course,” Sargon said, inclining his head. “And so while we remain so refreshingly bound to honesty, I am compelled to ask-”

He leaned slightly forward, drink in hand.

“- what is it that you want, exactly?”

I snorted.

“There’s a broad question,” I said. “Right now? Vale summer wine. Or maybe the journal of the warlock your ancestors placed at the side Theodosius the Unconquered.”

“I can have the latter brought easily enough,” Sargon waved away. “And as you no doubt grasped, I mean to ask what is it that this entire Wasteland campaign of yours is trying to achieve. You’ve not the strength or inclination to occupy Praes, that much is plain, so what is it you do want?”

I set down my pipe, amused at the boldness, and smiled at him over the rim of my glass before taking a sip.

“Arguably, as one of Malicia’s backers you’re one of the last people I should tell,” I pointed out.

“On the contrary,” Sargon said, shaking his head. “Unless you intend to purge the empress’ supporters among the nobility, I am one of the individuals you most need to convince. Even if you kill the woman in question, Queen Catherine, what she represents does not disappear.”

“And what does Malicia represent, exactly?” I asked.

“A strong Tower with no taste for foreign adventures. Power being concentrated in Ater through the Imperial Court and the bureaucracy,” Sargon replied without hesitation. “It comes at the price of curtailing many of the old privileges and ennobling greenskins, but many still consider it an acceptable trade.”

“Nok was sacked,” I flatly said. “Thalassina is dust. Foramen is held by High Lady Whither, the Grey Eyries outright seceded, the Steppes are in civil war and two of the High Seats are openly backing another Dread Empress. Half the army that’s supposed to serve her deserted. You call this a strong Tower?”

“The Dread Empire of Praes turned back the Tenth Crusade with Thalassina as its sole permanent loss,” Sargon countered. “Foramen was brought back into the fold bloodlessly. Sepulchral’s rebellion has stalled and the only reason it ever gained grounds was that the Carrion Lord’s attempted coup – which failed, half the Legions staying loyal to the Tower even after decades of other loyalties being cultivated among their officers.”

My eye narrowed. They were blaming the messes on Black. Of course they would, I thought. He’s Duni, the nobles despise him and they’re not wrong about him having added to the chaos in the first place. I wondered how much of this was decades of hatred between my father and the aristocrats given voice and how much of it was opinions Malicia had seeded herself. It would hardly be the first time she blamed the unpopular parts of her reign on Black and the tactic tended to be a successful one.

“As for the Clans, Queen Catherine,” he continued, “that they would war on each other is only to be expected when some among them were raised above others. Strong Lords of the Steppes will emerge from the violence, able to ably discharge the duties that were passed onto them.”

I hummed. There was no point in arguing this with him. I wasn’t even sure he believed in the first place, anyway.

“Let’s say I buy that, for the sake of argument,” I shrugged. “She still needs to go. She’s been an aggressive ally to the Dead King while the rest of Calernia has been fighting for survival. She fucked us in the League and in Procer, and even before she antagonized every single other ruler on the continent the grab she made for the doomsday fortress that was made of Liesse made it clear she can’t be trusted to remain in power. Nobody wants the Tower with a weapon that makes Hellgates, Sargon. Nobody.”

“Considering all the nations so antagonized have been at war with the Empire for years,” he drily said, “one might argue she was in fact rather rest-”

“You’re being obtuse,” I flatly interrupted. “Even if there weren’t a hundred reasons to put her head on a pike, and you know there are, at the end of the day she had to die because we can’t allow the precedent. If the Grand Alliance doesn’t cut her head off then we’re telling the world that we can be backstabbed while fighting existential threats without there being consequences. And there’s not a single signatory that’s willing to swallow that, Sargon.”

“This is a compelling argument,” Sargon Sahelian mildly said, “largely for people who are not Praesi.”

I sipped at my wine to hide my expression. That was a decent point, actually. We didn’t actually have a lot to offer people who weren’t already rebelling against Malicia. The truth was that the people currently backing her reign would lose out when she got deposed. They wouldn’t gain from what I wanted to achiever here in Praes. One the other hand, the fact that those same people couldn’t give less of a shit that Malicia’s plots abroad had caused thousands of deaths and risked the annihilation of Calernia didn’t particularly endear them to me. They didn’t get to pretend they were being unfairly victimized after turning a blind eye to that. If you threw stones at bears for long enough, you got mauled.

There was no deep lesson behind that except that you shouldn’t fucking throw stones at bears.

“We’re a few knives in the back past lectures from your side, Sargon,” I flatly replied.

“Praes would be a silent place, if that were the case,” the High Lord laughed. “Though you have me curious now, I’ll admit. Who is it that you mean to replace Her Most Dreadful Majesty?”

I cocked an eyebrow.

“The Carrion Lord?” Sargon tried. “He is disappeared, if not dead. And Sepulchral is unlikely to remain a steady ally to your Grand Alliance for long, for all that she now courts your friendship.”

Abreha Mirembe being a snake was hardly news to me, but the first half of that was rather amusing.

“It never ceases to fascinate me,” I said, “how large of a blind spot you highborn have when it comes to Amadeus of the Green Stretch. It’s like we’re talking about different men.”

“Half the High Seats would rebel at the mere idea of Duni ruling over them,” Sargon said, eyes narrowed as he studied me. “Yet you know this, I think. And so I wonder if you do not play a longer game than any of us had considered.”

I leaned back into my seat.

“Oh?” I said. “What game would that be?”

The dark-skinned man raised his glass, the last wisps of amber liquor swirling.

“Mile thaman, Sahelian,” the High Lord of Wolof toasted.

I smiled and spoke not a word. If he wanted to believe I had come east to raise Akua Sahelian as empress, let him. He drained the cup.

“It would be an interesting time to live in, if you got your way,” Sargon admitted. “It is almost a shame you will not.”

“I’ve heard that before,” I said.

He looked faintly amused.

“I’ve a great deal of respect for your abilities, Queen Catherine, but this once luck was not on your side,” the golden-eyed man said. “There is little you can do from captivity.”

I met his eyes with mine, baring my teeth in a malicious smile.

“Before the week’s end,” I said, “I am going to walk out of the front gates of Wolof with everything I want. And the both of you are going to let me.”

So ended my first meal with Sargon Sahelian.

—

He sent the journal, as he’d said it would. Made for interesting reading, with a surprising amount of steamy bits between the battles and commentaries. Kojo Sahelian had gotten around and not been shy in writing about it. I sat and read and waited, knowing this was only beginning.

—

When Malicia came she did not bother with charm.

She knew better than to believe relations between us could be mended, I supposed. It was the following morning, shorty after breakfast, that she was announced by a servant in livery. I didn’t bother to study the last meat puppet she’d decided to wear in any great detail – what would be the point? She wore a woman’s form, Soninke and tall, and besides that I did not bother to take her in. I stayed standing as she stepped in, cane in hand as I leaned against the wall. The illusion of Wolof behind me showed an early afternoon, so the light came through at my back. It’d make it hard to look at me properly. The Dread Empress of Praes sat gracefully at the table, not waiting for my invitation, and set a single parchment scroll on the table. She said nothing, waiting. After a bit I snorted.

“You know, I figure I could play that game,” I mused. “Ignore you or insult you, the works. But it just sounds tiring.”

I pushed off the wall.

“Say your piece,” I simply said, “and get the fuck out.”

“Your manners have not improved,” Malicia calmly replied.

“Could I beat you to death with my bare hands before they came in to restrain me?” I asked. “I’m not sure. If you test my patience, though, we’ll find out.”

I’d lied, of course. If I was to kill her puppet, I’d definitely use the cane.

“It would avail you nothing,” Malicia said. “You were captured, Catherine. This particular game you have lost.”

“It’s Queen Catherine to you,” I smiled, all pretty and friendly and utterly false.

“If I gave you the courtesy, would you return it?” Malicia said. “I think not. Yet I will overlook your many and varied insults, as I have for some time, for you have once again made yourself into an important enough piece you cannot simply be ignored.”

Implying that I should treat her the same way. Good luck with that, I drily thought.

“I’m still waiting to hear what you want,” I said. “To be honest, this is being something of a bore.”

“We had a conversation, some years ago, that I believe you must have forgot,” Malicia said. “Not so long before Akua’s Folly. You asked me about Still Water for the first time.”

I did recall that, more or less. I’d warned her that if she’d been behind all of it then she had best watch her step from now on or there would be blood. We’d discussed politics abroad, too, but what did any of it have to do with this? It’d been the Hierarch and the Tyrant that’d been the thick of the talk, and one was pissing off an entire Choir while the other was years dead.

“I told you why Wekesa insisted on trials, that he believed they would revolutionize our understanding of rituals,” she prompted.

I frowned, scrounging through my memories. I had pretty good recall, but it’d been years and my Name memories weren’t as crisp since the Sisters had brought me back from the brink.

“I asked if it really had,” I slowly said, “and you replied…”

“That what he learned would allow us a fighting chance against the Dead King, should he ever wage war upon us,” Malicia calmly replied.

Ah, I thought. And there it was. The way she believed she could barter herself out of the grave she’d dug. She had a weapon, maybe even more than one, that she thought could win us the war. Cordelia and I might despise her, but we were pragmatic women at heart: we’d choose survival over hatred. But that went with the assumption that we needed Malicia herself to have those weapons. That my father becoming Dread Emperor wouldn’t get us all of it anyway without all that it would cost us to let an empress who’d knifed us at every opportunity walk away with a slap on the wrist. Malicia was no fool, I thought, and so she would have seen the flaw in that plan.

“So what did you do?” I asked. “What poisonous little precaution did you take so you could threaten us with it?”

She’d already done it before, after all, when she’d spread word that by the terms of her treaty with the Dead King so long as she lived the dead could not invade Callow. Taking her own life as hostage was a favourite trick of hers, the kind of signature that Name tended to take on after years of settling into their Role.

“There was no need for anything too elaborate,” the Dread Empress said. “My death would result in all the necessary knowledge burning green, that is all.”

Which just meant she had to be taken alive. Had she prepared contingencies for that too? Probably, but I figured there simply wasn’t a lot anyone could plan against having Sve Noc peel open your mind before rummaging about for the useful stuff. We’d just have to be quick and careful.

“It’s all on the scroll, I take it?” I asked.

“Indeed,” Malicia smiled. “Along with a possible solution to the Hellgates issue as suggested by a mage in my service.”

“Good,” I said, “good.”

I moved quickly enough that the cane caught her on the side of the mouth before she saw it coming, but though she fell it didn’t make her bleed. Ugh, she’d come decked out in artefacts. I tried to strangle her, but soldiers poured in and wrestled me down before I could get it done. She was ushered out, breathing hard, and I waved mockingly.

“There’s always next time,” I cackled right before the door closed behind her.

—

I read the scroll that very afternoon.

It was in Malicia’s interest ton exaggerate what her weapon could do, but she also had to know that Masego would be able to see through anything to egregious in a matter of moments. To my distaste, this might actually work. Wekesa the Warlock had been a brilliant man, and Still Waters had only been used in its most straightforward of applications so far. He’d believed that his creation would be able to turn the tide in two ways.

The first had been that soldiers fighting the Dead King would be made to ingest the alchemical compound and then prepped with the right spell so that when they died they would immediately rise as undead in the service of the Dread Empire. He’d believed that with the right dosages and sorcery it was possible to keep those soldiers largely the same as before their death, nothing like the mindless wights I’d fought at the Doom of Liesse. It would make armies that, even when slain, would rise against just as tireless as their foe and significantly better trained.

The second was more of a gamble. By modifying the alchemical compound so it could enter through the skin, Warlock had believed that necromancers could potentially usurp control of corpses from the Dead King. The strength of Still Water was that it wasn’t really a ritual, that the active magic was simply an ignition while the alchemy did all the heavy lifting. Which meant if it worked as Warlock had thought it might, we might be able to steal entire armies in moments. I doubted it would go that smoothly, but the prospect of finally having a way to turn the Hidden Horror’s endless numbers against him was deeply attractive.

And given that we were well past the days where anything but a direct strike on Keter could win us this war, what was written on this scroll could be an edge that made the difference between the life and death of nations. Malicia was not one to come to a bargaining table poorly armed.

What I read of the proposed solution for Hellgates was largely gibberish to me, and so likely meant for someone better schooled in magic to read over. The only part that was understandable was the one that talked about raising fortresses over the gates after the first rituals were done, to make sure they wouldn’t open again. That and the estimates for the number of mages that would be required, which was around two hundred per gate. There simply wasn’t anyone but Praes left who could field that many well-trained practitioners, especially since there would need to be some able to use High Arcana.

Another pointed reminder by Malicia that we needed her.

—

On the third day, mages sworn to Wolof came into my cell.

It was all done very properly and politely, but I was still bound while a dozen men and women inspected every inch of me with spells and tried to access the Night. One got bold and tried to see into my mind, but the Sisters took offence to that and melted his eyes. I complained about the smell after they dragged him out, mostly to fuck with them, but several of the mfuasa actually smiled and one cast a spell to clear the air. They left after a few hours, carrying back to Sargon Sahelian the answer he’d been hoping they would not give him.

They had not found a way to access the Night through me.

—

I decided that, since I had so much time to spare, I might have a crack at writing my memoirs.

You know, for posterity. Sadly after a single page about my years at the orphanage I got horribly bored and started sketching out the troop movements for the Battle of Three Hills instead. It was pretty hard stuff, memoirs, I was impressed Aisha had gotten so far in hers. In the end I dropped the subject entirely and instead wrote a scathing critique about the defences of the Vaults, with a particular eye about how easily heroes could have gotten through some of those. I doubted it’d ever amount to anything, but it did make me feel oddly satisfied.

It also allowed me to sharpen a quill until a weapon could be made of it and secrete it away.

—

On the fourth day, I had supper with High Lord Sargon Sahelian. The meal was delicious, he was a delight to talk to and he’d somehow gotten his hands on a bottle of Vale summer wine. Once more wakeleaf was brought to me and I duly indulged, leaning back against the very comfortable seat.

“I offered Princess Vivienne to ransom you back,” High Lord Sargon said. “She declined.”

“Yes, she would have,” I faintly smiled.

“You do not seem displeased,” he said, sounding wary.

My smile broadened.

“What is it you asked for – the artefacts or the books?”

A moment of silence.

“The artefacts,” he finally said.

Ah, it’d been Malicia’s idea then. The books would have been more important to him.

“When I named Vivienne Dartwick my successor,” I said, “I didn’t pick her name out a hat.”

And that was all I said on that. His polite sideways inquiries about my accepting my own ransoming for his library back were just as politely ignored.

—

One the fifth day there was something of an incident.

Or at least so I assumed, as around noon forty armed guards crammed themselves tight in my cell and wards were put up to prevent anyone coming in or out. I finished my meal and, because I was never one to miss an opportunity to be a wretch when it was on the table, I took up Kojo Sahelian’s journals and began reading them aloud with great enjoyment – especially the explicit bits, which by the looks of it made more than a few of these nice soldiers uncomfortable. An hour and a half later they left, but the guard remained doubled and from now on even the veiled servant came in flanked by an armed pair.

Idly I wondered who it was that’d tried to rescue me, and how close they’d gotten. It was only going to get worse for Sargon from now on. That was the trouble when you couldn’t kill your prisoner: people would keep trying to free them, knowing there couldn’t really be any consequences for it.

—

One the sixth day they were desperate, which I knew the moment Malicia’s puppet walked in.

Why else would she be here again? Four soldiers came with the empress, faces hidden by helmet, and they had shackles that I was expected to put on nicely. I had last time, when the mages had come to poke and prod looking for a way into the Night. I knew why the Dread Empress was here, though, and I wasn’t going to be anywhere as nice. I pretended to cooperate, at first then the quill I’d sharpened days ago went into the slight gap between helmet and armour and got the first man in the throat. Another I broke the neck of, smashing him into the table, but Malicia ran out before I could get my hands on her.

My cell, and for all the gilding it had never for a moment been anything else and never had I fucking forgot that, my cell was flooded with guards and mages. They got me after I nearly smashed the last of my table legs on scale mail and broke my hand on a helmet. The got the shackles on me and did not heal me. Again there were only four when Malicia came back, face a blank mask.

“Well,” I smiled at her through bloodied teeth, “there’s always next time.”

She went still for half a beat but it was enough. I might be the one bleeding, but I wasn’t the one afraid.

“This brings me no pleasure,” Malicia said, looking down on me. “It is of your own making.”

She did not speak a word, not with her lips anyway. The world pulsed with the echo of it anyway. Aspect, my instincts whispered. And in the instant that followed a power seized me by the throat. I gasped out, writhing in my shackles, as a will tried to wrest mine into submission. I was being ordered to do something. Deep inside me the Sisters stirred, their anger a cold and burning thing. They were jealous goddesses, my Crows. But it was not them that calmed me. My fingers clutched at thin air, but still they caught something. Fur, deep and matted and warm. I laughed, dragging myself up by pulling at nothing. Malicia took a step back, eyes wide.

I felt a great maw open by my head, fangs being bared. My Name had not taken kindly to being given an order. No, more than that. It was not one that recognized the rule of another over me.

“Mistake,” I hissed at her in Mthethwa.

The guards were moving, but they didn’t get it. They moved to restrain my limbs, to push me down, when they should have gone for my mouth. My eye found Malicia’s and I grinned red even as she opened her mouth.

“Be silent,” I Spoke.

Her mouth closed. The guards forced me down, but I laughed.

“You overstepped,” I told her. “I wonder, does it work only on this body or your real one too? How long are you going to be fighting-”

Finally one of them covered my mouth, shortly before I was gagged, but no matter. The damage had already been done.

It was almost over now.

—

The first time I’d heard about soulboxing, that evening I’d wondered why Dread Emperors did not force it on every High Seat at their coronation. There was, of course, an answer.

On the seventh day, after I had breakfast the veiled servants came and laid out different clothes for me. Black trousers, a black tunic, a black cape and a black eyecloth: all exquisite and embroidered with silver thread. And with them came a circlet of silver, an elegant crown displaying flying crows. Matching silver shackles too, little more than bracelets, but still a symbol of my captivity. I was helped into the clothes by attendants after being informed that I was to be give audience in the Empyrean Hall, and before long I was leaning on my cane and limping down the halls of the palace where I had been held all this time.

Forty soldiers armed to the teeth escorted me, in plate and capes. Ten mages kept an eye on me, amber stares unwavering and their magic so close to them I could taste it in the air. Limping across marble tiles I breathed in the air, stretching under my cape, and I felt Sve Noc reach out for me greedily. I let the Night billow out of me even as shouts echoed across the hall. Swords left their sheaths as the soldiers spun into a circle, runes of light filling their air as incantations reverberated. I closed my eye, smiling, and struck the ground with my cane once.

Shadows spun close, threading themselves through my clothes until it was not mere dark cloth I wore but darkness itself. My foes had thought to dress me, to measure me, but my patronesses had willed it otherwise. I opened my eye, studying my escorts. They were still as stone, but there was a scent in the air I was most familiar with. Fear.

“Ah,” I smiled. “Much better. Take me to your lord, now.”

And they did, wary but obedient. I’d thought the halls I’d run through at night had shown me the splendour of the enchanted ceiling for which the palace was named, but I had been wrong. The Sahelians had kept the heart of the wonder for where they received guests and supplicants, a great hall that was as another world. I stepped across the span of the noonday sky, clouds beneath my feet as my cane cracked against the enchanted stone. The Sahelians had aptly named their hall: I stood here as if I was striding the very Heavens, the sun above and the world below.

On the sides, hidden behind veils, people stood. Sargon’s court. Golden-eyed nobles even more beautiful than their clothes, lesser nobles of military turn and even those who wore their sorcery as their signature. Guards, too, and war mages whose eyes missed nothing. I advanced with my escort around me, all leading to the man at the end of the sky. It was against the laws of Praes for any but the Tyrant in the Tower to sit a throne, and so the Sahelians had followed the letter of the law: though Sargon sat a great seat of stone atop a dais, roughly hewn into the shape of roaring lions, further steps still led to a great ornate seat of gold where none sat.

That one was the throne, of course, which meant Sargon’s was a mere seat.

No sign of Malicia, I thought. Was she hidden, or had it struck even deeper than I thought when I Spoke? I looked forward to finding out. My escort led me to the feet of the thrones before spreading out, thin invisible barriers that could only be wards separating me from Sargon Sahelian. I stood alone in the silent court until a woman with a beautiful speaking voice broke the stillness.

“Her Majesty Catherine Foundling, Queen of Callow, First Under the Night.”

Sargon’s face was as a clay mask, all thought and emotion smoothed away. I hummed the first few notes of Two Dozen Snakes A Knot Do Make, casting an unimpressed look around. How many of the watching snakes were Sahelians, I wondered? Had to be at least a couple dozen. All of them hungry, waiting for the man on the lion throne to falter.

“Quaint,” I drawled out.

Oh, they didn’t like that at all. But that didn’t matter, because even as they murmured their disapproval and glared I kept close to me the answer to a question. Why didn’t Dread Emperors soulbox all their high nobles the moment they climbed the Tower? Sure they’d be hated for it, and it was certainly tyrannical, but what would most of those madmen have cared? They’d know that the greatest threat to them was the High Seats, that it was well worth the hatred of a few who would likely seek to kill them regardless. The answer was around me, watching the High Lord of Wolof rather than the queenly captive brought before him. The two dozen snakes that made a knot. The Sahelians were a family, not a man.

And none of them would tolerate Wolof being made a tool for the sake a single man, one whose seat they craved like a drowning man craved the shore.

“You are summoned to speak terms of trade, Queen Catherine,” High Lord Sargon said.

See, for all their many flaws the Wasteland high nobles they loved their family. Not their actual kin, the institution of the family. The High Seat of Wolof, here, and the power that came with it. They were willing to sacrifice a lot to preserve the power of their family, its importance. For all that the great bloodlines of Praes constantly murdered each other for power, they’d also keep a breeding program going for centuries – they knew how to think long term in a way that few actual royal dynasties could. It was bred in them, taught to them. They were Sahelians, and only the power of the Sahelians mattered. Nothing else.

I hummed, cane clacking against the floor as I moved and the guards moved with me – like minnows around a shark.

“What need is there for that, High Lord Sargon?” I replied. “If you seek terms, I already gave them when last we parleyed.”

“They were frivolously given,” Sargon said, voice thundering.

I laughed in his face. Just because he was charming, did he think I’d forgot he was my enemy? That I would safeguard his reputation anymore than I would some other leech’s?

“Then let me repeat them, since you have been slow in learning this lesson,” I drawled. “I want your treasury. I want your granary. And I want to walk out the open gates of Wolof.”

Now the thing was, Sargon didn’t want to take this deal. At the start, he’d not actually been worried about what I had stolen and put away in the Night. Sure it was missing right now, but he held me captive and he could wait out the conflict. When I was forced to make a treaty with Malicia, she’d bargain on his behalf for all of it to be given back. Except that they hadn’t counted on Akua. Beautiful, clever Akua who had heard me ramble a few sentences and understood everything I meant. See, we weren’t threatening to torch the library and the artefacts. That would have been bad enough, but it wouldn’t have lit a fire under them like this did.

Akua had reached out to High Lady Takisha Muraqib of Kahtan and offered to sell her the entire private library of the Sahelians. Because High Lady Takisha was a supporter of Malicia and the last Taghreb high noble in all of Praes, if we actually did sell those books to her Malicia wouldn’t actually be able to get them back later. It would be a guaranteed rebellion of the entire south of her realm. The Taghreb noblewoman would not doubt have been skeptical, but I was guessing that the Crows had gotten out a book or two for Akua and they’d been sent as a token of goodwill.

The step just past that had, naturally, been to make this known to Wolof.

I could see the layout of it in my mind, clear as if it were ink on parchment. On the third day of my captivity, I thought, Malicia had learned of the offer. It was why the mages had come to look at me, try to get at Night. On the fourth, Sargon had. It was why he’d tried to ransom me to Vivienne and probed my interest in such a deal. On the fifth day, the Woe had tried to free me. It had put the pressure on them, made it clear that sooner or later my people would get me out and they’d be even worse off. On the sixth day, I thought, word of the offer had spread through Wolof widely enough that Sargon’s situation had become dangerous. And so he’d gotten desperate, agreed that Malicia should try to force me to spit out my loot with an aspect. But that’d failed, badly, and so now here we were. The High Lord of Wolof, the man who’d usurped Tasia Sahelian, looked down at me with burning eyes.

And I knew what he was going to say before he opened his mouth, because if he didn’t he was going to die.

“Your schemes ran deep, Black Queen,” High Lord Sargon Sahelian snarled. “We will bargain. Arrangement can be had, should you sign the proper pact.”

“My word isn’t enough?” I grinned, badly faking surprise. “Oh dear. I suppose I could sign a pact, if you insist.”

The only bone I’d throw him, just enough that he could do this without entirely losing face. Humiliating him entirely would just serve to corner him enough he might do something stupid. He was already going to have a rough few months ahead of him. See, the reason that Dread Emperors didn’t soulbox all the High Seats was that no family strong enough to be one of those would ever tolerate being led by a pawn. The moment the High Lord went against their family’s interests, they got their throat slit. And what I’d stolen? It was the foundation of Sahelian power. The secrets that kept them one step ahead of everyone, that kept the finest mages of Praes in their service.

And instead of burning them, I’d threatened to sell them to the High Seat that was the second best at magic in the empire.

The artefacts that kept their rivals wary, their enemies from picking fights? Akua had offered to sell them to Dread Empress Sepulchral, demons and all. Even Malicia had to have found that an unpleasant surprise. No matter how many spies she had in that camp, three boxes holding demons and enough materials to make a dozen more artefacts was going to be trouble.

And so the Sahelians were looking at Sargon looking at me, because not a single one of those golden-eyed monsters was willing to ruin the power of their centuries-old family to keep High Lord Sargon in his seat. He could accept my terms, or he could have his throat slit before one of his cousins accepted them in his stead. And Malicia would bend here, not just because otherwise the other woman claiming to be Dread Empress would buy a terrifying arsenal but because if she didn’t bend then Sargon would die. And she would not have the soul of the next High Lord of Wolof in a box.

“One day, Black Queen, this day will come back to haunt you,” High Lord Sargon coldly said.

I eyed him up and down, then snorted.

“I beat Akua Sahelian,” I said. “Should I now tremble at the shadow of her shadow?”

—

On the seventh day, I walked out of the gates of Wolof with everything I wanted and they let me.

Chapter 11: Descent

“Loyalty is not opposite of betrayal, but in truth adjacent: to truly place a person or principle above all others is to promise injury to a thousand others.”

– Extract from the prisoner’s memoirs of Princess Eliza of Salamans

My soldiers cheered as I rode back into camp.

I’d had a party waiting for me shortly outside the gates, led by Vivienne herself. She’d pulled me in tight for a hug, to my surprise and pleasure, before we took the saddle and headed away from the prying eyes atop the walls of Wolof. I’d expected there to be something of a strange mood in camp after I’d spent a sennight in captivity, but if anything my sudden return seemed to have been expected. Like I’d been a given that I would pull a trick, find a way out of the pit. It was as once oddly touching and brute burden. Sooner or later, I thought, I would lead them to a doom there would be no bearding. The thought of the look on their faces then had my stomach dropping.

It wouldn’t do to return grim-faced, though, so I smiled and laughed and stopped to speak with men and women I recognized. There were more than I’d expected. The First Army had pulled heavily from rank and file of the Fifteenth, back when it’d been first raised, and in some ways it had seen less action than other parts of the Army of Callow. There were fewer holes in the ranks here than there would have been in the Third or the Fourth.

When I first got to my tent it was to a warming sight: all of my closest companions had gathered there. Gods, even Pickler had come and it was even more of a chore to pull her away from her work since Robber had died. Akua kept to the back, tactfully keeping away from Vivienne, but I found her eyes and inclined my head. I’d speak no more of it for now, but I’d not forgot whose scheming it would be that got me out of that cell. Scribe was keeping her company, anyway, another whose presence surprised me. Wine was poured, though little of it – it was before Noon Bell – and I was asked about my time imprisoned. There was a great deal of outrage when I explained I’d pretty much lived in the lap of luxury, with good wine and interesting books.

“It figures even in a cell you’d stumble into a better bed than us,” Indrani complained.

“Even got to maul Malicia twice,” I cheerfully added.

I had a thousand questions to ask them, but before getting to it I wanted a wash and a change of clothes. Pretty as mine were, I wasn’t going to keep wearing what my foes had given me. Masego insisted on inspecting me for illness or enchantments, which I agreed to once I was clean from the dust of the road, and most of them took the hint that I wanted to wash immediately. Hakram lingered, no doubt to brief me on all that I’d missed, but to my surprise so did another.

“A private word, if you please?”

I eyed Scribe with surprise. Over the length of our association she’d made it a point to avoid getting Adjutant out of the room whenever she reported to me, as if to make it perfectly clear that she was not trying to usurp his position at my side. I doubted she would have broken that custom without reason, so I slowly nodded before glancing at Hakram.

“We’ll talk before the evening council,” I said. “I need to be caught up.”

“And more,” Hakram gravelled. “The envoys.”

Ah, that. Yeah, it made sense the orcs wouldn’t begin the journey back to the Steppes until I was out of Wolof. Not only had we been meant to speak again but there would be no point in making a deal with me if I were to stay Malicia’s prisoner.

“Bring in Vivienne for that, then,” I said.

“I’ll see what can be done,” the orc drily replied.

He gave Scribe a nod before taking his leave, limping away on his iron leg. That left me alone with the Webweaver in my tent, for the first time in what must have been ages. I poured myself a cup of water with lemon slices in it, asking if she wanted one with a cocked eyebrow. She declined, standing rigidly before my desk. I still couldn’t see her face in more than small glimpsed, always half-faded, but from the way she held herself I would have thought her nervous – or at least as close to it as a woman like Eudokia ever came.

“Now you’ve got me curious,” I admitted. “This isn’t professional, is it?”

“Not entirely,” Scribe admitted. “I would like to make a request of you.”

My brow climbed up. That would be a first. I’d sometimes wondered if there was still a woman under the Name or if she’d died when the Calamities had split.

“What about?” I asked.

I wouldn’t accept or decline without knowing more, but I didn’t actually believe that’d been what she was baiting with her lack of elaboration. She was, I was growing certain, genuinely uncomfortable having this conversation. Was it about Black? No, we’d talked of that before. Of loyalties. It wouldn’t make her like… this.

“You still have in your possession the corpse of the soldier that Marshal Nim possessed,” Scribe said.

“Marshal Nim can’t possess shit, Scribe,” I amiably said. “The Black Knight did that.”

Neither of us were particularly comfortable matching that Name to anyone but Amadeus of the Green Stretch, but best we got used it. I did not think it likely he would ever resume his old Name, which meant that even if Marshal Nim survived the tussle over the fate of Praes someone else would step in and fill those shoes. Scribe conceded the point with a nod.

“I would like for it to be passed into my custody,” Eudokia the Scribe said.

I blinked. That, uh, hadn’t been what I was expecting. I wasn’t sure what I actually had been expecting, but it was emphatically Not That.

“Masego’s studying it,” I finally pointed out.

Or at least he’d been doing so when I’d been captured. It’d been too much to hope he would be able to give me the aspect that’d done this, but I wanted at least an understanding of the mechanics involved.

“He believes he has already learned all he can,” Scribe said. “I believe he would be amenable to closing the matter, should you ask him.”

Huh. She wouldn’t even have needed to spy on him for that, I reminded myself. Zeze considered her like an aunt of sorts, he would have simply told her if asked.

“So I feasibly could give you the body,” I acknowledged. “And we’re going to walk right past why I should – for now anyway – to ask instead why you’d want that corpse in the first place. What are you going to use it for?”

She had to know I’d ask, I thought. I was not exactly known for my policy of handing over dead bodies to Named without asking questions. She had to have known, and still she hesitated before answering. That was fascinating to me, given who I was dealing with.

“I want to Inscribe it,” the Scribe said.

I swallowed a grin. Oh my, that’d definitely been an aspect. I was finally getting a peek at the juicy secrets of the Calamities, was I?

“And what does that do, exactly?” I asked.

“When I first began to us the method,” Scribe quietly said, “it was little more than a trick. I could make my words… weigh more than those of others. Make them linger where they were written.”

But tricks improve, I thought, and this one she’d refined until it became an aspect.

“By the time I met Amadeus,” Scribe said, “I could make eyes and ears of vermin. Sometimes I could even Inscribe instructions onto others that they would be beholden to obey.”

I calmly set down my cup on the desk. Living people, living creatures. Yet she was now asking for a corpse.

“You can make corpse-puppets,” I said. “And the higher quality the corpse, the better the results.”

“The first one I made was a puppet,” Scribe said, and I glimpsed a faint smile. “Little better than undead. Yet when I was destroyed, I retrieved the corpse and found that what I had inscribed could be retrieved. That there was more. The inscription had changed. I used the changes, and so the second was… something more.”

I breathed out a soft, incredulous laugh as it all fell into place.

“Gods Below,” I said. “You madwoman. You actually made a Named, didn’t you? By fucking accident.”

“We began calling him Assassin after the fourteenth iteration,” Scribe told me. “Wekesa helped me with the inscriptions that made it coherent enough for sapience, based on the contract Tikoloshe was bound by. Quickly enough we realized that the primary limitation was the quality of the base material. Most bodies could only carry part of the inscription before they began to wither. “

“So you used dead Named,” I said.

Assassin had died over the years, I thought. Dozens and perhaps even hundreds of times. And every time the Scribe had retrieved the corpse, ripped out the inscription and shoved a refine version into another dead hero’s corpse. Gods, had that been what my father did with all the Callowan heroes he’d nipped in the bud? Dropped them in some crypt, stashed away until Eudokia needed more materials? I was as appalled by the desecration as I was impressed by the brutal pragmatism.

“This one was possessed by a Black Knight,” Scribe said. “I will only be able to Inscribe seven parts in ten, at most, and there will be need for extensive… surgery so the resulting entity has a human silhouette. But he would be a match for the Assassin we were using in the decade prior to the Conquest, by my estimation.”

I could think of a way or two to use such an asset, I thought, but I still far from sold. It would, for one, not be my asset.

“How much control on the entity do you have, after you Inscribe him?” I asked.

“It cannot refuse a command from me,” Scribe said, then grimaced. “I fear you do not fully understand, Queen Catherine. I do not simply write words on dead flesh when I do this. I give of myself. It is the wholeness of the aspect. He cannot act against what I make of him, because there is nothing else to the entity.”

When I had fought Akua in the depths of Liesse, when I had passed through the Fourfold Crossing she laid out before me, I had glimpse of a life in which I had kill the Assassin. Goblinfire had done it, masses of it. It’s not a metaphor when she says she invests her aspect, I realized. It’s physically in the corpse. Practically speaking, it was probably why the construct could mimic Named abilities to some degree. The ‘Assassin’ wouldn’t have aspects of its own, but it wasn’t just flesh and power either. Not exactly. So if the body’s destroyed with goblinfire or demons it probably ruins her aspect too, I decided.

“Does Malicia know?” I asked. “Ranger?”

“Ranger does,” Eudokia said. “Malicia does not. She is aware that Assassin has ‘died’ in the past, but believes him to be a manner of wraith possessing bodies.”

Which wasn’t even entirely wrong, as tended to be the case with the best lies. Huh. That would be a trump card up our sleeve dealing with the empress. Which was probably why Scribe figured I might agree to let her make it. And it wouldn’t be a real Named, I thought. That had implications, considering the other opponent I was facing here in Praes. An entity with some of the abilities of Named but who could not be manipulated or predicted the way they could? That was a rather more tempting offer than just another knife to pull on the Dread Empress of Praes. The trouble remained, of course, that in the end it wouldn’t be my sleeve that card was up in. It’d be Scribe’s tool, and Scribe’s loyalty to me was not on solid foundation.

Her enmity with Malicia was very real, though, I judged. It was what she’d broken with my father over. And she despised the Intercessor as the architect of Sabah’s death. Could I trust her, though, to use this almost-Assassin to match those threats instead of pursuing her own goals? I took my cup, sipped at it for a bit as I felt her study me.

“And what do you want to us the thing for?” I asked.

“I would like to assassinate Malicia,” Scribe frankly said, “but I recognize that there are political realities and that the Tower is likely too well-defended for an incomplete Assassin. Instead I would commit him under your command to offensive operations against her cause.”

That was believable enough, but why would a lie from the Webweaver’s mouth would be anything else? Best to be blunt, I decided, and avoid misunderstandings.

“I’m not comfortable with giving you that kind of power when you have no personal loyalty to me,” I honestly said. “Especially when we’re in Praes. And while I don’t doubt you could grant me partial control, I don’t have the time to handle that on top of my other responsibilities.”

To my mild surprise, she nodded without seeming particularly offended.

“I understand,” she said. “In other circumstances I would have offered that Adjutant be placed in stewardship over the entity, but given his coming departure I would venture that Vivienne Dartwick is now the best candidate.”

First my right hand and now my successor. She’d picked the names well, couldn’t deny that.

“And you’d surrender part of the control without argument?” I said, somewhat skeptical.

“I recognize the investment in trust and resources you are making,” Scribe calmly said. “I will not pretend offence, though I will remind you I can do significantly more damage to the Grand Alliance with a few letters bearing your fake signature than a dozen Assassins.”

I was not unaware of that, but ‘I didn’t cut your throat with this knife’ wasn’t much an argument for giving someone a sword either.

“So what is it you do want?” I pressed.

“The right to brief Princess Vivienne on operational opportunities and present targets of my own,” Scribe immediately said.

Ah, there it was. Even after she’d been evicted from leadership of the Eyes here in the Dread Empire by Malicia’s own spymistress, the Webweaver still had more spies here than Callow did. That meant she’d be able to indirectly guide what we used Assassin for by simple dint of often having better information than we did. I hummed. She could also simply go back on her word and use the entity for whatever the Hells she felt like doing, of course, but that wouldn’t be like her. And though you might yet betray me, I thought, even if you do it will be to Black. I simply couldn’t believe he’d order her to use something like the Assassin on anyone dear to me.

“Hierophant will supervise,” I finally said.

As much because I wanted someone I trusted in that room as because if I robbed him of the opportunity of witnessing that he’d sulk at me for months. Even through the aspect I saw a surprisingly girlish smile light up Eudokia’s face, as she eagerly agreed and began to thank.

I could only hope, I thought, that I had not just made a grave mistake.

—

The gold and grain began reaching us half past Noon Bell, after I’d washed and Masego had declared be to be in the fullness of health.

It was only good sense to check the merchandise when you bargained with Praesi, so I unleashed Zeze and Akua on the goods while I got caught up with my informal council. There’d been next to no skirmishing in my absence, as it turned out, and Juniper believed what few blows had been traded to have been accidental. Patrols running into each other by happenstance, nothing intentional. As I’d expected it had been Akua – with Vivienne along for formal authority – who’d conducted the negotiations that’d pressured Sargon into my release. High Lady Takisha had been most eager to get her hands on the Sahelian library.

Akua had even tied up the affair neatly by ensuring the three tomes she’d sent south as proof that we did have the library were precious enough the High Lady of Kahtan wouldn’t be too miffed by our ending the negotiations. It was a nice touch, and I told her as much.

Sepulchral had been handled more by Vivienne, though, and there the talks had been rockier. Not for any misstep on my heiress’ part, but because Abreha Mirembe had wanted more than simply the arsenal the Sahelians kept in their vaults: she’d wanted a formal alliance between us, as well as the backing of the Grand Alliance. Vivienne had put her off by saying we couldn’t agree to that without the First Prince’s permission and the backing of all four remaining great lines of the Blood, which Sepulchral had recognized for the putting off it was.

“She warned us that the time for sitting the fence is coming to an end,” Vivienne told me. “That the civil war will be coming to a close soon, one way or another.”

“Or another yet,” I mildly said.

High Lord Sargon hadn’t been wrong, when he’d implied that Sepulchral was about as trustworthy as a hungry tiger. I’d been happy to throw her the occasional bone so far because she was a thorn in Malicia’s side, but I was not enthused as the notion of Abreha Mirembe holding the Tower. She’d probably hold off on backstabbing us until the end of the war on Keter, I figured, but she’d be trouble in the years that followed. Dread Empress Sepulchral would have no real interest in reforming the empire into something less poisonous to everything it touched, and I honestly suspected that she’d pull out of the Liesse Accords at the first opportunity.

That was not acceptable to me.

“We will need to take inventory of the coin and grain as they come, Catherine, but I believe in both cases our expectations were lower than the reality,” Aisha told me. “Wolof’s treasury, in particular, appears to have been fuller than we thought.”

“My cousin has been sacking the hinterlands of Askum rather relentlessly,” Akua noted. “It would not be surprising that he aimed to steal wealth along population.”

That or Malicia had been propping up his reign with gold. As had been pointed out to me last year, given that she still drew taxes from most of Praes, half her army was gone and most foreign markets were closed to her the empress was actually sitting on a lot of gold she didn’t have that many uses for. Solidifying the position of the High Lord she’d soulboxed would have been a good investment for her.

“How much are we talking, Aisha?” I asked.

“If the wagons are all carrying the same amount of coin, we would be looking at around a million aurelii,” the Staff Tribune replied.

I let out a low whistle. In the year after Second Liesse, when the shock of the second largest city in all of Callow and the crisis that’d followed was still hitting us the hardest, my tax revenue for the entire Kingdom of Callow hadn’t actually been much higher than that. I let that sink in for a moment.

“Well,” I finally said, “I suppose that makes up for the ransom money being stolen back.”

That got some smiles, the good mood infectious. It’d been a long while since out treasury had been quite so full.

“We’ll give a cut of the loot to Razin and Aquiline,” I decided. “As they helped us take it.”

Maybe a tenth? Much like my own countrymen Levantines tended to get pissy about anything they saw as charity – the pride of our fellow poors, I amusedly thought – so I might have to end up calling it an early wedding gift. The gold ought to help them strengthen their position in Levant after the war, too, assuming we all made it there. I would repay my debt to Tariq Fleetfoot in full, one bite at a time.

“So who was it that tried to rescue me, by the way?” I asked.

“Indrani led the attempt,” Vivienne said. “But Masego, the Silver Huntress and the Barrow Sword went as well.”

I let out a small whistle. Not a bad lineup, for a jaunt like this. I’d have to ask Archer how far she’d made it, for Sargon to find it worth filling my cell with guards.

“I suppose I ought to encourage that,” I drawled. “And since we’re rich, we ought to throw a feast before all the gold’s gone. Tonight.”

“A fire?” Juniper asked, leaning forward.

“It’s been too long,” I agreed.

My soldiers would get rewards of their own, extra rations and ale casks being broken out to celebrate our successful ‘siege’ of Wolof, but tonight I’d share a fire with my friends.

—

We did it proper.

Akua found us a good place, slightly away from the camp but not too far. Indrani and Hakram dug the pit, Vivienne got the benches and Pickler started the fire. I went with Aisha to obtain a few drinks – some of them smuggled, but we knew those tricks – while Juniper began to roast the pig. Masego rustled up a few wards, just in case, and we got old Legion cooks to make us a pot’s worth of the old staples from the War College. By the time the sun came down, we’d claimed our hilltop and seats as Juniper began cutting into the pork and the usual haggling began.

“I am a princess, nowadays,” Vivienne attempted. “Of Callow, too. Arguably-”

The rib chops were dropped unceremoniously into her plate as I cackled along with Indrani.

“This is borderline treasonous,” Vivi whined. “What do I have to do to get a shoulder cut?”

“Be named Aisha Bishara,” Hakram drily noted.

“It’s a little sad when being royalty doesn’t even get you on the right side of nepotism anymore,” I said, but then I caught Juniper’s hard stare being turned on me, “-is what I would say if I shared her opinion, which is obviously wrong.”

I got a satisfied nod for that, letting out a breath for that. I’d gotten used to juicy tenderloin cuts, I wasn’t going to let pride get me demoted back to chops. After we’d gotten our plates filled according to the arcane and mysterious system Juniper had developed over our years of companionship – Zeze got downgraded to leg for having suggested using a magical fire while Indrani got bumped up to fillet for having actually listened during briefings for a whole week – the bottles got opened the drink flowed freely. Aragh and ale, mostly, but some wine too. Nok pale for Akua, to Aisha’s profuse mockery, and Vale summer wine from my personal stock.

It was a reality that invitation to these little fires had come to be seen as a prize, a mark of favour from the Black Queen and her inner circle, so while I wasn’t going to spoil the whole thing I’d made some concessions to the inevitable. People came by, staying for a time before leaving. Razin and Aquiline were first, curious to try pork cooked in the orc way, and though they wanted to hear of my captivity at first the ended up spellbound by a tale Aisha told about ancient Taghreb legends that claimed her people had some kinship with those of Levant, that they’d been brought west on great ships by strange and cruel gods. It was why Taghreb disliked ships to this day, she told them.

I thought it more likely that the whole living in a desert thing had inspired a healthy dislike for seafaring, but what did I know?

The older Named came by, after that, and with them both Grandmaster Brandon Talbot and General Zola. The Refuge crowd, Silver Huntress and the Concocter, kept close to Archer. Akua caught the latter’s interest by speaking about some of the potions her family had accrued over the years and they ended up in an animated discussion in what I believed to be tradertalk, but Alexis the Argent and Indrani mostly spoke to each other in stilted, stiff tones. They didn’t argue, I saw, but it was hardly a triumph of diplomacy. They’re trying, though, I thought. Or at least Indrani is.

Juniper and I got into it with General Zola, who’d fought at the Doom of Liesse under General Afolabi. She’d been a supply tribune, then, but their legion had gotten into enough a mess during the battle that it’d been all hands on deck. Pickler actually seemed to be enjoying a talk with Brandon Talbot, to my surprise, though what little I overheard told me why. Marchford had been his home long before it was my personal fiefdom, and it was Pickler I’d once ordered to rebuild the defences there. The walls had been pulled down after the Conquest, but I’d had no intention of leaving my holdings so vulnerable.

Hakram and Ishaq were quietly talking on the other side of the fire, which I considered to be a situation well in hand. The Barrow Sword saw Adjutant as a peer of sorts, and that meant Hakram could work him I ways I could not. I wanted him disposed to pitching in for the peace in Levant after the war, so preparing him for it early was important.

The last to visit were the kids, well after the others, and though I’d expected Sapan to stick to Masego’s side as a barnacle the way she usually I instead found that she and Arthur Foundling wanted to hear from me. Like the lordlings my captivity was of interest to them, but more than that they were rather excited by the way High Lord Sargon had been forced to release me even as I lay in his power.

“Look,” I said, “there’s nothing wrong with a good sword. Stabbing the right people can get a lot done, don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise, but if you want a win that lasts longer than a season you’ve got to use other levers. The stuff that actually makes the world go round.”

“Was it not your use of the Night that forced him to surrender?” Sapan skeptically asked.

“I could have stolen his treasury with Night and it wouldn’t have done a thing,” I shrugged. “The man who taught me, he was a stark believer in the victory of cleverness over power. I’m not as much of a purist – Gods know I use artefacts much more than he’d be comfortable with – but he was right that power doesn’t mean much unless you know how and where to apply it.”

“Because it was politics that forced the High Lord to bend,” Arthur Foundling frowned. “Not power.”

I nodded.

“Night let me take his library, clean out his vaults,” I said. “But I knew what to take because I knew what was important to him. The power wouldn’t have meant much without the second part.”

“The Carrion Lord taught you this?” Sapan asked, a little hurriedly.

As if she’d been going through with it before she could think better, I decided with a grain of amusement.

“He did,” I replied. “I’d say it’s a shame he’s mostly remembered for the number of Named he’s killed, but that would be ignoring the fact he probably cultivated that reputation very much on purpose.”

“He conquered Callow, ma’am,” Arthur quietly said. “They say it was the governors that did most the ugly deeds, afterwards, but he’s the one who handed it all to the Empire.”

“He’s a monster,” I calmly agreed. “But he’s also one of the cleverest men I’ve ever met, and ironically enough perhaps the best chance we have for peace between Callow and Praes in the coming decades.”

It was why I meant to see him climb the Tower, even now. I could trust my father with the Dread Empire, to curb its worst instincts and tangle it so deeply into the bonds of peace with Callow that it would not be able to free itself of them without breaking. Neither Malicia nor Sepulchral were acceptable alternatives. The trouble was that I was not so sure the man in question wanted to claim the Tower. Maybe at the Salian Peace he had, but it’d been over a year since. And the way he’d left…

The conversation strayed to lighter subjects after that and eventually we sent the kids to bed. That left only us, as it was meant to be, and a second round of bottles was opened. I clenched, suddenly, when I felt Robber’s absence like a gut punch. How many ghosts were out there, just beyond the light of our fire? Nauk. Ratface. Hune. I pulled at aragh to chase the thought away and had succeeded in claiming a pleasant degree of inebriation when I caught sight of one of the phalanges approaching Hakram to whisper in his ear. Seeing he had my attention, he gestured for us to move away from the fire and dragged in Vivienne as well. Once we were slightly away from the others, he wasted no time.

“Word from Scribe and the Jacks,” Adjutant said. “Armies are moving towards us.”

My eyes narrowed. He wouldn’t be meaning the forces under Marshal Nim, which had already been headed our way for some time.

“Sepulchral?” Vivienne asked.

He nodded.

“But more,” Hakram said. “The deserters as well. They’ve decamped from the Green Stretched and they’re in close pursuit behind the loyalists and the rebels.”

Well, it looked like I was overdue a talk with General Sacker. Half the point of becoming her patron was being warned of things like this in advance. I breathed out, trying to parse it out in my mind’s eye. The armies of the empresses would reach us weeks before the deserters were in sight, if not months, but they wouldn’t have begun to march without a reason. They wanted a piece of this too, in some way or another.

“Northeast of Askum, northwest of Ater,” I finally said. “That looks to be our battlefield.”

Deep in the Wasteland, which was bloody campaigning grounds for all involved. I wasn’t looking forward to that.

“Agreed,” Adjutant said. “And it means I can no longer delay my departure. Come morning, we must speak with the envoys and I will leave with them come noon.”

I grimaced. I wanted to refuse. I’d just come back and already he was leaving, but I knew it was not a sensible answer. There could be no replacement for Hakram, no one who would mean what he did to his people or who would know my mind as well.

“Tomorrow,” I reluctantly agreed.

He must have caught my displeasure, for he squeezed my arm comfortingly with his skeletal hand.

“We still have tonight,” Hakram said. “Let’s not spoil it yet.”

I silently nodded, and after a moment he moved away. Vivienne lingered. I looked up at the night sky, the stars spread out as far as the eye could see and the moon glaring down as a pale eye. At least these days I did not feel irrational hatred at the sight of it.

“Beautiful night,” Vivienne quietly said, looking up as well. “Moon’s almost full.”

“It is,” I murmured. “It’ll turn soon.”

Tonight or tomorrow, but no later.

—

Well past Midnight Bell we began winding down, the drink and heavy meal taking their toll.

Usually we would have slept there, and some of us had fallen asleep, but we were outside the camp and in enemy territory still. Wards or not, it would be a risk. So instead everyone was roused and we began making our way back to the palisades, Hakram carrying a half-asleep Vivienne on his back to Indrani’s vocal amusement. I hung back with Masego to make sure nothing had been left behind, and after he took down the wards I torched the entire hilltop with blackflame. We were mere miles away from Wolof, the beating heart of sorcery in Praes, so I wasn’t going to be taking risks. I was mostly sober by now, having tapered off drinking near the end, so I did not feel vulnerable enough to rush back. I’d intended to walk back with Zeze after he took his last look, but when he did I found that someone else had stayed behind. Atop the burned hill, a golden-eyed shade was standing among the ash. My heart clenched.

Tonight, then. I’d almost hoped it would be tomorrow.

“You go on ahead,” I told Masego.

He frowned at me.

“Are your certain?” he asked.

He could see her as well, of course. But it wasn’t Masego’s way to meddle in what he saw as the personal affairs of his friends. I breathed out.

“I am,” I told him.

And he did not ask again. Hesitantly he brushed a hand against my arm and I smiled at him. Nodding and wishing me a good night, he began trodding back to camp. I murmured it back then turned to the hilltop. I limped my way back up through the ash, falling in at Akua’s side as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The two of us stood there for a moment, looking up at the night sky. She was the one to break the silence.

“There is a place I would like to show you,” she said. “Not far from here.”

“Cityside or waterside?” I asked.

“Closer to Sinka,” she said, and her eyes asked the question again.

I nodded. It had, I thought, the weight of the inevitable to it. We made our way through the darkness, sure-footed on small and winding paths. It was beautiful, out here. The sight of the orchards touched by moonlight, dappling the ground, the lights of Wolof in the distance as we went downhill towards the Wasaliti. There was little wind but the night was cool, and the thin breeze was enough to lazily stir leaves. We’d not broken the silence as we moved, her leading and I following, but as we crossed a cove of palm trees she began to talk.

“I did not find it myself,” Akua said. “It was shown to me, when I was a girl of thirteen.”

“Who by?” I asked.

She laughed, the amusement lighting up golden eyes as I caught a flash of pearly teeth.

“Some boy who thought he might become my consort,” she said. “Alas, his hopes were greater than his charms.”

“And I bet you were just the sweetest girl,” I drily replied.

“I was not so terrible, back then,” she smiled. “Not so artless as to be taken in, yet hardly the sharpest of irons.”

She would have spoken the last part of that sentence with a touch of reverence, once. No longer. It was, if anything, disdain. But then Akua Sahelian was, in her own way, one of the finest liars I had ever seen. She had made a game out of charming my inner circle, and largely succeeded even when some of them had spent years despising her. As Aisha had once warned me, that was the famous peril of the Sahelians: they were so charming and so useful that even the cleverest let them in. And then they turned on you. So how much of it was Akua’s truly held beliefs and how much of it the face she wore when around us? There was, in the end, only one way to tell.

The crucible. Trial by fire.

“I barely remember what I was like at thirteen,” I admitted. “Feels like a world away.”

“Much like you were at seventeen, I imagine,” Akua mused. “Swagger covering vigilance, looking every gift horse in the mouth twice. And, in your own way, dangerously insightful.”

I coughed to hide my embarrassment. That was the closest she’d come to giving me a genuine compliment – one not wrapped in anything else, honest praise – perhaps since we had first met.

“And terribly easy to embarrass, of course,” she teased.

“I wouldn’t have been that easy to fluster,” I snorted. “For one, unlike you I was the one taking the boys to dark corners.”

Girls, too, but not as many. I’d tended towards boys when I’d been younger.

“And yet I’m told the redheaded mage you took as a lover had to be the one to seduce you,” Akua said.

I’d noticed that she usually avoided using Killian’s name. Or talking about her at all, really. Not that it was hard, considering most of my closest friends tended to avoid the subject. Even Juniper, who was not known for shyness or tact, had not hazarded to venture an opinion on that whole debacle.

“It’s different when it’s someone under your authority,” I replied. “I thought there was something there, but I didn’t want to…”

“Overstep?” Akua suggested.

I hummed, not disagreeing. In a way. From the moment I’d held command of the Fifteenth I had been both a villain and the apprentice of the Black Knight, both positions that in many ways made me untouchable. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to abuse my position if I cared to, and arguably I had. I’d been very much against Legion regulations to sleep with my own Senior Mage, for one, but rules applied to Named in Praes more or less only when people higher up the ladder said they did. And in my case, Black had been more supportive than anything.

“I’m also not great at taking hints sometimes,” I admitted.

“Truly?” Akua said, tone drier than a desert.

I rolled my eye at her. We swerved to the north well before reaching the shore, to my surprise, still we into the cultivate parts of Wolof’s surroundings. The side of the hill where she led me, though, was cracked. Old scorch marks still blackened the stone, from some ancient battle, and she guided me through the broken grounds until we reached a tall flat stone covered with moss. Akua passed a hand against it affectionately.

“You’ll have to help me move it,” she said.

Interest piqued, I put my back into it and we toppled the stone to the side. It revealed a narrow, uneven passage going deeper into the hill. Akua glanced up at the sky, as if checking on the height of the moon, and nodded.

“Now is the best time,” she said. “Come.”

It was uncomfortable squeezing through the passage and the stone tore at my clothes some, but aside from the burn of my bad leg there was little to hinder me. To my relief the passage led to some sort of broader room, pitch dark – not that the darkness was trouble for me, blessed by the Sisters as I was. Here I could stand to my full height, and Akua almost, but it was still small. She showed a low fold in the stone to our left, though, and after crawling for a foot or so I followed her into a small cavern. I stopped almost immediately after rising, stunned.

It was not a large cavern, perhaps twenty feet wide, and most of the ground was covered by water. The sides had been scarred by spells, like the outside, but here the heat of the spell used has turned entire swaths of stone into something like smooth glass. And what brought it all together was the long opening in the ceiling that looked up straight at the night sky: the moon and stars were reflected perfectly on the water and the walls, as if we had crawled through the earth only to somehow stumble onto a slice of firmament. Akua leaned against wall, water lapping at the stone not far from her feet, and offered me a gentle smile.

She did not say anything, or need to.

I came to stand at her side, enjoying the coolness of the stone. There was no warmth from her, either, though we were almost close enough to touch. She was yet a shade, and a shadow had no warmth to share. We stood there for a long moment, silent and unmoving, as the stars and moon ghosted on stone and water. Eventually I felt her moving closer to me, and said nothing. My stomach tightened.

“Until tonight,” Akua quietly said, “I was the only person in all of Creation to know of this place.”

I did not ask what had happened to the boy. It was Praes. I knew well what had happened to the boy who had once wanted to be consort to a Sahelian. And I knew, too, what it meant that she had brought me here. Shared a wonder and a secret with me, asking for nothing. But, perhaps, hoping. We had toed the line closer and closer, as the years passed, but the line had always been there. Tonight she had not even touched me, and still somehow it felt as if it had been crossed. I turned enough to look at her but not to invite more. She’d always been gorgeous. I’d thought as much from the first time I’d glimpsed her in that tent.

Often, though, she made a spectacle of it. Magnificent dresses and jewelry, seductive smiles and teasing words. Right now, though, I found not a trace of it on her face. I could barely even make out what she wore, save that it was a dress, and there was nothing seductive about the look on her face. It was, I thought, longing and perhaps something like hunger. There was nothing veiled about it, and the nakedness of that realization had my stomach clench with desire and something else. I did not move, either closer or further away. A moment passed, heavy, and my arm tensed as she slowly began to lean closer – eyes on mine, asking. And I answered the question by turning away, looking down at that field of stars she had stared with me. I did not see her expression. Did not let myself see it, else I hesitate.

I must carry it out to the end, even if it stung. Especially if it stung.

“Even now?” Akua quietly asked, voice ailing.

“Even now,” I got out.

“I had thought it would be different,” she whispered. “There is… I chose you over my family, Catherine. My home. Everything I’ve loved since I was a girl, save for my father – and even his death I set aside, refusing vengeance on your own for it.”

“I know,” I said, wretchedly.

But her folly had been the death of Liesse. One hundred thousand lives, every single one of them in my care. My care. Even if the Gods Above and Below had demanded of me forgiveness of Akua’s folly, it would have been the same answer. I was who I was, and in the end that was a creature of long prices.

“It’s not something you can win,” I murmured. “That’s not how this works.”

Because that was the last thing that needed to be stripped away from her so she could truly enter the crucible: the thought that if she was kind, if she was good, if she fought for the cause the two of us might have a future together. It tasted like ash in my mouth to rip that out of the unspoken between us, but it must be done. The silence stretched out.

“There is no end to it, is there?” Akua finally said. “The shadow cast by that day. No sun that will chase it out.”

I smiled mirthlessly.

“We all live in it still,” I replied.

And always would. I still avoided looking at her, oddly ashamed, and so it was in utter surprise that I felt soft, cool lips press against the corner of my mouth.

“So we do,” she said, moving away.

Her golden eyes shone. Could a shade cry? I did not know.

“I would like you to leave, please,” Akua Sahelian said.

I didn’t argue. All I could wonder was if this was the way Hanno had felt, back in the day, when he flipped his coin and it spun in the air. Before it had landed.

—

By morning she had not come back, as I had known she would not.

Interlude: West I

“Terror is the hand that rips away the masks. What stays when it has stripped away all the civilized lies we tell ourselves is our truest face, ugly as it is.”

–Alrich Fenne, first of the Iron Kings

Life was full of ironies, Prince Frederic Goethal had found.

Death too, he supposed, though circumstance dictated that one’s enjoyment of such humour would be severely curtailed. For this jest, however, the Gods Above were yet smiling down on them. The endless armies of the Hidden Horror had smashed themselves against the walls of the Morgentor again and again, hordes beyond counting and horrors beggaring nightmares. The last fortress of Twilight’s Pass had held back the madness, as Lycaonese grimly had for centuries, but all the world had known that it was only a matter of time until the Morgentor fell.

There were simply too many of the dead and too few soldiers to stop them, no matter how sharp the courage and tall the walls. All of Procer, perhaps even all of Calernia, had turned its eye to fortress in the frozen north where horror was yet dammed. Like a face cringing away from a blow yet struck.

Yet they had done it. Against the odds, against the night and the fear and the endless cruelty of Evil, the Morgentor had held. Towers had fallen, even the fortress itself for a time, but always the armies under Otto and Frederic had taken it back. Even now, as the morn’s light fell on the stony grounds below, Prince Frederic stood atop the tower known as the Westenhaupt and knew the living to be the masters of the field. The dead were scattered and burning, the miraculous engines known as Pickler’s Nails – picklernagel – pounding away at their retreating mass.

Balls of pitch hit the ground, tossed by spindly catapults, spilling blackness where they landed and spreading the flames everywhere. The changes goblin engineering had made here… The Dead King’s commanders had grown wary of committing beorns to the first wave of the assault, after the fourth time they died without even touching a wall. Wary! The absurdity of that old monster’s generals being wary of anything at all had been as fine wine.

It had been night and day. Even after the Hidden Horror plied fresh tricks and opened a gate into the very Hells, the lines had buckled yet stubbornly refused to break. With valour and fire, the armies of the west had held back the tide even as all the world expected them to fall. But life was full of delightful, cruel ironies and so it had not mattered. To the southeast the Hocheben Heights had fallen: the dead were now pouring into Bremen like an unstoppable tide, burning and killing as they went.

The Morgentor had not fallen but it was going to have to be abandoned, lest the dead march north and surround it entirely.

The Kingfisher Prince looked down at the fleeing dead, sword in hand and fingers tight on the grip. Two years he’d fought here. Bled here, with the hard-faced soldiers at his side. The Morgentor was hundreds of miles from the borders of Brus, but he fancied he now knew the fortress as well as if he had been born here. It was not his home, but Frederic had well thought it might be his grave before it all ended. It was… frustrating to abandon it like this. The prince knew well the strategic necessity – already it would be a hard campaign to push south through the enemy invading Bremen, to be enveloped here was death – yet what the mind knew the heart disavowed. It tasted like defeat, leaving.

It was in the soldiers around him too, he could feel it. Aid fluttered in him like butterfly wings, urging him to help but not quite knowing how. Westenhaupt was heavy on Neustrians, whose home was south of Bremen was now next to fall, but that stern lot was no more inclined to leave than the rest. Garbed in steel and iron the soldiers milled about the rampart, talking in terse Reitz and keeping an eye on the wyrms in the distance. Even Frederic’s own retinue was in a dark mood. Such a small thing, pride, but was it not the smallest of axles on which the world rested? Small wounds could kill an army if left to fester.

Yet what could he do?

“It is finished for the day, my prince. The curs will not return until they have greater numbers than this to field.”

Frederic glanced at his captain – a distant cousin of his, he’d been given to understand – who’d addressed him and nodded agreement.

“They’ll be back under cover of darkness,” the Prince of Brus said.

Even with goblin spotters, night had the living at a disadvantage. The span they’d just bought, however, would be the opportunity of their departure. The armies had been ready to decamp and march south for days, it was only the constant assaults of the Enemy that’d kept them still. A fighting retreat all the way to Bremen would be… difficult, even for veterans like these. The soldiers around them had been listening without even the pretence otherwise and a familiar officer stepped forward, Captain Fredda of the Neustrian royal army.

“It is done, then,” she said. “We will flee south?”

The question was blunt, but more importantly reflected on the faces of most around them. Aid fluttered in him still, insistent. The Kingfisher Prince looked away, down at the fleeing throng of corpses. What could he claim?

“We will be back,” Frederic said. “And so will they.”

Grim nods, but the arrow had missed. The Kingfisher Prince thought, for a moment, of what Otto would say in his place. Something stern, do doubt. They were a stern and unflinching lot, the Reitzenberg. The Prince of Bremen was called Otto Redcrown by men for the proof of that, the same stubborn charge that’d killed his father and two elder sisters before the crown passed to him and he carried it to its end. And like that, Frederic found his answer.

“It begins now, our war,” the Prince of Brus said.

That claimed their attention.

“We will march south,” Frederic Goethal said. “Through Bremen and Neustria, through my own Brus in time, but though battles await us on that path it cannot be called a campaign.”

He smiled.

“It is a muster,” the prince said. “The last muster we have in us, the last gasp of Procer. And you all know where we will strike, once the strength of the east and the west is gathered.”

The Kingfisher Prince raised his sword, pointed it east. Where, beyond mountains and lakes and clouds of poison, lay the Crown of the Dead. Keter, the Hidden Horror’s seat of power.

“You call it fleeing,” the Kingfisher Prince laughed, “but you should know better, Fredda. Today, at long last, we begin our march on Keter.”

And inside of him the wings ceased fluttering at last, a smile from Above, as all around him backs straightened and stares hardened. Frederic had not lied, after all. The dead would chase them south relentlessly, until the time came for the last battle of this war. Frederic Goethal watched the corpses fleeing below one last time, fingers tight around his sword. Doom had come for the Principate of Procer, doom as no realm of man had ever known before.

They would meet that end, the Kingfisher Prince swore, straight-backed and proud.

—

The blow had split open her helm.

A shallow cut, she’d been lucky, but head wounds always bled ugly. Rozala Malanza, Princess of Aequitan, ripped off the straps of her helmet and tossed it away. It was useless now anyway and shaking free her sweaty hair was a small pleasure. Irritated at the delay, she glared at the priest laying his hands on her back.

“Hurry up, would you?” the dark-haired princess bit out.

A cleared throat followed and she glanced guiltily at Louis Rohanon, the former prince of Creusens who was now her formal secretary. And something rather more thrilling, in private, though that was best kept quiet.

“It would be easier if you dismounted,” Louis mildly said.

“I’m not sure I’ll be able to get back on my horse if I do,” Rozala admitted.

Russet eyes narrowed, but he knew better than to argue against her getting back into the thick of the fight. The Princess of Aequitan was not the kind of general that shied away from the melee: it was why men followed her into the dark. She asked them to brave no peril she was not willing to risk at their side. Louis simply nodded, even though he disapproved, and she felt a sudden swell of affection. He was a wonderful lover, but she had often thought he could be more should politics allow. Perhaps even if not. She had come to suspect there might be… other considerations. The dark-haired princess laid a hand on her belly. It was still too early to tell, but there were signs.

“The Levantines are still holding strong out west,” Louis told her. “But the Red Knight sent word that the Hawk has been nipping at them all afternoon. Lord Yannu took an arrow but he still lives.”

Rozala grimaced, the Light wielded by the priest at her side finally reaching her scalp. The wound began to mend.

“Someone really needs to kill that thing for good,” Rozala cursed. “And the eastern flank?”

“Still harassed by skirmishers, but the Cleven horse is scattering them,” Louis said. “If we can push through to the south, we have our path to Peroulet.”

Where the last line of defence for the principality of Cleves would stand. How quicky the wind had turned against them, Rozala thought. But a few months ago she had triumphed at the Battle of Trifelin then resisted the siege that followed in the victory’s wake. Even the opening of the Hellgate had not been enough to dislodge her. Yet the Hidden Horror, while losing battles, had found ways to win the war. As he had done to the Lycaonese up north, he had done to her here in Cleves: when the neck did not bend, he had struck the ribs. Rozala had lost the western coast while pinned in Trifelin so and seen herself at risk of being surrounded should the city of Atandor fall.

Cordelia Hasenbach had sent the order to retreat south to Peroulet before she could even consider a stratagem to turn this around. And though part of her had wanted to fight the First Prince’s command to retreat, Rozala had known it to be the right decision. Cleves was good as lost and there would be no reinforcements coming until it was far, far too late. It had been good that she’d not dallied out of pique, for Atandor had fallen earlier than anticipated and the army that’d taken it had swung north to attack her from behind as she already led her armies into a fighting retreat. For three days now her forces had been fighting the dead in heavy skirmishes, the Hidden Horror trying to mire her out here in the open instead of behind the walls of Peroulet.

She would not give the old monster his wish.

“Find me a helmet,” Princess Rozala asked her lover. “And a fresh lance. We must pierce through, else half of us will be corpses come morning.”

“Both are already on their way,” Louis replied, ruefully smiling.

Rozala almost leaned down to kiss him, holding herself back at the very last moment. His lips quirked anyway. Rising her saddle, caressing her charger’s neck, she turned her gaze to the field in the distance. They would make it to Peroulet, that much she would swear to any Gods that cared enough to listen. After, however… That fortress would be the last holdout before the hordes of the Dead King broke into the plains to the south. And if they do then Principate is dead, Rozala thought. It was a harsh thing, to realize that she had already given all the ground that she could afford to give. The moment she raised her banner over Peroulet, Rozala Malanza’s back would be to the wall. And the terrible truth was that, beneath all the oaths and speeches, the Princess of Aequitan was not sure she could hold the city.

No, that was a lie. She knew she would lose those walls. It was only a question of how long she could eke out before she did.

Breathing out, Princess Rozala Malanza accepted the helmet her lover pressed into her hand, setting it atop the crown of her head. A lance filled her hand, familiar weight, and she looked up at the sunny afternoon sky. They must first survive today, she reminded herself, before being troubled by tomorrow.

“One miracle at a time,” Rozala murmured into the wind, and rode back to war.

—

The First Prince thought it would look much like this, if an empire could see the headsman’s axe coming down on its neck.

The Morgentor had fallen. Rhenia had fallen. Bremen was halfway into the grave. The sole major military force left in northern Procer, under the command of the princes of Brus and Bremen, was fighting through the horde so it could make it to the temporary safety of Neustria. Cordelia had done all she could to evacuate her people further south, into Segovia, but many had stayed. Too many. Lycaonese, she should have remembered, were a stubborn lot. They were not retreating, not leaving. They would fight the dead fiercely for every league of stone, every river, every hill and forest and muddy road. It was the old fight, the old duty. The walls must hold, lest dawn fail.

That pride might yet kill them all, and with every passing day Cordelia Hasenbach could do less to ward away that fate.

Cleves was holding better, but barely. A ring of forts had been raised along the line drawn by Peroulet, after Cordelia drew from the refugee camps for labour. Food and places on carts headed south for the families of those who accepted had earned her enough volunteers that pits could be dug, palisades raised and stones stacked fast enough it could almost be called a miracle. The First Prince knew better. If there was one thing the Principate still had plenty of, it was hands that could be put to work. The entire effort had felt much like raising a sandcastle to stop the tide, but the fair-haired princess had gritted her teeth and seen it done regardless. Despair was not worth a whistle. If Cordelia failed, it would be after she had moved Heavens and earth trying.

Even from Hainaut the news was grim. General Abigail had been dislodged from the Cigelin Sisters by an enemy offensive, though she’d retreated in good order to Lauzon’s Hollow after covering her retreat with swaths of goblinfire. The White Knight’s crushing victory at Juvelun had secured the eastern passage, for now at least, but all of Cordelia’s generals agreed it was now only a matter of time until the Army of Callow was pushed back to the old defence lines at Neustal. And once that was the case, once all that stood between Procer and annihilation was forts from the hills of western Cleves to eastern Hainaut, then it would be the beginning of the end. The Dead King would hold the shores of the lakes and be able to cross unimpeded.

Looking at the grey stealing inch after inch of the exquisite map at the heart of the Vogue Archive, Cordelia Hasenbach could almost hear the whistling sound the axe was making as it came down on the neck of the Principate of Procer.

Though tastefully clothed and as rested as she could afford to be, Cordelia could not help but feeling worn to the bone. It showed, too, in some ineffable part of her. She’d glimpsed it in her looking glass, that subtle quality that came from a tool being worked ‘til it was near breaking. Yet the fire in her belly would not let her close her eyes, not when every missed opportunity was a few hundred more of the people in her care sent to the grave. The First Prince heard the Forgetful Librarian approach, recognizing the footsteps, and afforded the other woman a questioning glance.

“Word from the Dominion just came,” the Damned said. “It worked.”

Cordelia did not hide her surprise quite quickly enough.

“They agreed to the oaths?” she pressed.

“Every major line of the Blood swore oaths that the seneschal of Levante is to hold the city until the end of the war, when the Majilis will convene to settle the succession of the Isbili,” the Librarian confirmed. “The peace-oaths were not as widespread, but the rumours the Circle seeded seem to have moved public opinion where you wanted.”

This time it was a smile she hid. Cordelia had ordered that word be spread the Grey Pilgrim had died wishing for peace between Levantines before his sacrifice at the Battle of Hainaut, which would have meant little in Procer but carried a great deal of weight in the Dominion. He had been revered as half a god, in those parts. There would still be bandits and raiders that took advantage of the chaos, but the spectre of the Peregrine’s disapproval would stay many a hand. Perhaps, if she were lucky, enough that the Dominion of Levant did not collapse into utter anarchy. Methodical anarchy, at least, she would be able to prop up for a little longer still.

Long enough that if she no longer could, it was because Cordelia could do nothing at all.

“We can turn our attention to the League, then,” the First Prince said. “Have our envoys to Bellerophon sent word back yet?”

“Yes,” the Librarian grimaced. “That they have yet to be received by the expedition’s generals.”

The Republic of Bellerophon had, to almost universal surprised, succeeded at assembling an army and sweeping over the last holdings of Penthes. Unfortunately, the victorious citizen-soldiers had then begun a siege of the city-state that they were very unlikely to be able to carry out successfully. Cordelia would have had little issue with this, had General Basilia not been leading a coalition army east with the intention of besieging that very same city only to find that there was already an army camped beneath its walls. Given that Basilia had bought dwarven engines so that she would at least be able to breach the walls of Penthes and put an end to the war she’d begun, this was a… frustrating situation.

The Secretariat of Delos had invited her to mediate a peace between the parties involved, but while Helike and its vassals were amenable the Republic was proving to be rather more obstinate. The People had voted that Anaxares the Diplomat yet lived, and so was still Hierarch of the League of Free Cities. As a consequence, it was illegal for them to receive foreign envoys. The situation in the south had therefore turned into a farce of standoff under the walls of Penthes, General Basilia having refused to give battle and instead sent war parties to pillage the Penthesian countryside. She was, Cordelia suspected, trying to earn back what she had spent on those dwarven war engines.

“Then we lean on Atalante,” the First Prince said. “If they consent, Delos could at last call a formal session of the League of Free Cities.”

The end of hostilities that entailed could be used to force Bellerophon back to its territory, given that the republic still claimed to be loyal to its lost Hierarch. If General Basilia could steal a march on Bellerophon when hostilities resumed after, she could claim the siege first and finally bring the civil war to an end. Beginning to consider how the ruling priests might be convinced to end their self-imposed isolation, Cordelia ceased when she saw a messenger come for her. She glanced at the Librarian, who snorted before taking the offered scroll for her. It was given unto her afterwards, however, and she frowned. The head of the Circle of Thorns, Louis de Sartrons, claimed he had urgent news.

And to think she had almost begun to find a silver lining to the cloud.

Cordelia wasted no time in heading towards the salon where her spymaster would be waiting. The conversation would trouble her carefully arranged schedule if it ran for too long, and she had an obligation that could not be put off later that evening, but she would have to adapt. Louis de Sartrons was not the kind of man to call anything urgent without good reason. Within moment of sitting across from him and taking a polite sip at the served tea, the skeletally thin older man spoke a sentence that chilled her blood.

“The Dead King is looking for the ealamal.”

Cordelia carefully set down the cup, painted porcelain of exquisite delicacy. She did not ask whether or not her spymaster was certain, as it would be an insult to the both of them.

“Has he found it?” she asked instead, forcing calm.

“I believe not,” Louis de Sartrons replied. “A Revenant was caught in southern Lyonis and another was seen in Lange, but the facility in Brabant has not been breached.”

It would not be catastrophic even if it were, Cordelia reminded herself. Brabant had been judged too close to the enemy, and so the weapon had been moved into southeastern Aisne.

“Destroy it,” Cordelia ordered. “We must be sure the Enemy learns as little as he can.”

“I will see it done,” her spymaster agreed, then thinly smiled. “It may very well be only a matter of time until it is found regardless of any measure, Your Highness. Unless we let Chosen see to the defences-”

“We will not,” the First Prince sharply interrupted.

She would not let the White Knight usurp control of the weapon. It had been made of the corpse of an angel of Judgement, there could be no pretence of Hanno of Arwad not becoming its master as soon as he laid hands on it – and he would, if any of the Chosen took up guarding the ealamal. The loyalty of the heroes went first to their champion, and the White Knight had already proved himself untrustworthy in the Arsenal. Cordelia would not make the same mistake twice.

“Then the best we can deliver is delay, Your Highness,” Louis de Sartrons blandly said. “And I would consider Sister Alberte’s proposal that a limited test be attempted. Otherwise we know too little of the weapon for it to be considered usable, in my opinion.”

The First Prince hesitated, staying silent. It had been the question that plagued them all ever since the Salian Peace. What would a weapon made of a fallen angel of Judgement do, if Judgement was kept silent by a madman? The Hidden Horror himself had claimed that the Tyrant of Helike had spared them all a great doom by arranging for the Hierarch to do this, and the secrets unearthed in Levant last year had borne this true in part. If the Intercessor truly could influence angels, using the ealamal would have been a mistake. It would have given that enigmatic monster power of life and death over half of Calernia. Yet with the Hierarch staying true to his course of obstruction, the situation had changed again.

If the ealamal could be used without the Intercessor’s meddling, then Cordelia still had a way to prevent the fall of Calernia. If. Only none could tell her what the weapon might do without the guidance of angels behind it, and there was no known precedent to draw on. What way but a test was there to gain an answer? A small use, limited in scope, but still a use. The First Prince was inclined to agree with her spymaster of the necessity, but it was not so simple as that. There was another crowned head whose assent must be gained before that, lest in chasing ghosts Cordelia make an enemy of the living. Catherine Foundling had not been shy in voicing her disapproval of the entire affair, and absurdly enough the Black Queen was now Cordelia’s closest and most important ally.

“I am to speak with the Black Queen tonight,” she finally said. “The subject will be broached.”

“That is all I can ask, Your Highness,” Louis de Sartrons said, bowing his head.

—

The parlour had been refurbished from floor to ceiling when it was first dedicated to a new purpose, that of serving as the scrying room the First Prince of Procer would use to speak with the Queen of Callow. An entire wall had been covered by a beautiful silver mirror while the plush sofas had been replaced by a beautiful yet severe set of Lycaonese armchairs and tables. Bureaus had been filled with papers which might be of use in discussion, the latest reports and predictions, while the walls were covered with maps and tapestries. Every detail had been tailored according to what her agents believed to be the preferences of Catherine Foundling.

Though Cordelia doubted their common amiability could be traced back to these changes, it had to be said that at least the change of furniture had ensured that the Black Queen would no longer eye the more elaborate Alamans furnishings with barely veiled disdain. The First Prince was in some ways rather amused by the other royal’s disdain for luxuries, considering that for all her severe inclinations she was likely one of the wealthiest women in all of Calernia these days.

The First Prince of Procer poured herself a cup of mead and set the pitcher down on the table before slipping into the armchair – discreetly made more comfortable with cushions – and allowed herself to take a sip. Unlike the Black Queen, who usually guzzled wine as if it were water while they talked, she moderated herself. It made it all the more frustrating that the drink usually came to redden her cheeks before it did the other ruler’s, to be frank. Before she had even set down the cup, the surface of the mirror before her rippled. It took a moment for the wizards of the Observatory in Laure to bind her to the Hierophant’s spell in Praes, but hardly more than a few breaths.

On the other side of the mirror the Black Queen, looking as tired as Cordelia herself felt, offered her a lopsided grin.

“Your Highness,” Queen Catherine of Callow said.

“Your Majesty,” First Prince Cordelia of Procer replied.

Catherine Foundling could be striking on a good day, but this did not seem to be one of them. Her clothes were ruffled, her expression drawn and there was no sign of the ruinous charisma that had drawn so many to her causes – fair and foul. The cloth covering the eye she’d lost in Hainaut was slightly askew, which made her shark cheekbones stand out more than usual. Cordelia almost wished she had not taken the time to put on a fine dress in Rhenian blue herself, but only almost. Even if Foundling noticed the difference between them, which a slight frown told Cordelia she had, the queen was was always easier to deal with when the Lycaonese princess was dressed becomingly.

The Black Queen’s wandering eye was well-know, and Cordelia had not gotten where she was by refusing to use the arrows in her quiver.

“A trying day?” the First Prince asked.

The tanned woman – even darker of skin, now that she campaigned under the Wasteland sun – barked out a laugh.

“In a way,” the Black Queen said. “I have what I came for: High Lord Sargon’s granary and his treasury are secured and ready to be moved. I can begin heading south for a decisive battle.”

“A great victory,” Cordelia said, meaning every word.

The city of Wolof was famous even in her native Rhenia, known as a great fortress that’d broken the same armies that had taken Ater and brought down the Tower. That Foundling had beggared it without even having to storm the walls or losing more than a handful of men was the kind of feat a reputation could be made of, were the Black Queen’s own not far beyond such tales nowadays.

“So they tell me,” Catherine Foundling tiredly said. “Akua Sahelian left my camp two days ago. Our spies in Wolof tell me she has entered the Empyrean Palace.”

Cordelia, knowing the Doom of Liesse to be a thorny matter, took a sip from her mead as she chose her words.

“Her desertion is as you predicted,” the First Prince said. “And planned for.”

The other woman winced.

“If I might give you a word of advice?”

Cordelia cocked a brow but nodded.

“I wouldn’t ever say anything that could be construed as a variation on ‘just as planned’,” the Black Queen said, and she seemed completely serious. “That never ends well.”

The blonde princess leaned back into her seat. It was absurd enough advice, on the surface, but it was no fool giving it.

“One of the obscure rules of… Named, I take it,” Cordelia said, deciding using Chosen or Damned would be undiplomatic.

“More for villains than heroes,” the Black Queen said, “but it’s best steered clear of across the board. Sharp irony tends to ensure.”

“I will keep it in mind when dealing with Named,” Cordelia replied.

It was useful information and there was no denying that in these matters Catherine Foundling was a great deal more learned than Frederic Goethal, who Cordelia had attempted to learn from only to find his knowledge of the affairs of Chosen to be rather shallow. The likes of the Peregrine and the Black Queen seemed, unfortunately, to be quite rare.

“Might be useful for you to keep in mind period,” the queen drawled.

“While I appreciate the implicit compliment, I am not Chosen,” Cordelia flatly said.

The other woman leaned back into her seat, inside that campaign tent of hers. She took up a goblet of what looked like that truly horrid orcish liquor – aragh – and knocked it back, offering a toothy smile afterwards.

“Maybe not right now,” the Black Queen said. “But I wouldn’t bet on that staying true forever. Vivienne tells me you’ve gotten Levant back into a semblance of order.”

The heiress to Callow would have read the report earlier. It seemed an odd change of subject, but likely wasn’t. These little detours were a staple of conversation with Catherine Foundling, she had learned.

“Lady Itima’s contributions were key,” Cordelia said. “But I will agree that the Dominion has somewhat stabilized.”

“Yeah,” the Queen of Callow drawled, rolling her eye. “I’m sure Itima Ifriqui was the one who came up with that oath and propaganda plan. Seems right up her alley, that play.”

Cordelia’s lips thinned.

“You have a point, I imagine?”

“You got Levant in order,” the Black Queen said. “You’re keeping Procer from falling apart and taking the lead in the fight against the Dead King. There’s a title for someone who does that, Hasenbach.”

Ah, were they now dispensing with titles? Foundling usually on began that a few drinks in.

“Is there?” the First Prince replied, skeptical.

“Sure,” Foundling shrugged. “Warden of the West. What a fun coincidence that you happen to already bear it.”

“That door lay open before me once,” Cordelia coldly said. “I did not step through the threshold. It is not a choice I regret.”

“You didn’t take the Name, maybe,” the Black Queen said. “But the Role, you made it yours anyway. There’s not a pie west of the Whitecaps you don’t have your finger in. Might take a year, might take twenty, but Creation will answer to the truth of that.”

She smiled, looking fearsome and sympathetic both.

“You can swim against the river all you like, Cordelia Hasenbach,” she said. “It won’t get tired before you do.”

The genuine sympathy in the other woman’s voice made it a harder blow than if she’d been cruel. It sounded like something she truly did believe. And though this talk of Name and Role was… esoteric, there seemed to be some manner of logic to it. However tortured. And though you are a madwoman, Catherine Foundling, Cordelia thought, you might just be the cleverest madwoman alive. This was not an assertion to be lightly dismissed.

“I will heed your warning,” the First Prince said, politely calling the subject to a close.

Foundling nodded, looking almost nonchalant. She was… loose tonight, Cordelia decided. Less controlled than usual. And for all her drinking and seeming carelessness, the Black Queen usually kept close mastery of herself. This, though, seemed unguarded.

“Does Sahelian’s betrayal truly trouble you so?” the fair-haired princess quietly asked. “You told me of its coming months ago.”

“It stings,” Catherine Foundling artlessly confessed. “I didn’t think it would. Wasn’t sure it would, maybe.”

“And still you went forward with this scheme,” Cordelia said. “Why? There are less convoluted ways to take revenge, Foundling. And I did not question your plans, for this is an affair of Named and Callowan besides, but I will admit I find what I know of this to be baffling.”

The one-eyed queen’s lips quirked. That had, somehow, pleased her to hear. She truly took as compliments the strangest of things.

“It’s not just about revenge,” the Black Queen said. “It’s… hard to articulate.”

Cordelia was not so sure. She thought it might instead be that it was the simplest thing to articulate in the world, but that the queen across the mirror would resist speaking those words to the bitter end. It was a shocking thought, that Catherine Foundling might have affections for the woman that’d destroyed Liesse, but in a way fascinating as well. Cordelia was not certain whether it was the tint of tragedy to the whole affair or simply that she had never before met someone with such spectacularly terrible taste in women before, but the perhaps the truth lay somewhere in the middle.

“A strange revenge indeed, to return her home and to the Tower’s service after having been one of your inner circle,” Cordelia mildly said. “Unless you have sabotaged her prospects?”

The Black Queen grinned, a vicious slice of ivory.

“Oh, not at all,” Catherine Foundling said. “She is going to get everything that she ever wanted.”

The queen poured herself another cupful of liquor.

“But that’s the thing with Praes, see,” she continued. “You get whatever you want, but never the way you want it.”

“It is your campaign to lead,” Cordelia finally said. “And I cannot gainsay your results so far.”

“It’ll be a battle next,” Foundling opined. “A convergence. The fate of Praes going forward is going to be wrestled over. And after that…”

“Ater,” the First Prince completed.

“It ends there,” the Black Queen said. “I’ll get it done, Cordelia. I know the stakes. I’ll muster the East and we’ll come with its full array of war.”

And the truth was that the First Prince believed her. Because the two of them had grown beyond enmity, even as enemies, and though they were not friends – would never be – a trust had grown between them. You could only share the burden of the world on your back with someone for so long before you took to them, even a little.

“We don’t have long left,” Cordelia quietly admitted. “We are giving ground on all fronts now. And the southern principalities are beginning to buck my authority, slowly but surely. I expect there will be defections before you return.”

There was only so long people were willing to have the lifeblood squeezed out of them to support a war they’d never seen with their own eyes. And though Cordelia had pushed through the Highest Assembly measures that would buy the realm a few more months, the hard measures she’d relied on to see it done had made her enemies.

“You’re keeping up the sky with your back, Hasenbach,” the Black Queen replied, tone oddly gentle. “I don’t expect the impossible of you. If it were anyone else in your seat, this war would already be lost.”

“We might lose it anyway,” Cordelia said, and hesitated.

It was now, she thought or never.

“The ealamal,” the First Prince said. “I want to find out what it does with Judgement silenced. In case…”

In case they lost the war, she left unsaid. The Black Queen grimaced.

“You want a test,” she said.

Cordelia nodded. Added nothing more.

“Fuck,” Catherine Foundling cursed, leaning back into her seat.

There was a long moment of silence.

“Crows take me. Do it.”

Interlude: East I

“As a rule, principles are trouble. If you have them, unprincipled men will despise you. If you do not have them, principled men will despise you. My advice, my son, is therefore to choose terribly mediocre principles but keep to them religiously.”

– Extract from the infamous ‘Sensible Testament’ of Basilea Chrysanthe of Nicae

“And the nature of her alliance with the First Prince?”

Akua Sahelian had found that betrayal was not unlike putting on an old dress. The cut did not quite fit as it would have once did, but there was a certain comfort in the… familiarity of the object. Sargon had been dear enough to grant her use of the family’s finest scrying mirrors – ancient artefacts, tall as a man and twice as broad – so the illusion that she was seated at a table in the same council room as the Dread Empress of Praes was rather convincing. The clarity of the spell allowed for the game to be played as if they were in person, Malicia reading her face as she read Malicia’s. It was rather invigorating to fence this way with a woman of the empress’ calibre.

“Largely a result of common interests,” Akua said. “There is a surprising degree of trust there, but that is not unexpected after Catherine’s restraint during the Peace of Salia.”

Callow had been well positioned to extort Procer when the time had come for bargaining. There was not much the First Prince could have afforded to do but bend, given the imminent collapse of her realm if she did not, but Catherine had instead chosen to court goodwill. Given how important the trust between the two greatest rulers of the Great Alliance had become, and the veiled frustration on Malicia’s face when she spoke of Procer, Akua was inclined to believe it had been the right decision to make.

“There has been some method to her recklessness,” Malicia conceded. “Your opinion, then, on her relationship with Yannu Marave and Itima Ifriqui?”

Oh my, she truly was frustrated. Mentioning those two names – the two heads of the great lines of the Blood that were not Catherine’s informal pupils – was a tacit admission that Malicia was trying to get a peace here in Praes by getting the broader Grand Alliance to twist Callow’s arm into accepting it. No doubt she’d already tried Cordelia Hasenbach and been rebuffed, so she was now looking for other angles of approach. Unfortunately for the empress, the Dominion was dead grounds in this regard.

“She is highly respected, due to her role in the Grey Pilgrim’s resurrection after the Princes’ Graveyard,” Akua said. “I don’t believe she has spoken much with the Lady of Vaccei at all, but she has a solid accord with Lord Yannu.”

Akua decided to keep it up her sleeve that not a single one of the Blood would dare to cross Catherine at the moment. Not while she had the Barrow Sword at her side and they very much wanted to avoid her protection of him extending beyond the confines of the war. If she kept meddling in the politics of Levant that might change, but for now having both fear and respect at her back meant that Malicia would find no purchase with the Levantines. It might be amusing to see her fail in the attempt, however, so Akua offered her empress a pleasant smile instead of potentially useful information.

“Her talent for ingratiating herself to key individuals is proving to be an obstacle,” Malicia deplored.

And perhaps Akua would have agreed, as a girl, when she could only think of strength through the Empire’s conception of it. An outlook that would claim Catherine was ahead because of a superior quality. In this case, Malicia seemed to have decided it was talent for making alliances at the highest rungs of power. To triumph over her the Dread Empress would have to bring her own superior qualities to bear and decisively beat her opponent. Yet the old certitudes no longer rang so true. Praes is so deeply despised out west nowadays that Hasenbach could not agree to a bargain even if it were advantageous, Akua thought. That is not of Catherine’s making.

The Dread Empress had won too many battles, ceasing to question if they needed to be fought at all. Victory was a heady brew, Akua knew better than most, but she was surprised that Malicia would fall prey to such a mistake. The empress had always struck her as being an exquisitely self-controlled woman. Then again, the Carrion Lord was involved. It was always harder to see clearly when the cut was so close to the heart.

Akua knew that too, and learned the lesson roughly enough it still left the edges of her raw.

“The Dead King has forced together strange alliances,” she simply said.

Malicia looked amused, understanding the sentence for the veiled reference that it was.

“How have you found the body?” the empress asked.

Akua closed the fingers of her right hand into a fist, enjoying the sensation of skin on skin. It had been almost overwhelming at first: her time as a shade had blurred the memory of what sensations actually felt like. Returning to the real thing after the pale shadow she’d lived with had needed some adjustment. There was an even greater boon attached, of course. Akua murmured a single word in the mage tongue, opening her hand into a flat palm, and a dot of hellfire bloomed above it.

“More than satisfactory,” she said. “A princely gift, Your Dread Majesty.”

“I reward loyalty, Warlock,” Malicia smiled. “And sometimes even the anticipation of it.”

The Named being spoken aloud earned a small shiver from Akua every time. She was not a claimant for it, not yet, but Creation was recognizing the… possibility. That the potential was there. Neither of them mentioned the spells Malicia’s mages had hidden that would allow the empress to kill her with a word, though they both knew they were somewhere in the flesh. As always, the Dread Empress’ words had two meanings: if loyalty earned reward, then disloyalty earned punishment. The mere anticipation of it would too, as Malicia had subtly warned.

“I’ve no doubt ours will be a close relationship, Your Dread Majesty,” Akua lied.

“Oh, I agree,” Malicia lied back.

The empress deigned to take a sip from her cup, some dark liquor cut with water.

“My decision to place trust in you is why I have decided to assign you to the Black Knight’s command for the coming battle,” Malicia continued. “Your unique insights into the adversary will be of great use, I am sure, but I most look forward to seeing your magic on display once more.”

A transparent enough ploy, but that was on purpose: the empress was asserting control. As the first measure of that control, she wanted Akua to kill enough of the Army of Callow with sorcery that the bridge back to that side would be forever burned. There was not a ruler worth their salt on the continent that did not know Catherine Foundling loved her soldiers just as fiercely as they loved her.

“Of course,” Akua replied, not batting an eye. “In that spirit, I would seek your permission to obtain artefacts from my cousin. The Sahelian arsenal is best put to your service, not left to gather dust.”

“If he is amenable, I don’t see why not,” Malicia smiled.

A lie, Akua decided. The answer had been too smooth, too unthinking. Sargon must have already been given strict instructions about the calibre of what he was allowed to lend her. The empress feared she might be able to slip the leash too early, then. Interesting.

“My thanks,” she said, bowing her head.

“Think nothing of it,” the empress dismissed. “Are you confident, with such aid, of being able to match the Hierophant on the field?”

“It would depend on the amount of magic he first ingests with Devour,” Akua said, feigning reluctance. “I have not seen his upper limit as a thaumatophage. Placing mage circles under my command or moving me to Marshal Nim’s side early so that I might begin preparing rituals would increase my chances.”

She liked Masego. He was a fascinating conversationalist and Akua had something of an inherited fondness for tactless mages. It had been marrying convenience to her own preference to lie about his abilities. With the Tower under the impression that he could simply suck dry entire battalion of mages if they were in sight, he’d be treated as an entity to be avoided instead of a Named that could be fought. And if Malicia’s most sensible answer to this was placing greater power in the hands of another special asset – like an incipient Warlock, just for example – then was it not the best of both worlds? The Dread Empress studied her for a moment, then conceded with the slightest movement of the head.

“I will speak with my Black Knight,” Malicia said, committing to nothing. “Expect to depart soon.”

A moment passed.

“Great gifts bring the expectation of great results, Warlock,” the empress added.

Meaning that should she be granted her request failure to match the Hierophant would have… consequences. Ah, how very old-fashioned of her. Akua found it rather charming.

“That is only natural,” Akua easily replied.

The empress chuckled. It was a languorous sound, and though it had little effect on her Akua could appreciate the artistry as a fellow seductress. Dread Empress Malicia was almost inhumanly beautiful, of course, but in truth that ran rather somewhat contrary to Akua’s tastes. She had spent many years surrounded by the perfect and the splendid, eventually growing tired of the fare. She preferred character nowadays, the interestingly imperfect. The empress was simply too exquisite to qualify. Besides, women were rarely of interest to her. She could count on one hand the number she’d been attracted to. She caught the scent of smoke.

Looking down Akua saw her hand had closed into a fist, smothering the hellflame. She’d not even realized she’d done it. The growing pains of a new body, she told herself.

“I do enjoy conversing with you, Akua,” Malicia lightly said. “They are always interesting, our little talks.”

“I aim to please,” she replied.

The empress smiled and Akua could feel the conversation was now to end. They had reached the end of their business for the day. And it was a whim, to ask, but she did not kill it when it rose. She had wondered from the moment she’d realized that work on the body awaiting her in the depths of the Empyrean Palace would have begun months before she ever set foot in Praes.

“How did you know?” Akua asked.

The Dread Empress of Praes studied her with dark eyes. Not a speck of gold in them. Blood as muddy as the land she’d been born of, running through the veins of the longest-reigning tyrant in the history of Praes.

“That I would turn on them,” she said. “I did not, until the very end. How did you know?”

Dread Empress Malicia’s smile was sad, she thought, and perhaps the sole genuine emotion she had shown this entire conversation.

“You came too late,” the empress said. “Even if some loved you, and I expect they did. You came to them too late, Akua. They were never going to forgive you for what they might have forgiven each other. There was no becoming one of the five.”

Her face went blank, like she was some kind of tipsy debutante. It was still better than the spasm of pain that would have shown on her face otherwise.

“In the end, darling, you were always going to come back,” Malicia gently said. “This is the only home you have.”

Sorcery rippled across the mirror, turning it back to simple polished silver, and Akua was left to wonder whether it had been kindness or an assertion of power to end the spell on that sentence. Perhaps a little of both, she decided. Though the dark-skinned woman knew she could have risen to her feet and distracted herself with movement, with pouring herself a cup of wine from the carafe or biting into a pear – the sheer pleasure of proper taste, after all this time – she did not. Instead she sat there and closed her eyes, thinking while it was all still fresh.

She had just fooled the empress successfully for the first time, after days of being interrogated for every scrap of knowledge on the Army of Callow and the Grand Alliance that she cared to divulge, but it did not feel like much a victory. She would admit it had been enjoyable, sparring with the empress. Sharpening iron with iron, the two of them knowing a single misstep would be enough for the other to pounce. Yet now that it was over, looking at what had been done, it felt… childish. Gaudy. No, neither of those were exactly right. More like she’d been indulging in something particularly-

“Wasteful,” Akua Sahelian murmured.

Scrapping iron for no real purpose save vanity. What had been gained from it all, really? They had circled each other like crocodiles snapping at each other’s tails, a triumph only of showing teeth. If instead they had sat and spoken plainly for even an hour, understood where they differed and where they might concur, would it not have – ah, she thought. And there it was. That old Sahelian greed, whispering again in her ear: she had left the fire for the dark, but she wanted all the pleasures of both. Akua rose to her feet at last, drawing back the chair and gliding past the wine carafe. It was the long window at the back of the room she sought, great panes of glass that could be pushed open to pair a lazy evening breeze with the view. She leaned against the windowsill, enjoying to the touch of the wind on her face, and lost herself looking at the distant silhouettes of Zaman Ango. The ancient maze, the sloping pyramids of mud.

Malicia had been right, she thought. This was home. The warmth of the fire had lulled her into indolence, but she’d snapped out of it at last. She would not forget that moment in the cave, where it had at last sunk in that nothing would make a change. That Akua could turn on her family, on her people, on everything she believed in and had ever loved since she was a child, and still it would not be enough. Because her folly had been the doom of a city, of a hundred thousand souls, and while the Gods knew of forgiveness Catherine Foundling did not. Had that been the revenge, she’d wondered then? Making her… and then ripping away the curtain, leaving her to look a merciless truth in the eye.

Maybe it was. Dartwick had wounded more shallowly when she’d made her rip out the eye instead.

And the worst of it was that, even now, part of her ached to leave. To return. It would not go without comment, her absence, and yet Akua thought she might be able to talk her way out of the worst of it. And she’d still have the evenings spent designing wards with Masego, the drinks and lurid gossip with Indrani. Even those cautious, almost Praesi talks with Adjutant – who wanted to learn all she had to tell of the highborn of the Wasteland while giving back as little as he could for it. And another, of course, the one she’d left behind most of all.

Akua had thought to kill Catherine Foundling, once. To slay her and claim all she had built, perhaps even wearing her face. When she had still been a prisoner of the Mantle of Woe, sent back to the maddening boredom of nothingness in between brief tastes of Creation. Ah, but what interesting tastes they had been. Grandiose plans of war against half the continent, diplomacy with the most powerful people on Calernia. Then even more terrible sights, on the way to Keter. And even as she was dragged from wonder to wonder, there was the once-Squire in the middle of it all. Now a Black Queen, turned into everything Akua had thought she might become.

Fascination had been the doom of many a Sahelian.

“But it doesn’t matter, does it?” Akua said to the wind.

There was no joy to chase at the end of that path. No long-awaited delight, nothing to suffer for. She would not be forgiven, and even a lifetime of saving strangers and helping fools would not see her redeemed in anyone’s eyes. She had been chasing ghosts the entire time. So why stay? Why not come back to the home she had sold for nothing, to the destiny that had been taken from her? Warlock, yes, for that was Malicia’s offer. But why stop there? Sargon wanted her to free him of the soulbox, and so she could use him to free this body from Malicia’s yoke. Beyond the walls of Wolof, Praes was a cauldron about to tip over and in such chaos a clever woman could rise far. If she was to have a foot in the Tower, why not climb all the way to the top?

If none of it mattered, why should Akua Sahelian not get everything she deserved?

A voice she was learning to hate whispered that perhaps she already had. She ignored it. It was the voice of weakness, of the lion gone tame. She could see it in her mind’s eye, the path up the stairs. It began with the Black Knight, Marshal Nim. The key to the Legions, not that Malicia seemed to have grasped that. Her only Black Knight before Nim had the loyalty of the Legions for having reformed them, but the bond ran deeper than that. Black Knights were the champions of the Tower, commander of armies and killers of heroes. There was a Role: Malicia had done more than simply name a new champion when she had recognized the ogre’s claim. Should Marshal Nim prove less than utterly loyal, why, it might just be that the armies of Praes would split between following the old Black Knight and the new.

Did that not simply reek of opportunity? Yes, she decided, it was the beginning of a plan. One that would allow her to sit on the sole throne in all of Praes, before all was said and done.

So why, Akua Sahelian wondered, was she not hearing the song?

—

Amadeus had always enjoyed looking at the Hungering Sands as night fell.

It was a pleasure to the eye, the way the sky turned to vivid purples and yellows with not a cloud in sight. The way the shadows lengthened among the dunes like slithering snakes. Even the coolness was pleasant, when wearing a cloak. That much had been a necessity, given that it was only feasible to meet the woman he’d come to see under some cover of darkness. He’d not seen her in at least fifteen years, by Amadeus’ reckoning, but neither of them would forget the other. Lady Layan Kaishi had once been Commander Layan of the Third Legion, before she came to rule a prosperous little town at the outskirts of the Hungering Sands.

She’d lost an arm at the siege of Laure, and not in a manner where it might be replaced, but the Legions had not abandoned her. When she’d sought a discharge and returned home to settle accounts with her family, ‘volunteer legionaries on leave’ had accompanied her. Lord Kaisha had fallen down some stairs, as had his young wife – Layan’s own age, he’d heard – whose luck in birthing a son possessing the Gift had first seen Layan given the choice of the Legions or the grave. Some of those legionaries had even returned after their terms were over, stayed on as household guards, and though the holdings of Lady Layan were not large or rich they were known to be orderly. It’d drawn people to her town, as safety always did in troubled times.

Layan had not forgotten whose help it was that’d seen her made a lady: when Amadeus had contacted her, she’d agreed to lend a hand without hesitation. It had not been an onerous favour he asked for, anyway, simply the use of one of her family mages for a scrying ritual. Sometimes the dark-haired man wondered if anyone aside from Eudokia really grasped the sheer number of veterans he’d settled across the breadth of Praes. Most of them were not lords or ladies, of course – a campaign to stack the nobility with his veterans would have caused rebellion – but he’d seen to their livelihoods. Appointments in the local bureaucracies, free land leases in the Green Stretch, cushy posts in city guards or advantageous trade permits.

The Legions of Terror had bled for him across a dozen fields. Amadeus would not let their legionaries tumble into destitution after they left the ranks. And now, in his own time on need, he had found many doors still open to him. It was not the same as when he had been able to call on the Eyes, when Eudokia and Ime had left no stone unturned and council unheard, but he’d learned he still had friends in many places. Not a net of them, but it was better that way. Ime would have been able to infiltrate an organized apparatus, but she could not track entire decades of friendships and loyalties forged through two wars. So long as Amadeus remained quick and careful, so long as he kept moving, the Eyes would stay one step behind. It’d be enough.

In most fights, one step’s worth of distance was all that he needed.

Layan had aged gracefully, hair threaded with silver and skin wrinkled but staying fit in form. She’d come to him out in the sands with her mage, as the odds were good that there was at least one traitor in her keep, but when they met she had hesitated before clasping the arm he offered. Amadeus’s lips quirked in amusement. She had not been the first of his veterans to react this way.

“The beard?” he teased.

“And the grey,” Layan admitted. “Never thought I’d see you with either, sir. No offence.”

“None taken,” he said. “You’d be surprised how many reacted the same.”

She snorted.

“With all due respect, sir, no I wouldn’t,” Layan said.

For all the levity, her eyes had sharpened when he’d mentioned others. She hesitated, then spoke again.

“Is it true?” Layan asked. “That out west you made a claim on the Tower?”

“Rumours fly far and swift, I see,” Amadeus noted.

“Rashan up north was a captain in the Fifth,” Lady Layan said. “His kid and one of mine are married. Lady Salah’s husband, out in Jubar, he’s the brother of the Second’s last quartermaster. We talk, sir. And not just us. There’s a lot who came home after the wars who’re still around. And a lot of us who have kin in the Legions and the Army.”

It still filled Amadeus with a rueful sort of pride, every time he heard the army raised by Istrid’s daughter and his own spoken of as a peer to the Legions he’d given so many years of his life to.

“I spoke words at the Peace of Salia,” Amadeus said. “I stand by them still.”

Layan Kaishi nodded, eyes hooded in the unfolding dark of the evening.

“There’s a lot of us who’ll come, if you call,” she quietly said. “More than you know. Not just veterans and our families.”

She hesitated.

“It can’t go on like this, sir,” Layan said. “This chaos. Ashur burns our coasts and now we play parlour games pretending they’re allies?”

She spat to the side, into the sand.

“Fuck that,” Layan cursed. “And whatever the Hells is happening with Sepulchral up north should have been stamped out years ago, not left to burn for whatever scheme this is. The empress is getting lost in her plots, sir. Doesn’t matter she keeps winning, we’re just tired of the games.”

And in a way, Amadeus thought, those few sentences he’d just heard were the most damning a verdict passed on Alaya’s reign he’d yet to hear. Because when the Tower was losing people like Layan, who was neither rebellious nor ambitious by nature, who most wanted out of a ruler competence and order, something had gone wrong. Were you always like this, Alaya, and I simply never wanted to see it? No, he did not believe that. They had lost perspective, over the years. He as much as she. They’d spent too long sitting on high seats, forgot what the view from the mud was like. Like all empires, like all rulers, they had reached their zenith and begun to decay. Old mistakes were yet in need of mending, and Amadeus of the Green Stretch would not relent until he had laid them all to rest.

That much he owed, to all and to himself.

“I am already a rebel, Layan,” he faintly smiled.

“We can be too, if you want,” his veteran boldly offered. “And there’s enough of us we can get High Lady Takisha behind you if you toss her a few bones. It’s not just us old hands who want an end to the messes. We’ve got support.”

The High Lady of Kahtan would turn on him the very moment she felt she was in a position to claim the Tower for herself, of course. They both knew that without Layan needing to speak the words.

“Another banner raised won’t end this,” Amadeus gently declined. “But beyond your help tonight, there is something that can be done.”

Layan Kaisha was almost seventy. She’d not been in the Legions of Terror for over twenty years. And still, the moment he finished that sentence, she snapped at attention like a cadet fresh off the College rolls. Some things just stay with us, don’t they? he fondly thought. Amadeus understood. He, too, had never quite shaken the stray dog out of his bones. He still found it easier to bite than kneel.

“High Lady Takisha has gathered the nobles of the south to her court,” he said. “Do not let them disperse. Take them north: Ater is where this all comes to a close.”

Layan slowly nodded.

“So long as the Grey Eyries are rebelling and Old Wither’s holed up in Foramen, many will balk at leaving the Sands,” she said.

“The Tribes won’t move,” Amadeus said.

It was not a prediction or a promise. It was a statement of fact. Her eyes widened in surprise.

“Are they- no, best you don’t answer that,” she decided. “They can’t get out of me what I don’t know.”

It was rather heartwarming to see that the safety protocols Ranker had designed were still being kept to. Her contributions to the Reforms had been more discreet than his or Grem’s, but no less crucial for it.

“I’ll spread the word, sir,” Layan said. “We should have enough pull for it.”

And Alaya would want the nobles close, even if she lost the battle taking shape in the depths of the Wasteland. The starker her disarray, the closer she would want them to the Tower: troublesome as they would be in its shadow, it was nothing to the trouble they would make out of her reach. So even if the Eyes learned he had a hand in this, and they would, Alaya would allow it. She would trust in her mastery of the Court to triumph against whatever scheme he might have arranged.

“There’ll be a battle, before it ends,” Amadeus said, offering his arm to clasp.

“Then we’ll meet again, sir,” Layan smiled, taking it. “I still fit in my armour.”

She cast a look around, glossing over the young mage she’d brought as he requested – he had long prepared the ritual, needing only a word to begin – and casting about for another shadow in the gloom.

“I’d heard the Lady was with you,” she said, a question in her tone.

“Ranger’s out and about,” he smiled. “Checking to see if there are any rats.”

“I pity them if there are,” Layan muttered.

With one last glance they parted ways, Amadeus sliding down the side of the hill to speak to the mageling in neat robes awaiting by a simple scrying bowl laid atop a rock.

“I can begin at your pleasure, my lord,” the young man said. “Though the key you gave me is utter nonsense, so it ought to do nothing at all.”

“Then it will do nothing,” Amadeus serenely replied. “The spell, now.”

Though somewhat put out, the young sorcerer duly spoke the incantation and the spell shivered across the air. When the water’s surface rippled the mageling gaped in surprise. Amadeus’ cool stare shook him out of it, making the dismissal clear. He bowed, then ran off after his aunt into the sands. The green-eyed man passed a hand through his hair, which he decided was getting a little too long, and waited for the ripples to cease. It took nearly a quarter hour for it to happen, and only then did a face appear in the water. Deep-set yellow eyes and wrinkled skin that looked like brown-green leather swam into focus.

High Lady Wither of Foramen, formerly Matron of the High Ridge Tribe, looked highly irritated until she realized who it was she was looking at. Then her face went blank, mouth closing shut with a snap.

“Good evening, Wither,” Amadeus smiled, showing only the faintest slice of teeth. “It’s been some time, hasn’t it?”

The old goblin hissed in displeasure through her teeth, almost like a whistle. Obtaining the key to her private scrying bowl had not endeared him to her, evidently.

“Never long enough, Carrion Lord,” she said. “Come to threaten me into changing sides?”

“I usually threaten only people I intend to later kill regardless,” Amadeus noted. “Fear is a poor incentive for alliance. I suppose I could bluster a bit, if it will make you feel better about what is to follow.”

“And what’s that?” Wither mocked, flashing her teeth mockingly.

“I am going to tell you a story,” Amadeus amiably said, “and you will then give me what I politely ask for.”

“You’re getting thick in your old age, Carrion Lord,” Wither said. “My defences are fine enough Ranger didn’t even try for my life when you two passed through Foramen. You have nothing to threaten me with, and any offer you make the Tower will double without batting an eye.”

Ah, Wither. For all that she was the first Matron to truly enter the highest reach of Praesi politics, she’d yet to learn to think beyond the goblin conception of conflict. Amadeus had never attempted to lay a hand on the High Lady of Foramen because what he’d come for had been of much greater value than anything an assassination might bring about. The green-eyed man had promised his old acquaintance a story, however, and so he would tell it.

“After the fall of Summerholm, during the Conquest,” Amadeus said, “it took less than six hours for the first rebel group to form.”

Garrison soldiers and a hedge wizard that’d escaped the Fields of Streges, planning to go to ground until most of the Legions left the city and then strike out at the invasion’s supply lines while the siege of Laure began. It had been a reasoned and practical plan, in Amadeus’ opinion. He’d appreciated the professionalism of it. Unfortunately Wekesa had spared the mage on purpose at the Fields, marking him with a discreet tracking spell, so they’d all been executed after interrogation.

“Three more emerged the following day,” he continued. “Even with Scribe personally overseeing the Eyes in the city, it quickly became clear that the situation was not tenable. Sooner or later we’d miss the cabals and the push against Laure would be endangered. Something needed to be done.”

Some had suggested mass executions of former soldiers, but Amadeus had found that ill-advised. It would simply replace known possible insurgents with military training for thrice their number in grieving relatives inclined to methods of insurgency that were harder to put down. If not worse. Callowans had long proven that they were perfectly willing to torch their own towns and cities while invaders were in them, should they be pushed far enough.

“The grey’s brought rambling with it,” Wither snorted. “You’re turning into a joke, Amadeus.”

The dark-haired man’s friendly smile did not waver.

“It occurred to me, then, that fighting the inevitable was pointless,” he said. “There would be rebel cabals. This was not an issue, however, so long as they were manageable rebel cabals.”

“So you started making your own rebel groups,” Wither dismissed. “Where spies were in the ranks from the start. I know the tale, Carrion Lord. It’s an old one – have you run out of cleverness, to be boasting of tricks decades old?”

“Ah,” the Carrion Lord said. “So you do remember.”

He cocked his head to the side.

“Why, then, did you old witches believe I wouldn’t catch you out using the same trick?”

Wither’s face went blank.

“Come now,” Amadeus murmured. “Alaya never bothered to understand your people beyond the levers that could be used to move them, Wither, but I made a study of you. Did you really think I wouldn’t figure out the Tribes have been making their own traitors for centuries?”

On the surface, the goblin custom of constant backstabbing and treachery was remarkably similar to broader Praesi philosophies: iron sharpening iron, echoes of jino-waza. But that was a surface resemblance only. Goblins always preferred taking from outsiders than each other. Competition was brutal within units – within a family, a tribe, within the Tribes – but unlike the governing philosophies of Praes the Tribes did have a concept of the ‘common good’ of their kind. They could and did sacrifice, if not for each other, then for the sake of their race. When the Goblin Rebellions became losing proposition, the Matrons always made the same decision: one or more turned traitor, the rest were butchered to appease the Tower.

There must always be someone in the Grey Eyries that Ater could deal with, else the talk might turn to annihilation instead of vassalage.

“You are grasping at straws,” Wither dismissed, “your position has become des-”

“It was cleverly done,” Amadeus honestly praised. “Whoever wins the war, wherever the balance of power lies, the Tribes will gain. Either Alaya keeps the Tower and you are confirmed the first High Lady of your kind, or the Grand Alliance prevails and the Confederation of the Grey Eyries is recognized as a sovereign nation by more than half the continent.”

It had been, in that classically goblin way, a viciously executed gambit. Because whether it was Wither that was the face of goblinkind going forward or the Confederation, the ‘loser’ would have to be drowned in blood. The deception risked being found out otherwise, the truth that the Matrons had planned this entire civil war of theirs from the start and that Wither was still very much one of them.

“You have nothing,” Wither said. “Not a thimble of proof to back this, because it is complete lunacy.”

“You played it too straight, Wither,” Amadeus told her, not unkindly. “That is what gave you away. We came to Foramen and there was not a single secret line of communication between you and the Matrons.”

He saw the realization sink into her, the way her large eyes narrowed in dismay. They had overcorrected in cutting off ties entirely. The Matrons should have been secretly negotiating with Wither if this was a genuine civil war. They’d wholly cut ties because they did not want the Eyes to catch them talking and figure out the entire affair was a ploy, which had been the very detail to confirm for Amadeus that it was all a ploy. Alaya would understand it too, if it was brought to her. Wither knew that.

And so she knew that Amadeus now had his fingers around a throat: hers and all the Tribes’.

“You sat on that for more than a year,” Wither finally said. “You’ve not simply been wandering around drinking and fucking the Lady of the Lake.”

Well, he’d not done just that.

“In the spirit of our understanding,” Amadeus amiably said, “I would like to make polite requests of you.”

“What is it you want, Carrion Lord?” Wither hissed. “You’ve turned the knife enough for a night.”

“I would like you to refrain from sallies outside your territory.”

“Fine,” Wither said, with ill grace.

“I would like use of your smuggling routes into Ater.”

She began to speak, but Amadeus raised a hand to interrupt her.

“I know the Matrons’ own were closed, but also Alaya left you your own as a reward,” he said. “Don’t bother.”

Wither grunted.

“Anything else?” she mocked.

“Oh, just one last thing,” Amadeus nonchalantly said.

The friendly smile turned thin and blade-like.

“I would like every last drop of goblinfire in possession of the Tribes.”

Chapter 12: String

“There are three decisions that can only be mistakes: trusting a peace in the Free Cities, intervening in an Alamans succession and campaigning in the Wasteland.”

– Queen Matilda the Elder of Callow

It was General Sacker I’d wanted to talk to, as her informal patroness, but instead I found all three of the leaders of the Rebel Legions sitting on the other side of the scrying bowl.

That made an amusingly odd trio to look at, I must admit. Sacker was still the same old sack of wrinkles that looked deceptively half asleep, but General Mok was even larger than Hune had been on top of having half his face severely burned with spellfire. The difference in size between them somehow made the last of three stand out even more: General Jaiyana Seket of the Second Legion, a dark-haired and grey-eyed Taghreb in her late fifties. She’d been the only general already in the Wasteland to desert Malicia after the empress pulled her mind control trick a few years back. Only a little over half her legion had followed her, though, the rest sticking with the Tower.

That made the junior of the three generals in their informal hierarchy, considering that Sacker had filled her legion’s depleted ranks from deserters and the Jacks had reported that Mok’s own Third Legion now fielded six thousand soldiers instead of the standard four. Being the one with the relationship with Callow – and therefore its forges and foodstuffs – had put Sacker more or less on equal footing with Mok, however, so it wasn’t quite as straightforward a balance of power as one might think. General Seket tended to be the kingmaker in contested decisions, after all, which was a form of influence as well. It’d all worked out as being surprisingly communal for a military hierarchy, no one making a push for primacy.

Which unfortunately meant that I wasn’t negotiating with one person but three.

“I understand that the Grand Alliance has interests in Praes,” General Mok said, voice rumbling, “but it doesn’t get to impose terms here. Who rules in Ater is not to be determined in Salia or Laure.”

I wasn’t sure whether not mentioning Levante – the Dominion’s capital – reflected good intel about the fate of the Pilgrim’s Blood or simple dismissal of Levant, but either way he wasn’t wrong. These days the Blood wasn’t agreeing on much of anything, except fighting the war to the end.

“That ship sailed the moment Malicia began actively warring on us through proxies and attacking our diplomatic efforts,” I curtly replied. “She is, even now, the ally of the Dead King. Sovereignty’s all well and good, but it doesn’t buy you the rest of the world pretending nothing’s happened when you piss on the common table.”

General Seket looked amused at the turn of phrase – not a noble flower, this one, but a former bandit who’d chosen the Legions over the noose – and Sacker continued looking at me through those half-lidded eyes. Mok was getting angrier, though. I got the impression that out of them he most believed in the Dread Empire that’d been sold to the Legions after the Reforms: a place of order and rough fairness, where peoples that’d once been left out in the cold were slowly brought into the fold instead. It’d been the mind control he objected to on a fundamental level, not necessarily Malicia calling the Rebel Legions to heel. Sacker stepped in before Mok could speak again, perhaps sensing my irritation with the ogre was rising. I had little patience for people who let their ideals get in the way of looking at what was actually happening around them.

“No one is denying that you have a right to retaliate for attacks on the Grand Alliance,” Sacker said. “Our concern is that it seems few of the decisions relating to the empire’s future will be made by Praesi.”

“That Malicia has to go isn’t even something even worth arguing about,” I bluntly replied. “I will cheerfully massacre anything and anyone who gets in the way of that. If your issues are with the details of Malicia’s succession, however, then we have a lot more room for compromise.”

“We did not leave the empress’ service to now defend her,” General Seket said. “The matter my colleagues are tiptoeing around is different: to be frank, none of us want to raise a sword to win Dread Empress Foundling the Tower.”

I almost laughed in their faces, fighting that down to a snort with great effort.

“If that’s you worry, then we have no issue,” I said. “I have no interest whatsoever in climbing the Tower.”

“Akua Sahelian would not be a more acceptable candidate,” General Mok plainly said.

Huh. First Sargon had guessed that, now the Rebel Legions. The High Lord of Wolof I could forgive, but some of these people had served in Callow over the years. Did none of them realize that if I were known to have backed the Doom of Liesse for rule over the Wasteland I’d get strung up in the streets by my own people? It wasn’t like the Folly was some old wound barely remembered. Almost everyone in Callow had lost at least a distant relative when a city the size of Liesse got murdered.

“I’ve no interest in backing her claim either, assuming she makes one,” I replied just as plainly. “If I am to support anyone’s claim, it will be that of Amadeus of the Green Stretch.”

“You have been talking with Sepulchral for years,” Sacker pointed out.

“And we already discussed all this years ago,” I waspishly replied. “Why are we revisiting these grounds now?”

“Years ago you were not leading an army invading Praes,” General Mok replied. “We require different assurances now that battle is on the horizon.”

A little rich to say that, considering that they were at least three weeks behind Sepulchral’s army on the march and she was herself at least a week behind Marshal Nim. Maybe closer to two.

“I’m not interested in putting Abreha Mirembe on the throne,” I explicitly spelled out. “I see no need to make war on her, however, and she was a convenient ally against Malicia. Should she surrender to whoever claims the Tower peacefully I’ll even argue for leniency on her behalf.”

I actually believe she might take that deal, and so did Scribe. Sepulchral had rebelled because Malicia had cornered her, not because she’d intended to make a play for the Tower. That attack from Malicia had come because High Lady Abreha had been muscling in on the empress in the first place, of course, but that was Praesi politics for you. It was Malicia that Sepulchral couldn’t afford to surrender to, she wouldn’t be so constrained if someone else held the Tower. And someone who hadn’t been rebelled against could afford to offer her amnesty without taking a major hit to their reputation with the nobility. Looking closely at the three, I could see that General Seket was leaning the way of taking the bargain I’d offered: joining our armies to defeat the Loyalist Legions together, guaranteeing them a seat at the table in the aftermath. Mok was still very much against, and Sacker hard to read as she’d ever been.

“I cannot agree to putting imperial forces under the authority of a foreign nation,” General Mok finally said. “Not even in this manner.”

Sacker did not contradict him, a silence that rang loudly. I eyed the three of them coolly.

“Then it’s my turn to ask questions,” I said. “If not to reinforce my expedition, why is your army marching north?”

“You are not owed an answer,” the ogre general flatly replied.

“You weren’t owed food and steel,” I sharply said. “You still got it. Careful about what bridges you burn, Mok. There are no second chances at this game.”

“No offence was meant, I’m sure,” General Seket intervened. “We set out to march, Queen Catherine, because if we do not the civil war will end without our having ever raised a sword.”

I eyed her, distinctly unimpressed.

“So you’re either foolish enough to march an army without a campaign plan or baldly opportunistic enough to want to sit out the fight and leverage your numbers for concessions afterwards,” I said. “Which is it?”

“You put a hard slant on trying to avoid fratricide, Black Queen,” Sacker curtly replied. “You blame us for not being eager to fight legions still filled with friends and kin, comrades we have fought with for decades. With the situation on the knife’s edge, we will first attempt diplomacy.”

My fingers clenched, then unclenched. I did not like the sound of that.

“Elaborate,” I said.

“We will speak directly with the Black Knight,” General Mok said. “And offer simple terms: should Dread Empress Malicia abdicate, we will return to the fold and crush Sepulchral together.”

“Malicia will never take that deal,” I replied without batting an eye. “Or if she does, it’ll be as a trick to get you to dispose of her enemy before getting around to you.”

“It’s not her we’re offering the deal to,” General Seket said. “Nim is as good as her word. If the last legions turn on the Tower, Malicia will have to abdicate. All she has left in Ater are the First and the Fourth, which went skeletal from desertions.”

“And should the Black Knight refuse you?” I asked.

“She won’t,” Mok confidently said.

Ah, so that was it. Sacker genuinely had been on the fence, I just hadn’t offered enough to convince her. Mok had been against our armies joining from the start, though, because he’d already had a plan that was more palatable to him: cutting a deal with Marshal Nim.

“But if she does?” I pressed.

“Then you get your way, Black Queen,” General Sacker said, showing pale needle-like teeth. “Long live Dread Emperor Amadeus. In the defence of his cause, we will seek friendship with the same Grand Alliance that recognized him in Salia.”

I drummed my fingers on the table. The tremor had the water rippling, their faces rippling with it. And with that easy questions settled there was only one left to ask.

“And if the Black Knight does takes your deal,” I asked, “where would that leave us?”

“The Legions of Terror are the sword and shield of Praes,” General Seket said, tone conciliating, “but it doesn’t need to come to blows between us.”

“What it means is that there’ll be no more talk of you dictating anything, Queen of Callow,” General Mok rumbled.

Huh, I thought. This might just be the first time I’d been the hand that fed instead of the biter.

I wasn’t enjoying the change of pace.

—

There was need of a fresh war council after that. Yet I found that, in practice, learning that there was a chance the Rebel Legions might turn on us did not affect our plans much.

“Being generous,” Juniper said, “the rebels are a month behind the battle unless either we or Marshal Nim start wasting time. It’ll be settled by the time they get there.”

“If they can take the Twilight Ways they could cut ahead of Sepulchral, at least,” I pointed out.

Dread Empress Sepulchral’s army could not practically use the Ways, according to our spies. Some of its mages could access them, but they couldn’t yet make stable portals. The Rebel Legions were another story. I glanced at Vivienne questioningly, getting an uncertain palm wiggle.

“The Jacks aren’t sure either way,” she said. “They have enough mages in the ranks for it to be possible, but it’s not knowledge that grows on trees. I’d tend to err on the side of caution and assume they have some capacity with the Ways but not enough for their entire army.”

“That could still be trouble,” Grandmaster Talbot said. “Should we defeat the Black Knight in battle only for her to retreat in good order, a sudden swell of reinforcements could tip the balance against us. How large are their numbers, now that they’re finally marching?”

“Thirteen thousand legionaries,” I said. “They should have little to no goblin munitions, at least, unlike the Loyalist Legions.”

For the same reason the Army of Callow had finally filled its own stocks: I’d bought theirs.

“I do not understand this hesitation on your parts,” Lady Aquiline admitted. “We are yet sixteen thousand, or close, and the Black Knight commands only twenty-three thousand soldiers. I have seen the Army of Callow triumph against steeper odds than this.”

“You haven’t,” Juniper bluntly informed her. “You’ve seen us beat inferior or borderline peer armies, Lady Aquiline. You have never seen us fight a force that is at least our equal and possibly our superior.”

She wasn’t wrong, even if she was being pessimistic. We did have some advantages going for us. There were five legions marching with the Black Knight – the Eight, the Eleventh, the Thirteen, the Fourteenth and Nim’s own Seventh – but the Legions of Terror didn’t typically field cavalry. The Thirteenth did, having been raised from Callowan bandits and rebels, but only six hundred horsemen or so. The vast majority of Nim’s three thousand and change cavalry was auxiliaries. Taghreb and Soninke light horse sent by nobles, which my Order of the Broken Bells could shred if they engaged in melee. My entire army was made up of veterans, while the Legions would have fresher recruits, and we also had a decisive Named advantage.

On the other hand, the officer corps of the Legions would be flatly better than ours and we’d be down on mage firepower as well as general numbers. It was still very much a winnable battle, in my opinion, but there would be no repeat of the Third at Sarcella or the ridiculous odds against undead my soldiers had frequently taken on. We were facing the same army that’d held the Vales against the greater strength of Procer, and I had no reason to believe it’d lost a step since then. Throwing another thirteen thousand veteran infantry down on the Black Knight’s side of the scale would make for… hard odds, to say the least. At a minimum, it’d take field battles off the table.

To minimize the risks, we had to finish it before the Rebel Legions got there.

“Perhaps we should seek allies,” Lord Razin suggested. “Would Dread Empress Sepulchral not be amenable to helping us against her rival?”

“It was my instinct as well,” I told him, “but she’s broken off talks with us. At our best guess, she’s hoping we’ll clash with the Black Knight before she gets there and she can pick off the weakened Loyalist Legions.”

It would have been damned useful to string Abreha Mirembe along, but the trouble when dealing with people who’d survived at the top of the Wasteland for decades was that they tended to be rather hard to fool. Sepulchral had correctly assessed I wasn’t going to help put her on the throne, so she’d decided to use me to weaken her enemy and finish climbing the Tower on her own. Odds were she figured I wouldn’t actually fight a war to keep her off the throne, especially if I’d first taken losses casting Malicia down from it. To my distaste, she was fairly accurate in that judgement. I didn’t want to march west again until my father held the Tower, but if Sepulchral dug in and offered good terms I might not have a choice.

How large a portion of Procer was I willing to sacrifice to get my chosen candidate on the throne? Abreha wasn’t just a cutthroat snake: she was an old cutthroat snake. In Praes those were rare for a reason. She knew how to survive when the storms came calling.

“That’s another twenty thousand we have no certainties about,” Aisha noted. “We need to have a good grasp on the pace those force march at at before engaging, else we will be taking risks.”

“Half of Sepulchral’s army is levies that’ll break under steady munitions fire,” Juniper grunted. “But the other half is dangerous enough, I’ll grant.”

Like my Marshal of Callow, I could admit that I wasn’t worried about fighting Sepulchral’s army on the field. She had a little over six thousand household troops, which would be tough customers as that breed always was, but we had twice her horse in better quality. The thousand wavemen her allies in Nok had sent might be some trouble, true. They were supposed to be the finest archers in Praes, using great horn bows and honing their trade defending the ships of the House of Sahel. We were fighting the former High Lady of Aksum so naturally there’d be monsters too. It was what the city was famous for. But after having faced the Hidden Horror’s own menagerie of nightmares, I did not expect Aksum’s to impress me much.

“Unless the enemy tempo changes, it looks like our best shot at solving this cleanly remains a decisive victory against Marshal Nim,” I finally said.

If we forced the Black Knight’s army to surrender, the Rebel Legions would sink back into irrelevance. And Sepulchral couldn’t take a swing at us lightly: it’d put her at war against the Grand Alliance. Much more likely she’d march straight on Ater instead, and I had no real issue with that. I was skeptical she’d be able to take the City of Gates, but more than willing for her to soften up the capital some before the Army of Callow took a crack at it.

“Agreed,” the Hellhound replied. “I’ll want reports from the Jacks about the pace of every army to ensure we give battle with the best margin possible, but in around three weeks seems to be that window of opportunity.”

I nodded in agreement.

“Well,” I said, “council’s done, it seems. Get your affairs in order, ladies and gentlemen, because come dawn we begin our march south.”

—

Even in Hakram’s absence his phalanges were functioning like a well-oiled machine.

That left me in the odd position of, well, not actually having anything to do. It would be a week at least before I next spoke to Cordelia Hasenbach, Indrani was spending the evening with Masego and Vivienne was busy twisting arms are making promises through the Observatory to secure names for a plan she’d come up with that might kneecap the Black Knight in the field. Feeling restless, I took to the night and the dirt streets of our camp. Whenever I stopped moving it felt like I was losing ground: even when I stayed still, the world kept moving around me. The first act of my Praesi campaign had been an unequivocal victory, for all that Malicia and her Black Knight had scored blood of their own, but from now on things would get… complicated.

The number of moving pieces had increased and this wouldn’t be the Graveyard all over again. I wouldn’t be able to predict the whole array of leadership I was fighting the way I’d been able to read the Tyrant, Pilgrim and First Prince. Too many people, not enough of them Named. Legions rebel and loyalist, Sepulchral’s would-be army of conquest and hidden behind them all whatever my father’s scheme for this fight would be. I knew better than to believe he wouldn’t be putting a finger on the scale of the battle that would determine the fate of Praes for the coming decades. That he had yet to truly come out of the woodworks worried me more than I cared to admit. He wasn’t proud, as a man, at least not in ways that got in the way of him achieving his goals.

So if he’d not reached out to me, made common cause, it was because some of our objectives were at odds. I was not so arrogant as to pretend that the prospect of the fighting the man who’d taught me did not inspire in me a… healthy amount of caution.

The sound of steel on steel drew my attention as I drifted close to drilling grounds. There shouldn’t be any legionaries out at this hour, and a few steps confirmed there weren’t. The two people moving swiftly back and forth across the dusty ground weren’t my soldiers. The Silver Huntress deftly flicked her spear, barbed tip tickling at the Squire’s shield, and as Arthur Foundling took a cautious step back she circled around him to probe his flank. I approached quietly, laying my staff against the side of the fence before resting my elbows atop it. The Squire was being careful, keeping his shield up and only venturing out of his shell to try to rush her and leverage his advantage close up, but on open grounds like this the tactic was a mistake.

I winced as I saw him try a charge, banking on the Huntress being slow to retreat her spear after a feint, only to find out that Alexis was quite light-footed of maintaining their distance. She feinted his leg, then darted back up to slap the side of his helm hard when he lowered his shield to cover himself. The boy winced at the pain but did not complain. As well he shouldn’t: if that blow had come from someone out to kill him, it would have gone right through his throat instead. If Arthur was to ever to score a blow, I thought, he needed to pressure her from the start. Push forward steadily, learn to tell apart the feints from the real attacks and close the distance while she was committed to striking him.

I watched in silence as the two continued to move across the dust, the Mantle of Woe’s hood warm over my head, and to my pleased surprise I saw that the Squire was learning. No more bull rushing out of him, though he wasted a lot of time trying to figure out how to parry a spear with a sword. You couldn’t, really, not reliably. From Named to not, sure, but not between peer opponents. The Huntress worked him through a pretty straightforward sequence – shield edges the spear to the side, sword lunge for the throat as you dart forward – and he began trying it out. He took to it quickly. Unnaturally quickly, really, I decided as my brow rose.

His reflexes weren’t getting sharper or his footing more flexible, but with every try he moved a little faster through the sequence. A little smoother. By the eighth attempt his execution was impressive enough I would have thought he’d spent months drilling it. Name, I thought. Has to be. The spar ended after Arthur finally scored a blow on the Silver Huntress’ breastplate, though I suspected she’d actually allow him to land it. He was a quick lad, but Alexis the Argent wasIndrani’s superior in close combat. The two of them seemed surprised when they noticed I was there. Night was a friend to me in all sorts of ways. I clapped politely, to the older heroine’s amusement, but Arthur looked embarrassed.

They had water and cloths on a stone near the fence, so when they came to quench their thirst and get ride of the worst of the sweat it was only natural that we chat a bit.

“I’m rather ashamed you saw that, Your Majesty,” Arthur said. “I have been meaning to expand my experience fighting Named, but it is slow going.”

“In terms of pure swordsmanship you’re actually better than I was at your age,” I noted. “Not as good as the Lone Swordsman was, maybe, but there’s a reason I relied on tricks to kill the man.”

“It’s empty whining on his part,” the Huntress scoffed. “He improves daily. The Lady’s the only person I’ve ever seen pick up drills that fast.”

“The Ranger?” Arthur breathed out. “That’s… I’ve always admired what I heard of her in stories, truth be told.”

Oh dear. I shared a look with Alexis, the two of us silently agreeing it would be for the best if he never met the woman in question. The Silver Huntress had a much harsher opinion of the Lady of the Lake than Archer. I’d learned as much because she was not shy in expressing it even to strangers. It’d made for pleasant common ground over the months of campaigning. Still, I couldn’t let myself get distracted by this little detour. I’d had a nugget of information I wanted to dig for.

“Were you always this quick to catch on?” I casually asked. “It seems like the sort of thing the Order would have reported on.”

He ruefully smiled.

“No,” Arthur admitted. “It was after the fight with the puppet of the Black Knight, Your Majesty. The way it handled Sapan and I, then the way you stepped in and took care of it…”

His gauntlets clenched tight around his sword.

“I had believed myself a fine blade, but after that I couldn’t deny I stillhave so much to Learn,” the Squire said.

Ah, an old friend had returned. Was he leaning on that to improve his fighting? I’d not been able to do the same, back when I had the same aspect. Fighting had been the one thing it didn’t help me with.

“Aspect,” I noted, seeing no point in further subtlety. “Have you seen the same kind of leap forward in your studies?”

He looked baffled.

“No,” he said. “Should I have?”

I hummed, shaking my head.

“It’s somewhat reassuring that you did not,” I said. “There’s a balance to these things, Squire.”

The Silver Huntress grunted in agreement.

“No power comes without a hook,” Alexis the Argent said. “Beware of anything that pretends otherwise.”

Still, the Gods Above liked their nasty surprises, didn’t they? The Squire had gotten a flavour of the aspect attuned to martial pursuits after a defeat against the Black Knight, while being guaranteed weeks if not months of a relatively safe environment filled with veteran Named to train with. By the time Nim encountered the boy again for the continuation of their pattern, he was going to be a regular fucking monster. In an abstract sense my sympathies lay with Marshal Nim, because this all felt very much like the Heavens hooking an Evil fish and reeling her in, but in a practical sense our little Squire had my backing to the hilt. I’d put Indrani on training him too, maybe see if the Barrow Sword was amenable to pitching in.

“I know to be wary of shortcuts,” Arthur promised, then sent me an almost shy look. “Perhaps we may spar one day, Your Majesty? Many consider you among the finest swords in Callow.”

“My tricks are best kept up my sleeve,” I drily said. “We’ll see about getting you a few sessions with Archer, though. She tends to be my better close up.”

The boy did not quite manage to hide his disappointment but I quashed the pang I felt at the sight. I already walked the line perhaps a little too finely when it came to teaching Arthur Foundling. An occasional distant instructor tossing a few lessons his way shouldn’t be too prone to ending up story fodder, I figured, but considering he had a draw with the Black Knight coming up the last thing I wanted was stepping into a formal teacher’s role. That was a good way to stumble into buying his draw with my death. The Squire retired after chatting a little longer, but to my surprise the Silver Huntress did not. Had I offended her by mentioning Indrani training someone she was already training?

No, I decided, looking at her tense face. That wasn’t the tension of someone keeping a lid on their anger but the gritted teeth of someone forcing themselves to venture into uncomfortable grounds.

“I want to talk,” Alexis the Argent said, then bit her cheek. “Please.”

My hand found the staff of dead yew never too far from my hand, closing around the rough wood. I’d gotten used to the contrast between the Huntress’ startlingly girlish high-pitched voice and her rough appearance – broken nose and plain face, the messy bun of red hair and calloused hands – but I’d noticed she tended to speak slowly and curtly to take the edge off it. No doubt she’d been mercilessly mocked for the contrast as a child: it was the kind of thing even my fellow orphanage girls would have narrowed in on, much less children as skilled at cruelty as the Refuge kids had been. This time, though, the curtness was not an affection on her part. She was fighting the words as they came out.

I couldn’t think of many things I had a hand in that’d get this much emotion out of her.

“I’m listening,” I said.

Her lips pressed tight, like she was trying to clench them.

“The Lady’s in Praes,” she said. “With the Carrion Lord. Your spies said so.”

I nodded.

“You think we’re going to fight her?” the Huntress asked.

“I’d prefer not to,” I admitted. “But I don’t think she’s going to give us a choice.”

At some point, my father and I would clash. His continued silence spoke to that. And when that moment came, I did not believe it would be armies that marched. It would be a war of knives, not battalions, and the Ranger was the finest knife at his disposal. On my end of things, it was not a coincidence that all the surviving children of Refuge were with my host. I had planned for this eventuality in my own way.

“She won’t,” Alexis roughly said. “That’s not how she…”

She hesitated, stumbling over words before abandoning the sentence entirely.

“I hate her,” the Silver Huntress candidly admitted. “I honestly do. But I won’t lie. She didn’t think she was being cruel when she worked us. She thought she was toughening us up for the real world, so we could live like she does.”

“But you don’t buy that,” I murmured.

“We came out of Refuge fine killers, Black Queen,” Alexis said. “For that I’m thankful. But she was also trying to make us all into these… she has this idea, this ideal, of ‘full’ persons that need no one else. That bind with others only because they want to, not because they ever need to.”

She spat to the side.

“And that fucked us,” the Huntress bluntly said. “Cocky still hasn’t told a living soul her name. John got himself killed because he thought he thought he needed to prove he was our equal. Lysander once spent most a year learning how to make shoes, when we were kids, because he thought just buying them would mean he was weak.”

I watched her silently, waiting for the last two names. Named. The last of the band of five that had never formed.

“I fight when I shouldn’t,” Alexis the Argent reluctantly admitted. “Because it feels like backing down if I don’t. But Indrani’s the worst off, because of all of us she’s the one that bought into it.”

“I think the woman you knew,” I gently said, “only shares so much with the woman I know.”

She didn’t like that.

“I know,” the Huntress bit out angrily, slamming a fist on the groaning fence. “I know, fuck.”

I let it go, this once, but my eye narrowed. It did not go unnoticed.

“She’s not the same as she was when she left to pick up John,” Alexis forced out. “She tries. I can see it, Black Queen, that sometimes the urge is there but she fucking bites down on it.”

“You don’t have to forgive her,” I quietly said. “She’s not owed that.”

The Silver Huntress faintly smiled.

“Sometimes I still wonder if Lysander got killed because Indrani went soft from her years with the Woe,” she confessed. “Whether it’d have gone down different, if she’d not turned into the kind of person who tries.”

Sometimes, looking at what Ranger had left in the children she’d raised, I wondered what it was Amadeus of the Green Stretch had left in me. What curse, what scar. That there would be one I had no doubt: one did not learn from a madman without learning some manner of madness with it.

“She got to us deep, the Lady,” Alexis tiredly said. “Even where we think she didn’t. But maybe that’s what we have – scars from the same fang. That’s for us to handle, anyway. It’s not what I came to you for.”

“Then what did you come for?” I asked.

“When Ranger comes for us, and she will,” Alexis the Argent said, voice eerily calm, “she’ll strike at every weakness. As hard as she can. She’ll try to break us.”

My fingers clenched.

“It’s how she believes love works, I think,” the Huntress quietly said. “To make someone stronger, even if it hurts them. So she will come for us, Catherine Foundling, with loving cruelty. To crown us, welcome us as women. Peers.”

Peers, the way she’d treated the Calamities in my Name dreams as the Squire. The way she treated those, I thought, that had not needed her hand to come into strength. There were people, I thought, that Ranger might be lovely to. My father was one of them, because there were things about him she admired. It excused none of it, as far as I was concerned.

“She is not my peer,” I coldly said. “And I’ll teach her why, should she come for any of you.”

“I can take care of myself,” Alexis brusquely dismissed. “But Indrani…”

The Silver Huntress bit her lip.

“That’s what I want from you, Black Queen,” she finally said. “Don’t let the Lady turn her back into who she used to be. That’s all I ask.”

A moment, as she choked on the word.

“Please.”

The moon glared down at us, a full circle wreathing us both in pale.

“I won’t,” I swore.

Chapter 13: Footing

“To hold a strong defensive position is not enough. You must force the enemy to attack it, which is the difference between tactics and strategy.”

– Extract from ‘Considerations on Warfare’ by Marshal Grem One-Eye

We made good pace.

The Army of Callow had been hammered into a host that could move on the quick by years of campaigning abroad, and for once we weren’t too starved on trained officers: the combination of the First and Second Army that Juniper commanded had benefitted from the officer pools being combined. It’d be Hells to split the armies back up when it was done, of course, but that was a problem for the future. There simply weren’t enough potential soldiers left back in Callow for the First and Second to be raised back up to full strength separately anyway, they’d be staying combined until the end of the war. The ‘Fifth’ Army, as the rank and file had taken to calling it, wasn’t going anywhere for some years.

The Levantines under Razin and Aquiline weren’t a drag on our pace, the way they’d sometimes been in Hainaut. Now that they were relying on our supply train instead of their own, the Dominion warriors were as cut free from a tether: they were usually quicker on the march than my legionaries now. The lighter armour and years of raiding had trained it into them. The Twilight Ways made for a pleasant reprieve from Wasteland weather, even if we’d only ever tasted the outskirts of that, and we advanced faster than Juniper had anticipated. We had to slow down around the end of the first week, waiting for reports about the march of the other armies.

Marshal Nim and her legions kept to the same brisk pace they had so far, which meant in about two weeks both our armies would be forced to emerge from the Ways or face the possibility of a contested crossing should we be beaten to returning to Creation. The surprising part was that Dread Empress Sepulchral seemed to have been gaining on the Black Knight: she was in hot pursuit, still a week behind even though the Legions were using the Ways and she was not. It seemed impossible, and the Jacks confirmed there was more to it a few days later. It was not Sepulchral’s entire army that’d been keeping up that breakneck pace but instead a large vanguard.

Two thousand household troops and her entire cavalry contingent, Vivienne’s people believed.

“She’s trying to keep up the pressure on Marshal Nim by having a force nipping at her rear,” Juniper opined. “They won’t engage, but they’ll raid her supply lines and try to hammer any detachment she splits from her main host.”

“If the Jacks have people in Sepulchral’s camp able to learn this, the Eyes will too,” Vivienne noted. “I have no doubt Malicia informed her Black Knight of the plan before it even began.”

I snorted.

“Old Abreha’s counting on it,” I said, reluctantly admiring. “She’s trying to goad the Black Knight into engaging us hastily.”

Sepulchral had nothing but gains to make from the Loyalist Legions and the Army of Callow getting into a messy, ill-planned battle.

“It’s cleverly done,” Juniper admitted. “If Nim sends a force south to make the vanguard back off, she has to either leave it there – and weaken herself just before she fights us – or slow her march so it can rejoin. Which would buy time for the slower part of Sepulchral’s army to catch up.”

I shared a look with my marshal. It was an inspired tactic, playing to the strengths of her army and the weaknesses of the Black Knight’s positions. It was, in other words, not a tactic that Abreha Mirembe or her generals had likely come up with. Sepulchral was a skilling intriguer but a solidly average battle commander, looking at her record. And as far as we knew neither Aksum nor Nok had any noteworthy military talents in their upper ranks. So who was planning Sepulchral’s campaign for her? I glanced at Scribe, who had been silently keeping notes as we spoke.

“Make it a priority to find out who’s been giving out those orders,” I ordered her. “The last thing we need is for Sepulchral to become a genuine threat.”

“Ime has been concentrating on putting out the last gasps of my influence in the Wasteland,” Eudokia said. “It might be possible to find this out, Queen Catherine, but I will have to burn most of the agents I have in Sepulchral’s camp.”

Meaning she would no longer be confident of catching anything going on there afterwards. We’d be relying solely on the Jacks, and Vivienne’s spies had been playing catch-up with the Eyes since the moment they were first raised without ever quite touching that prize. I hesitated, then turned to Juniper.

“How confident are you of beating that army if you know who commands it?” I asked.

She did not answer immediately, considering the question seriously.

“Seven parts in ten,” Juniper of the Red Shields finally said.

I nodded. Good enough for me.

“Do it,” I ordered Scribe.

Aside from that little surprise, the beginning of our southern offensive was trotting along nicely. As the second week since we’d left the outskirts of Wolof began, it looked like as if our preferred outcome would come to pass: a decisive pitched battle with the Loyalist Legions at least a week before anyone else was close enough to intervene. There’d been no real hiccup to our advance so far, which only made it natural that Creation would then promptly snatch the ground out from under our feet. Unlike some of the past instances of the Gods pissing in my morning gruel, however, this time the snatching was not a fucking metaphor.

Half-past Morning Bell, as we marched along the Twilight Ways, the ground literally fell out under my army.

Great cracks spread across the ground, fast enough my officers had time to do little more than shout warnings, then great chunks of the Ways fell down into Creation like shattered glass panes. It was all the more hellish for the suddenness of it: there’d been no warning, not ominous sign. In thirty heartbeats my army had turned from a smoothly marching column into a groaning and wounded beast, spread out in chunks in the middle of a particularly vicious Wasteland dust storm. There was enough order in my ranks that I managed to rustle up two mage lines and Hierophant to form a shaky protective ward around the column, keeping the whipping dust out of our faces long enough that priests from the House Insurgent could begin seeing to the wounded and dying.

I ran around trying to get proper wardstones in place, hindered by the fact that they’d been built to protect the shape of camps and not columns, but before I got anywhere the storm suddenly died. It’d lasted perhaps half an hour after my army fell, and just as suddenly as it had come it was gone. Clenching my teeth, I got to finding out the damage. It’d been a short fall down, at least. That’d taken off the edge some. Hardly more than four feet in most cases, and the Order of the Broken Bells had been in the vanguard ahead of the fall so it’d mostly been remounts that’d broken their legs falling.

The grassy grounds from the Ways that’d fallen with us began to decay quickly and the emanations were somewhat toxic so we had to move away and reform, but order was getting restored as lieutenants saw to their lines. Numbers for casualties and wounded quickly made it up the chain, eventually getting to Juniper and myself: only seventy-nine dead, but almost three hundred wounded. We’d also lost enough horses for the Order that their staying power was compromised for longer-term engagements. Not necessarily an immediate concern, but by the time we got to Ater any knight who lost a horse would be fighting the rest of the campaign on foot.

There’d been more painful damage in a strategic sense.

“We’re paralyzed for at least two days,” Juniper bluntly said. “That we still have any supply wagons capable of moving is a miracle, and if the healers can’t fix the oxen pulling them we’re going to have to kill the beasts.”

Which would further slow us, for all that it’d add to our meat reserves. We could compensate by putting the Order’s remaining remounts to work pulling the wagons and arranging relays of legionaries – mostly orcs, given their greater body strength – but it’d still be a blow to mobility. Hopefully our healers could salvage at least some of the beasts of burden while our sappers repaired the broken supply wagons. The only silver lining was that Pickler’s obsessive care for her field engines meant they’d been insulated from shock well enough the fall had caused need only for minor repairs and replacements. We wouldn’t be headed into battle with the Legions of Terror without working war engines.

“We need to find out where we are,” I sighed. “And if returning to the Ways will just see this happen again.”

I’d already asked Masego to look into it. Wasteland weather was infamously dangerous for good reason, but ripping an army out of the Twilight Ways was going too far. My instincts screamed enemy action, but which enemy?

“I’ve sent out scouts,” Juniper said. “I’ll send someone to fetch you when they begin coming back.”

“I’ll see what Hierophant has for me, then,” I said, groaning as I got back to my feet.

I’d almost lost Zombie the Sixth to this mess. He’d broken a leg and bucked me off, but the priests seemed to think he could be made better. I’d be stuck borrowing a mount from the Order until he was fit to ride again, though. Masego wasn’t hard to find, considering he was still exactly where I’d left him. The hastily raised tent was kept standing more by wards than wood, not that he seemed to notice. Earlier he’d been using scrying rituals with some difficulty, going through the Observatory, but now he was instead running spells on the storm dust he’d sent Apprentice out to gather. Though the outer ward would have warned him of my entry he did not immediately turn. I left him to his spells, waiting in silence as I leaned against my staff. He turned to me when he was good and ready.

“It was a ritual,” Hierophant said.

I glanced at the dust but he shook his head.

“This is simply dust,” he said. “We are near the Gust Ribbon from what I gathered while scrying, so the dust storm itself was drawn out of it by the first part of the ritual and only then empowered. There are striations in the magic saturation of the dust that make the sequence plain to see.”

Near the Gust Ribbon wasn’t saying much, as it was a winding and moving region that stretched across the northwest third of the Wasteland. Wasn’t overall reassuring, though, considering it was called that because it was plagued by sudden and powerful storms that had a nasty tendency to spill out in every direction. It wouldn’t be safe to stay here long even if we didn’t get hammered by another ritual.

“So someone leashed a dust storm, empowered it with a spell and sent it our way?” I asked.

“It was quite brilliantly done,” Masego said. “The dust, you see, solved the issue of air being able to hold too little magic for most large-scale ritual work. The storm was turned into an array that thinned the boundary between the Ways and Creation – which is already very thin – until it was on the very edge of shattering.”

“Are you telling me that the physical weight of my army is what shattered the Twilight Ways?” I flatly asked.

“As I said,” Masego smiled, “quite brilliantly done.”

I clenched my fingers, then unclenched them.

“This is Malicia,” I said.

It had to be. People had been telling me again and again that weather sorcery was the specialty of Taghreb, and there was only one army out there that fielded a significant amount of high-calibre Taghreb mages. More than that, we’d known for months that while High Lady Takisha of Kahtan had played coy with sending the Tower actual troops she’d not been shy with providing mages instead. It’d take more than just a few cadres of talented mages to pull off something like this, though. I knew that and so did he.

“This is Akua Sahelian,” Masego corrected, confirming my fear. “There are maybe four other practitioners in Praes capable of such a ritual, but there appears to have been an uncontrolled surge in the middle of the span – I suspect mages grew exhausted and their replacements had inadequate control – that was masterfully redirected instead of allowed to collapse the entire working.”

He paused.

“I would be capable of this,” he said, without a hint of a boast. “My father was, and so was Dumisai of Aksum. I would not bet on Naziha Sarrif being so capable, however, and she is the finest mage in the south. There is only one woman in all of Praes with the talent and schooling to do it.”

His face was calm.

“I have already told you her name.”

That was what happened, I told myself, when you let someone as dangerous Akua go to your enemy’s side. She didn’t stop being dangerous, it was just turned on you instead. I breathed out, suddenly tired. I had seventy-nine names to learn. I owed that, and truthfully more than was possible to repay.

“I found something interesting, however,” Hierophant said. “The way the boundaries of the ritual array were defined was… peculiar.”

I cocked an eyebrow at him, silently urging him to continue.

“Much more of the Ways fell than was necessary,” Masego said. “Without looking at the equations myself I cannot be certain, but it seems to me that the power could have been made… narrower. Concentrated on ensuring there would be a faller from higher up instead of such a large swath of territory.”

My fingers clenched.

“What are you saying?” I asked.

“That no one capable of crafting such a ritual,” Hierophant evenly replied, “would have made such a mistake in ignorance. It was a choice.”

A pulled punch, he was saying. Seventy-nine dead, my entire army paralyzed, and still a pulled punch. Not without reason had we once named that woman the doom of an entire city. I silently nodded, at loss for words. Glowing, fiery eyes studied be from beneath the eye cloth.

“I do not understand why she is no longer with us,” Masego admitted. “Is this about revenge? Indrani tells me that in Hainaut you had the opportunity to let her go to her death. I had thought – and she – that you refused because you were letting go of all this long prices business.”

He paused.

“She is no longer here,” Masego plainly said, “and so I am confused.”

“One hundred thousand dead, Zeze,” I quietly said. “She doesn’t get to have that swept under the rug. Nobody does.”

“So it is revenge,” Masego mused, brightening for having understood. “Why let her go to the Tower and become the Warlock, then? It does not strike me as a very good vengeance.”

“Because she’ll hate it,” I quietly said. “It will be everything she has been taught to want, but even as she gets it every victory will taste like ashes in her mouth. And when reaches the end of that line, of that dreadful dream, it will not be joy she feels.”

It would be horror, I thought. Horror at the prospect of spending the rest of her life wearing shackles around her wrists that she would have put on herself. And the moment she understood that, understood that she wanted to be better than the girl she’d once been instead of simply an older, crueller version of her, I would be there. Waiting with an offer that she would accept.

“And after?” Masego asked.

“She trades a broken dream for a broken crown,” I murmured.

I did not believe we could destroy the Hidden Horror, not truly. Not now and even less after we gifted him the crown of Autumn. So he would need a prison and a warden. A box he would surely break in time, a pit he would dig himself out of, but a realm of endless paths? That might do the trick. There he would be cursed to wander forever alone, as a broken queen on a broken throne kept him imprisoned until the end of times. And that queen’s throne would lie in the heart of the city she had doomed, perched atop her very folly as she kept the peace of Twilight. She would make the choice herself, willingly and without coercion. That was the retribution I owed a hundred thousand screaming souls: an endless vigil holding back a greater evil, knowing every part of it was of her own making.

I was Callowan. My prices were long, and paid twice.

—

The first scouts returned with word of a town to our southeast. Scrying wasn’t working well in the region, which Masego believed to be because of the same ritual that’d brought us down. To sum up a quarter-hour explanation, ‘much magic in sky dust makes magic in sky difficult’. I shared this summary with the table, which prompted him to admit he wished he had a way to disown me. On the bright side, he also believed that while it was still unsafe to return to the Twilight Ways for at least two weeks it was unlikely that we were going to be hit with a storm again. The same phenomenon that screwed up scrying would make it ‘astronomically difficult’ to get another ritual going. I’d intended on going back into the camp after the conversation, but Juniper had notions of her own.

“You’re pacing back and forth like a tiger in a cage,” the Hellhound said. “Make yourself useful instead. Take knights and have a look at the town, find out where we are.”

“I’m not pacing,” I reflexively defended, but she had a point.

I took thirty knights of the Order and Scribe too, since she was the woman with the maps. Eudokia didn’t recognize the region itself, though she did note that the dusty and rocky grounds here would be a good fit for certain parts of the Cradle: a rough square of land near the middle of the Wasteland that had fairly steady weather but got the spills from more… exotic parts. We rode out briskly, finding the town the scouts had marked in less than an hour. It wasn’t anything all that impressive, I saw as we got closer. A walled town large enough to hold maybe a few hundred souls, surrounded by sparse farms and skeletal orchards. We found several wells on the way, though, which was good news. Too many of our water barrels had broken during the fall.

The gates were closed when we got there, an iron-barded set tall as a man but too cramped for most carts. No great traders, then. The walls weren’t anything I’d have a hard time smashing with Night if I put my back into it: six to eight uneven feet of stacked stone and mud with wooden spikes on top. Over the gates, an old dark-skinned woman in faded robes was waiting for us. Spread out further atop the walls were maybe a dozen archers and an unarmed pair of middle-aged siblings that must have been the town mages. They weren’t the ones in charge, though, as was made clear when we reined in our horses at the edge of bow range and got called out by the old woman.

“State your business,” she demanded. “Are you with the army to the north?”

I blinked. My knights carried the royal banner with them, which usually got recognized and took care of most questions before the talking began. Not so this time, evidently. Seeing no point in subtlety out in the middle of nowhere, I went with straightforward instead.

“I am Queen Catherine of Callow,” I called back. “I only want to talk and buy goods.”

There was some consternation atop the wall, several others coming close to the old woman before she angrily waved them away.

“There’s nothing worth burning here,” the old woman yelled out at me. “Go away.”

I sighed. Why was it never the useful parts of my reputation that preceded me? Deciding to make a point, I murmured a prayer to the Crows and let the Night sluggishly wake to my words. I went for something loud and dangerous looking over actually dangerous, blasting a chunk of the countryside in a whirl of black flames. I let silence follow in that sights’s wake as it sunk in that I could wield the same power against their wall to fairly predictable results. I then politely requested to be let in so we could talk and I could arrange the buying of goods, which after some arguing between the ‘warriors’ was granted.

The gates swung open and we were ushered through deserted dirt streets to a hall of stone. There the old woman from earlier received us by a great fire and extended hospitality in the name of the town, Ogarin. We refrained from accepting food or drink anyway. She introduced herself as Anan, the current haku to the town. Bailiff was probably the closest equivalent to the title we had back home, from what I understood, as a haku’s authority was centred around arranging the collection of communal taxes and work levies in the name of the local lord. The town was part of the territory of a Lord Abara, she informed us, who ruled from a fortress called Kala further to the southeast and situated at the bottom of the eponymous Kala Hills.

“I’ll bargain so the town does not get sacked, Your Majesty,” Anan said, “but we don’t have much to trade. We already sent our crop tax south to the fortress. There’s been a food levy across the Wasteland.”

I frowned.

“Who does Lord Abara swear to?” I asked.

She snorted.

“His uncle swore to Wolof, but that was in High Lady Tasia’s day,” she said. “Now he’s sworn to no one. It was the Tower that came to collect.”

So Malicia – more likely the Black Knight through her – had been emptying the Wasteland of food, to feed Marshal Nim army and make sure my own wouldn’t be able to add to its supplies from the local stores. Not without starving towns and villages, anyway, which aside from being deeply distasteful to me was likely to mean resistance to my troops from locals. No one liked having the table robbed by a foreign invader, as my childhood in Laure had intimately taught me. We got a little more out of Anan about the region we’d ended up in with some wheedling. Ogarin was at the northwestern edge of Lord Abara’s lands but linked by a dirt path to a better road that Anan called the ‘half-road’. I asked, naturally. It was a name that pretty much demanded it.

“We’re between imperial highways,” Anan said. “One of the old Abara – in my great, great grandmother’s day – swore himself to Aksum, and to make it stick he planned to connect Kala to the highway between Ater and Aksum. It was going to make us rich, he claimed. Only he died before it was done. His daughter instead went back to the Tower’s protection and pocketed the gold, leaving the job half done.”

The half-road wasn’t properly paved, she explained, just made of stone. While usable for carts it tended to be rough on the axles. It went towards the southeast, eventually coming close to the Moule Hills. Those were a bunch of steep slopes, so in practice the road was nestled in a valley between the Moule Hills to the south and Kala Hills to the north. North of said Kala Hills, she continued, was the small Nioqe Lake and the other town sworn to Lord Abara, Risas. Further north than that was the southern edge of the large Jini Plateau: all cliffs there, nothing we could travel through.

The way I figured, the sooner we got on the half-road and began moving south the better. I’d suggest a detachment head out to Nioqe Lake to see to our water situation, but there simply weren’t enough water sources in the region to sustain the presence of an army as large as mine for long.

As for trading, strictly speaking it was treason for the town to bargain with us while we were at war. I allowed the shadow of a possible sack to loom over the negotiations, though, which motivated the town to do it anyway. It wasn’t my intention to go through with it, but if my reputation was black in these parts then I had no qualms in using that. There wasn’t much food and Anan was reluctant to part with was left, but tools and wood were on the table – armies chewed through those like hounds through meat – and I promised to restrain my soldiers from robbing farms or entering the town. I even paid a generous fee for use of their wells, which Anan did not need to know was from the Wolof treasury.

When we were done talking I stretched, groaning, and offered her a friendly smile. We’d been at this for over an hour now, and I was ready to leave. There was still one little detail to take care of first, though,

“So,” I said, “how likely is it that some of your dimmer boys and girls are outside and planning something unwise?”

Her creased face tightened.

“Not unlikely,” Anan finally said.

“I still remember what it’s like, wanting to put down monster to make a name,” I said. “So I’ll let that go.”

I met her rheumy eyes with mine.

“If it ends now.”

She swallowed. Anan preceded us outside, and while there was some shouting and a small scuffle it ended without corpses on the ground.

Three cheers for diplomacy, I thought, and got back on my borrowed horse.

—

We got some trouble with the locals the first night after we crashed, but not the two-legged kind. Our palisade, which had been hastily raised, was hit just after Midnight Bell by what we first believed to be enemy soldiers but turned out to be a coordinated attack by a pack of tigers. The unreasonably astute animals actually hit another spot in the palisade as a distraction while the rest dug their way under, attacking horses and cattle. Archer and the Huntress got themselves a few pelts for the trouble, but of the dozen tigers that came six still survived and ran away with full bellies. It was only to be the beginning of our troubles, I found out to my dismay.

A colony of head-sized scorpions took offence to our presence the following day and began attacking legionaries whenever they stepped outside the vermin wards, which thankfully held them back. It only stopped when I set out with a mage line and torched their underground lair, to a disquieting amount of chittering screams. A decision was made not to openly prevent my sappers from going into the charred ruin and stealing some eggs, considering scorpion fights tended to be good for the morale of the little bastards.

Then the soldiers that went to fill up water barrels at Nioque Lake – under the wary eyes of the townsfolk of Risas, whose homes were on the opposite shore – were ambushed by some sort of shrieking freshwater squid that dragged two men under before the Squire and the Apprentice killed it. Its flesh was apparently considered a delicacy in the Wasteland, Aisha informed me, because everyone in this bloody place was completely mad. I refused to have a bite out of principle, though Masego assured me with guileless malice it was delicious.

Archer was having the time of her life, at least, and came dragging back the carcass of what looked like a cow-sized lion with bat wings and a stinger-tipped tail the following afternoon. Masego was delighted enough when she offered him the venom glands that he enthusiastically kissed her cheeks, which had her in a terrifyingly good mood the rest of the day. I was only glad she’d killed the damned thing while out hunting and not after it’d flown into the camp and eaten a few of my soldiers. Not that our short turn in luck stopped a flock of blood-drinking bats that spat out paralytic venom – charmingly called something that translated ‘night kissers’ by Soninke, Aisha said – from attacking one of our night patrols.

The entire Wasteland was a fucking death trap.

It looked like we were going to be ready to march by Noon Bell on the third day, though, so I sat with Juniper to put together a vanguard. Two thousand light foot from Levant would do, we decided, with Archer and I accompanying them. Razin Tanja, whose forces were chosen to march, was pleased to be given the front as Levantines always were when awarded the possibility of being the first to be shot by arrows. Took all sorts. The Dominion warriors had taken well to the Wasteland, to my amused horror, Lady Aquiline even admitted it made her a little homesick. Fewer trees here than the Brocelian, she said, but the animals had a lot in common.

No wonder Levantines raided so much, I unkindly thought. I’d get out of the house as much as possible if my home was full of godsdamned bloodsucking bats, and fight for the privilege too.

We set out in passably good order just after Noon Bell, largely as we’d planned and to the palpable relief of many Callowan legionaries. I rode out with Razin and Archer for company, to a surprising chill under the afternoon sun. A cold wind was blowing in from the northeast, over the Jini Plateau. An hour got us to the half-road and from there we quickened the pace going southeast, until we came in distance of the Moule Hills and I was forced to call a halt. Not because three hours of marching had tired us out, but something entirely worse. On the steep northern slopes of those hills a fortified camp had been raised, wooden walls bristling with scorpions and catapults as six banners flew above them in the wind.

One for each of the five legions under Marshal Nim, one for the Tower.

Chapter 14: Nock

“The right kind of defeat can be more useful than a victory.”

– Dread Empress Prudence, the Frequently Vanquished

The two of us reined in our horses a prudent hundred feet away from the bottom of the slope.

A fortified camp looked down at us from the heights of the Moule Hills, raised grounds with a palisade and a dry moat. There were artillery platforms looming beyond the wooden rampart, at least two that I saw, and more than a dozen scorpions glaring down at the Army of Callow’s vanguard from atop the palisade. My lips thinned as I took into consideration the steep slope leading up and the length of it going up – at least a few hundred feet – and how bloody taking that camp was likely to get should we try. I’d lose a hundred men for every foot, I darkly thought, the moment Marshal Nim brought out her crossbows.

“That wasn’t there yesterday,” Archer muttered. “I didn’t come too close, Cat, but I would have seen it in the distance.”

“They did it overnight, maybe?” I guessed. “Goblins can work during the dark, we’ve pulled that trick before. Then they bring in orc and humans after sunup when the foundations are laid.”

That might mean they’d not finished the works too long before we arrived. And possibly that the defences weren’t as thorough as it would seem from down here. Archer was visibly itching to ditch the horse and go have a closer look on foot but she restrained herself. Instead I felt the world shiver ever-so-slightly as she drew on an aspect, leaning forward on her horse.

“Moat’s not even,” Archer said, eyes distant. “And there’s still goblins working on the side of the camp to make it go fully around.”

I wouldn’t be able to match her sight without drawing on Night and I’d rather not draw on that frivolously under the afternoon sun, so I simply took her word for it.

“Definitely overnight, then,” I mused.

That made what they’d gotten up in time even more impressive. Much as it stung to admit it, the Army of Callow wouldn’t have been able to manage the same. We lacked the sappers and the expertise: a lot of my legionaries had spent no more than six months in training camps before being considered ready for war. The Legions regularly trained and drilled their soldiers in ways the war against Keter had simply not afforded me the time to do. My people were veterans, but they were veterans of a very particular kind of war.

“Your rider will get to Juniper soon,” Indrani noted. “We waiting for her orders or heading out to tickle the devils up early?”

I grimaced. Taking light foot up a hill into a hardened Legion position wasn’t going to achieve much except corpses. She’d not meant taking the Malaga troops, though, but the two of us. Thing was, I wasn’t sure we should. Not when the Marshal Nim would have a bunch of high-class mage cadres waiting and Akua Sahelian leading them. The odds of something nasty waiting for us up there were about the same as those of the sun rising tomorrow.

Might be it wouldn’t, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

“I’m not touching that camp without a bigger crew than just the two of us,” I said. “And I’ll let you loose to scout, since I know it’s a lost cause to stop you, but I want you to promise to keep your distance.”

Indrani considered me a moment.

“Worried about the mages?” she finally asked.

“They know which Named we field now,” I reminded her. “Nim and Malicia aren’t idiots, they’ll have spent time and coin figuring out how to kill all of you.”

“I’ll be a good girl, then,” Indrani drawled. “Promised.”

I rolled my eye at her, feeling a pang of discomfort when I realized I was facing the wrong way for her to be able to see it. All she had to look at was an eye cloth over a hollow socket. It was the little things that distressed me the most, somehow. Wounds I knew, had learned to live with. Limp along with. Losing an eye had been… more than that, in a lot of little ways. Archer waited until we’d returned to the ranks of the vanguard before passing off her horse, wandering off to find a way to sidle into the Ways. Though it was still dangerous to travel those and it’d still remain that way for the better part of two weeks, it was the sort of environment she thrived in.

A broken-down patch of the Ways where a single misstep might see her falling through the sky? Archer would take to that like a fish to water. It was when she’d be back in Creation that worried me.

Not that I had a lot of time to spare on that. The Levantine warriors that made up the vanguard of the Army of Callow had been advancing in a broad column until we’d caught sight of the enemy camp, going down the half-road, but when I’d called a halt Razin had pulled them out of marching order and begun ordering them into warbands. It was the right instinct, because right now the army behind was spread out along that road like a snake. Juniper would put the column into battle order soon enough, I thought, and I didn’t think that the Black Knight would have staked out that position in the heights to then abandon it at the first opportunity.

But there were troops Marshal Nim could throw at us without abandoning her position, and sure enough as I rode through the throng of Levantine warbands I heard exclamations of surprise from the ranks. From the eastern face of Moule Hills horsemen were pouring out in neat ranks, though where they’d emerged from was hidden by a large fold of rock. Hundreds, I counted, then more than a thousand. Fuck, was Nim throwing her entire horse at us? If so, we were in deep shit. The last reports had her at three thousand light horse to our vanguard of two thousand and a half-thousand of heavy horse from the Thirteenth to throw in should she feel like it.

“Razin,” I shouted over the din, forcing people away with my staff. “Razin.”

The sound of my voice caught his attention over the din, drawing his eyes to me and away from his advising captains.

“Shield wall now,” I called out. “Pack it tight or we’re all dead.”

If Nim had sent goblin skirmishers I would have advised we retreat instead, but we wouldn’t outrun cavalry on flat grounds. To Razin’s honour, he wasted in time in following through. Shouting in Ceseo he got his captains moving, the quick-footed Levantine warbands gathering into a fat uneven circle. I dismounted, heading for the front as shields were raised. In the distance, across the grounds, the enemy horse advanced at a brisk trot and formed into four slender wedges. They were long and thin, so it was hard to tell how many riders there were. More than a thousand, at least, but how many more? I found good solid ground to stand on, slightly away from the shields up front, and after making sure the warriors around were giving me a wide berth I closed my eyes and began to pray to the Sisters.

“Wake up,” I murmured in Crepuscular. “We have a war on our hands and I need a miracle to teach the enemy to fear me again. Wake up, carrion crows. There’s blood in the air.”

As I continued to murmur the Night began to move, lazily slithering into my veins, reluctant to brave the heavy sun. I kept drawing it in, murmurs flowing freely as the power began to accrue. There were shouts in Ceseo as the Levantine captains whose men had slingers among them – a lot of Dominion warriors had picked up the habit of carrying slings as well as their usual arms in Hainaut, since they were so useful against the dead – told them to get ready. A few heartbeats later the enemy closed the distance, Taghreb and Soninke in vividly coloured scale and cloth. War cries sounded on both sides, and though a few stones split open heads it was nothing to what we suffered in return.

Our shield wall was tight and packed, which I’d asked of Razin to discourage the enemy charging us. Light horse wouldn’t want to get mired in our ranks, it’d be like a mud pit for them. The downside was the same as the upside, unfortunately: the shield wall was tight and packed. So when the enemy cavalry began throwing javelins with all the strength of a charge behind them, those steel-tipped killers found their marks and then some. Shields splintered and broke, men fell with screams and I got my first good look at well-trained Wasteland horse making war. All four of the wedges that’d threatened a charge stopped well shy of our ranks, instead splitting to the sides and riding backwards smoothly.

The riders at the front threw their javelin and then retreated, making room for a fresh horseman to toss their own. The impact was… bloody. Worse than arrow fire would have been, if not as sustained.

I’d gathered power enough to give an answer, though. Night flared up, wreathing me in shadow, and above the enemy horse I began to gather specks of black flame. I wasn’t going to bother with subtle here: if I could burn through a chunk of their cavalry today the Loyalist Legions would be significantly easier to handle going forward. To my surprise the horsemen did not disperse at the sight, continuing their deadly javelin fire, and I saw why a moment later. There was a great surge of sorcery up on the heights, two transparent but roiling rings beginning to form. I stole away a sliver of the Night running through me, sharpening my eyes, and almost cursed. That was raw kinetic power they were gathering; I’d seen the likes of it before.

If that hit the ranks of the vanguard javelins would be the least of our problems. With the shield wall broken, we’d just get run down by the cavalry like animals.

Whoever had designed that trap had an uncomfortably good read on my abilities. I couldn’t abandon my working with the Night and rustle up another to handle this, not at this time of the day, which meant I’d have to break it apart and remake it. Gritting my teeth, I did. The black flames gutted out into smoke, the power instead expanding those puffs into great tendrils of dark mist. The kinetic rings flew out, the sound they made comically wobbly, but I moved the mist in the way. The working devoured the sorcery as it went through, leaving little more than a short burst of wind to reach our ranks. That wasn’t a victory, though, when the horsemen had been hammering at us all the while.

At this rate they’d run out of javelins before we gave an answer.

The Levantines were itching to ditch the shield wall and charge, given how close the riders were – another trap – but discipline held. Razin went through the ranks giving encouragement even as I began gathering Night again, his captains forcefully pulling back warriors that began to break the ranks. I’d have to let the Levantines take the hit, I realized. We could probably survive the magical bombardment, but if I didn’t hit the horsemen they were definitely going to overrun our position the moment they got done softening us up with javelins. It was a shitty choice to make, but I didn’t have a better one on the table. Best make my miracle count, then.

I had an idea or two in mind and I took to weaving even as power began rising atop the heights again – only to suddenly fall apart. I blinked in surprise, confused, only to then let out a sharp laugh. Archer. Archer had put an arrow into whoever had been leading that ritual. This was as close to an opening as I’d get.

Then the ground behind us began trembling. Yet it was not cries of dismay that greeted the change. I glanced back, finding the banner of the Broken Bells flying tall in the wind as they rode hard to relieve us. Juniper must have sent them out before we even caught sight of the enemy cavalry, for them to get her so quickly. The arrival of other horsemen saw the Legion auxiliaries lose their taste for the skirmish, unloading another few javelins our way spitefully and then smoothly pulling away. My knights began pursuit, passing by our position at a gallop, but they weren’t going to catch up to light horse and they knew it.

Brandon Talbot pulled the Order back when the enemy was driven most of the way back to their camp. I kept an eye on the heights all the while, waiting for magic to erupt again, but no ritual followed. I released the Night, feeling a wave of exhaustion, and the bloodied vanguard began its retreat back to the rest of the army. We’d survived, I told myself. Marshal Nim had given us a black eye, but we’d survived.

It wasn’t much, but it was something.

—

“The best we can say is that it stopped shy of being a disaster,” Juniper bluntly assessed.

Three hundred and sixty-three dead, almost twice that wounded. Over half of our two thousand strong vanguard had been shredded over the course of a skirmish that’d lasted maybe half an hour. There would have been a lot more corpses on the ground if we’d not been able to retreat to healers, but that was cold comfort considering we were unlikely to have all the wounded back on their feet before nightfall.

“The Black Knight caught us with our trousers down,” Aisha admitted. “Our scouts had no idea the Legions were here, much less camped above the only road. It is a major failure of our forward elements.”

That was a very polite way of phrasing ‘we stumbled in blind and got spanked’, but the lovely Taghreb did have a way of doing that.

“We turtled up after we got hit in the Ways,” I said. “And it cost us. Now two ways about it.”

I wouldn’t pretend otherwise.

“But now we know Nim’s here, so she’s shot her arrow,” I reminded them. “She won’t catch us out like this again.”

It’d been less than an hour since the enemy cavalry had retreated. We’d used that time to form up the Army of Callow and its auxiliaries in a battle line across the half-road, facing the fortified camp in the hills, but the Legions of Terror showed no inclination of coming down to fight us. It was just Juniper and Aisha here with me here in the field tent, General Zola being charged with handling affairs on the front, so none of us bothered to put a better face than was true on our current situation.

“We can’t attack that camp,” Aisha said, voicing an opinion we all shared. “It would be throwing an egg at a wall.”

“We need to turn her position,” I said. “Either to the east or west. So long she’s the one sitting on top of the half-road she can keep bringing up fresh supplies and water to her camp while we’ll be eating into our own reserves.”

“That’s the trap, Catherine,” the Hellhound growled. “She’s making it seem like she’s ceding us the initiative by staying up in her camp, but she hasn’t. We can’t leave through the Ways and we’ll slow to a crawl if we leave the road.”

I cocked an eyebrow at her.

“The grounds are too rocky west of Moule Hills,” Aisha told me in her stead. “Unless we put the sappers to making a path for us, we’d just be wrecking the wheels we just got done putting back on.”

Might still be possible to do it if we moved really slow, but if we did we’d get hit. She’d harass us with skirmishers and cavalry from a safe distance, bleeding my army out one cut at a time. And while it would be possible for the Army of Callow to advance ahead of its supplies at a quicker pace, it would be a very bad idea. We were tethered to those wagons, because the alternative was the Black Knight’s three thousand cavalry sallying out and torching the wagons carrying all our food and water. Marshal Nim was living up to her reputation as one of the three most decorated officers in all of Praes: she’d found a way to hem us in without even setting foot outside her fortified camp.

“That leaves only the half-road,” I said, openly unenthused.

It’d mean marching down the valley between Moule Hills and Kala Hills with a larger enemy force on our flank that was set up in entrenched high grounds. We’d be doing that on open grounds all the while, while the enemy had their war engines pointed at us from above. It had disaster written all over it.

“It might be possible to keep close to the bottom of the Kala Hills and make it south without a battle ensuing,” Aisha argued. “It’d be a risk for her to try us: in an enclosed space like the valley we could maneuver to negate her advantage in numbers.”

“And on tight grounds the Order would punch much harder than her own horse,” Juniper grunted. “But it won’t work, Aisha. She’ll just decamp and use the road to outpace us going south. Then she’ll set up at Kala Fortress with stone walls to defend from and her supply line still safe at her back.”

Which would just be moving the problem a few hours south, assuming it even worked. Which I was significantly less inclined to believe than Aisha was.

“We could march back north,” I suggested. “Go around this entire region, find another way through.”

“We’d be rolling dice,” Aisha grimaced. “We can’t go back into the Ways and if the Gale Ribbon spits out a storm at us the results could be almost as bad as a defeat.”

She wasn’t wrong, though it might honestly still be better than engaging the Black Knight on her chosen grounds. Unlike the Legions of Terror, after mauling us the storm wouldn’t pursue.

“North is right,” Juniper gravelled. “But into Kala Hills. Northeast.”

“Those are a dead end,” I frowned. “Even if we set up a camp on those heights facing hers, all we do is run out our supplies while she watches us.”

Nim wouldn’t be any more eager to attack our camp than we were to attack hers, we wouldn’t bait her into making that mistake. Especially not when Malicia and her Black Knight were well aware that I could only spend so long settling affairs in Praes. It was to their advantage to wait me out without even giving battle, since without a decisive victory against the Tower my bargaining position was weak.

“Are they a dead end?” Juniper replied, clicking her teeth thoughtfully.

She went looking through her papers, eventually taking out a parchment sheath she pressed into my hands. It was a report, I saw, from the captain that’d overseen the detachment that had gone to Nioqe Lake to fill water barrels. A significant chunk of it was spent going over the freshwater squid attack and praising the two young heroes that’d killed the creature. I glanced at Juniper, unsure why she’d hand me this. I’d already told the kids they’d done well.

“What am I looking for?” I asked.

“Captain Henry mentions seeing locals on the opposite shore,” Juniper said. “Fishermen, as is to be expected of a lakeside town, but also those bringing cattle to drink.”

I scanned for the line, eye narrowing when I found it. The officer had mentioned seeing sheep, specifically, and I finally found my marshal’s line of thought.

“Goats they could feed on scraps, but they’d need grazing lands for sheep,” I muttered. “And we haven’t seen any suitable grounds on the other side, so you think they’re-”

“In the Kala Hills,” Juniper finished. “And that means shepherd paths, maybe all the way through.”

Even if we found those paths they wouldn’t be broad enough to let our army cross, but that was why we had sappers. Should we cross the hills and march south it was almost certain that the Legions would still beat us to Kala Fortress, but it wouldn’t matter as much. We wouldn’t be bottled up in the valley anymore, we could swing wide to the east and go through the rainlands until we eventually found another stretch of the half-road to march on. Marshal Nim would have to come and fight us on our terms; otherwise we’d cut her supply lines and have freedom to march on a lightly defended Ater even as Sepulchral caught up to the Loyalist Legions.

“It is already too late in the afternoon for giving battle to be anything but risky, regardless,” Aisha noted.

No one argued with that. The Black Knight had the Eighth Legion with her, the Trailblazers, and General Wheeler’s ranks were heavy on both goblins and skirmishers. If fighting continued after dark we’d be at a stark disadvantage.

“Kala Hills, then,” I agreed.

—

The slopes weren’t as steep here as they were on the Moule Hills to the south, but the stone was softer. Easier to use as foundations. The Kala Hills were also covered with brushlands and Pickler assured me having local wood to cut made building the camp much easier. The work only began midafternoon, which was uncomfortably late, but the Black Knight hadn’t just sat in her camp looking pretty as we moved. Skirmishers were out and about with the hour’s turn, harassing our retreat as we marched away. Juniper sent out the Levantines and our own Army skirmishers to match them, but the Order stayed put. We needed the knights ready in case Nim sent out her own cavalry, we had nothing else that’d be swift enough to stop her from chewing up our light foot.

This once the fight went our way, at least. I was done fucking around after the mauling we’d taken, so I sent out Named in force. The Silver Huntress was like a thresher in a wheat field, fighting skirmishers, and she had a lot of anger to work out. The Squire got himself two crossbow bolts in the stomach after getting cocky but with the Apprentice at his side it was far from enough to kill him. He’d eat only broth for a week, I thought, and be a wiser man for it. Just because goblins were half his size didn’t mean that charging crossbowmen on foot was any less foolish. The Empire had designed those things to punch through plate, knight-killers.

The enemy broke off shortly before nightfall, their cavalry having never come out. Another hundred dead on our side, but we’d inflicted easily twice that. Nim would think twice about testing us like this in the future and the Malaga warriors raised their heads for having avenged their honour in the rematch.

I stayed back to level hilltops with Night so our sappers would make progress quicker but it was still frustratingly slow-going. There’d be no dry moat for us and the palisade was patchy in places: we’d put a priority on getting the wards in place, since the last thing we wanted was to suffer magic bombardment in the middle of the night. Nightfall saw the Army of Callow retreating into its half-done camp, tents raised and fires roaring. Come morning I’d take Archer and the Silver Huntress out in the hills, looking for paths, but after the exhausting day I just wanted to sleep. My head barely hit the pillow before I blacked out.

Cruelly, I was awakened what felt like a single heartbeat later.

Alarm wards were pounding away at the night air. I dragged myself into trousers and hastily put on my armour, snatching my sword and staff as I exited only to almost stumble into a large orc sergeant.

“Report,” I ordered, tightening my sword belt.

“Under attack ma’am,” he gravelled.

I rolled my eye. Yes, I’d deduced as much somehow.

“Who, where?” I pressed.

“They came from the hills, behind the camp,” the sergeant said. “Staff Tribune Bishara claims it’s the Eleventh Legion.”

It took me a moment to place that. Cognomen ‘Tenebrous’, led by General Lucretia. The sole officer that’d been a general in the Legions before the Reforms and stayed one after. Also a vampire, some sort of flesh-eating undead. Her legion had been under Grem One-Eye during the Conquest, attacking the Wall, but I couldn’t remember anything in particular that’d distinguished it. The Eleventh stayed in the Wasteland ever since, so I’d never had to deal with any part of it. My belt was comfortably set, so I laid a hand on the pommel of my sword and straightened my back.

“All right, sergeant,” I said. “What’s the situation?”

“Marshal Juniper requests that you head to the breach,” he said.

“Let’s get to it, then.”

The camp was in decent order, considering we’d gotten attacked right after Midnight Bell. My legionaries were gathering briskly for a counter push, the element of surprise having passed. It was only when we got to the breach that I winced. The Eleventh hadn’t hit the Army of Callow, I saw, but the Levantines. The chunk of the patchy palisade that’d been broken through with now-abandoned rams had led straight to where the day’s wounded were kept. The same warriors that’d bled down on the plains. Legionaries with shields painted in green and black had overwhelmed the tents and slaughtered the surprised Dominion force, but by the look of the bodies and scorch marks a force of Lanterns and Osena slayers had stopped them in their tracks. By the time I got here, the Legion incursion – a mere five companies, by the looks of it – was being driven back even if most of the Dominion warriors were only half-dressed.

The trouble came from further back: deadly crossbow volleys were being poured into the shield wall from a hill in the distance. We’d stemmed the tide, the camp was in no danger of being overwhelmed, but bodies would keep piling up until we cleared out that fucking hill. That’d be my job, looked like. Razin and Aquiline were easy to pick out from the throng, just by the way their people rallied to them, and I saw that both the Silver Huntress and the Barrow Sword were with them. Deciding I could use the help, I limped my way to them. I quickly exchanged greetings with the lordlings, then the Named.

“Black Queen,” Ishaq greeted me, grinning. “Nice night, isn’t it?”

“They disturbed my beauty sleep,” I flatly replied. “Someone’s going to die for that.”

Some chuckles, but Alexis was grimly serious.

“Orders?” the Silver Huntress asked.

“I want you two and a good line of twenty killers,” I said. “We’re going to silence those crossbows.”

“It would help,” Razin admitted. “Marshal Juniper is sending crossbowmen of our own but they have yet to arrive.”

“I’ll go,” Aquiline said. “My retinue will serve.”

I wanted to argue, but that glint in her eye told me she was going to be obstinate and we didn’t have the time.

“Fine,” I grunted. “Lord Razin, you have the command.”

He nodded, then snuck a kiss to his fiancée.

“Do try not to get another scar,” he teased her. “You know how jealous I get.”

“No promises,” Aquiline grinned.

Ugh, young love. I shared a disgruntled look with Alexis, though for some reason the Barrow Sword was looking rather fondly at the pair. I didn’t want to take slayers with us, I made clear to Aquiline, so she drew twenty sword and board men from her retinue instead and we circled the melee at the gap. The Barrow Sword opened a path through a weak patch of the palisade with a mule kick, large enough for us to make it out onto the hills. All three of us Named could see in the dark at least decently, so we guided the Levantines through the sloping brushlands. Several times we had to outright climb up, so I had to kill the pain in my bad leg with Night, but we made good pace anyway.

The enemy had chosen a tall, flat-topped hill to position their crossbowmen so they weren’t difficult to spot. Two hundred of them, firing in rotation to obscure their numbers. They were probably hoping to bait legionaries into exposing themselves before unleashing proper volleys, I thought. I was not much enjoying fighting the Legions of Terrors. I’d much preferred having that particular war machine on my side. Still, the reason I grimaced and gestured for our warband to crouch into the bushes wasn’t the crossbowmen: it was the few skulking shapes at the bottom of that same hill. Goblins. Sappers.

“We have to hit the hill from here,” I whispered.

I got odd looks for it.

“There’s sappers afoot,” I flatly stated. “Every approach to that hill will be mined to the Hells and back. We try to walk through a field they set up and maybe two of us will make it there.”

Maybe. If the sappers were having an off night. Names helped you against a lot of things but stepping into a gout of goblinfire wasn’t one of them. We found defensible grounds, a dip between to hills that had just low enough a rim that I could look at the enemy crossbowmen and aim, and Aquiline’s men spread out around me in a loose circle. I silently gestured for Ishaq to keep an eye on the Lady of Tartessos when she wasn’t looking but kept the Silver Huntress close. She had sharp reflexes and I’d not be able to move much while weaving Night. I breathed out, looking at the sky, and struck my staff against the rocky ground.

“Sun’s gone, Sisters,” I spoke in Crepuscular. “Let’s play, yeah?”

The power came eagerly when I called, as if to make up for its sluggishness during the day. In a low murmur I spoke my prayers, shaping the working as I drew more and more Night into myself. I’d expected the enemy to catch on to our presence sooner or later, but that wasn’t exactly what we got. Suddenly – when I had gathered enough Night into one place, I guessed – there was a ripple of magic in the air and a red circle of light formed about two hundred feet above our position. You know, revealing it to anyone looking. I paused in my incantation.

“Fuck you,” I feelingly told the sky, and also Akua Sahelian.

The enemy must have been expecting us because it couldn’t have been longer than a hundred heartbeats before they struck. They came out of the night like ghosts, a single line of twenty legionaries. But these were not regulars or heavies, I thought. Their armour was light, leather and breastplates, and none of them wore helmets. Their hair flew freely in the wind, long and dark and oddly animated. Each bore a single sword and a long spear. They… didn’t move right. They were beautiful, I thought, dark-skinned and dark-eyed but with impossibly smooth skin. My mind was being clouded, I recognized. After I bit my lip hard the beauty waned. Their skin was smooth as corpse’s because that was exactly what they were.

Not a single one of them breathed.

They struck in silence, three warriors dying before Alexis could warn them we were under attack, but I kept whispering my prayers. Almost there. Aquiline and Ishaq took on one of the enemies together, the Osena hooking his spear and dragging him close enough the Barrow Sword could take off his head. The legionary exploded into a spray of dust and rotten flesh, armour falling into the rocks. The Silver Huntress parried a spear tossed at my side then threw her own with a flash of Light, slaying the sender without batting an eye. The proximity of Light almost destabilized my working, but with a soft curse and desperate haste I compensated. Just a moment now, aligning it just right…

“Burn them all,” I hissed in Crepuscular.

The circle of black flame erupted around the crossbowmen, rising the height of three men before spinning inwards. The crossbowmen died screaming, but I was not done. The circle kept spinning on itself, until I snapped my staff against the ground and it exploded outwards in a wave. I heard screaming from legionaries not mine as munitions began to explode, the brush burning bright as the wave of incineration continued outwards until it gutted. I breathed out, brow touched with sweat, and drew my sword. The animated corpses that’d been attacking us – vampires? – were retreating, I found. Half the Levantines that’d come with us were dead and Ishaq was bleeding from a bite mark on his face, but otherwise we’d made out decently.

Eye scanning the night, I found that in the hills there were glints of steel under moonlight. More legionaries. Pulling back, I realized. And so were those that’d been fighting in the breach, though the Dominion pressed them close and the crossbowmen Juniper had sent took their toll. Maybe a fifth of those five hundred would make it out. But why were they retreating already? It made little sense. If they feared what I could do with the Night, why attack after nightfall in the first place? Feeling like I’d missed something I led us back to camp in a hurry. And there was something wrong, I noticed it immediately. Too many legionary tents were empty, and those that weren’t were being brought down. Packed away.

I found Juniper and with her my answers. My marshal looked wretched. I thought it was a wound, at first, but her body was fine.

“She played us,” Juniper got out, words tumbling out of her fanged mouth like a confession. “She left her camp, Cat. The Legions are marching on us right now, they’re most the way across the valley, and we can’t fight. Not with the entire Eleventh out in the hills waiting to flank us.”

My fingers clenched.

“You’re saying we need to retreat,” I slowly said.

“We’re in disarray, flanked and our camp fortifications are incomplete,” the Hellhound said. “If we fight, we’ll lose.”

I rocked back in shock. She knew, and I knew she did, that a retreat at night with the enemy nipping at our heels was going to get bloody. Goblin skirmishers were going to scrape of our rearguard raw, and we’d be both slow and vulnerable on the move. That she was still arguing we needed to retreat could only mean that she was genuinely afraid that our army was going to get destroyed if we did not.

“Where would we even go?” I got out.

“Further north,” she said. “Near the Jini Plateau, close to Nioqe Lake.”

That wasn’t a strategic position, I thought. Or even a tactical one. There were no real gains to be made by going there except not being crushed. That was how bad out situation had gotten. Numbly, I nodded my permission. I needed a drink, I thought, before we got going. Gods but my leg hurt.

I could not remember the last time we had been this brutally outmaneuvered.

—

We cut our losses and ran. It was not as hard a retreat as it could have been, Marshal Nim perhaps wary of engaging in a full pitched battle in the dark, but it cost us more than I cared to admit. As we fled I looked back and froze, for in the distance I saw the Black Knight’s fortified camp was burning bright under the starry sky. It took me a moment to understand. Of course she was burning that camp. She no longer needed it, after all.

She’d just taken ours.

Chapter 15: Pull

“Only a child pretends there is value in defeat. Fool they who praise a bleeding wound.”

– Dread Empress Massacre

Since we’d come crashing down into this godforsaken region three days ago, we had lost one thousand six hundred and thirty-two soldiers.

The last count came in from the Dominion midmorning, as they were less used to counting their dead. The Levantines had borne the brunt of those losses, almost a quarter of the men they’d brought east now dead. In the exchange we’d killed maybe a quarter of that number in enemy soldiers, mostly through skirmishes that had gone our way. The best that could be said of the last few days was that we’d avoided a rout, not that this narrow avoidance meant our situation was anything less than terrible. We’d camped near the northern shore of Nioqe Lake, beyond the long shadows cast by the Jini Plateau, and while we were somewhat safe at the moment our strategic situation had taken a sharp turn for the worse.

The mood was grim when our war council assembled. The usual few slunk their way into the tent: Vivienne and Brandon Talbot, Juniper and Aisha, Zola Osei. Of the two lordlings only one showed today, Razin Tanja. Aquiline was attending to their captains, who were not pleased with the way this campaign was going. It’d not escaped anyone’s attention that the Legions of Terror seemed to be focusing their efforts on the Dominion, which had brought old tensions to the fore – there was some talk in Levantine ranks of my Praesi legionaries being traitors, of there being some conspiracy afoot, and it needed to be stamped out. Aquiline tended to be more popular with their warriors, so it was only natural that we’d ended up with Razin.

“It is no longer feasible to take back our camp,” General Zola crisply said. “I can only argue in favour of retreat now, west to the half-road and then further north to grounds less at our disadvantage.”

“That marches us straight into the Gale Ribbon,” Aisha said, shaking her head. “Even with wards prepared we’ll take losses.”

“We could attempt to take the burned camp in Moule Hills for our own,” Brandon Talbot suggested.

“They’ll have mined that,” I grunted. “If not worse.”

It was against Legion regulations to use devils but I wasn’t sure how closely followed a rule that would be without my father around to enforce it. A lot of high-placed officers had shared his opinion, but many of those were now dead. I wasn’t sure the Black Knight would push back if Malicia insisted, which she might. The Empress would prefer burning contracts to losing men, at this stage of the war.

“And even if we swing wide away from Kala Hills to avoid giving battle, there is nothing to stop her from simply marching down and getting into a position to flanks us,” Aisha said. “Lady Black has made it clear that she will not let us entrench.”

“Is a ramp to access the plateau feasible?” Razin asked. “We could avoid the valley that so troubles us entirely by accessing the heights.”

Looks were shared. That was the closest thing to a good idea we’d heard so far.

“I’ll consult with Sapper-General Pickler,” I said.

“Even if it is something our sappers can accomplish,” General Zola began, “Marshal Nim will not leave us to build that ramp unmolested. We would need to stake out a more defensible position.”

I glanced at Juniper, who sat at the other end of the table in silence. She had been following the conversation attentively, but there was a peculiar look on her face. She had not once opened her mouth to give an opinion this entire council and did not break the streak to answer Zola.

“Send out riders to find one,” I ordered the general. “Even if Pickler says it can’t be done, it’ll be useful information to have under our belt.”

“I will see to the roster,” Aisha volunteered, smoothly rising to her feet.

She threw a worried glanced at Juniper, who did not meet her eyes. The council ended without much ceremony, the tent emptying until there were only three people left: Vivienne, me and the still-silent Hellhound. Brushing back a strand that’d slipped her braid, the princess was the first to speak up.

“You haven’t said a word all morning,” Vivienne stated.

Juniper let out a long breath, chair creaking under her.

“I haven’t,” she said.

A moment passed. She did not continue.

“We’ve had setbacks before,” I finally said. “And we’re far from defeated, we just-”

“I should resign,” the Hellhound interrupted me. “I can’t, I know it would be a bad look in the middle of a campaign, but I should. Command should informally be passed to Zola regardless.”

I balked.

“That’s not even slightly a good idea,” I said. “Zola’s solid, but she doesn’t have the spark. Nim will eat her alive.”

Hakram had been right when he’d warned I should temper my expectations of Zola Osei, as he often was. Hune’s replacement was not her equal, much less Juniper’s. She was the kind of commander that made for a respectable general but fell short of marshal talents.

“Nim is eating me alive, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Juniper barked out. “How many times are you going to make excuses for me, Catherine? I’m losing.”

“I’m not making excuses,” I flatly replied. “We’ve made some mistakes and paid for them but-”

“I should have asked you to send Named out in the hills, not just scouts,” Juniper growled. “The Eleventh wouldn’t have caught us out. The Order should have been out near the vanguard, not near the supply wagons – they could have chased Nim’s horse before they shredded the Levantines.”

“You’re not an oracle, Juniper,” I bit out. “We’d be having a very different conversation if she’d sent the horse after the wagons instead, and she might have attacked the moment we flushed out the Eleventh so-”

“I am not,” Juniper of the Red Shields quietly said, “equal to this task.”

I slammed my open palm onto the table.

“What the fuck is this?” I snarled. “She played her cards better, Juniper. We lost a few hands. So what? The goddamned pot is still on the table for anyone to take.”

I heard her hands creak as large fingers tightened into fists.

“I’m not sure it all came back,” Juniper hoarsely said. “After Malicia pulled her hooks. That I’m still all of me.”

And just for that look in my friend’s eyes, I wished I could kill Alaya of Satus twice.

“It did,” I flatly said.

The Pilgrim had told me as much and I had no reason to doubt him. There’d been physical scars it would take her years to overcome, but her mind was fine.

“I will not be another orc cripple for you to lug about, Catherine,” Juniper hissed. “Don’t you see it’s even worse if it’s all there? It just means I was never in the same league. If I’m no longer fit, if I ever was in the first place, and-”

“Do you genuinely believe I wouldn’t have advocated your removal if I believed you unfit for your office?”

Vivienne’s voice cut through our rising anger like a knife. Juniper rocked back like she’d been slapped, but she was listening.

“Catherine loves you like family,” Vivienne calmly continued. “She might excuse weakness out of sentiment. Would I, Hellhound? We have an understanding, but we both know I would not put you above Callowan lives.”

“You’re not a general,” Juniper replied, but it was weak and by the tone of her voice she knew it.

She just wasn’t convinced. Didn’t want to be, maybe couldn’t be. I grit my teeth. Though I was not unfamiliar with the flagellant’s whip, this was not the time for my marshal to indulge in it. We were already in deep enough trouble without losing our finest military mind halfway through a campaign.

“Neither are you, at the moment,” Vivienne evenly replied. “Perhaps you should attend to those duties before further defeat ensues, Marshal Juniper.”

The orc’s voice was stilted as she excused herself, almost fleeing the tent. I slumped back into my seat. Vivienne rose to pour two glasses of wine, pressing one into my hand.

“Fuck,” I eloquently said.

It’d not been good in the first place, but I suspected I might have made it worse.

“I can’t fix this,” Vivienne told me. “It’s not who we are to each other. She doesn’t call me Warlord, or ever will.”

I drank, biting down on my first answer. It was bitter enough on my tongue it almost spoiled the wine.

“I’m not sure how to fix this either,” I said. “Winning? If we could beat Nim so easily we’d already be doing it.”

“There are some who agree with her, you know,” Vivienne murmured. “Not just our countrymen, who sometimes mutter for the wrong reasons. Officers that were brought in from the Legions. They say she came up too quick, more out of closeness to you than merit. That a few College tricks and being Istrid Knightsbane’s daughter aren’t enough to warrant her being raised so high.”

I scoffed.

“I didn’t pick her name out of a hat, Viv,” I said. “Just yesterday she saved us a rout. How many officers would have figured out the Order needed to be sent to relieve us before the enemy cavalry even came out? It’s not her that’s the problem, it’s that we’re fighting the Legions of Terror on their picked grounds with the deck stacked in the favour. This was never going to be easy.”

I’d ridden Legion war doctrine like a warhorse over the back of half the fucking continent. It wasn’t going to stop being effective just because I wasn’t the only one on the field using it.

“I know that,” Vivienne said. “So do most people who matter.”

My heiress paused, offering me a wan smile.

“Does Juniper?”

—

“You might as well be asking me to build a ramp to the moon,” Pickler bluntly told me.

“I’m sure Ol’ Sorcerous would appreciate the way down, but my ambitions are slightly more grounded,” I easily replied.

Well, more or less. I only wanted to bind the entire continent to a treaty that would fundamentally change how Named would operate. You know, summer fair gift stuff.

“Funny,” my Sapper-General said, tone dry as sand. “I can’t do it, Catherine, at least not in the time you want it done. We didn’t have the wood to build a ramp that size in the first place and we lost too many of our stakes when we abandoned the camp last night. Unless you want me to build it out of stone we cut from the cliffside, it can’t be done.”

I eyed her with alarm. I’d not known our situation was so bad with the sudes. If we lost too many of the large stakes my legionaries carried to easily raise palisades then we’d be dependent on local wood. Of which there wasn’t much. The most we’d seen was the brushlands in the Kala Hills, which the Loyalist Legions now held.

“We can still raise palisades properly, can’t we?” I asked.

“Camp size’s been reduced. We’re toeing the line for sanitation,” Pickler admitted. “If not for the priests we’d be at risk of sicknesses.”

Well, it’d been a day for pleasant surprises so far. Why break that lovely trend?

“We need to do something, Pickler,” I got out.

“We’re not reaching that plateau, Catherine,” she said, then hesitated. “But I have an… idea. I need to look at some things first, though. See if it’s truly viable.”

I cocked an eyebrow.

“You’re not going to give me more than that?”

“No point in raising false hopes,” Pickler said. “I’ll find you when I’m sure.”

I was inclined to poke at her for at least a few scraps, but she was saved by the appearance of a phalange. The young Taghreb informed me that Archer was back in camp and she’d brought a package with her, which spurred my curiosity. I met with Vivienne as I limped my way back, as she’d been sent for too, the pair of us entering the tent together to the sight of Archer dumping a large cloth sack on the carved table. I paused.

“Is whatever’s in that bag breathing?” I bluntly asked.

“I would hope so,” Vivienne said. “That’s one of the abduction bags for the Jacks, if she got blood all over it I’ll be cross.”

Ah, Vivienne. Sometimes she said these things and I acutely felt the loss it was for my gender that she was only interested in the other one.

“Why, hello Archer,” Indrani brightly said. “Lovely to see you, how did your night go?”

I raised my staff then poked experimentally at the bag, ignoring her entirely.

“I think it’s a person,” I mused.

“She might have finally snapped and done in Masego,” Vivienne suggested. “There’s only so many times a woman can have her words nitpicked before blood ensues.”

“If you don’t stop I’ll put him back where I found him,” Indrani threatened.

I had to bite down on a ‘Masego? It’d be a walk, but I suppose you could’ that very much wanted to wriggle its way past my lips. It was rare that I got to gang up on one of the Woe instead of getting ganged up on, so it was only with reluctance that I moved on to business.

“And where would that be?” I asked.

Theatrically, Archer opened the bag to reveal the bruised face of an unconscious dark-skinned man in what I’d guess to be his early twenties.

“Kala Fortress,” Indrani said. “You’re looking at Sokoro Abara, third child of Lord Abara of Kala. Caught him while he was serving as a go-between between the fortress and the Legions.”

My brow rose. That was quite the catch. More than enough to make up for her absence last night, considering she wouldn’t have made much of a difference in the fight. I stayed silent a little longer, choosing my words.

“I know that look,” Indrani accused. “I did good but you want to insult me anyways so you’re moving around the sentence.”

“Of course not,” I lied.

“You did good, Archer,” Vivienne told her with a warm smile.

Indrani preened.

“You know,” my successor casually added, “for a sullen wench.”

I grinned even as wails of Callowan treachery began filling up the tent, already thinking about all the answers we were going to get out of that man.

—

Sokoro Abara was going to be a hard nut to crack, I figured.

Akua had once told me that a lot of Wasteland nobles trained their children in methods to resist torture and in my experience Praesi aristocrats needed to be made brutally aware that their situation was desperate before the veneer of arrogance even began to break. So we did the works: put him in a tent enchanted for darkness with the sole magelight facing him, had the Concocter feed him something to keep him slightly dazed and I handled the interrogation personally with only Vivienne at my side. Sokoro Abara woke up, blinking away the sleep, and then took in the sight of my being seated across from him and Vivienne standing behind me.

There was a pregnant pause.

“I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” he swore.

Well. I was feeling a little cheated, but there was a saying about gift horses. The young noble was quite frank about how he was not even slightly interested in dying or being tortured for his family’s sake, and instead offered information quite freely when asked. His position as the envoy between the fortress and Legions – he informed us quite bitterly that such a task had of course been beneath his elder half-siblings – and his confessed tendency to open sealed scrolls to read them meant he’d been in a good position to learn about the unfolding debacle.

“The Eleventh was in the hills for two days before you marched there,” he told us. “They went through Risas, using the shepherd paths. The Black Knight wanted them in position to strike at your army from behind should you fight in the valley.”

It was an odd feeling to know that our disastrous vanguard action had still been better than the likely alternative: picking a fight with Marshal Nim in the valley and getting smashed in the back by a full legion. Though it’d been a costly thing to learn that General Lucretia was hiding in the hills, better we learn it now than when a battle was on the line. He also had actionably useful information, of the recent kind.

“Lady Black ordered that the wells to both the east and west of the Kala Hills should be poisoned today,” Sokoro told us. “She had to ask us permission first, as it is still father’s land, but he bent over backwards to agree. Lady Warlock has offered to broker entering under Wolof’s protection on very favourable terms, so there’s little he won’t do to please her.”

My lips thinned. I could deduce why Marshal Nim would give the order easily enough. She wanted us to be stuck near Nioqe Lake, knowing that if we strayed too far from those shores we’d have no water source to draw from. Now that the Black Knight had put us in a corner, she meant for us to stay there.

“What do you know of Marshal Nim’s plans?” Vivienne asked.

“Not much,” Sokoro admitted. “She was raised under the Carrion Lord, you know. Like all his old soldiers she has high-handed manners even in the lands of her betters.”

I doubted this man was Nim’s better in any possible sense of the word – except passing through small doorways, maybe? – but I’d gain nothing from telling him that.

“Not much is still something,” I smiled.

He smiled back and asked for assurances about his captivity. I guaranteed him absence of torture and fair treatment if he talked – which he already had, but apparently did not know – yet when I offered right of ransom he scoffed.

“Father won’t pay,” Sokoro said. “I’d rather you promise wine instead, I imagine being a prisoner will be dreadfully dull.”

“We can arrange that,” Vivienne promised.

‘Not much’ hadn’t been him playing coy, unfortunately. He’d overheard useful bits but no plan. Nim’s legionaries were apparently convinced that she wanted to avoid giving us a pitched battle, which I had no trouble believing. The most interesting morsel was that apparently General Wheeler had been asked about raising field fortifications that would hem in the Army of Callow around Nioqe Lake. It was not a sure thing, but in my opinion it seemed likely she actually intended to try. Malicia did not want to wreck my army, just put me in a position where I was forced to negotiate. Bottled up against the shores of the lake with a larger force or impassable terrain encircling me as my supplies ran out would achieve that.

The best possible outcome of being forced into that corner was managing a stalemate until Sepulchral and the Rebel Legions arrived, but I had my doubts we’d manage as much. Besides, if it was the fight Marshal Nim was after then it was the last one we wanted to give her. Which meant moving before we got cornered.

Time to see if Pickler had a way for us to slip the noose before it got tightened.

—

“I told you that I can’t get us on that plateau,” Pickler hissed out in irritation.

“But you have something else,” I pressed.

“It’s a gamble,” my Sapper-General admitted. “But I believe it’ll work.”

She showed me to the inside of a tent where a tenth of sappers were chattering away as they worked, cutting away at wood and hammering in nails. It took me a moment to realize what I was looking at: one of our supply wagons, stripped of its wheels and bound tighter. Was that wax I was smelling?

“I can’t get you on the plateau,” Pickler repeated, standing at my side. “But there’s another way east. Nioqe Lake.”

“You want to make a pontoon bridge across,” I realized, then frowned. “We have enough wood?”

“If we use every supply wagon,” she replied. “And a significant portion of our stakes.”

She’d not been underselling it when she’d called that a gamble, then. If the enemy sunk that bridge, or even just prevented us from recovering it after we crossed, we’d be in heaps of trouble. As in, might seriously have to consider cutting a deal trouble: without wagons to carry our supplies we’d slow to a crawl even using roads. Out there on wild land, where there weren’t any, we’d be snails to the Black Knight’s hawk.

“How long would it take you to get it done?” I asked.

“We made a pattern, so I could have it ready for deployment by sundown if you don’t steal any of my sappers,” Pickler said. “Trouble is, Catherine, I don’t have a way to prevent them seeing us make it.”

Which would allow Nim to contest the crossing, the last thing I wanted. I clenched my fingers then unclenched them. There was a way. I didn’t like using it as a ploy, it felt disrespectful, but I’d do it anyway. The question was, then whether it was truly our way out. Sure, it’d get us out of Marshal Nim’s planned encirclement and on the other side of the lake if things went fine. What would we do once there, though? Taking a gamble to flee blindly was exactly the kind of mistake the Black Knight was waiting to capitalize on. She’d pushed her army hard, striking at us repeatedly over the same day and night, because she knew that our officer corps and general staff were of lesser quality than hers. We were, as an army, simply more prone to making mistakes when time grew short.

That was the difference training made.

The way I saw it, the point of crossing Nioqe Lake would be marching south afterwards. I’d been Juniper’s original plan to do as much, if from a significantly better position, and I still believed it was a sound notion. The problem now was Kala Fortress. It was a certainty the Loyalist Legions would move to cover it faster than we could get there – needing to fish out and rebuild our supply wagons ensured as much – so Nim was likely to entrench by the walls. That’d been true in the original iteration of the Hellhound’s plan as well, but our answer to that had simply been going around the Legions by marching further east before cutting south. That was no longer an option, because as I’d recently learned from our prisoner the Black Knight had ordered all the wells east of Kala Hills poisoned.

I wasn’t sure how far that order would be applied in practice but given that Nim had light cavalry to spare I wouldn’t bet on it being a small slice of land. We could last maybe two weeks without refreshing our water supplies if we began rationing immediately and nothing went wrong, which made risking an eastern march rolling the dice. If we got lucky it might rain and be the drinkable kind of rain instead of the brimstone kind that burned – a legitimate worry in these parts, Aisha had informed me – but that was a large if. Especially when the mage cadres of the Loyalist Legions had shown they were capable of large-scale weather manipulation rituals. Even if rainstorms gathered, there was nothing to prevent the Legions from just dispersing them.

No, the reliable water was south and down the half-road. And there was a set of fortifications on top of that road: Kala Fortress. If we could take it before Nim got there, we’d be in a very defensible position and sitting over her supply line. We’d be putting her in a corner instead of the other way around. I could maybe sneak a small force to that keep before the Black Knight got there, I finally thought, but nowhere large enough to actually take a well-defended castle. Which meant I needed to figure out how to bust open that lock before we got started on this plan.

“Catherine?” Pickler hesitantly asked.

I had gone silent for a long while, I supposed. I clenched my fingers, then unclenched them. Taking Kala Fortress wasn’t really the issue, was it? As in, it did not need to be in the Army of Callow’s possession. I just needed it not to be in the hands of the Loyalist Legions. And that was something I might just have the tool to achieve.

“Get started on the work,” I said, then bit my tongue. “Talk to Juniper and General Zola first, but you have my full backing for this. Unless they object stridently, it’s happening.”

Leaving her quite bemused at the sudden turn, I set to talking around the key to the lock.

—

Sokoro Abara widely smiled, showing slightly yellowing teeth. His breath smelled like the wine we’d promised him and Vivienne had evidently delivered on.

“I do have some friends behind the walls, Your Majesty,” he said. “Though it behooves me to ask why I should introduce them to you. I am, after all, a prisoner.”

“You misunderstand me,” I said.

He flinched, as if preparing for a blow, but none followed.

“There would be no need for an introduction, as you would be the one speaking to them,” I idly continued.

His eyes narrowed.

“You’d release me?” he asked.

“Release is a strong word,” I thinly smiled. “Tell me, Sokoro, how would you like to be Lord of Kala?”

He stayed silent a moment, considering. If the Army of Callow put him in that seat Malicia might take offence in the aftermath should she beat us, but that was a relatively distant concern. He could place himself under a High Seat’s protection should he grow too worried of retribution.

“Part of the castle and the soldiers would back me over my siblings,” Sokoro finally said, tone even. “Not over my father. He is a well-respected man. I also have… concerns about my mother’s safety.”

“Your father is an eminently mortal man,” I said. “And we can whisk away your mother before we strike.”

Scribe had gotten to make her latest Assassin. We’d use it. The dark-skinned man’s eyes brightened at my words. It was what he’d wanted to hear. Wasn’t like he was ever going to rise high except through my good graces: everything he’d said about his half-siblings implied a degree of enmity. He might get cast out after the death of Lord Abara, and that was assuming none in the castle decided to… err on the side of caution.

“And what would you have of me in return?” he asked.

“All I want is a friend ruling that fortress,” I smiled. “Perhaps your help in learning the lay of the land. Nothing onerous.”

He looked hesitant. Right, Praesi. I’d get more trust out of him if I bled him some.

“Full use of your water is what I want most, of course,” I said. “I’ll not require your soldiers to fight by the side of the Army of Callow.”

“I might be amenable to such an arrangement,” Sokoro Abara lightly said.

“Good,” I smiled, and to his alarm the darkness began thickening around us.

Faint sounds could be heard, almost like cawing, and my smiled broadened.

“I’ll want an oath out of you, my friend,” I said. “Just in case, you see. Trust is hard come by in these troubled times.”

“It is only natural,” he stiffly replied. “On what would you have me swear?”

Night began filling the room, Sve Noc granting this a sliver of their attention, and I answered him.

—

In a ring outside our camp, one thousand six hundred and thirty-two corpses were dragged out on the plains and assembled in great piles. Mages came out in lines, setting fire to them with what little wood we could spare for this – which wasn’t much. As a result they had to stay and keep feeding more mageflame to the dead bodies, which took powerful flames to burn. The result was plumes of thick, guttering smoke that rose up into the afternoon sky. Enough of them that it was as if a curtain had been pulled in front of the camp.

Pickler’s sappers had their cover.

Meanwhile I set about giving the enemy something to react to, instead of leaving them to operate unhindered. I first picked a place on open grounds with a good view at the Black Knight’s fortified camp. Hierophant came with me, in expectation of the enemy’s answer, and the two of us stood out like black-plumed birds out on the rocky plains. A bodyguard of twenty knights had ridden with us, but I’d refused more. There would be no point. I took the lead, pulling down my hood and beginning to murmur under the pounding sun. Night was like a lazy brat refusing to get up, but I had time to spare. I coaxed it out properly and the Sisters helped me with the alignment. Zeze could have done it through the Observatory, but I wanted him free to act.

The same ring of red light as last night appeared over our heads, but I’d told Masego to leave it. No need to warn the enemy of his presence too early. Once I’d gathered the power to me, though, I told him to get ready.

“I am all eyes, Catherine,” he replied.

High above the enemy camp I ripped open a gate into Arcadia. There was a reason we’d not tried to keep moving through the faerie realm after being stranded: out here it was a nightmarish mirror of the Wasteland. Impossible storms that toppled mountains, landslides that charged like armies and rains that drew furrows in the ground. That was without even getting into the… fauna. Maybe a few Named could slip through, but entire companies? It’d be madness to even try. There was no lack of water, though, and that was what I’d been after. After a few heartbeats a flood began pouring, just in time for power to begin rising in the enemy camp.

Time to see what Akua had cooked up to handle my signature trick. I let out a startled snort when, instead of some fancy spell, what appeared was instead another gate. About the same size and placed below mine, like a bucket for the flood to be poured into. Well, that was certainly a solution. Nice sorcery, it’d be a shame if something happened to it.

“Zeze?” I asked.

“Wrest,” Hierophant replied, and the world rippled.

The enemy gate rippled but did not break. I saw Masego frown and dimly felt power bloom in the distance again.

“Clever mage,” Hierophant murmured. “They are feeding the gate further magic so that I cannot fully wrest it-”

“Keep them stuck, then,” I grunted.

I was not without tricks of my own. My gate began to pull together, like a ball of twine being rolled up, and the flood of water ended. But with a grunt of effort I dragged the ‘twine’ to the side and down, only to begin unfolding it again. Sweat soaked my back and the gate was noticeably smaller than my first, but before long the flood began pouring again. About a hundred feet above Loyalist Legion camp, it hit transparent panes of sorcery. They buckled but held. Water began sliding down, revealing the broad shape of a dome. Masego tutted.

“The structure is too simple, Sahelian,” he said. “Here is why we want more intricate escapements.”

His hand whipped out, the ripples of his aspect strengthening, and the enemy gate blew up in blinding flash of light. The air thrummed with power as there was a sound of thunder, the enchantment protecting the camp shivering – and, in patches, failing. I’d kept my gate opened, and like an avalanche of bricks the water fell down on the enemy through a doze holes. Mages patched up the hole quick enough with shields, but not before we did some damage. I kept the gate open as long as I could, Hierophant swatting down a few other attempts to block it, but their mages were focusing on protection so there was no further break.

Didn’t matter. I’d got what I came for: I’d rattled their cage and something else they’d not notice until it was too late.

“The angle for your adjusted gate was far from the best you could have used,” Masego noted. “Too much to the east of the camp.”

“I aimed at what I wanted, don’t you worry about it,” I smiled.

I’d emptied half a lake on the eastern part of the camp, and though it’d rolled off the dome the important part was where it’d rolled off. Into Kala Hills, into the same paths the Eleventh had used to attack us last night. The same that Nim might be tempted to use as a shortcut to attack us when we crossed the lake.

Now they were a mess of mud and water, impossible to march an army through for at least a few days.

—

We launched a night attack.

It was the best way to cover our crossing, General Zola said. Marshal Juniper did not object. Five thousand of the Army of Callow and a thousand Levantine skirmishers marched out, every Named at hand save for me going with them. They were to shake the enemy and then retreat, actually fighting as little as possible. I even poured Night into a trinket and left it for Hierophant to wield: that ring of red light was a good way to feign my presence where I wasn’t. The Loyalist Legions would be very wary of attacking me after dark now that I’d had some time to prepare.

It was nerve-wracking to watch them march out without going with them, but I had other duties. Sokoro Abara was put on a horse and we kept our most mobile force in reserve: the moment the pontoon bridge was finished, the Order of the Broken Bells would ride across in full force. The knights were our change to get to Kala Fortress before the Black Knight could, much as they might be needed in the small battle about to take place in the plains.

It took hours, to my rising restlessness, before the bridge was done. We didn’t wait until it was; as soon as Pickler told me they’d reached the shallows on the other side, I saddled up and led the Order across. There’d been no news about the battle in the plains yet. We rode through the shallow water and then up the beach, the townsfolk of Risas barring their gates and hiding as we rode past. After that, the hasty ride in the dark was surprisingly boring. Sometimes a horse fell and a knight had to pull back and change their mount, but otherwise we went untroubled.

We rode down the eastern length of the Kala Hills, then swung around west to approach the keep itself. We rested the horses before coming into sight, not only to allow the beasts to catch their breath. Scribe and her almost-Named had come through for me: waiting for us in a fold of the rocks was Sokoro Abara’s mother, as I’d promised. I gave him a moment to reassure her – and confirm through someone he trusted we truly had assassinated his father – and then we saddled up again.

Kala Fortress was a grim old thing propped up against the side of the eponymous hills, with tall and thick wall of stones surrounding the small town at the bottom of a squat castle. Sokoro went in ahead with Assassin secretly shadowing him and contacted his partisans. There was some violence before they seized control of the outer gates, but once they were swung open my knights flooded into the town. We struck quick enough the castle gates were overridden before they could be closed, and with Sokoro serving as our emissary a surrender was not overly difficult to secure.

I had to blow up his sister’s head, she was the fight-to-the-end type, but the sight of that cooled ardours among the hardliners. Within the hour he was Lord Sokoro Abara and his half-brother in a cell, which was when I finally left out a breath of relief. Our part of this, at least, had gone well. It was past Early Bell, but we’d taken the fortress. Now all we could do was wait.

I got the news in waves. The first rider was sent by Juniper once the force we’d sent to stir up Nim had begun to retreat. The skirmishing had gone well and it looked like the Black Knight had preferred marching out with her full strength arrayed rather than pursuing us half-baked. She must have thought we were baiting her into a trap. The second rider informed me that the Loyalist Legions had sent out their entire horse to harass us when they’d realized we had raised a pontoon bridge but that our rearguard was holding. The crossing had begun and it was expected that the Army of Callow would be across before the enemy infantry arrived.

The third rider wasn’t from Juniper at all, it was from the Black Knight. We caught the man and killed him, but all it’d do was slow the realization that we were now at her back. The fourth rider brought harsher news: the enemy cavalry had set fire to the pontoon bridge before the last of my men crossed, leaving three companies stranded on the wrong side of the lake. General Zola had ordered them to surrender, which they had. The rest of the Army of Callow, however, had crossed. A detachment would stay to try to salvage as much of the bridge as possible, but the march to Kala had begun. The Black Knight sent a pair of companies to check the fortress, in the hours after, but I sallied with the Order and rode them down.

There were no survivors and Marshal Nim did not try us again.

By dawn my army was camped beneath the walls of Kala Fortress, the few sappers Pickler had been able to spare looking into setting up defensive positions. By Morning Bell our supplies had caught up. By Noon Bell horns sounded to call the beleaguered Army of Callow to fighting positions, because our forward elements had brought word: the Loyalist Legions had formed a battle line in the valley and were now beginning to march towards us. Lady Black had decided she’d rather fight than let herself be cornered.

An hour past Noon Bell, as I sat on Zombie’s back, I looked at the retreating Loyalist Legions and laughed until my belly hurt. It wasn’t us that’d given them pause, no. We were in good battle order, ready to receive them, but it was a banner that’d done the trick. Atop Moule Hills, on Nim’s left flank, a banner had been raised: a vulture cradling a white skull, with green and yellow lines emanating from it. And under the colours horse and infantry stood, poised on the heights and looking down at us.

Sepulchral’s vanguard had arrived even earlier than expected, and now everyone’s plans were merrily burning under the afternoon sun.

Beatification II

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Interlude: North I

“You cannot flee from fate, it is the road beneath your feet.”

– Levantine saying

The grass was coated with dust, blown in from a southern storm. It made for slippery footing and that was Borghold Bluesmile had tried her luck: she’d thought the dust would make it harder on his prosthetic leg. As if Masego would ever make such shoddy work. Hakram slapped away the other orc’s axe with his own, nimbly letting her pass by him, then flipped it in his hand and tapped her shoulder with the butt from behind. There was raucous laughter from the circle of warriors around them, fists thundering against shields. It’d been an insult to hold back the blow, a sign of disdain.

Adjutant had implied he was teaching a child, not duelling an equal.

“You fucking tame dog,” Borghold furiously snarled, turning around. “Servant to wallerspawn, whore for-”

She struck at him when he took a step forward, hard and blind, but he didn’t even bother to avoid it. He adjusted the angle of his steel limb, let the blow bounce off, and his dead hand snatched her throat. He squeezed hard enough the insults replaced by a gurgling choke, raising her high enough her feet left the ground. He met her eyes with his own, patient, and let the fear seep in. Then his bony fingers tightened, a hard warning, and he dropped her. Borghold fell in a sprawl, coughing spittle through her blue-painted teeth.

“Howling at the moon doesn’t turn a hound into a wolf,” Hakram snorted, then spat to the side.

Fists on shields, the sound drowning out even his opponent’s coughing. He did not bother to help her up, as he had some other foes. The Brass Wings Clan was no enemy of his, this was not a test or declaration of enmity. Borghold Bluesmile had just wanted to raise her reputation as a champion by bloodying him in the wake of so many more famous names failing. Hakram left the circle, shields parting for him but even as a few eager young greenhorns sought to offer him celebratory aragh he caught sight of a man waiting for him.

There were few orcs as tall as Hakram and even fewer still that were taller, but Oguz the Lame was one of them. Juniper’s father had been known as Oguz Sharphand once, one of the most famous champions of the Steppes until both his legs were broken in a fall. Even with a shaman’s attention they’d never healed quite right, ending the warrior’s stride just as he hit his pride. Still, he’d kept the edge he’d had when he’d given Grem One-Eye his sobriquet and served as the chief of the Red Shields in all but names for decades while General Istrid served in the Legions.

He’d been proclaimed her successor, after her death, which Hakram counted as a blessing. Oguz the Lame made as useful an ally as dangerous he would have made an enemy. Adjutant drank a mouthful of aragh, slapping the stripling’s shoulder in thanks as he returned the skin and heading straight for the chieftain before warriors could try to rope him into a bout of celebratory drinking. Oguz, leaning on his slender blackwood stick, eyed Borghold with scorn.

“Kids,” Oguz the Lame rumbled, shaking his head. “There are times to make a reputation. A taratoplu is not one of them.”

It was an old term, that one. In translation it would mean truce-gathering but that would be missing a crucial nuance. In Old Kharsum, what the clans of the far north still called the noble tongue, taratoplu was the first of a pair of bond-words. The second was ordutoplu, which meant camp-gathering. The Miezans had only ever bothered to learn the first and in their records they’d matched it to one of their own words after unwarrantedly making it a masculine: turbelus. Horde, in Lower Miezan. Though it had been laziness that’d led the conquerors to make that mistake, they’d stumbled into a partial truth. Taratoplu was as day to the night of ordutoplu, the gathering under truce meant to lead to the making of a great war camp.

Not even when the Steppes had been filled with talk of breaking ties with Ater under Grem One-Eye had a taratoplu been called. If the tales were to be believed, none had been called since the day the Broken Antler Horde was smashed into dust.

“We are what we are,” Hakram grunted back.

The older orc scoffed.

“They put too much in your heads, at the Carrion Lord’s college,” Oguz said. “Too many words meaning too little. The Blackspears aren’t wrong about that, even if they’re the bloody vulture whoresons.”

“The Blackspears would sell a wolf to a goat and boast of it,” Hakram snorted.

A favorite expression of his mother’s, implying terrible bad faith and shamelessness.

“And it’s serving them well,” Oguz the Lame replied, sucking at his fangs in displeasure. “Walk with me, Deadhand.”

Around the tall walls of the fortress of Chagoro, a sea of tents had spread out. Once the great warring clans had called a truce and gathered for talks, the others had flocked from all over the Steppes. Even some of the faraway clans who’d only ever known the Golden Bloom and other orcs had come, drawn by the rumours of a Horde gathering in the south. Never had Hakram ever seen so many of his people in one place: over two hundred banners reached for the sky, more than a hundred thousand orcs swarming under them. Not all warriors, but many. Hard to find out numbers when the camp was violent mayhem, not a semblance of organization to it.

Just finding your way to where you needed to go was a struggle: there was a reason the talks between the clans were held within the fortress, none allowed to set tents within.

“The Winter Hooves changed sides,” Oguz briskly said. “Their champions now drink with Troke’s and swear his fights will be theirs.”

Troke Snaketooth, chieftain of the Blackspear clan, was proving to be a problem. Hakram had not anticipated that the man would be so able at making allies, much less as ambitious as he was proving to be. The man had ridden the story of being the maker of this truce to greater influence, painting his greatest rivals – the Red Shields and the Howling Wolves – as warmongers who would rob all the Clans of the wealth of the south. Worse, his deeper game was only now starting to emerge. There had been no chief that could unite enough of the clans to have a claim at being acclaimed Warlord, not even Troke whose clans still had many enemies, but the Snaketooth had traded axe for arrow. He had put it to the clans that, in the Praesi way, a High Lord of the Steppes should be elected to lead the Clans into war south. Avoiding the title of Warlord, couching it all in terms of Praesi authority, had made the affair more palatable to clans who would have balked at proclaiming a Blackspear their Warlord.

Many had taken up the banner in the weeks since. Too many, and more were rallying by the day.

“The Winter Hooves were friends to the Howling Wolves,” Hakram quietly rumbled. “What changed?”

“They were friends to Grem One-Eye,” Oguz corrected. “They wanted him as Warlord, in the old days. Now there is no getting him back: even if the Tower returns him, how are we to be sure it is not just some creature riding his skin?”

There was an undertone of relish to the other orc’s word at the ruin of his old foe’s reputation, Hakram noted. That enmity had never quite faded, not helped by the old rumours that Grem was Juniper’s true father. Empty words, as far as Adjutant knew, but it was too tasty a slander not to be kept moving from mouth to ear.

“You’re saying they care more about the throne than who sits it,” he slowly said.

“Talk about thrones and you’ll get your throat ripped out,” Oguz warned. “But they’re looking for a stallion to ride, that much is true, and Troke’s the one prancing. They’re not the only ones, Deadhand. Praes is looking ripe but no one wants to try the Tower without a firm axehand to follow.”

On Rule, the fascinating treatise on politics that so many Procerans treated as a second Book of All Things, described this very phenomenon. In times of crisis, it wrote, authority will move from the periphery to the centre. In times of plenty, it will move form the centre to the periphery. Hakram had seen it unfold with his own eyes, the way a parade of enemies had pushed Callow deeper and deeper into Catherine’s embrace. Now, to his displeasure, he was seeing an opponent sail the same current. Clans would back Troke Snaketooth not because they were ardent supporters but because he was looking like the rising candidate.

The deed wasn’t done, though. And Troke had made that old and most unforgiving of Wasteland mistakes: you never wanted to be the one looking closest to claiming the Tower until you were ready to actually take it.

“The Hooves will bring over maybe three clans with them,” Hakram said. “That brings Troke to over sixty backers, by my count.”

“Just about,” Oguz said. “If he gets to eighty the tide will carry him over, mark my words. No one wants to be the last to proclaim a Warlord.”

That Troke would be High Lord of the Steppes instead would matter not a bit in practice, Hakram knew. Once he was in the chair, people would obey. It was what orcs did when someone was raised above. The Blackspear clan would make promises of lesser authority, of limits and restraint, but the moment Troke Snaketooth had a few victories under his belt he’d begin taking it back. And the Clans would let him, so long as he kept their axes red and their bellies full.

“Sixty is enough that the Weeping Arrows will be scared,” Hakram said. “They’re going to start bleeding clans and Inge Farsight knows if she drops under forty she’s done. She’ll negotiate now.”

“You want us to back her?” Oguz said, tone unconvinced. “Dag is still our man.”

“Unless you want your clan to serve as Troke’s footrest for the next twenty years, you don’t really have a choice,” Hakram bluntly replied. “Dag’s a hawk with lead wings, Grem’s cousin or not. He’s a solid champion but he’s not even chief to the Howling Wolves.”

The Howling Wolves clan was still led by Grem One-Eye, who they refused to name dead, though in practice much like the Red Shields had spent the last two decades led by Oguz in his wife’s name Dag Clawtoe had led the Howling Wolves as chief in all but name for his cousin.

“That lot is prickly,” Oguz warned. “They won’t like going from rider to wolf.”

“So we marry Dag to Inge,” Hakram said.

“She killed her last husband,” Oguz the Lame flatly replied.

“I’m sure Dag will enjoy the challenge,” Adjutant lied.

It needed to be done. The alliance between the Howling Wolves and the Red Shields was holding steady at forty clans but it’d not grown in days. Dag was respected but seen more a steward than a lord, to use Callowan parlance, and Oguz couldn’t be put forward because no one would follow a cripple. Their clans were by far the two largest of their alliance, and the warriors would not hear of putting forward the chief of a weaker clan as the figurehead for the alliance. Hakram knew there was no point in forcing the matter. Even if it worked, challenges would see the chief slain by his own allies before the day was out.

The bloody Blackspears were making gains, in large parts due to the skilled diplomacy of their Split Tree Clan allies. Hakram had been somewhat disposed to making peace with their ascension, as his and Catherine’s plans did not necessarily require the Wolves or the Shields to be raised as the highest of the clans, but Troke’s plans were a problem. The Snaketooth did intend to burn a swath through the lands of Okoro, but he’d called it madness to try the walls of a well-armed and forewarned High Seat. He had promised instead to keep raiding southwards, towards Nok.

Whose defences had been weakened by an Ashuran sack and who had sent many troops out west to fight with Sepulchral.

No doubt it was just happenstance that such an attack would cripple a rebellion against the very same woman who’d raised Troke to the rank of Lord of the Steppes and might just make her inclined to confirm him as High Lord of Steppes should the war end in her favour. Most of the Clans didn’t give a shit about that, though. What they saw was that Troke wanted to take them after a softer but still rich target, which was a pleasant song to the ear of many.

“I fucking doubt that, boy,” Oguz snorted. “But let’s ask him.”

Dag did not, in fact, enjoy the notion of that challenge. Hakram sold him on it anyway by pointing out that if he wed Inge Farsight even should his cousin return to become chieftain of the Howling Wolves he’d still have a high position as husband to the High Lady – or Warlord, depending on how things fell out – of the Steppes. Ambitious bastard, Dag, though personal loyalty to his famous cousin had kept that in check. A chance to step out of Grem One-Eye’s shadow, though, was not an opportunity to be lost. All that remained was selling to Inge and the Weeping Arrows.

She’d see reason, Hakram thought. Like most of the prominent chiefs, she had to know that food was beginning to run out. The countryside had already been stripped bare, Okoro no longer sent patrols that could be slain to eat and the clans had brought only so many herd with them to butcher for meat. Much as the chiefs would like to argue forever, someone would need to be acclaimed in Chagoro before the month was out or simple hunger would force the gathering to disperse.

Within moments of getting to the great tent of the Weeping Arrows, Hakram found trouble. Trouble looked back at him with a come-hither glare, going by the name of Sigvin of the Split Tree Clan. One of the twins that’d come as speakers for their clan to Wolof, Hakram had gotten to know her better since. She had these long fangs and wore tunics that prominently displayed ritual scarring on her shoulders, and Hakram had always had a weakness for dangerous women. It’d only made the fucking better to know that they both knew she was trying to turn him to her side, which might have been while they’d kept doing it.

Not that hers was the only bed he’d rolled in. Being the first Named of his kind in centuries and an unbroken streak of duelling victories had made Hakram a desirable orc. He wasn’t one to say no when the question was asked right.

Sigvin was leaning against a marking post outside the tent. Inside was a lot of shouting, not a pot he wanted to dip a toe hastily, so he came to lean on the other side of the post. Silence held between them, Hakram pricking an ear to try to discern what was happening in the Weeping Arrow tent. Names were being shouted, but also oaths and insults.

“If I didn’t know better,” Adjutant said, “I’d say it sounds like the acclamation of a chief, in there.”

The early part of it, at least.

“You haven’t heard?” Sigvin said, flaring her teeth provocatively at him. “Inge Farsight got killed. Some feud with a Black Tongue champion that went hard.”

The Black Tongue weren’t backers to Troke Snaketooth, from what Hakram recalled. At least not officially. How many knifes like that had the Blackspears kept in wait?

“No telling who they’ll raise now,” Hakram said.

Inge had led the clan almost twenty years but had no clear successor. Those kinds of acclamations always got messy and often left clans divided in their wake.

“Except that it won’t be Inge Farsight,” Sigvin laughed.

She met his eyes boldly.

“One step behind, Deadhand,” she said. “Might be time for you and your queen to talk with Snaketooth instead of keeping lead weights on your feet.”

Swift as a doe, she pushed away from her side of the post and swatted at his buttocks.

“Don’t worry,” Sigvin said, “I’ll not kick you out of my bedroll even after you lose. It’d be a waste.”

Hakram took the time to enjoy the sway as she strolled away, for he was only mortal, but as soon as she was gone he turned cold eyes to the tent. That was a setback. The Weeping Arrows were done, their alliance would collapse. The practical thing would be to take the offered branch the Blackspears had sent through Sigvin and have private talks with Troke. He would only pull further ahead in the coming days, and even if he couldn’t be turned against Malicia he still needed to be sounded out over… other matters. As the Adjutant, that was his duty. Much as it irked to have been outplayed, he had been. Now he needed to make sure Catherine’s plans were not too heavily damaged. Yet Hakram found his feet refusing to move. He thought, suddenly, of Scribe. Of the look she’d had on her face, that night he had taken her by the throat with a ghostly hand he could no longer make. How the glint in her eyes had scared him for the way he could so easily understand it. He looked down.

The grass at his feet was coated in dust, blown in from a southern storm. Tricky footing.

Just a few more steps, he decided.

—

The night sky would have been beautiful, were it not for the plumes of foul smoke clawing across it. The Dead King’s devilish machine, the dragon-furnace that had been meant to incinerate the armies that’d held Hainaut, had not ceased burning after being toppled. Miles of land had turned into a sea of fire as black pitch spread, and though the fuel was running out it was as if a curtain of black and pungent smoke had been drawn across the world. The kind of sight that would make men mutter about the end of the world, had they not already all known it had arrived.

“In Ashur, Speakers do not like to deal in simple truths,” Hanno of Arwad said. “Simplicity is a brittle thing, they claim. What lessons they have to share, they prefer to share through stories. To let us find our own meanings.”

“I hatred riddles,” Rafaella admitted. “And poems. Even Hidden Poets. Words trying to get clever.”

Hanno shifted in his seat, wincing as the bandages pulled tight against his wound. The priests had seen to his impalement as best they could but the enchantment on the Revenant’s spear had fought the Light. It would be days before he was truly fit to fight again.

“Cleverness isn’t the point,” he told his old friend. “It is a mark of respect, I always thought. A recognition that few truths are true for all.”

“Stories not about truth,” the Valiant Champion chided him. “They about glory and sex. And killing. Sometimes Gods, but mostly other three.”

He chuckled.

“But you can speaking bad Ashur story,” Rafaella allowed. “I am best of friends, will pretend to listen.”

“Convincingly?” he teased.

“Am not that best a friend,” Rafaella replied without batting an eye.

But he knew her enough to see she was curious, under the ribbing, so Hanno idly thumbed the stumps of his missing fingers and chose his words.

“There is one that I cannot seem to shake, lately,” he admitted. “It is a story about the Patient Man.”

“He villain?” Rafaella asked interestedly.

“I am not sure,” Hanno murmured. “Which I suppose is the point.”

In the distance, red lightning crackled across the sky. The aftermath of Antigone’s duel with the Archmage had left great scars on an already devastated land: power still lashed out wildly where they had clashed.

“In the far land across the sea, in the city of Akra, there was once a Patient Man,” Hanno said. “He was a man of faith and wisdom, who had grown wealthy before retiring and raising his two daughters. In time Akra went to war with the city of Yane, and so his eldest asked his blessing to fight. The Patient Man hesitated, for war is a dangerous trade and he did not want her to perish but neither did he want to shame the courage that made him proud. Knowing not which was the just course, he kept silent.”

The cadence came back to him easily, tradertalk having enough of High Tyrian to it that the tales he had learned a child could be recited to the same beats he had once learned. Hanno had never found the tale put to writ anywhere, and not for lack of looking. Like much of the wisdom of the Speakers, it was estranged from ink. Tales were living things, to the masked priests of Ashur, and the corpse of them on parchment would be almost as sacrilege.

“The eldest went to war without his blessing, captaining her ship, and though the city won the war her ship was lost,” Hanno gravely said. “Dead, they said, but the Patient Man did not yet grieve. His younger daughter grew wroth and cursed his silence as heartless. She blamed many for the death of her beloved elder sister but none more than the rulers of the city whose greedy ways had led to war. So that no sister would be lost again, the younger daughter sought to become a ruler herself.”

Rafaella had never been one to hide her thoughts, for all that she delighted in feigning false ones, so it was easy to see how she approved of the eldest daughter who had gone to war and less so of the youngest who sought to rule. Violence was familiar to the Valiant Champion. She had won her Name triumphing over others in honest battle, but it was no coincidence she had then left the hills of her native Alava. To stay in the lands of the Champion’s Blood would have seen her drawn into the feuds and schemes of the dynasties of the Blood, made precious by her inheritance of Bestowal.

It was a hard irony, that the same character that had made her the Valiant Champion had led her to want little to do with the Valiant Champion’s Blood.

“The younger daughter sought the Patient Man’s blessing and the help of his riches. This would be a long and arduous path, the Patient Man knew, for rulers do not like to share their power,” Hanno of Arwad said, with a wry twist of the lip. “Yet he held in esteem the conviction of his daughter and desired not to stand in the way of it. Knowing not which was the just course, he kept silent. Once more his daughter cursed him and rose to rule without help, but in rising she forgot her conviction and grew wicked.”

Hanno paused.

“To punish him for his silence she swore never to hear a word from him again, but the Patient Man did not yet grieve.”

“Good,” Rafaella grunted, speaking of the daughter and not the father. “Silence for silence. Honour in balance. Good girl.”

Rafaella had never once, in all the years they’d known each other, spoken of her family. It was not unusual for heroes to be born of tragedy but Hanno had long suspected that was not the truth of this. Sometimes he wondered at the kind of mother and father it would have taken, to raise a woman like Rafaella. Who could claim and hold such a hallowed Name at the age she had: seventeen, barely a woman grown.

“There came a day where a man came from the city of Yane,” he said, ignoring her guffaw and muttering of Yanu, “who was from there a prince, and he sought audience with the Patient Man. The man had been a captain for his kin in the war and found the shipwrecked eldest daughter. Falling in love, he wed her and had spent time gathering great gifts to bring the Patient Man to ask his blessing. A ship was sailing, with the eldest daughter and the gits among it, and the old man sent a messenger to his younger daughter to tell her of this wonder. It was a merry day, but the Patient Man did not yet rejoice.”

Rafaella’s brow tightened. Heroes did not live as long as either of them had without learning to catch the scent of tragedy in the air.

“The following day his younger daughter sailed into the harbour, bringing with her what she claimed a great war prize,” Hanno said. “A ship whose hull had been filled with great gifts and hated enemies from Yane, which she had all slain with her own hand. She had refused to hear the Patient Man’s messenger, keeping to her oath, and so in ignorance slain her own beloved sister. The prince was furious with grief, named her a kinslayer and swore revenge. He asked that the Patient Man condemn her, to show not all Akra was wicked, but the old man kept to his silence and so there was war.”

He’d told Antigone the story once, long ago in an airy city where they had been the only humans to be seen, and this had been where she balked. The Patient Man is made wicked by this, she had insisted. He and his daughter both deserve to be slain as reparations to Yane, for one committed a great crime and the other abides it. Rafaella did not balk, for her world was a vastly different one. The Dominion was bound as much by ties of blood as it was feuds between families: many a time would Blood forgive or ignore their trespasses of their own while the same dealt by the hands of their foes.

The Ashen Gods of Levant were not as the benevolent Hallowed of Procer or Callow’s stern Heavens. In the Dominion, the Gods were partisans. They had favourites, they took sides.

“Yet the younger daughter, broken by her crime, found her old conviction again,” Hanno continued. “She offered herself to the city of Yane as a penitent, and the truth of her earnest grief moved the hearts of the people. In time she was wed to the prince, who forgave her, and the cities of Akra and Yane were bound in peace and friendship. The Patient Man died in his bed, father to a grave and a woman estranged.”

His voice trailed off, leaving thoughtful silence in its wake. Rafaella was frowning, then eventually she sighed.

“Fucking hate riddles,” the Valiant Champion said. “Patient Man fool, good daughter dead bad daughter should have become priest?”

“That is an answer,” Hanno agreeably replied.

She sharply elbowed him.

“Is it right answer, though?” Rafaella asked.

“I was once told there are as many answers to that tale as there are Faces,” Hanno smiled, thinking of the masks hanged in the temples of Ashur and the priests who wore them. “You’re not any more wrong or right than any of us.”

Rafaella looked skeptical.

“So what’s your answer?” she seriously asked.

Hanno breathed out, looking at the marred sky.

“I don’t have an answer,” he quietly admitted. “All the story ever taught me was a question.”

He felt her eyes on him even without turning to look.

“Is it a greater evil to act unjustly,” the White Knight asked, “or not to act at all?”

The Patient Man might have saved his daughters great pain, even death, had he spoken. Had he grieved or rejoiced. Yet in keeping his silence, in trusting the Heavens, he had lived to see the birth of peace and friendship between once-warring cities. Was that great good worth the little evils caused by silence? The Choir of Mercy would say it was, had made a sword and law of that belief. But Hanno of Arwad was not the Sword of Mercy. And there had been a time where he had held an answer to the story, the one shown him in the depths of that unearthly place where he had become the White Knight. Mortals could not be just, he had been shown. Not truly.

They were flawed, blind creatures and even their finest intentions were blades without a handle. He could trust instead in the judgement of the Seraphim, impartial and farseeing. There was justice, beyond the fallibility of men. Hanno of Arwad palmed a small silver coin, one side bearing crossed swords and the other laurels, and deftly flipped it. It went spinning, a glint of silver in the dark, but it held no answers for him.

The Seraphim were yet silent.

“It true the coin woke?” Rafaella quietly asked.

Hanno caught the coin, snatching it out of the air.

“For a moment,” he said. “Would that it had not.”

The hope had burned, after the years left adrift. And burned harsher still when Hanno had understood what had truly happened: somewhere in the south, hidden away, Cordelia Hasenbach had ordered that the corpse of an angel be desecrated. Ealamal, such a corpse was called in the Dominion. Priests and mages in the service of the First Prince had meddled with something beyond mortal understanding, tried to turn the remnants of a Seraphim into a weapon. And the shadow of a shadow had woken for the barest of a moments without calamity ensuing. It had lit up like a beacon in an empty place within Hanno’s soul, blaring to him a warning of how far and fast the First Prince was falling.

Twice over her had been stung, in the Arsenal, and much had he thought of those days. Considered how he might have done things differently, looking into past lives for guidance – for the man he could have been and had failed to be, the one who would have passed that test. He had found no answers, the search only dwindling his power in the Light even as he warred against the dead, left to study only with his own meagre eyes. Catherine Foundling had startled him out of their pleasant détente, that day, but his anger there had waned. What wisdom was there in blaming a scorpion for striking? He would not allow himself to be lulled into complacency again, but neither had he misread the Black Queen as he’d once feared.

He had simply never been at odds with her before. It had been a lesson well worth learning, and cheap at the price.

Yet Cordelia Hasenbach had been looked upon with approval by the Choir of Judgement once. Her convictions been judged worthy, even as she denied the Name was her rightful mantle to bear. A scant year later and the same woman had been reduced to someone feeding people into the grinding gears of the Principate of Procer so that the machine’s wheels would be kept wet. Hasenbach had no ideals, only an ideal Procer. And though that land would be a beautiful thing to behold, Hanno thought, it would be grimly built and as Evil made it slip further and further away the First Prince was dipping her hands deep in the red.

Already she was up to her elbows, how long before she began to swim? Conviction and despair had been mothers to many a horror.

“Truth then,” Rafaella grunted, studying him. “Talk of ealamal.”

“It is,” Hanno simply said.

The Valiant Champion weighed him with her eyes.

“That why you been middling?” she asked.

He blinked.

“Meddling?” he suggested.

“Middle, meddle, muddle,” she growled. “Tradertalk is fool tongue. You understand, Hanno. Now you finger on scales.”

Her face grew serious.

“Time was you did not.”

He did not deny it.

It had begun as a small, simple thing. But then was the same not true of the first pebble before the avalanche? There had been trouble in the army, after the Black Queen left. The Lycaonese had begun to elect their own leaders, after the death of the Iron Prince and Mathilda Greensteel, of marching to fight with their kin in the north. The leading captains all agreed in this. And Hanno could have stood aside and watched, as he had when the Iron Prince had hung mutineers, for it was not his place to meddle in the affairs of Procer.

But he had glimpsed the shape of it, how it would unfold. They would leave and there would be no stopping them without a battle. Hainaut would weaken, then fall. So instead of standing aside, he instead had stood to the side of those captains who shamed the others for speaking of leaving the fight. And though he had said not a word, his presence had spoken volumes. The White Knight agreed. The Sword of Judgement, like the Ashen Gods of the Dominion, had picked a side.

Once he’d dipped a toe, it had seemed pointless to balk when the Alamans princes began to bicker and their hosts to desert. He’d brokered a truce between Beatrice Volignac and Arsene Odon, exhorted the levies of Bayeux whose shame about routing at the Battle of Hainaut had been eating away. It had seemed almost just to him to speak to those levies, balancing the scale of the way he had done nothing as Klaus Papenheim slew and imprisoned their officers. He had not expected for them to look to him for command, after, but he was a high officer of the Grand Alliance – he could serve as a commander if he chose, he simply had not. They had fought like lions since, to regain their pride.

They called him Lord White, and meant it not as a courtesy.

Hanno had remembered the clarity he’d felt, when he had been fighting to the north to destroy the bridge, and then the sickening feeling when he had heard about the bloody battle at Hainaut. And with those memories following him around like loyal hounds, he had found his hand moving again and again. Stiffening General Abigail’s spine when she began to consider retreat further south, killing the dispute through a scrying ritual when the Red Knight and the Myrmidon almost came to blows in Cleves, advising the Kingfisher Prince to retreat long before the Morgentor came at threat of being encircled.

Small things, all. But many of them. And others had noticed. There was a deference to the way the princes now spoke to him that had not been there before, and it was slowly passing to Named. Many now looked to him for advice who had merely taken it when offered before.

None had noticed that his power was waning all the while, save for his closest friends. That troubled Hanno, for it would have been easy to decide from this that the Heavens were frowning on his action, but for all that he was weakening he did not feel… shunned by the Light. But it was his doubts, he suspected, that were behind it all. The end of his certainties. For Hanno of Arwad had once believed himself as a Patient Man vindicated, but as the silence of Judgement lingered his own was beginning to break. These days he often he dreamt of the story he had told Rafaella, the question burning in his mind as he woke.

The Valiant Champion had been watching him through his long silence, the sky above them alive with writhing smoke.

“Is it a greater evil to act unjustly,” Hanno quietly repeated, “or not to act at all?”

And he could not shake the fear that he had not heeded the warning of the story. That he had seeded a doom at the heart of the Grand Alliance by his action. Would Cordelia Hasenbach grown so desperate, if he had not begun to step beyond his old lines in the sand? He had proof, ruinous proof, that his actions and hers were interlinked. Yet some part of him balked at the notion that simply acting, trying to do all the good that he could, would be a seed of doom. What had he done here, save try to keep the dark from blowing out the last trembling lights in the west?

“Not fighting Evil,” the Valiant Champion said. “Rolling over. That is greatest evil. You cannot be others, only you. That is what you owe the Ashen Gods.”

He thought on that, for a moment.

“I could do more,” Hanno of Arwad quietly confessed. “Even now, I stay my hand.”

Rafaella smiled gently, and pressed a kiss against the side of his head. He looked at her in surprise, for love or lust she had never been shy in expressing but affection was rarer.

“It’s end of the world,” his friend said. “When, if not now?”

The words lingered long after she departed, leaving him to silence and the smoky sky. When, if not now? Was she wrong? He felt as if she should be, but he could not say how. And that left only a broad, terrifying expanse ahead of him. One that could be filled with anything.

“I could do more,” Hanno of Arwad said, voice pensive.

Then perhaps he should. He already knew how to begin. Speaking with Antigone, so that she might lead him to the one who had taught her. The sole man who could bring the Titanomachy fully into the war, the last of the ancient Titans. The thought fixed, firmed, became a decision. And in that moment, Hanno felt it fully for the first time. Not in parts, in moments, as he had until now. Like a beacon. The claim that was stirring in him, to a Name he could not yet grasp. He had his suspicions, however. He was feeling another claimant, after all, to the south.

If Hanno had to put a name to where, it would be Salia.

Interlude: East II

It would have been a mistake for him to watch the swords.

It was her feet that warned him, when he had any warning at all. Amadeus circled to the side, shield raised and sword low. Hye darted forward, striking high, but he did not bite. Arm tightening, he took the real hit – come by the side, a blindingly quick swing and flick – on the shield and shot into a riposte. She stepped to the side, let it pass her, and turned to swing at the arm. Cursing in silence, he struck out with his shield. He wasn’t quite swift enough to withdraw, her blade slamming into his wrist harshly enough he almost dropped his sword, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The shield slam forced Hye to step back and abandon the killing stroke she’d been setting up.

Amadeus took two steps back, his back drenched with sweat from the hour of sparring now coming to an end. He was slowing, losing his edge. Old age, he supposed, though the now grey-haired man knew he was closer in shape to a man in his forties than this true age. For now, at least.

“You get baited into that riposte too easily,” Hye said. “You got too used to being able to kill people with it when you were Named. You’re slower now, you can’t keep using it.”

“I’m still used to being able to correct midstroke,” he admitted. “I collected too many habits that relied on Name reflexes.”

She snorted, bringing her blades back to the sheaths with a purely unnecessary twirl. Her long hair was kept in a braid today and he’d always loved the look on her – especially when she had a blade in hand. Which she was perfectly aware of, from the sly looks she kept sending him.

“You’re too hard on yourself,” Hye told him. “In terms of swordsmanship, you’re still one of the most impressive opponents I’ve had. In the finest ten, at least. You just have more practical limits to deal with than before.”

“I did have a skilled teacher,” Amadeus smiled.

She smiled back.

“I speak, of course, of my mother,” he casually continued.

He got a clump of dirt tossed at his head for that, ducking away laughing. Since early in theory acquaintance Hye had insisted that there be wagers to their sparring, which had never lost him much coin but ensured he’d cooked most of her meals on the move for decades. Tonight was not to be exception, though he’d been farsighted enough to get the stew going before they began. It was mostly ready by the time he went to check on it, needing only seasoning. Only roasted greens for side dish, as… Amadeus felt his heart clench. He forced himself to finish the thought. As Wekesa was gone and would no longer assembled a makeshift oven to help him make fresh bread.

Hye sat at his side, silent. She knew how to read his moods, and so stayed close but did not impose touch. An invitation. He leaned into her side, enjoying her arm going around his waist as he leaned his head on her shoulder.

“Who?” she asked.

“Wekesa,” he said.

“He went out on his own terms,” Hye said. “For his son. Remember that as well as the rest.”

Amadeus allowed himself to enjoy the comfort a little longer then moved away. Neither of them spoke more of it. Hye was one of the people he’d met who were even more private than him by inclination, she well understood that for some the light of day burned more than it cleaned. They sat with the stew, the old lacquered bowls – whose cracks were filled, oddly enough, with silver – that she’d been using longer than he’d been alive warm in their hands.

“I did miss your stew, and that damned lentil soup,” she laughingly told him. “My pupils were nowhere as fine cooks, even though Cocky at least should have been better by sheer divine mandate.”

“The Concocter?” he asked, cocking a brow.

It was not common for her to talk of her old students, but not uncommon either. She still had much fondness for her years in Refuge, even though she had left that part of her life behind much as she had once parted ways with the Calamities. He’d always admired – envied – that in her, the capacity to walk away. He was not so blessed.

“Feral little thing,” Hye fondly said. “Never seen a Crafter that much bite to them before.”

The Teoteul, her father’s people, called Named whose Role tended to creation ‘Crafters’. In those lands they were held in great respect, she’d told him, often greater than martial Named.

“The way you raised them likely had something to do with that,” Amadeus mildly said.

She cast him a sideways look.

“You can just say it outright,” Hye said, amused.

“You already know my thoughts on the affair,” he replied. “I can understand what you meant to accomplish, but when one’s means involve cruelty to children they are best reconsidered.”

“What I did accomplish,” Ranger calmly said. “They left my tutelage with all they needed to survive and thoroughly discouraged from banding together. I didn’t coddle them like you did your girl, Amadeus, but they came out stronger for it. Named that get tucked in at night get killed in their first decade. I’ve seen it happen to more heroes and villains than you’ve put in the ground.”

“Wealth of experience tends to mean more powerful aspects,” he conceded, “and personalities less brittle. But you only painted in black, Hye.”

I’d been painfully obvious the few times he’d encountered her pupils, never more so than when he’d spoken with young Indrani. The Archer, who’d thought the way to tame the evils of the world was to make herself and her Name into the Ranger’s shade.

“It’s what I know,” she frankly replied. “And it’s what sticks.”

He shrugged, seeing no point in further speaking of it. He’d already told her his thoughts before and she’d disagreed with them then too. She respected his opinions but had never felt bound to heed them in the slightest – which was, he would admit to himself, half the reason he was in love with her in the first place.

“I suppose you think your student-”

“My daughter,” he corrected calmly, evenly.

Pointedly, too. She winced.

“Look, I’ve already apologized for that talk in Arcadia,” Hye said. “I wouldn’t have been so hard on her if I’d known she mattered to you as more than an apprentice.”

An apology which she meant, and he’d accepted, but it would not mend the broken pot. Catherine was now singularly predisposed to seeing Hye as an enemy, which might just end up being a massive headache before this was all over.

“She does,” Amadeus said, “which is why I see little point in comparing the deeds of our former students. She would not have gotten so far without your Indrani at her side.”

Hye’s lips quirked at the mention. Ranger was not a particularly fair woman and she’d never shied away from having favourites. Of her little band of Named, Archer had been the one she most liked. Not out vanity, though one might be forgiven for believing that, but because Indrani had in her belly a rare sort of fire.

“Your little queen might still kill you, before this is said and done,” Hye plainly said. “She won’t like what you’re scheming.”

“Neither do you,” Amadeus teased.

She rolled her eyes and let it go. Eudokia, for all that he loved her dearly, would not have. It was not in her nature to leave details unattended to, to embrace the unnecessary risk. That attitude had saved his lives many a time, over the years, but it should not be taken as the iron law habit had slowly turned it into. They’d gotten old, set in their ways even as their bodies stayed the same preserved statues of wax. Hye, while older than any of them by centuries, never stayed still long enough to rot. There were lessons to learn in that. In embracing impermanence. Amadeus should not have presumed he would stay the same under the face because the face did not change.

Or believe the same of Alaya.

“She brought the last of your pupils east, you know,” he said. “I am not the only one who might face a rough end.”

Hye’s face was serene as a pond, the shadows of their fading fire clawing at her cheeks.

“Have they grown enough for that?” she asked. “I wonder. I will have to see, Amadeus, who it is they have become. One last test for the children of Refuge.”

They went to bed early, for they were to begin moving before the dawn. Northeast of them was an old run-down inn owned by the cousin of a friend, and there letters waited for him. A confirmation from one of his people in Ater that Grem was still alive and writing, growing fat in his house arrest. Alaya did not seem to suspect. Yet it was the other letter, the one from the south, that set him to smiling. Nahiza had corresponded with Wekesa for decades, back when she’d still lived in Kahtan instead of retiring to her tower, and it was only out of courtesy for that she’d accepted his first letter. After that, though, it had been out of curiosity.

The problem he’d put to her was one too fascinating for such a mind to resist, and the possibility of eternal glory a temptation to her pride.

It can be done, she wrote in that terse way of hers. But only with the Tower. No one else has the mages and coin. The formulas she’d sketched out as a proof of concept he could not understand, not even after all his years of trying to understand more than the barest edges of Trismegistan sorcery, but he tucked them away in his doublet anyway. They would have a use. What he’d needed of her had been confirmation that it was possible at all: the rest was only a matter of finding the right place and right time. The last letter he read twice, to commit the words to memory. Nim had ambushed Catherine out of the Wasteland but the Army of Callow had held fast and now all the vultures were drawing in. Good, rather like he’d thought it might go.

The game he’d not seen coming was the release of Akua Sahelian to become the Warlock, but then he’d been consistently blindsided when it came to Catherine’s treatment of Tasia’s girl. That she’d not been publicly and brutally executed years ago remained a source of bemusement.

With the loyalist Legions and those that’d deserted coming ever closer, the moment of truth was drawing near. He’d sown the seeds but done nothing more than that, could not do more than that. As he’d told Layan down south, the last thing Praes needed was another banner raised. When the time came, when the blades were out, what was it that would win – the mud or the orders? Amadeus of the Green Stretch had spent most of his life betting on the mud and he had no intention of ceasing at so late an hour. Leaning forward, he put the letter from Kala to a candle. It burned bright and quick, smoke curling upwards. He caught sight of it disturbing a spider, which crawled to a corner of its webs on long legs. Smiling, he dropped the last smouldering remnants of the letter and stepped on them.

Were he a superstitious man, he might have called that a good omen.

—

High Lady Takisha Muraqib of Kahtan was to come to Ater, along with most the nobility of the south.

It was an unusual and unforeseen decision, so Malicia investigated. What dearest Takisha had wanted out of gathering the entire Hungering Sands to her court had become plain enough after a little digging: she’d been trying to rally houses to her banner for an attempt at taking back Foramen. She could have made such an attempt without such pageantry, of course, as Malicia was in no position to stop her. Yet Takisha, for all that she was an intelligent woman, was prone to dithering.

It was a learned error. Kahtan had the most vassals out of all the High Seats, which made large scale enterprises for it difficult unless time was spent wrangling support. Takisha had heeded that lesson a little too well, to Malicia’s eye, and come to avoid bold action even when it would best serve.

Yet she was skilled at wrangling, and with the traditional rivals of the Muraqib for prominence in the desert – the Banu of Foramen – dead and gone Malicia had expected her to find a measure of success. That not only she had found none but that she had been driven to take her court north had been a noticeable enough reversal that it must be looked into. Even if this was not the action of a player but instead of an undercurrent of popular feeling, clarity was required. The empress’ plans had arrived at too delicate a stage for interference to be permissible.

Spies came and went, scrying rituals crisscrossed the land. Ime was busying herself chasing Amadeus’ trail, which she had finally caught, but Malicia left the matter to her capable hands. Instead, as she sat in a comfortable salon tea in hand, she poured over lists of names. Those who had petitioned High Lady Takisha to journey to Ater and formally petition the imperial court for intervention in the south. Some of those names she well knew.

Lord Feisal Rahab, whose great silver mines made one of the wealthiest men in Praes. Lady Nawal Morcos, whose kin had skirmished with the Tribes for centuries. Prominent names, at first, but they had met with Takisha late. And more importantly, they had little to gain from the decision made. She sent for earlier reports. The first to speak with the High Lady of Kahtan were less known to her. Lady Layan Kaisha, Lord Habid Tannen, and on it went for a dozen names. Lesser aristocrats, all of them, with few common interests that she could grasp.

She sent for the files the Eyes had on them. Layan Kaisha was one of Amadeus’ veterans, it turned out. So were two of the rest, but most were not. Yet Malicia’s mind itched with intuition. This had been done in accord, she grew convinced as her Name began to swell. There was something to Connect those names even if she did not yet understand it. Her aspect had never failed her before, even though the leaps of intuition it sometimes leant her were the ficklest part of the boons it granted. She set the Eyes to digging deeper at the nobles.

Behind closed doors, alone, Alaya would admit that the aspect’s blooming was a deep relief. After the encounter with Foundling in Wolof, she had feared… Her fingers clung desperately to the cup of tea she forced herself to drink with decorum. Be silent, the Black Queen had ordered, and Alaya’s soul had obeyed. As if to be able to declare silence was the girl’s due Alaya had found that she could no longer Rule. Not in the simulacrum she’d worn, not in her own body, not anywhere. It had taken days for the aspect to return, and even now it was weakened. She could feel it in the people around her, through the connections that Connect allowed her to instinctively understand.

Her authority had thinned.

It would come back into its fullness, she thought, that was the trend. But after how long? Another month, year, decade? She’d been told that the Black Queen was not yet Named and already she could do this. The thought was… frightening. As was the memory of the girl’s mad grin as she was wrestled down by a dozen men, Alaya tasting blood in her mouth as the little monster cackled. There’s always next time, the Black Queen had laughed. Foundling was coming for her head, Malicia now understood. She would settle for nothing less if she were not forced to settle otherwise. Practicality and gains would not be enough to sway her, Malicia had misread that very badly.

Spies came and went, scrying rituals crisscrossed the land and her Black Knight ambushed the Black Queen in the depths of the Wasteland. Akua Sahelian was proving worth the investment.

“All is in place with the deserters?” she asked Ime.

“It is,” her spymistress confirmed. “We’ve prepared the scapegoat.”

Good, that was one worry in hand.

“Sepulchral?” she probed.

“We still don’t know who plans her campaign,” Ime admitted. “Not anyone openly in her service, at least. It’s slickly done, Malicia. It’s possible whoever is doing it isn’t even with her army.”

That seemed… unlikely, from what Malicia understood of military affairs. Perhaps a Named would be able to work through such constraints, but there was none around to provide such guidance.

“Best prepare for a bloody end,” the empress pragmatically said. “She has served her purpose, the time has come to pull the curtain on her rebellion.”

“Troke Snaketooth is on track to win the election as High Lord of the Steppes,” Ime said. “And he’s reiterated to our agents that the terms still stand: if we confirm him in that title he’ll lead the Clans against Nok.”

Which, combined with the destruction of Abreha Mirembe’s field army, would be enough to bury the cause of Sepulchral. The Sahel of Nok and the Mirembe of Aksum would turn on their ruling kin the moment they thought the cause helpless, and Malicia was willing to offer relatively mild terms of surrender for their return to fold. No need for soulboxing, it would be overplaying her hand. Increases on a selection of taxes would hamper their economic recovery for long enough that the empress could smother them out instead of wielding an executioner’s axe. Perhaps an expansion of the Green Stretch at the expense of Aksum, she mused, as pointed lesson.

Treachery was treachery, but no one should swing at the Tower and miss without proper admonishment.

When the in-depth reports on the few nobles she’d asked for came, she finally connected the dots. The lords and ladies that were not veterans were nearly all from border or trade holdings. The kind that would be negatively affected in a direct way by the kind of civil war that’d afflicted the Empire for the last few years. Ah, Malicia thought with a smile. It was a faction she was looking at. A very discreet one, difficult to make out on parchment, but a faction nonetheless. One that was hostile to her rule of the Tower. A rash of assassinations would not be overly difficult to arrange, but Malicia restrained herself. When one got rid of weeds, it was best to burn them out root and stem.

It was too early for blades, and she could make use of this for other purposes.

She had letters from Wasteland lords that expressed concerns about the Clans being on the move, and those concerns were slowing her attempts to put together one of the measures that would keep her head on her shoulders and her crown atop her head. The ritual that might solve the Hellgates that terrified the Grand Alliance had exhaustive resource requirements, the kind that not even the Tower’s vaults could see to. She’d had to rely on drawing on the resources of northern lords for some of the substances. It needed to be ready soon, she knew. The ritual would bind the gates to open only once every decade for seven days and seven nights, an ideal solution, but it needed weeks of preparation before it could be implemented.

“Send word,” Malicia ordered Ime. “We are holding a formal court session in the Tower. As the nobility of the south is coming, so will the nobles of the north.”

The Taghreb play had Amadeus’ signature all over it. He liked to move pieces towards the centre, were they could be more easily dealt with. He’d get his wish, Malicia decided, and more. Much more. Using the gathering of the Clans as a reason for the court session would see even the most reluctant of lords and ladies come, the empress knew, and with them would come an army’s worth of retinues. Another assurance to have in her pocket, should it come to the worst. With the Empire tended to for now, Malicia could turn her attention to further measures that would preserve her life and reign. She needed leverage on the Grand Alliance, not only Callow, and there was only one place left to acquire it.

The Free Cities, where General Basilia’s attempted unification of the League was beginning to worry the cities yet to be conquered. There was potential in that, but none of the rulers involved were willing to engage in talks with the Tower. Between Hasenbach and Foundling, the costs of dealings with Praes had been made to steep for any there to still be willing to pay them. How fortunate, then, that Malicia had replaced the Merchant Prince of Mercantis with a creature of her own.

Alaya was the Dread Empress of Praes. Should weather this storm and emerge from it triumphant, as she had all others.

—

It ought to be an exciting sort of war, but somehow it was not.

Dear Sargon had offered Akua the use of the Amaranth, a sure indication he was looking to get rid of the Tower’s leash around his neck. The necklace was a splendid thing, a collar and trailing generous expanse of beads in polished gold and onyx. Each bead held a small sliver of power, at the fingertips of whoever wore the necklace. Yet it was the pale purple precious stone set in the hollow of the throat that made the Amaranth such a powerful artefact, for within it lay a Titan’s tear turned to crystal. The purity of the overwhelming grief it emanated allowed a caster to free themselves of all feelings and doubts, leaving one’s will the sharpest it could be. Akua’s ancestors had used the artefact to make even the most middling of their sorcerer-lords seem skilled, in the past, as the Amaranth was enough to turn even a middling fool into a passable battlemage.

Having been a prodigy herself, she had found instead that the Amaranth not only ended the difficulties she’d had in acclimating in her new body but that it had allowed her to surpass some of her old limitations. The swiftness of her recovery had made spawned many a murmur that she was becoming the Warlock in truth, as was only to be expected, but Akua knew it to be otherwise. She had been Named, once, and not forgot the sensation of it – the warmth of unbroken certainty settling on her shoulders like a cloak.

It had not been difficult to prove her value to the Black Knight, though the stern Marshal Nim had treated her as a hissing viper at first. Detailed information on the spellcasting capacity of the Army of Callow and Catherine’s own limitations – which were ever-shrouded, but Akua had deduced to some extent – had bought her a place at the table. From there, it had only been a matter of finding out the Named’s weaknesses and presenting herself as a remedy to them. The auxiliary cavalry that had been assembled from highborn sons and daughters from all over the Empire had been defiant of the ogre’s authority, at first, but Akua had eased the burden. She was of the greatest of lineages herself and rumoured to be Named: within days she had them eating out of her palm.

She took one of them to bed, on a whim. A Taghreb captain with a crooked smile and dangerous manners, whose large rough hands had appealed. Not so after she fucked him. She’d had her due of pleasure, more than once, but it had not sated her. It had… lacked intensity, somehow, though she knew that to be absurd. She’d been a shade for years, the sensations should have been almost overwhelming. Akua was careful not to think of what hands might have better pleased – smaller, knuckles always half-scuffed and, no, she was not this weak. There were better uses of her waking hours than chasing the never-be.

Settling the highborn cavalry had not given her a foothold with Nim, only ensured that she was now being treated as a mildly useful rattlesnake. Organizing the auxiliary mages into proper casting circles, however, would be a step in the right direction. Akua did not even have a rival there, as the only person of Praes who might have contested her – Nahiza Serrif, widely recognized as the greatest mage in the south – had declined service in war due to her age. Dubious, that, but Serrif was famously reluctant to ever leave her mage tower and Malicia had little to gain from throwing stones at the wasp’s nest. After a few brisk duels fought under the pretence of practice, Akua broke the ringleaders of the most important cliques to her service. Most gave way with good grace, as was custom, but some did not.

Kendi Akaze fell to his knees, panting and covered in sweat. The last wisps of his spell faded away, shattered at his feet. Swaths of the ground had burned, but Akua was well-learned in curses and he had not studied them deeply. His blood was slowly boiling.

“Surrender,” Akua ordered.

“Did you even know her name?” Kendi hoarsely asked.

She cocked an eyebrow.

“Of course you didn’t,” he laughed, wetly. “Just another mfuasa. A servant. We don’t even know if she died as your dog or if the Black Queen nailed her to a cross. We weren’t important enough the question was asked.”

Akua studied him for a long moment.

“Your sister?” she quietly asked.

“And two of my cousins,” Kendi snarled. “All for your pride. So you could go on serving the enemy. We’re all just games to you, aren’t we?”

Murmurs of disapproval. It was one thing to bear a grudge for the death of one’s kin, respected even, but for a mfuasa to question their place was… disgraceful. If they had been fit to be more than servants, jino-waza would have ensured that they were.

“Surrender,” Akua repeated.

He spat to the side, struggling to rise on shaking limbs.

“Her name,” he croaked, “was-”

The roar of the flames he formed, not even voicing an incantation, drowned out his own words. There was an irony in that, she thought. A lesson, for those who cared about such things. The spell was at her fingertips in an instant, quicker than even his despair. The flames were smothered in darkness, rot writhing its way up Kendi Akaze’s arm. He howled in pain, dropping unconscious, and Akua knew he had to die. He would try again, otherwise. Some grudges could not be set aside. And still she ended the spell. Ordered him dragged to a tent. They thought she would order him tortured, she saw in the eyes of the watchers. Made an example of.

She had him healed instead. The hatred was not gone in his eyes when he woke.

“This changes nothing,” Kendi hissed. “Nothing.”

“I did not expect it would,” Akua quietly said.

There was a long moment of silence. She looked outside the tent, hearing his steady breath.

“Why?”

She turned, met pale brown eyes with golden ones. Because you are my past made man, she thought. There is no pit in Creation deep enough I could bury you in it. Because I loved a girl as a sister, once. I murdered her, and a thousand other sisters since. Where does it end? If no one kills me, where does it end?

“Why not?” the Doom of Liesse replied.

She dreamt of her father, that night, and woke up with red eyes. Iron sharpens iron, the other mages praised her. She kept to the old ways truly, to have a kept a man who wanted to kill her alive just so she would remain sharp. Bile rose in her throat even as she smiled. This what who she was now, wasn’t it?

She did not regret sparing him.

With the mages in line, she proved her value to the Black Knight. A ritual to bring the Army of Callow forcefully into Creation, to deny retreat through the Twilight Ways. It was an inspired piece of spellcraft, she thought. And she found her hand, moving again and again. Adjusting numbers. It was pointless, Akua thought. Even if the blow was softened she would never be forgiven for it. And still. The hand moved. Some had hated her, in the Army of Callow. Many. Others had been… kind. In their own way. How many of them would she kill with her ritual?

A few less, she thought. If she could.

It worked, and the battles that followed saw her prove herself. Then there was that hard night where the Army of Callow reminded them it was still the same mule that’d kicked in the ribs of half the armies on the continent, slipping behind them. And there would have been battle, but Sepulchral surprised them all. Instead there was a tense, hesitant stalemate and Akua was at last invited to dine in private with Marshal Nim. It was a stiff affair, almost begrudged, and there was no dessert. The marshal proved remarkably forthright, by the time the plates were taken away.

“I can smell it on you, you know,” the Black Knight rumbled. “Ambition.”

Akua smiled easily, drinking of her wine.

“It seems like a singular curse to be able to smell such a thing while living in Praes.”

“You’re only charming to humans, Sahelian,” the Marshal glared. “Malicia saw use in you and she’s been proved right in that, but I still question her judgement to have taken up such a hiltless sword.”

“Do you often?” Akua asked.

The ogre eyed her in silence.

“Question the empress’ judgement, I mean,” the Doom of Liesse idly continued. “Idle curiosity, I assure you.”

“Highborn,” the Black Knight said, tone disgusted. “He was right about you all, B- Amadeus. Even if the sun fell down on us you’d jostle for the nicest place to die. You don’t know what loyalty means.”

Oh my, but what an intriguing mistake she’d almost made. Telling, too. She would not be the only to change the word halfway out of her mouth: the Carrion Lord had, for better or worse, been part of the backbone of the empire for decades. That was not a legacy easily cast out. Did it weaken her Name? It likely did. Enough, perhaps, that Catherine’s little Squire might be able to slay her given the right opening. Something to ponder.

“Interesting, this talk of loyalty,” Akua said. “There are some who would say you’ve broken faith, following the Empress over your predecessor.”

“That’s because you think like a child, Warlock,” the Black Knight scathingly replied. “Like loyalty can only be about people. You want to know what I follow? There’s no need for games, mageling, I’ll tell you. It’s not like I hide it.”

“That would be most helpful of you,” Akua agreeably replied.

“I believe in the empire promised us in the Reforms,” the Black Knight bluntly said. “A Tower that holds to law and order, that does not cater to the whims of the High Lords. A realm that is not a mangy pack of alley cats fighting over scraps.”

“And Malicia offers you this?” she asked, genuinely surprised.

Though the Empress was certainly of a mind to gather the power in Ater, she had never been one to mind a bit of intrigue. It would have been like a prize champion being shy of the arena.

“You’re not listening, Warlock,” the Black Knight bit out. “This isn’t about people. You know what the cornerstone of that dream is? The Legions of Terror. An army that can cow the High Seats, professional and modern and most of all loyal.”

Akua studied the other woman with open fascination.

“This isn’t about the Tower at all,” she said. “This is about the Legions.”

“You think half my officers, half my men, don’t want him on the throne?” Nim said, tone hard. “She’s been good to us, Malicia. Better than most. But she’s not known. She’s the stranger in the Tower.”

“It would kill the Reforms, if you rose to help him climb the Tower,” Akua slowly said.

“We wouldn’t be an institution anymore,” the Black Knight said. “The bedrock of stability. It would make us into just another High Seat to please and defeat the entire purpose. Do you think it’s a coincidence that he’s been skulking about scheming instead of calling on the Legions of Terror? Soldiers would come if he raised a banner.”

“I have read the reports,” Akua delicately said. “That decision might not be one of principle, but driven instead by the Emerald Swords-”

Marshal Nim laughed, leaning over the table. Her breath was unpleasant.

“You think he’s the kind of man who’d flinch at killing elves?” she said mocked. “He’s got Ranger at his side. Don’t be a fool. He knows it too, what it would do to Praes to call. Just like he knows we’ll fight him tooth and nail if he comes for the Tower.”

“You sound like you admire him,” Akua said.

“I do,” the Black Knight said. “I don’t like him, Sahelian. I don’t love him either, and I fear what kind of an emperor he would make. But I do admire him. Even now, he still believes in the same dream that I do.”

The ogre bared her teeth.

“And he’d agree it matters more than any single man.”

And there it was, Akua thought. The Black Knight thought herself a fortress for her principles, unassailable to temptation because her loyalty was to something above the dross of petty ambition. She was wrong, of course. Idealists were no less fragile than anyone else if you knew the lay of their castle.

“Oh dear,” Akua sighed. “You really are going to get yourself killed, aren’t you?”

The Black Knight scoffed.

“Repeat that threat and-”

“It won’t be me, you fool,” Akua sighed. “Warlock. Black Knight. Scribe. Captain. Ranger.”

“The Calamities,” Marshal Nim said, impatient. “What of them?”

“Where are they now, Black Knight?” she asked.

A moment of startled silence.

“Gone,” Akua said. “The Dread Empress of Praes does not long tolerate other Named at her table. Even the band that made her bid for the Tower was broken and sent out in pieces, Nim. How long do you think you’ll last?”

“Captain died abroad,” Marshal Nim flatly replied.

“On whose behalf?” Akua laughed. “Come now, you ought to know better. Did you truly think yourself so different than me in the empress’ eyes? You, too, are a hound raised to run down a particular trouble.”

The golden-eyed mage pleasantly smiled.

“And Dread Empress Malicia is not the kind of woman who keeps a hound at the table when the hunt is finished, Black Knight,” Akua said. “It is a waste, to her. She puts them down.”

The Black Knight laughed mockingly.

“And you’d never, of course,” Marshal Nim said. “So I ought to back you instead, for fear of my life. You’ve only listened to the parts you wanted to hear.”

“I have listened to everything,” Akua sharply said. “It is you who ignores the reality around you. Do you think Malicia cares a whit about your little dream, save in how it helps her maintain control?”

“Wind,” Nim dismissed, “she benefits from-”

“Not enough,” Akua snarled. “Gods, when are you all going to understand? It will not be enough, because when you hold the Tower it can never be enough. There’s always another enemy, another doom, another doubt. She’ll cut open the Legions to make what’s left her creatures. She’ll hobble them so they can’t ever raise a hand against her. Because you have ideals, you fool, and she doesn’t share them. In the back of her mind the whisper is always there: is this the line that makes them turn on me? Is this the order they will refuse? She doesn’t make decisions because they are lawful or fair or they bring stability. Malicia cares about being in control. That’s it. That’s all of it.”

She had risen to her feet, at some point, but she did not recall.

“There’s no place for your dream in that Dread Empire,” Akua said. “And there’s no place for you either, Black Knight. For a Named that will get in the way of making the Legions safe. I have a spell that will kill me, somewhere in this body, but Gods burn me if there is not a sword hanging above your head just the same. We are meant to be temporary measures.”

The armoured ogre watched her in silence, still as a statue.

“I rode that black doom to my end, once,” Akua said. “I know the look of it, Marshal Nim, and the empress is a woman in the deep throes. There was a time where I thought-”

That I spoke words like these so they would trust me, she thought. So they would love me. So that I would have a seat by the fire, until they saw through it and turned on me. Her nails bit into the palm of her hand.

“It doesn’t matter,” Akua got out. “It is all scrapped iron, that’s all. Pointless.”

“You are,” the Black Knight slowly said, “perhaps the finest liar I have ever known.”

“You want truths?” Akua asked. “You want proof? Fine. Ask someone you trust to inquire as to what a pattern of three is, Black Knight. You who fought a Squire and won.”

She smiled mirthlessly.

“Because I know,” the Doom of Liesse said, “and I assure you the Empress does too.”

And she had not, Akua knew bone-deep without even have looked, said a word. And though tomorrow they would return to war, to the bitter fruit risen of the bitter seeds Akua had lain, she knew from the look in the Black Knight’s eyes that she had just cracked the stone with the blow.

And still, curse all the Gods who listened, she was not hearing the damned song.

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Chapter 16: Anchor

“To suffer defeat is not to be defeated. One is an occurrence, the other a state of mind.”

– Dread Empress Sanguinara, the Shrewd

It was as if our armies had played a round of musical chairs.

The Loyalist Legions had been camped at the tip of Moule Hills, south of us, but they’d burned that camp to force us out of our camp in Kala Hills. Then we’d gone around those same hills and stolen a march south of them, taking Kala Fortress and setting up over their supply lines. The final bit of surprise, though, had been when Marshal Nim had marched her army south expel us from our new position and instead been forced to retreat north: Sepulchral’s vanguard had popped up atop Moule Hills, threatening to flank her if she gave battle. So now here we were, the three of us staring at each other as the afternoon sun pounded down on our helmeted heads.

The vanguard set up shop at Nim’s old camp in Moule Hills, in what I could only call a fit of irony. Not without paying for the nice campsite and half-filled dry moat, though, going by the detonations and screams that’d followed the rebel forces moving there. Looked like I’d been right to think that the Black Knight had trapped the area with goblin munitions before leaving it. We were keeping an eye on both the other armies in the region, scouts out and about, but not going on the offensive. The unexpected arrival of Sepulchral’s three thousand had bought us time and we intended to use it to the fullest.

See, even after having outmanoeuvered the Loyalist Legions none of us thought it was anything but stupidity to try to go and attack them in their – formerly our – fortified camp in northern Kala Hills. And given the disparity in our numbers and the fact we’d taken some bruising losses, none of us were particularly eager to face Marshal Nim in a fair pitched battle either. The chances were high that even if we won the costs would make it a strategic defeat. If Juniper had been herself I might have risked it, but as she was… The Hellhound was still largely silent during the war councils she was supposed to be leading.

On the other hand, we couldn’t just let the Black Knight slap us out of our superior position either. We could cut off her supply lines from here and ensure we wouldn’t run out of water. So Sapper-General Pickler had given us our solution.

“We raise a wall,” she said, leaning over the map. “Between Moule Hills and Kala Hills, at the narrowest part of the valley.”

And so while half our army had gone in the rest to shade, the rest had spread out across the valley. Sappers and regulars were digging trenches, going from east to west, while palisades were being raised. Our main camp was still next to Kala Fortress, where we could use the wells and the walls, but out in the valley two makeshift forts were already under construction behind the trench line. The Legions hadn’t taken that lying down, of course. The auxiliary cavalry had come out in force the moment it’d become clear what we were doing, but we’d been waiting and ready. It’d not been lightly armed Levantines facing down the riders, this time, but a proper shield wall with crossbowmen behind it.

After a hard reminder of the difference in range and power between javelins and standard-issue Legion crossbows, the enemy horse had beaten a retreat. They kept harassing us all afternoon, though, even as the Loyalist Legions mounted their answer to our new stratagem. I was standing next to Pickler as it began to play out, sighing.

“We should have seen that coming, really,” I admitted.

She spat to the side.

“They’ll get their fortifications up faster than we will ours,” Pickler warned. “We’re outmatched in both sappers and labour.”

In answer to our containment of them with a trench and wall, the Legions of Terror had begun building their own to our north. Not even that far, damnably enough. About two hundred feet beyond our furthest crossbow range, with their cavalry waiting out in the valley just in case we got foolish enough to try a skirmishing war. Pickler was right, I grimly thought, as she tended to be when it came to sapper’s work. I could already see the gap between the capacity of our armies in action: the Legions had begun working three hours after us yet already they’d caught up to two thirds of our trench length.

“Theirs are more vulnerable,” I noted. “They still have Sepulchral’s three thousand on the wrong side of the walls.”

Which might actually be part of the plan, I thought. The Black Knight would either bait them down from the hills in an ill-advised attack or fortify around them until they became irrelevant. That might explain why she wasn’t being more aggressive in trying to get us off her supply lines. She wasn’t digging in to stay so much as putting up defences to prevent being flanked before she hammered away at us. From her point of view, this battle would be settled long before her stores of food were at any risk of running low.

“I can’t speak to that,” Pickler shrugged. “You know my interest in tactics is limited. What I can tell you, though, is that we’ll need our best skirmishers in Kala Hills tomorrow.”

I had to crane my neck more than I wanted to so I could have a look at her. She was standing on the side of my missing eye. I felt my fingers clench. It was always the little things that got to me.

“Why’s that?” I frowned.

“We don’t have enough stakes to make a wall the length of the entire valley,” she said. “And neither do the Legions. So we’re going to have to cut wood, Catherine, and the only place in the region that has any in the quantity needed-”

“- is Kala Hills,” I finished.

Plenty of brushlands in those rocky hills, some proper trees too. With this having turned into a war of entrenchments, those bushes and trees had just become as precious a commodity as water. We’d begin by cutting the wood closest to our camps, of course, but then they’d need to go south and we would need to go north. Closer to each other.

“The moment we both run out of sudes, the easiest way to slow the other side from building up is to harass the soldiers cutting wood,” I said, rubbing at the bridge of my nose. “Shit. That’s going to get messy.”

“That’s a word for it,” Pickler snorted.

She seemed amused, but her face suddenly stilled. She looked away, biting at the inside of her cheek. A long moment passed, a silence I did not dare to break. I knew whose memory had struck her like a punch in the gut.

“He would have loved it,” Pickler finally said. “The mess. The chaos.”

“The danger,” I ruefully said.

She nodded, then returned to silence. Honest emotion was not something that came easy to goblins, so I let her choose her words at her own pace without sticking my foot in it.

“After Ratface died,” Pickler said, “I thought we were done losing them. That we’d paid our due to the Gobbler, that the rest of us would make it.”

“Nauk,” I quietly said.

“He was gone long before they killed him,” she said, shaking her head. “The Warlock… didn’t bring much of him back. Not enough for it to count.”

I did not disagree, keeping my shame to myself. I’d thought, once upon a time, that Night might have mended that. These days I was not so sure, but I had clutched that hope close in the early days of my return from the Everdark.

“Then they got Hune,” Pickler continued. “That was…”

“I didn’t think you two were close,” I said.

“We weren’t. She wasn’t the kind that made friends. But she was one of us, Cat,” the goblin quietly said.

Over the years, somewhere along the line the veil that’d once separated the Rat Company cadets from the Fifteenth had fallen. There just weren’t enough of us left for the distinction to matter. With every fresh war I dragged us into, every hard stand, another body had dropped. We were a dying breed, those few that’d been in it from the start.

“She was,” I acknowledged.

Hune had not been my friend and I had never trusted her entirely. But she had been one of us anyway, in that intangible way they only ever quite became real when it started feeling like loss.

“And somehow I still didn’t see it coming when Robber died,” Pickler said, tone bitter. “He used to go around telling us he was invincible, that he just couldn’t seem to croak-”

My throat tightened and she stopped herself, looking at the men raising walls in the distance.

“I guess I believed him a little, even when I rolled my eyes. I thought that even if we all died, Catherine, he’d be the last one to bite it,” she said. “Somehow. It just never felt real that he could be… gone.”

“Sometimes I still feel like he’ll pop out from behind a stone,” I admitted. “Grinning, making fun of us for having gone soft.”

“But he won’t,” Pickler harshly said. “He won’t. And there’s so many things with him I left half done, because I always thought there’d be more time. After this battle, that plan, that book. I waited until the Gobbler took him because I was too… lazy to talk to him.”

“We always think we could have done more, when people die,” I said. “Especially people we loved. It’s not fair to either them or us.”

“What does fair ever matter?” Pickler tiredly said. ‘’It won’t fix a thing. It’s not wood and steel, I can’t take out what’s broken and make good again. Instead what I have is regrets and a letter I’m too afraid to open.”

I breathed in sharply. Hakram had told me Robber had left her a letter, but I’d not known she had yet to read it.

“Why?”

“I know what’s in it,” Pickler said, then snorted. “Or maybe I don’t. I don’t know which scares me more.”

Robber had loved her, once. When we’d been little more than children he and Nauk had both courted her attentions and fancied each other rivals, not that anything ever came of it save bickering. She’d liked the attention, but she’d never been all that interested in romance. Besides, goblins thought of love differently than humans. It didn’t mean the same things, didn’t carry the same expectations even when it was returned.

“Did you love him?” I quietly asked.

Hesitation.

“No,” Pickler replied.

Then she chuckled bitterly.

“Maybe,” she admitted. “It was… messy. I thought he’d want more than I wanted to give, so I never let him ask.”

I breathed out, hand itching for my pipe. I restrained myself.

“I think you did,” I murmured. “At least a little.”

Her shoulders tightened.

“After the war,” Pickler finally said, “I wanted us to go to the same place.”

It was as close to admitting affection as she would ever get, I thought.

“I expect we all will, Pickler,” I softly said. “He’s just gone on ahead one more time.”

She laughed, a little grimly but genuinely. Goblin humour tended to run even darker than my people’s. There was a reason they got on so well with Lycaonese, whose gallows humour was black enough even Callowans balked at it.

“It feels like unfinished business,” Pickler eventually said. “That’s all. And I don’t know how to finish it.”

Sometimes you don’t, I thought. You keep walking with that weight on your back, knowing one day you’ll buckle. My instinct was to lay a hand on her shoulder in comfort, but it would be no such thing to a goblin. Instead I gave her the sole courtesy I had to offer: work to disappear into.

“Prepare our builders for skirmish,” I said. “Draw on our reserves for regulars if you need to.”

“You’re going to hiss at the snake?” Pickler asked, sounding surprised.

Poke at the bear, I decided, only for the Grey Eyries. It always surprised me that even after all these years there were still expressions from east of the Wasaliti I’d never heard. In Lower Miezan, anyway.

“Something like that,” I said. “I figure that we’ve got one asset the Legions have no answer to, so it’s about time to use it.”

I wasn’t going to be sending skirmishers out to fight theirs in the space between our trenches, I wasn’t that much of a fool. They had crossbow companies waiting for that mistake, same as us, and my men were a lot more tired than Nim’s anyway. The Army of Callow had marched all night and not had a full eight hours of sleep since, it was on the ragged edge. Instead I sent for two people: Archer and the Silver Huntress. My instructions were straightforward.

“You see these people?” I asked, pointing north.

The two of them eyed the enemy legionaries and sappers raising a wall and digging a trench, a swarm of ants just outside the range of our crossbows.

“Sure,” Archer shrugged.

“I do,” the Silver Huntress gravely replied.

“You’ve got bows and I want corpses,” I bluntly said. “Have at it.”

That got a delighted laugh out of Indrani and a measuring look out of Alexis. Neither of them bothered to use the elaborate bows they’d received as gifts from the Lady of the Lake, instead stringing good yew longbows from Daoine after ensuring they were well provisioned with arrows.

And then, easy as breathing, they began taking lives.

The enemy were maybe seventeen hundred feet away, well out the range of even the longbowmen of the Watch. But these two were Named, sharpened to a razor’s edge in the greatest war of our time, and so they began killing their way through the enemy as if were not impossible. Archer went for officers, Huntress for the sappers. It took a while before the enemy even realized what was happening: they scrambled about looking for skirmishers that weren’t there, at first. And even when they did realize, the response was slow. Archer had killed the people who should be shouting orders. Within half an hour the regulars were in a full testudo and sappers were either huddling in their trench or gone.

At the hour’s turn the sappers came back having assembled rough mantlets, wooden walls on wheels they could bring forward and take cover behind. It was a mixed success: the two archer Named first bled the regulars that broke cover to put them in place and then ignored them entirely, curving their arrows to fall down from above. Those shots weren’t anywhere as lethal, but they still disrupted the sappers trying to get back to work. It was only half an hour after that the situation came to a close, when mage lines were sent out to raise shield spells around the sappers to protect them entirely. In the distance I recognize the woman who led them. Tall, dark of hair and with strange golden eyes. Akua looked our way as well, but nothing was spoken.

It was still too early.

“We could have at the mages,” the Silver Huntress said. “If we start using our proper bows and our stock of mage-killing arrows.”

I shook my head. I might have considered it if they were mfuasa and nobles, but these were Legion mages. We did not have enough mage-killer arrows for this to be a good trade.

“Better to let them win now,” I said. “Let them feel safe and get sloppy.”

Indrani eyed me amusedly.

“You’re sending us back after nightfall,” she said.

My smile was cold.

“Get some rest, you two,” I said. “You have a long night ahead of you.”

And I needed to get back to camp. The fortifications were a good measure to take, Pickler had been right to suggest them, but they weren’t a plan.

If we were going to win this, we needed one of those.

—

Vivienne wasn’t alone in her tent when I went to see her. I’d been about to enter anyway when I overheard the voice of who she was speaking with. The Laure drawl wasn’t rare in my army, but I knew the timbre of that voice too. I was curious enough about what had brought the Squire to her that I decided to… actively overhear. It wasn’t called eavesdropping when it was a queen that did it, there were laws about this stuff.

“-did a number on him,” Vivienne was saying. “I know there are parts of Callow where he still has a good reputation, but they tend to be the ones that saw little of him.”

“He was chosen by a Choir, I am told,” Arthur hesitantly said. “Can that truly be a harmful thing?”

“Angels are a lot of things,” Vivienne said. “Most of them are good. But do not ever, for a moment, believe them to be harmless. Even their kindness has teeth, and Contrition has little other than the teeth to offer.”

“Yet you fought with him,” the Squire said, voice daring her to deny it. “At his side.”

“Some of the things we did back then were right,” Vivienne said, tone gone quiet. “But some of the others… we weren’t fighting the right battles, and not against the right people. Doing good’s not always the same thing as doing Good.”

“There’s priests who would call that heresy,” he said.

“Heard lot of that talk, when I was your age,” Vivienne said, and I could hear the hard smile in her voice. “Heresy this, blasphemy that. What did the Praesi care? Wasn’t priests whining that got the Empire to leave. Keep to Above of you want, there’s nothing wrong with that. But like Jehan the Wise said, prayer and a sword work better than prayer alone.”

A sentiment I could get behind. The sword part of it, anyway. Deciding I’d eavesdrop- actively overheard for long enough, I made my presence known by loudly approaching. Fuck, I thought as I entered the tent, but someone was going to have to teach the kid to hide his thoughts better. He looked like I’d just caught him with his hand in a honey pot, it was painfully obvious he thought he’d been doing something bad. I wasn’t too worried about talk of the Lone Swordsman, myself. Contrition had been trying to hook the Squire from the start, but William was not a great angle for them to take. A lot of Callowans hadn’t been fond of the man.

That tended to happen when you carved messages into people’s foreheads, even when those people were Praesi.

“If you’d excuse me, Your Grace, Your Majesty,” Arthur said, bowing.

I shrugged and Vivienne waved him away. She waited until he was gone from the tent to cock an eyebrow at me.

“So how much did you listen at?”

I put a hand over my heart, deeply wounded by the implication.

“How dare you,” I gravely said, “and when you started talking about the way people remember William.”

“The end, then,” Vivienne said. “Kid’s been dreaming, but they’re all over the place.”

I frowned.

“Still the broken sword?”

I’d broken the Penitent’s Blade and good luck to anyone trying to – no, Catherine, that was a good way to get stabbed with pointed irony in a few years. Let it simply be said I had been thorough in dispersing the shards of the angel’s feather.

“He has a whole array of them,” Viv replied, shaking her head. “Different Squires. He does get the sword dreams, but I’d bet that’s Contrition trying to nudge him down that road.”

“Those nosy fuckers,” I grunted. “They need to learn when to quit.”

I wasn’t above asking Zeze to look into the practicalities of a pointed lesson for those vultures when this was all over. Malicia and Amadeus had outlawed the Name of Chancellor, when she climbed the Tower, so maybe I should look into outlawing the Hashmallim getting their sticky fingers into any of my countrymen.

“He’s not like William was,” Vivienne frankly said. “Nowhere enough self-loathing. I imagine they’d like him on the throne instead of you or me, but he’s a lot more interested in knighthood than crowns. That bodes well.”

“He’s still a wild card,” I said. “Different Squire dreams means he’s not settled, Viv. No telling what kind of a Knight Name he’ll end up transitioning into.”

It sounded a lot to me like the Heavens dangling shiny paths in front of their newest Callowan hero to find out what might stick. And there were some that I simply wouldn’t be able to tolerate. Rebel Knight, for one, Eleanor Fairfax’s old Name that’d popped up in Callowan history whenever a tyrant needed toppling. It irked me how much Name lore about the days of the Old Kingdom had been lost. I understood why my father had destroyed pretty much all he could – legacies were dangerous things when you’d destroyed the last iteration of them – but it still left me more knowledgeable in the ways of Praesi Named than those of my own kingdom.

Maybe it was for the best, I told myself. Using old tools and old means tended to lead to the same old ends.

“Lots of that going around,” Vivienne admitted. “Yours is so close I can almost taste it, Cat. You’re already starting to get the coincidences again – what were the odds of you stumbling into this talk?”

Low, practically speaking.

“I think it’ll take shape when we settle the Tower,” I admitted.

I’d know for sure if I started getting the reflexes again.

“You’re not far either,” I said. “Or he wouldn’t have been having that talk with you in the first place.”

She grimaced.

“I’m not sure what it is,” Vivienne said. “And there’s… something missing, I can’t quite put it into words.”

“You need something to take you over the top,” I said, tone clinical. “You’ve got your Role and the will, but you need weight. A story that people will talk about.”

That famous charge at the Battle of Hainaut had not been quite enough.

“I thought you might be angry,” she admitted. “I know you wanted Callow to be ruled by someone without a Name.”

I sighed.

“Those provisions of the Accords are essentially dead,” I said. “And in the end it’s not a theoretical candidate I’m entrusting that throne to, it’s Vivienne Dartwick. I stand by that choice whether it comes with a Name attached or not.”

Her eyes shone and I looked to the side.

“Thanks,” Vivienne quietly said.

I cleared my throat uncomfortably.

“I did come for something,” I said. “Your scheme in the Legions?”

“Won’t work if it looks like we’re losing,” she replied. “I’m still looking into getting in contact. It’s ready, I just need my foot in the door.”

“Hurry it up,” I asked. “I’m not sure we’ll be getting a decisive battle before Sepulchral arrives. If the rest of her army arrives in time, I want our finger ready to pull the trigger.”

“I’ll see it done,” she firmly replied.

I nodded. I was about to take my leave when I saw hesitation on her face.

“Viv?”

She brushed back an errant strand that’d fallen out of her braid. It still looked like a crown, her milkmaid’s braid, even when she did not wear the silver circlet that’d become hers when I formally named her a princess of Callow. She bit her lip.

“The Name,” Vivienne quietly said, “I do not know if it will be…”

She trailed off, hesitating again.

“I don’t think it will be one of Below’s,” she said. “Cat, I know that-”

I limped forward a step, leaning over the desk, and even as her eyes widened in surprise I pressed a kiss against her forehead. She looked up, startled, as I drew back.

“I didn’t name you my successor so you could keep making my mistakes,” I said.

There was nothing more to say, as far as I was concerned, and so on those words I left her.

—

Staff Tribune Aisha Bishara still brewed what was probably my favourite tea in the world. Herbal Wasteland stuff, nothing like the horrid imported leaves that Hasenbach was so wild about, and I’d yet to ever dislike a mug she’d made me. Not that the pleasant taste made what we had to talk about any more pleasant.

“I’ve never seen her like this before,” Aisha said. “In her first year at the College she had moments, before she found her footing, but this is different.”

I grimaced.

“I didn’t see it coming,” I admitted. “I know Nim pulling one over us twice in a row had to be a shock, but we’ve had hard rides before. What makes this different?”

Aisha elegantly sipped at her tea, which was the polite Taghreb way of gathering’s one’s thoughts without being uncouth.

“It has been coming for some time, I think,” Aisha finally said. “Looking back now. But I am afraid that the tipping point would be you.”

I froze in my seat a moment, taken aback.

“I thought I’d made it clear I still had full trust in her abilities,” I slowly said.

“Yes,” Aisha gently said. “Which made it sting all the more when she failed your trust by being defeated so starkly.”

Fuck, I eloquently thought. Had I been turning the knife without even realizing it?

“She said things, after you left,” I began, hesitant to continue.

“She’s afraid it didn’t all come back,” Aisha murmured. “Yes, she has confided as much in me before.”

“The Grey Pilgrim himself said she was all there,” I told her. “It wrecked her body to extract the commands, the hooks were deep, but the weakness is purely physical.”

“You trusted the man, which weighs on the scales, but not all of us are eager to take the word of the Peregrine for anything at all,” she replied. “It is doubts, Catherine. She believes she was either lessened by Malicia’s spells or never on even footing with the Empire’s marshal, and cannot believe in either without loathing.”

Aisha sighed and then, for one of the few times in all the years I’d known her, slumped into her seat.

“And she loathes the indecision too,” she continued, “which makes even standing still a defeat. It is… tangled, Catherine. And perhaps this was a long time coming. We all rose swiftly under you. Some might say too quickly.”

I sipped at my tea.

“I’m not one of those people,” I said. “And unless someone else has taken to wearing my crown, that’s the only trust in need of keeping.”

She met my eye, then slowly nodded. Aisha had always been hard to read, her lovely heart-shaped face ever showing anything she did not want it to.

“I am proud, you know,” Aisha quietly said. “Of the army we built, all of us. The kingdom. It was bitter and often thankless work, Catherine, but you did not pretend otherwise when you asked us to follow you. And looking at all we have done, even after all it cost us, I am deeply proud.”

She slid a finger around the rim of her cup.

“I would not let that legacy bury us,” Aisha said. “Juniper… if she fails you here, it will haunt her to her grave.”

“I don’t know how to make her eager for the fight again,” I admitted.

I’d never had to, before. Never learned to.

“I might,” she said. “I looked through her papers as she slept.”

My eye narrowed but I did not interrupt.

“She has been sketching out theories,” Aisha said. “And one stood out. I would have us show her, Catherine, that she is not blind and lost.”

“I’m listening,” I said.

And we planned, the two of us, how to follow the plan my Marshal hadn’t given me.

—

For a bit, it looked like we’d accidentally started a night battle.

Archer and Huntress had come out to reap another harvest of lives, but when they began shooting at the legionaries sleeping in forts exactly like those we’d raised – it was the same damned pattern both sides used – it looked like we’d kicked a hornet’s nest. Not only did goblins and regulars come out in force, but so did a large force we hadn’t anticipated. The entire Eighth Legion had left the camp in Kala Hills and begun marching towards the trenches. Our watches and horns did their job properly, calling for a brisk assembly, but it was clear that we’d not get to our fortifications in force before the enemy did. Not that it mattered, I thought, because the Eighth wasn’t actually there to attack us. Juniper had believed it would be two legions, but she’d written that a delaying force at least one strong would march our way.

Now there were two more of her predictions left to come true.

The first came true within a quarter bell. In perfect marching order, the Eleventh and Fourteenth Legion crossed the valley to begin an assault on the camp in Moule Hills where Sepulchral’s vanguard was now beginning to wake in a panic. Eight thousand legionaries marching against the three thousand mixed force of household troops and cavalry. If the Black Knight closed in before they were ready, and she would, it would be a slaughter. I was rather proud of how quickly the Army of Callow began gathering in the valley facing the Legions. By the time the Eighth finished living up to their cognomen of Trailblazers and took over the Legion fortifications facing ours, our own vanguard of three thousand was on its way to our side of the trenches.

“I think we took them by surprise with the harassment by Archer and Huntress,” I mused. “At a guess, because of the dark they thought it was an attack on their position.”

“Then why did the Eighth march out so quickly?” Vivienne asked with a frown.

“Dedicated response force,” I said. “Nim had them waiting for something like this. Which is why there’s only one other legion marching to reinforce them.”

I pointed in the distance, where the Thirteenth was marching to bolster the Eighth in their defensive position. The Black Knight’s own legion, the Seventh, was staying back. Serving as a reserve, most likely.

“And now the Legions gamble on our being too slow to stop them from wiping out the Askum troops,” Vivienne muttered. “Isn’t Marshal Nim afraid we’ll overwhelm the eight thousand she’s putting in our way? Sepulchral sent household troops, not the sort of men who die quickly. If we gather enough soldiers here, we could break the two legions in our way and perhaps even defeat her army while it’s divided.”

“Good instinct,” I praised. “She’s very much afraid of that. It’s why she’s kept her own legion as a reserve, it keeps her options open. That way she can either use the Seventh to shore up the defences in the valley or to give second breath to the assault on Sepulchral should it stall out.”

“It still seems risky, especially trying it at night,” Vivienne said. “What if we gather quicker than she anticipated?”

“Here’s where it gets interesting,” I mused. “See, what we sent to reinforce our trench was our readied troops. Night watch, soldiers on duty. It was a pretty solid number for an army our size. But the second wave of our soldiers is going to come slower. They’ll need to wake, put on armour, find their officers and muster before marching out. There’s going to be a beat between the two waves.”

“So she attacks us when she still has more soldiers on the fronts than we do?” Vivienne guessed.

“That’d be a blunder,” I said. “If she tries to overwhelm our trenches, she risks our people holding and her men being out of formation when our second wave does arrive. That could go really badly for her, the kind of disaster you were talking about earlier.”

“So what does she do?” the sole princess of Callow asked. “Why are we here, Catherine?”

“Because the Hellhound believes that Marshal Nim is going to make use of that beat between the waves,” I said. “Not to overwhelm our position in the valley, no, but to delay the reinforcements. To make sure that we can’t threaten to overwhelm her position in the valley while she deals with the Askum camp.”

“And how would she do that?” Vivienne asked.

I wasn’t the one who answered her. It was, instead, the thunder of thousands of hooves against the half-road. Three thousand auxiliary horse rode down the sole road of the valley, well to the west of the standoff between the Eighth and our vanguard. They weren’t heading there in slightest, after all: they were going to continue doing the road before taking a brisk turn east towards Kala Fortress, to strike at my soldiers before they could properly form up into a second wave. They’d retreat soon enough, light horse couldn’t handle the Army of Callow in a lasting fight, but all they had to do was sow enough chaos and death to slow us down before running away.

It would buy the Black Knight long enough to do achieve what she was after, removing Sepulchral’s vanguard from the board.

Of course, there was just one little bit of trouble with that. Three thousand light cavalry, packed in a tight column so they could make the best use possible of the road, were a fearsome force. But also a fragile one. So I wanted until they were in deep, too late to easily leave, and then I turned to Grandmaster Brandon Talbot. He’d been waiting all this time, listening with an eager look on his face.

“I’m going to pull down the veil,” I said. “Ready?”

“At your word, Your Majesty,” he replied.

It’d been a pain to get Masego to anchor the Night-working in a stone and meant it had been a pretty basic illusion, but it’d allowed me to get around that little trick of Akua’s with the red light circle. The Legions had gotten too dependent on that for sniffing me out, they really ought to have known better. With a murmured prayer I tore the Night out of the stone, feeling it crumbled to dust in my hand, and suddenly the moon shone pale above the glinting ranks of the Order of the Broken Bells. Lances down, shields up, the knights were in broad flanking positions just ahead of the largest cavalry force left in the Wasteland. I glanced at Vivienne, grinning and gesturing at our foes. She grinned back.

“KNIGHTS OF CALLOW,” she shouted. “FORWARD!”

Once, twice, thrice the horn sounded.

Death followed.

Chapter 17: Aim

“To be great one must stand on the shoulders of others. The difference between rule and tyranny is whether they raised or you stepped on them.”

– King Edward Alban of Callow, best known for annexing the Kingdom of Liesse

I’d not seen that many dead and dying horses since the Graveyard.

Casualties were a haphazard game, when one tried to count them in the wake of a bloody melee in the dark, but I trusted my eyes. At least half the force of three thousand that’d proudly thundered down the road now lay dead in the dust, torn through like parchment by Callowan lances. The rest had fled, panicking as my knights butchered their way through the tightly packed column, and there’d be no more fighting out of them tonight. It’d been a massacre: we’d caught them flat-footed and in the wrong formation. Even after the casualties the Order of Broken Bells had taken, I suspected we now had more cavalry left than the Black Knight. That meant we’d killed at least three horsemen for every lost knight, the kind of exchange rate utter routs were made of.

Yet as the stink of blood and shit filled my nostrils, as the death cries of men and horses joined in a strange elegy, my eyes stayed on the horizon. The Order had not pursued the fleeing horsemen, Talbot had known that it was a fool’s errand and it’d put us as risk of running into an enemy trap. The orders given had instead been to send away the few prisoners taken, execute the dying and change mounts in anticipation of another ride. It seemed, though that there would be no need to send my knights into another melee. Marshal Nim, from her perch, had decided she did not like the growing shape of the battle. Too many risks, especially now that her horse had routed in the dark and the Army of Callow’s reinforcements were marching unhindered.

If my vanguard tried to take her fortifications in the plains with the support of the Order, she might face an outright defeat here. Her forces were still split and I was the one with the cavalry advantage now. So the Black Knight did the smart thing, the prudent thing. What the Legion doctrine she’d helped write would have advised: she retreated.

The assault on Sepulchral’s soldiers in the heights was called off and the Seventh prudently moved to reinforce the two legions already gathering to face my army by the trench. Marshal Nim wouldn’t attack, though, and neither would I. Taking trenches, even only half-finished ones, would be messy. Too risky, given the exhaustion of our armies and the lack of coordination that came from fighting in the dark. Her officers were better than mine, sure, but she wasn’t going to bet on the same army that’d slugged it out with the Dead King for years being the army to break. When the going got rough and the fighting became about who had the iron to pull through? There was no beating the Army of Callow.

So instead of a battle, what we were going to get was two armies standing in battle array half a mile from each other in the dark for a few hours before both retreated. I pulled off my helmet, shaking free my wet hair. I wasn’t great with a lance, but I’d gotten in close with my sword after sowing further panic in the enemy with Night. There was blood on my armour that wasn’t mine. I looked up at the starry sky, breathing out slowly.

We’d made it through one more night.

—

Aisha had thought that following Juniper’s plan successfully would shake her out of… whatever this was, but the following morning I saw differently. I’d taken it as a good sign that she had headed out towards the frontlines, but it wasn’t to our fortifications she went. She didn’t go to inspect the trenches or the forts. Instead Juniper had headed further west, near the half-road that it would take us days to build all the way to – about six, Pickler believed, at our current pace. I found my marshal’s escort milling about uneasily on the valley floor while Juniper herself stood alone beneath a tall sycamore tree. It didn’t give much shade, its branches skeletal and bare of all leaves.

The Hellhound was one of the tallest orcs I’d met, taller than any in the Army of Callow save Hakram, and she’d always had a presence. Even as a cadet, the broad shoulders and ramrod straight way she stood had made the military in her visible to even a casual glance. I tended to have a hard time placing the age of orcs that were between their twenties and forties – before or after, the signs were pretty distinctive – but I’d known Juniper for years. Seen her grow as I grew, the lines of her broad face harden and her fangs thicken. Her eyes, black like most orcs’, were deeper set than when we’d first met. The skin around had grown greyer, too.

Yet in all these years I’d never really seen her… sag like this. It was a little subtle, could have been taken as just leaning against the tree in someone like Indrani, but to someone who knew her it was plain. Her shoulders were hunched, her expression exhausted. She didn’t greet me after I limped to her side, eyes still on the growing lines of fortifications in the distance. Dawn had passed an hour ago, both the Legions and my army were back to work in the cool morning air.

“There are better places to take it in,” I tried. “If we go near the foot of the hills to the east, we can make out the Aksum camp as well.”

She did not answer. I waited, at a loss. Juniper had never been one to swallow her feelings, so these long silences she’d taken to hiding in had me on the back foot.

“I recognized the plan,” the Hellhound finally said.

“You should,” I said, “it was yours. And it worked.”

Not my subtlest of approaches but sometimes blunt was the way to go. A surprisingly large amount of the time, really. Yet instead of what I’d been looking for, her shoulders further hunched.

“It wasn’t,” she roughly replied.

“Juniper, we literally cribbed your notes,” I flatly said.

Finally she turned to me, jaw clenched tight and eyes hard.

“You took my read of the situation and you made it yours,” the Marshal of Callow evenly said, the growl kept low in her throat. “I predicted some decisions Marshal Nim might make, like half our general staff could have had they been asked. You took those guesses and made them into a functional battle plan.”

My fingers clenched but I forced myself to stay calm. It was like she was trying to be obtuse.

“Using the Order was-”

“I wouldn’t have used the Order, Catherine,” Juniper angrily said. “I wouldn’t have fought at all. I would have moved half the army closer to the trenches so that the Black Knight would be forced to do the same and it became too much of a risk for her to attack Sepulchral.”

I blinked, then hid my surprise.

“That would also have worked,” I pointed out.

“Your solution was better,” she growled. “You won the same prize, forcing her to back off from Sepulchral, but the Order’s ambush cost her half her horse as well. If I had given you advice, if you had taken it, it would have been an inferior result.”

I bit on my tongue before I could tell her it would still have been a good one, knowing she’d take it as a slap in the face.

“If you hadn’t predicted Marshal Nim was going to attack none of it would have been possible,” I said instead.

“General Zola believed she would as well,” Juniper said. “You simply never asked her, because you insist on pretending I am something I’m not.”

I grit my teeth. Why was she insisting on embracing the worst possible slant for everything? Fuck, she’d been outplayed by the Black Knight only twice – when had she become so fragile?

“And what would that be?” I bit out.

“A better commander than you,” the Hellhound gravelled. “Someone whose advice you should be taking.”

“That’s-”

I almost said ridiculous before biting down on it. Calling her a fool wasn’t going to achieve anything.

“- the truth,” Juniper said. “When have I ever won a victory, save when you were dragging me along?”

“You beat back Malanza at the Camps,” I said.

“I played for time until you could return,” she replied, “and would have lost if you had not. It’s been like that since the start. Three Hills was your plan. Marchford, Five Armies and One, Dormer – all the way to the Tenth Crusade. And when I did hold the command with none above me, I almost broke the Army of Callow in Iserre.”

“I handle the Named part of those plans,” I said. “The military parts were yours, Juniper. In almost all those battles, I went down in the ranks and fought. Someone needed to actually command the army and that’s always been you.”

“You don’t need a Marshal for that,” Juniper said. “You need a general, and you have plenty already.”

“I don’t agree with that in the slightest,” I harshly said. “And you’re forgetting who built this damned army in the first place, Hellhound. It sure as Hells wasn’t me.”

“Don’t you see how senseless it is?” Juniper miserably said. “We had a single draw when we were kids and it’s all come from that. Every office, every honour, every title. I am a child in marshal’s stripes facing a real marshal of Praes. It can only go one way.”

There was nothing I could say, I dimly realized. We could be at this all day, I could have the silvermost tongue in Creation or the finest rhetoric of the Free Cities and it wouldn’t move her an inch. She’d swallowed the lie, let it settle in her guts. Words wouldn’t fix this. Fuck, I wasn’t sure I could. My eye strayed to the sycamore, the shifting lay of its shade baring what I had missed: it was dead, inside. Through cracks I could see it had gone hollow, dead at the heart and the limbs simply too slow to have caught up to the truth. When I looked at Juniper she did not meet my eye.

“I will refuse a resignation if you offer it,” I curtly said.

I got back on my horse and left her to her tree.

—

The bruising night battle had changed the balance of power in the valley.

We’d shown we had teeth and the Army of Callow had managed to recover from the exhausting overnight forced march that’d won us Kala Fortress. The Black Knight wasn’t as sure she could take us on a field now. So both my army and the Black Knight’s avoided further fighting, in the valley at least. Zola ordered a permanent night watch on the Legions in case they made another move on Sepulchral’s vanguard, but like us Marshal Nim was focusing elsewhere: the valley between the hills of Moule and Kala had become a race of fortifications. I sent Archer and Huntress out to slow them as I had yesterday, hitting them at different places in the line, but even so their advantage in sapper numbers told.

They caught up to my own sappers and then began to overtake us, though not by too large a margin. Across the valley mirrored works were emerging: two lines of trenches facing each other, with palisades behind them. East to west, the both of us hurrying towards the half-road. We even took the same precautions, pulled from the same doctrine. To prevent a night attack overwhelming our positions, we raised walled camps behind our walls where we could keep protective garrisons.

It was in Moule Hills that the fighting continued. I needed all my sappers down in the valley working on the siege works, which meant I’d have to rely on regulars to actually head out into the hills and cut wood. Compared to the goblin skirmishers from that would be shaken loose to harass us, my legionaries would be at a distinct disadvantage. A protective screen had to be sent out, so I sent for the two I believed to be the right people for the job. Lord Razin Tanja and Lady Aquiline Osena came into my tent an hour past dawn, but it was not an elaborate plan I gave them.

“Kala Hills,” I said, pointing at the map. “If it’s an enemy and it’s in it, I want it dead. Keep them off our woodcutters.”

“The plan?” Razin politely asked.

“Pick your men, pick your pace, pick your battles,” I shrugged. “Those hills are yours.”

Aquiline grinned.

“You have us an honour war, Black Queen,” she said, sounding delighted.

“Honour can bite my ass,” I said. “Bring me scalps, Osena.”

The look on her face was somewhere between scandalized and gleeful, which actually did wonders for my mood. At least the lordlings could be counted on not to fall apart, I thought as I sent them out of the tent. By afternoon I had my first reports: the Dominion force was taking to the task with fervent enthusiasm, the Malaga contingent in particular. Fighting the Champion’s Blood in the Alavan hills for centuries had ensured they were well versed at fighting in this sort of terrain. It was a bloody, tribal fight just the way the goblins and the Levantines liked them. Razin himself came back near Afternoon Bell with a fresh scar and a pleased look on his face, just in time for Vivienne to ambush me as I got a cup of wine in him before sending him off to a healer.

“The commander of Sepulchral’s force sent us a rider,” she said, briskly entering the tent. “They want to meet.”

“Finally,” I grunted. “You got a name for me?”

“Isoba Mirembe,” Vivienne said.

I let out a low whistle.

“Sepulchral’s heir,” I told a confused Razin. “Her grand-nephew.”

“Does she have no closer relatives?” he asked, sounding surprised.

“It used to be her nephew, but we killed him at the Folly,” I said. “They have a time for me, Vivienne?”

“Half-past Afternoon Bell,” she said. “South of Moule Hills.”

I grimaced. Would have to saddle up soon, then. And since the young man – he was nineteen, I vaguely recalled, or thereabouts – was technically heir to both Askum and her claim on the Tower I’d have to bring enough high-ranking people it wasn’t an insult. There weren’t really many I could spare, though. Then I shot a considering look at Razin, who was noble.

“Finish that cup, lordling,” I said. “And get that wound looked at. We’re going for a ride.”

Might as well pick up the other kids, I thought. Sapan would be pissy at leaving Masego’s side – or more realistically his grimoires – but it would be good for her and Arthur to get a proper look at Wasteland high nobility. Besides, even though I didn’t believe the call to be a trap that hardly meant I trusted the Mirembe. Two more Named would be a useful precaution. Razin Tanja set down his empty cup on my carved table, standing up, and that was the sound of us getting a move on.

—

Isoba Mirembe looked a lot like I’d expected Sargon Sahelian to. Tall and with slender muscles, his face a perfect symmetry of high cheekbones under cold golden eyes. He was beautiful, but almost more like a statue than a man. It reminded me uncomfortably of the Exiled Prince, who might as well have been cut out of marble. This one, though, did not have a Name. How many potions and spells had it taken for his dark skin not to have the slightest of imperfections on it? The armour he wore was practical, at least, if incrusted with enough jewels to arm an entire company of legionaries. My escort of knights was a match in numbers for his retinue, but instead of the handful of nobles he’d brought I instead had two Named and a ruler of the Blood.

“Black Queen, I greet you in the name of Dread Empress Sepulchral,” Isoba said, breaking the silence, “and give you her thanks for your intervention last night.”

“The Black Queen greets her back,” I drily said. “You know who I am. With me ride Lord Razin Tanja of the Grim Binder’s Blood, the Apprentice and the Squire. And, of course, twenty of the same knights that ran down the Legion horse last night.”

The last part was a break in manners, but I regretted it not the slightest when I saw the backs of my knights straighten. They’d earned the praise, as far as I was concerned. Isoba introduced only the nobles he’d brought, each a ruling lord or lady in their own right. He’d not skimped on the rank of those he brought, at least, which was a good sign. With that out of the way, we got to business.

“A truce between our forces would be only natural,” Isoba suggested. “Neither Aksum nor the true empress have any quarrel with the Grand Alliance.”

“A truce is a start,” I said, “but it’s just delaying the trouble. We need to strike at the Black Knight together.”

“My aunt would welcome the official backing of the Grand Alliance as ruler of Praes,” Isoba easily replied, smiling without a speck of joy. “On such terms an alliance could be made.”

“You’re not getting that,” I bluntly said. “And you lending a hand to the business of keeping your hides from being tanned is hardly worth that asking price. Poorly bargained.”

“Why would we pay for what you offer freely?” the young man laughed. “It is in your interest to keep our force from being overwhelmed, lest you find yourself fighting the Legions alone.”

“You’re standing on quicksand, Mirembe,” I warned. “I’m not going to keep pulling you out of the fire if you’re of no use to me. Better then to let the Black Knight bloody her forces killing you all.”

That got his attention.

“Bluster,” he dismissed, but his eyes had sharpened.

I sighed. There was no point to this if he had no grasp on the precarity of his situation.

“This is why children shouldn’t be sent to negotiate,” I said. “You’ve wasted my time.”

He looked like I’d slapped him, which to be fair I pretty much had. His gaggle of nobles were studying him for a hint of his thoughts – or of weakness – but he wasn’t going to walk back his words after I’d insulted him. We’d have this talk again after Marshal Nim put some proper fear in his belly, or she killed them all. Either way, it was no trouble of mine. So long as the vanguard had a proper standing fight instead of being slaughtered half asleep, I figured they could cost the Legions at least two thousand men going down. It’d make the Black Knight’s force somewhat more manageable.

“Back to camp,” I told my people, pulling at Zombie’s reins.

My eye found that Razin, though, was looking at the other young man with an odd look on his face.

“Since I was a child I have been told of the cunning of the Praesi high lords,” the Lord of Malaga said. “And this is the truth of your blood? This is a bitter disappointment.”

“What would a savage from the edge of the world know of anything?” Isoba mocked. “The Mirembe could wipe out your misbegotten bloodline as easy as-”

“I have been on that horse, once upon a time,” Razin said, eyeing the other lord. “So I am not without sympathy for your position, for it is not pleasant. Yet even a savage from the edge of the world knew it was better to swallow pride than perish like a fool. Where is the cunning and power that your people so often boast of? All I see is an arrogant child who would kill himself and all with him out of wounded pride.”

Eyes, amber and dark, studied them both coolly. The nobles were listening.

“You know nothing,” Isoba hissed. “Either of cunning or death. If the Legions come, they will be cowed.”

“If the Legions come, you will die,” Razin slowly said, as if speaking to a half-wit. “I am Blood, Isoba Mirembe. I understand honour, the pride of defiance. But that pride must be rooted in something more than fantasy, else you have saddled a dead horse. When the Black Knight comes you will be slaughtered to the last, and you are breaking off talks with the sole woman who can prevent this. This is senseless.”

Huh. Isoba was looking at him like he wanted to skin him alive and boil him. Shit, now I was almost hoping the heir to Aksum would live just so he’d have to keep remembering that little speech. The nobles had watched it all, and I saw now that looks were being traded. They had come to a decision.

“It was not known to us that Marshal Nim had become the Black Knight,” one of them idly said. “The situation has changed. Named are not to be underestimated.”

“Perhaps talks should be had, after all,” another said, smiling pleasantly.

Neither were looking at us. All of them, amber-eyed vultures, were looking at Isoba Mirembe. I saw it sink in, the truth that if he did not bargain Sepulchral would have another heir by nightfall. And it was hard pill to swallow, but still better than dying, so he turned to us with a mild smile and talks began anew. I sent Razin a fond look. Sat in that horse before, had he? Sarcella had not been so long ago, and still it felt like a lifetime. What did the man I was looking at now have to do with the boy I’d fought in that city?

So very little.

—

Isoba Mirembe would not concede to joining us in battle unless his position was assailed, and on that the nobles seemed to back him. Orders from Sepulchral herself, I suspected. We did strike a bargain, though: he would harass the Legions from behind, slowing their works, and in return I promised to intervene of the Black Knight tried to wipe him out again. It wasn’t what I’d wanted from him, but it was still better than them staying holed up in Moule Hills twiddling their thumbs. The second day rose to much the same arrangements as the first: in the valley walls raced east, while in the hills trees fell and blood spilled.

It was all ambushes and raids in there, not a single standing fight to be found. War parties came back with trophies or never at all. The Dominion was better up close and with javelins, it became clear from casualty reports, but the Legion skirmishers were hardened veterans with full stocks of goblin munitions. We pushed them back far north by afternoon, but it led the Levantines into a series of vicious ambushes on mined grounds that forced them into full retreat. Aquiline captured a prisoner that shed light on the turnabout: the Legions had sent for volunteers from Risas, the town by the lake, so that they might have native guides in the hills. The losses earlier in the day had been bait for the trap.

In the valley the Legions were still ahead of us, but Isoba had been true to his word: he sent out his horse to harass the enemy. Quick hit-and-run attacks on companies between Marshal Nim’s camp and the walls, burning a few carts and killing a few isolated tenths. He retreated immediately when the Legions sent out their own cavalry, returning to the safety of the camp. The Black Knight hadn’t made it a priority to bottle up the Askum troops before, but that changed with them making it clear they were willing to go on the attack. Sappers were pulled from the valley to begin raising a ring of forts near the foot of the hills where Isoba was encamped.

Good, it’d slow the Legions where it mattered.

On the third day, the situation in the valley and hills stabilized. In Kala Hills, the chastened Levantines established a cautious stalemate slightly to the north of the lines of fortifications. It left the greater part of the Kala Hills and its wooden bounty in Legion hands, but the Aquiline had sent her slayers to secure a few hidden glades to the east that kept us sufficiently provisioned in wood. Considering the disparity in numbers, I was more than satisfied with the performance of the Dominion forces and made that plain to both lordlings. It was in the valley that we pulled slightly ahead, our wall and trench passing the Black Knight’s. The Legions had carts full of what I believed to be siege engines brought to the front, though, and I ordered the same of my men.

No battle ensued, though. When trouble came it came from elsewhere. Scribe found me near Afternoon Bell and led me to a tent where two men were bound and gagged under guard.

“Who am I looking at?” I asked.

“Trusted servants of Lord Sokoro Abara,” Eudokia said. “I’ve been keeping an eye on him. They were sent to take the long way around Moule Hills and get in touch with Marshal Nim. Some information would be passed as a gesture of goodwill, ties established.”

Well, he hadn’t struck me as a particularly trustworthy man. Hadn’t expected him to try to play both sides so quick, though.

“What kind of information?” I asked.

“Minor,” Scribe said. “Troop numbers, camp gossip.”

Mhm. So nothing too drastic. He’d wanted to establish credentials, not outright jump ship. Not yet.

“He’s still got his half-brother in a cell?” I asked.

Scribe nodded.

“Take him out,” I decided. “Stash him somewhere in our camp.”

“And these two?”

I eyed them.

“Put their heads on his bed,” I said. “With a written note: no second chances.”

That should remind him in whose hands his leash was. It better, I had plans for tomorrow and wanted no distraction from them.

—

On the fourth day, I decided it was time to try to kill Marshal Nim.

Not here and now, unfortunately. I was unlikely to succeed with a nascent pattern of three nudging coincidence in her favour. But I could, at least, solidify that pattern. The veil over that knife was to be the Army of Callow going on the offensive: we were only two days away from our trench reaching the road, half the valley’s length already fortified, so the time had come to test the enemy’s defences. The Legions had mounted their siege engines, as had the Army of Callow, but neither side had begun firing. We’d not wanted to begin that slugging match too early. Until now.

My ballistae began hammering at the enemy palisade at the turn of Morning Bell. Within eighty heartbeats, the enemy returned fire.

They had us beat in numbers for traditional Legion siege weapons like ballistae and scorpions, but by doctrine a legion didn’t usually carry trebuchets unless an actual siege was planned. That gave us an edge in range and power with the three we had, but as the sky filled with stones I saw the margin was much thinner than I would have liked. On both sides mages had been brought to the fore, using shields to prop up our palisades so they wouldn’t break under hits, but the enemy’s superior volume of fire was hammering harder at us. We had fewer mages, too. I had an answer to that, fortunately: Archer and the Silver Huntress began using their proper bows.

Javelin-sized arrows began killing the siege crews and breaking the engines, our own ballista fire forcing their mage lines to stay and protect the palisades instead of covering them. The Black Knight had other mages to call on, though, and they intervened before my Named could do too much damage. A whirling wind formed over the enemy position and I grimaced. That looked simple and easy to maintain, which was bad, but worse was that neither my archer Named could land an arrow through that. Magic like shields they had arrows that could go through, but not wind. And it was exactly that, just magically induced.

Time to gamble, then. This might turn around on us if we didn’t. I gave the order and the signals went up. In the Kala Hills to the east, through a path the Levantines had found, a strike force of a thousand emerged past the enemy defence line. There was a fort in the way, the Legions had known of the path’s existence, but suddenly the wind in the sky stopped whirling and instead formed into a great spear. It hammered down into the fort, killing an entire company in a moment as Hierophant reminded everyone on the field why people avoided fighting mage Named of his calibre.

The legionaries rushed past the wreckage, heading straight for the enemy engines with two silhouettes at their head: Squire and Apprentice. Come on, Black Knight, I thought. You need to keep those engines, otherwise digging out the vanguard in the hills will get a lot more complicated. It’s only a thousand, and you can handle a mere Squire can’t you? Take your swing. Come on. A surge of power in the distance reminded me why I wasn’t with the assault, a ball of poisonous green clouds beginning to form above my own siege engines.

“Hello, Akua,” I coldly smiled, and unleashed the Night I’d spent an hour gathering.

My work was here. I’d asked Masego to keep the kids alive if this went south, it would have to do. And it was looking pretty good. The force with the Squire got to the engines and set two on fire in quick succession while I maintained a stalemate with the mage nobility and arrow fire began picking off Legion mages. Only the Black Knight wasn’t showing. Not even in a possessed body. Shit, she wasn’t taking the bait. Worse, even as my attack force began running into entrenched opposition and was forced back I found out where the Black Knight actually was: there was smoke coming from the Aksum camp. Had she hit them with an ogre line like she’d done our camp near Wolof?

Sepulchral’s men didn’t make fortified camps like the Legions and the Army did, a raid like that would go… badly for them.

Cursing, I have the order for a retreat. We’d broken at least half of the enemy siege engines, those deployed here at least, but it’d been costly. Even with Hierophant covering the retreat, we lost a little over half the thousand we’d sent. And Marshal Nim had not shown. I’d not finessed fate into killing her before the campaign was over. How had she known not to show? My fingers clenched, then unclenched. Akua, had to be. But why would she tell the Black Knight? If she was going to make a play for the Legions, and she must if she was to attempt to overthrow Malicia, she could not keep Marshal Nim alive. The Black Knight was a loyalist, the marshal that’d stayed true.

So what was her game?

It was beginning to slip out of my hands, I realized. I’d thought I had a handle on the path Akua would take, and I still believed that I did, but I had to wonder… I pushed aside the worries, attending to the here and now. With our retreat, siege fire petered out on both sides and ended entirely by Afternoon Bell. Sappers on both sides began repairing the chunks of palisade that’d been blown away, and that strange air of truce fell over the valley again. There was no more killing over the fourth day, not even in the hills.

All knew better than to believe it would last.

—

On the fifth day, Scribe brought news.

“Sepulchral’s army is getting close,” she told the war council. “If she keeps up the current pace, by evening in six days she will reach Moule Hills.”

Opinions were divided on how we should react to that.

“We should delay until the greater army arrives,” General Zola pragmatically advised. “Sepulchral will likely attempt to use us to destroy the Legions at the least cost to herself possible, but she will still broadly be on our side.”

“Or she could sit it out entirely, waiting for someone’s supplies to run out and desperate decisions start getting made,” Aisha pointed out. “We should not assume cooperation of Abreha Mirembe, she is well aware that we do not wish her to climb the Tower.”

“Even if we do want to finish off the Legions before Sepulchral arrive, can we?” Vivienne asked.

“If her vanguard helps, I believe it’s possible to win a field battle,” I said, then hesitated. “I’m not sure how decisive a victory it would be, however.”

“That would strengthen the position of the pretender empress when she arrives,” Lady Aquiline said. “Give her power in bargaining with us.”

She wasn’t wrong, I admitted. If Army of Callow and the Loyalist Legions bloodied each other just before Sepulchral arrived with her fresh force, it swung the balance in her favour. On the other hand, should we really wait six days just for this to still be true only with her camped in the hills over the battle? Aisha wasn’t wrong either, when she’d said that Sepulchral might just try to live up to the vulture on her banner. No decision was made, in the end, though I knew one would have to be soon. If we were going to attack, it would have to be somewhere over the next three days. Otherwise the margin to rest and regroup before the empress-claimant arrived would be risky.

The trenches and palisades in the valley kept steadily stretching east, and by tomorrow Pickler was certain we’d reach the half-road. Fortifications were not, unfortunately, a goddamned plan. That was our trouble here: we didn’t have a plan to beat the Black Knight, even if we could force her into a pitched battle. Which was looking less and less likely by the day.

Both sides extended their defences to the road on the sixth day, the skirmishes beginning again in earnest in Kala Hills. Weather blew in from the north-east that forced everyone to retreat by early afternoon, though with the warm morning sun being covered by clouds as the air cooled. What begin as a hard rain that sent everyone running to fill water barrels turned into something altogether less pleasant before the hour was out: rain turned to snow, and then the kind of hard hail I would never have expected of the Wasteland. Everyone was stuck in tents for the rest of the day, until the storm passed halfway through the night.

When the seventh morning rose it was to still-wet ground, the hail having melted overnight, but also to General Zola bringing me a worrying report. Two lines of scouts send to the south of Moule Hills were hours late in reporting. We hadn’t seen movement from the enemy, but the Black Knight might have moved troops under cover of the hail.

“Battle formations,” I ordered Zola. “And prepare a force to handle our eastern flank in case they went around Moule Hills unseen.”

Yet I learned, not even an hour later, that I’d been wrong. It was not the Legions that had caught our scouts. Well, in a sense I supposed it actually had been. In the middle stretch of Moule Hills, well to the south of Sepulchral’s camp and about the height of the mirroring fortified lines, banners had been raised. Legion banners: the Second, Third and Ninth.

The Rebel Legions had arrived before Sepulchral could, and the balance hadn’t swung against us so much as swung down on our heads.

Chapter 18: Release

“The trick isn’t to win battles, it’s to let your opponents lose them.”

–Aretha the Raven, Nicaean general

General Sacker came to meet me with a company of a hundred heavies and three lines of mages, the lot of them glittering with at least half a dozen defensive enchantments and shield spells at the tip of their hands. Well, would you look at. The Rebel Legions had grasped the reality that I might be somewhat cross at them. It was almost like they’d taken my coin and supplies for years before turning on me at the first opportunity. I wasn’t going to be forgetting that, or any other of their small slights.

“Hail, Black Queen.”

A mere twenty knight stood fanned out behind me. What need did I have for a larger escort than that?

“Sacker,” I said. “Fancy seeing you here.”

The goblin general had only walked up to the edge of the defensive enchantments and not a step further. I would have been offended by that if I hadn’t seriously considered slaughtering the entire contingent and ripping her plans out of her mind on the ride here. Only the certainty that it would push the rebels to allying with the Black Knight, however temporarily, had stayed my hand.

“You were warned of our march,” General Sacker replied. “We have dealt openly with you.”

“Debatable at best,” I flatly replied. “But let’s pretend I buy that, just for a moment. Keep up that alleged streak and tell me what you lot came here to do.”

“We aim to engage in talks with Marshal Nim,” Sacker said. “We have no intention of fighting you save if you force our hand.”

I snorted. General Mok’s plan to talk the Black Knight into deposing Malicia was still their play, then. They were fools if they thought it would get them anywhere. Nim was in deep with the Tower, she wasn’t going to defect now. Malicia would string them along until she no longer had a use for them, a situation I could only assume was imminent.

“And your stance regarding Sepulchral’s forces?” I asked.

“If arrangement is reached with the Black Knight, there will be either surrender or war,” Sacker said. “If not, the situation remains fluid. Regardless, we will not attack unless first provoked.”

Mhm. Then they weren’t all in on Mok’s plan yet. The vanguard in the northern Moule Hills was being used as threat on the flank of the Loyalist Legions, one they had no intention of removing before a deal was struck with the Black Knight. An alliance with the Rebel Legions wasn’t on the table – wouldn’t be unless Marshal Nim refused their entreaties outright, which she wouldn’t because she wasn’t a fucking idiot – so there was no point in aiming for that. I could, though, aim for a smaller concession.

“Then I’ll ask for your promise to stand aside should I intervene to prevent Marshal Nim wiping out the vanguard,” I said. “If not your help outright, which I would take as a sign of good faith doing much to restore your trustworthiness in my eyes.”

She hesitated.

“They are a rebel force,” General Sacker hedged. “The Black Knight’s duty is clear.”

I met her eyes and let all pleasantness drip down from my face.

“My tolerance has limits,” I said, tone so very mild.

“We are not in your service,” the goblin general snorted.

“No,” I replied, “but so far you have toed the line when it came to being my enemy. You might want to consider the price of crossing it, before you offer me another half-hearted platitude.”

“I am a general of-”

“You were a general,” I coldly interrupted. “Now you’re a vagrant that twice bit the hands feeding you. You’re out of chances, Sacker. With me, with the Tower, with everybody else.”

“Threats will not sway me, girl,” General Sacker said.

I let Night billow in my veins, coming quicker for the anger in my blood.

“A threat?” I laughed. “Do you honestly think your little spells would stop me if I wanted you all dead? If I wanted to rip out every secret from your head and make them dance before my eyes? It’s not a threat when I warn you, Sacker. You are not strong enough for my words to be hypothetical. If you get in my way, I will fucking step on you.”

I leaned forward.

“So I’m going to ask you again,” I said. “I want your promise to stand aside, should I intervene to prevent the Black Knight from wiping out Sepulchral’s vanguard.”

Still she hesitated, and a ring of red light formed high above me as Night kept coming to me. I ripped it out of the sky without even bothering to look.

“So long as no deal has been struck with the Black Knight, you have our promise,” General Sacker finally said.

“Good,” I harshly smiled.

“You are not making allies with your words, girl,” the goblin said.

“And still I somehow seem to have more than you lot,” I replied.

I cocked my head to the side.

“And Sacker, one last thing?” I added.

She watched me expectantly.

“Call me girl again and I’ll make you eat your own tongue,” I calmly told her.

Somehow, I saw, the calm gave her more pause than my anger had.

—

The Rebel Legions did two things the day they blew into our increasingly crowded battlefield. The first was send envoys to both myself and the Black Knight. The second was throw their hat in the ring, so to speak. The Loyalist Legions and my Army of Callow had dug trenches and raised palisades along two thirds of the length of the valley between the hills, all the way to the road, but the deserters sent their sappers downhill the moment they had a camp up and began digging a trench of their own. Facing mine and Nim’s, vertical to our horizontal.

“They’re digging a hundred feet past crossbow range, both ours and the Legions’,” General Zola informed us at council. “Sapper-General Pickler believes their fortifications will end up in a thin crescent facing our lines.”

“We’ll need to raise our own trenches facing theirs,” I sighed. “Or they’ll be able to flank us at will.”

It would turn our fortifications into a straight corner with one side facing the Loyalist Legions and the other the Rebel ones, while the Black Knight’s trench would end up at a much wider angle. Given their more numerous sappers, though, I didn’t anticipate them losing much of a step.

“We’re getting boxed in,” Grandmaster Talbot said. “With all these walls and trenches the Order will be made useless.”

“We can’t prevent them for raising fortifications of their own without forcing a battle,” Aisha said. “One at which we will be at a severe disadvantage, should the Black Knight reinforce them.”

Which she probably would. The deserters were still at a full force, thirteen thousand and fresh. The Army of Callow numbered a little under thirteen thousand, now, and Nim’s legions should be around twenty or twenty-one thousand. That battle would see us outnumbered more than two to one while flanked, which was a recipe for disaster. We couldn’t afford to start that fight.

“We do nothing,” I said, the words bitter against my tongue. “To them, at least. Our sappers need to prepare our flank for the possibility of assault now.”

It was out of my hands, now. All I could hope was that my enemies did not yet band together. The day passed quickly enough, laden with bad news, but the following warning ended up just as darkened. Scribe had requested the war council gather, which was rare enough I did not think twice about granting the request. What she had to say was not long, but it still hit hard.

“It cost me most of my agents within Sepulchral’s main host, but I have found out who plans her campaign for her,” Scribe said.

I laid back into my seat, already sensing this was not pleasant news.

“Instructions are received by letter, which are read out loud over scrying ritual,” Eudokia said. “The physical letters eventually make their way to Sepulchral herself, however, and my people were able to forge a decent copy of one before fleeing camp.”

She set down a letter on the table, which aside from having calligraphy small and cramped did not particularly evoke anything in me. Juniper, though, breathed in sharply.

“This is Grem One-Eye’s handwriting,” Scribe said. “He has been planning Sepulchral’s campaign for her from captivity in Ater.”

I grimaced. Well, fuck. Just what we needed, another marshal in the mix. My fingers clenched, then unclenched. Wrong way to think about this, I decided. Grem wouldn’t have had the pull to do this on his own, someone had to be helping him. Hells, someone had to have asked him to do this because otherwise I couldn’t see him helping Abreha Mirembe. And only two people were in position to do it, Malicia and my father. It didn’t fit Malicia, though, her way of doing things. Even if she’d been helping Sepulchral stay afloat with good advice, she would have cut off the flow now. She could no longer afford game this elaborate.

So it meant I had, at last, found the first trace of what my father was up to in Kala.

That somewhat improved my mood, but it passed quickly. While I’d been lost in thought I’d not been paying attention to the table, which only claimed my attention again when there was a ripple in the assembled council. Juniper had gotten to her feet.

Without a word, she walked out of the tent and did not return.

—

Once more I found the Marshal of Callow standing beneath a sycamore.

The same as last time, a bone-dry skeleton of a tree hollowed out inside. Dead and dying, the limbs having yet to catch up to the emptiness at the heart of it. Juniper’s escort had stayed far, as ordered, and as I limped past them across the dusty ground I found my eye dragged above. Sunset was painting the sky in layers, just like the stones of the hills to the west: the dark blue of night high above, with a distant moon, but then it lightened. Yellowed. Only to deepen once more, orange and red and at last a rich purple. Day died and its death throes shifted across the stone and dust, shade cutting in fluid slices as it swallowed up Creation in a never-sated maw. The Wasteland, for all its many dangers, was capable of eerie beauty at times.

Juniper was not leaning against the tree. I saw that first, even as I approached her. I had thought to find here the same hunched and self-loathing creature that’d been wearing the skin of one of my oldest friends for over a sennight, but this was… different. Her back might not be straight, but she was not sagging like withered vine. Instead she stood there with a lost and thoughtful look on her face, looking straight west. I followed her gaze, founding nothing more than the sappers of the Rebel Legions at work digging their own trench and palisade. They were skilled hands, well-drilled for all that they had deserted the Tower’s service. The three generals leading them had kept them disciplined.

I hesitated to break the silence. I’d found what I’d thought I would, and I was not sure I wanted to interrupt… whatever this was. For all the intensity of the Hellhound’s gaze, I had of late seen in her fragility that had me staying my hand. As I wrestled with my doubts, she came to a decision of her own. Her voice was rasping when she spoke. Dry, and she licked her chops before doing it.

“The Scribe, she said that Sacker’s in command among the deserters,” Juniper said. “Is it true?”

I hummed.

“Can’t be sure,” I admitted. “But the Jacks heard the same thing. I think Mok has more pull when it comes to strategic decisions, since he has the biggest army, but that Sacker’s the lead for tactics.”

Her eyes never left the sappers digging to the west. I bit my lip, then cast aside my hesitation. It wasn’t doing me any good.

“They tell me you’ve been here more than two hours,” I said. “Have you been looking at them the whole time?”

The Hellhound laughed. It was a low, rumbling thing. Not quite amused or happy, more like a… release. Vented feeling.

“Yeah, I have,” Juniper said. “Because there’s this…”

She shook her head.

“She was like an aunt to me, Sacker,” the orc said.

I did remember. It felt like a lifetime ago, but I remembered. I’d never seen her as embarrassed as she had been when I’d first seen her meet her mother and almost-aunt fuss over her after she became a legate. It’d been a memorable sight.

“Auntie Sacks,” I idly said.

“She used to tell me stories,” Juniper distantly said. “When I was small, Catherine. To make me go to sleep. That was all back in Summerholm, before I went home to be raised by my father. Goblin stories about gore and raids and little girls that got gobbled up for being too slow or too dim.”

“She seemed close to your mother,” I said.

I’d never grown to know either more than shallowly, but it’s been obvious to be even when I’d been young.

“She was probably Mom’s closest friend in the world,” she replied. “She spent more years of her life with Sacker at her side than she did my own father. It showed. Goblins aren’t usually… good with children. Sacker was making an effort.”

“She seems to have made an impression on you,” I said.

Juniper flashed pale fangs at the deepening night.

“She did,” the Hellhound said. “But not just for the stories. Did you ever hear she was meant to rise to Marshal in Ranker’s place when she retired?”

“There were rumours,” I acknowledged. “You know, back before…”

I gesture vaguely, meaning a great many things but not in particular. She snorted in amusement.

“I looked up to her for that,” Juniper said. “Even more than I did my mother, because my mother was never going to rise higher than she had. It wasn’t like Istrid Knightsbane I wanted to be when I grew up, Catherine. It was like Grem and Ranker and Nim. The Marshals. And Sacker, she had the stuff. The marshals knew it, so the Carrion Lord. If things had turned out different, it could be her serving as the Tower’s greatest captain instead of Nim.”

“A lot of things could have gone differently,” I said.

My hand half-rose to the cloth covering the eye sloppiness had cost me before I forced it down. Some mistakes stayed with you longer than others. I found Juniper’s gaze had moved to me, catching sight of the aborted movement, and I flushed in embarrassment. Those kinds of regrets I preferred kept unseen from even my friends.

“It’s an eye, Catherine,” Juniper said. “Just an eye. You could lose both and still be who you are. And that’s what eats at me. When did you know?”

“Know what?”

Her gaze was alight with something I could not quite name.

“Who you were,” Juniper gravelled. “We’ve hung titles around your neck like necklaces at a summer fair, Warlord. Countess. Squire. Arch-heretic of the East. Black Queen, Queen of Lost and Found, of Winter, of the Hunt. First Under the Night. But before that, when did you know?”

Half a dozen answers, some flippant and others rote, came to the tip of my tongue. I could not get any of them out, not meeting her eyes with my last remaining one. Seeing the cast of her face in the last gaps of the day, the despair and the hunger that burned in her eyes. I did love her, Juniper. My own Hellhound. As deeply as I did the Woe. I’d loved her as the hard-eyed foe I had to overcome to prove myself worthy of my father’s tutelage, when we’d both been children, and I loved her now as the woman who’d built a kingdom and an army with me. So I stayed silent, for a long moment, and told her the truth.

“In the Everdark,” I quietly said. “There was…”

I swallowed. I’d never spoken of this to anyone, not even Hakram. The words did not come easy. Was there a way in any language ever made that I could truly explain what they had been, the last moments of the battle in Great Strycht?

“I lost,” I finally said, tone quiet. “They carved me open, Juniper, and all the power and the death and the madness I’d gorged myself on came pouring back out.”

I looked down and found my hand was shaking a bit. I had come to understand the Sisters, and they me, but that had been after. After.

“It was like blinders went off my eyes,” I murmured. “And Gods, but I had done so many horrible things. More of them were all I could see ahead, and I was just so fucking tired. So I went down.”

I closed my fingers into a fist, to kill the tremors.

“And I stayed down, waiting to choke in the snow.”

I heard the sharp intake of breath.

“But I didn’t,” I murmured. “It took too long, you see. Snow melted enough I could breathe. And I still wanted to stay down, to sleep, but I just…”

I laughed, as mirthlessly as she had.

“It was a choice,” I said. “And there was nothing weighing the balance either way. So I ask myself, why not?”

I tightened my cloak around my shoulders, shivering.

“And then?” Juniper quietly asked.

“And then I got up,” I softly smiled. “And I think that’s what stayed with me, Juniper. The even balance and the question and the choice I made. And it’s gone to shit since, you know. Death and doom and the age falling down on our heads. And every day the same choice is there waiting to be made: lie down…”

“Or stand up,” the Hellhound finished.

I nodded.

“I’ve stayed on my feet,” I said. “I will, until I am either victorious or I die. I think that’s what left of me, when you whittle away the rest.”

Juniper looked away.

“I thought it’d be victory,” the Hellhound admitted.

“It’s never the victories that stay with you,” I tiredly said.

Large fingers laid against the dead wood.

“No,” the Marshal of Callow said, “I guess not.”

A moment passed.

“You’re looking west again.”

“Ranker’s dead,” Juniper quietly said. “But Sacker’s here. Nim is here. And Grem uses Sepulchral’s army. Everyone who is or could be a Marshal of Praes.”

I studied her, but her expression was hard to make out and her eyes stayed west.

“There’s this thing I see, Catherine,” she confessed. “The lay of it. Two hours I’ve watched the sappers, how quick they work. How quick the work will be done. And I know how quickly Nim’s will work, and ours and…”

“And what?” I quietly asked.

“And there is a box,” the Marshal of Callow said. “Where the battle will happen. I see it. It’s where it’ll all happen and we can shape it.”

I could smell it the air, now. Victory. Yet Creation did not shiver, fate did not ripple like a lake in the wind, because this was not the writ of any Gods. It was just Juniper of the Red Shields, looking at a dusty field in the middle of nowhere and being the woman I’d glimpsed in her at seventeen.

“You want to fight,” I said.

It was not a question.

“Sacker hasn’t seen it,” Juniper said, sounding disbelieving. “She can’t have, not if she’s raising those walls. Sacker hasn’t seen it, and she could have been a Marshal.”

Large fingers clawed at the thin bark of the dying sycamore. She turned to me.

“I could be wrong,” she told me, tone anguished. “I could be just seeing what’s not there. I’ve… these have not been good days, Catherine, and I did not stand up in the face of them. I need you to know that I could be wrong.”

I would have answered, but she was not done. The words were spilling out of her like broken barrel.

“I feel like my entire life I’ve been drawing a bow,” Juniper said. “And ever since I’ve been your marshal, I’ve just… stood there. And my hand’s been trembling. But this? This place, this box, these foes?”

The hand left the tree and she pushed away, straightening her back.

“I can release the arrow,” Juniper of the Red Shields said, pleaded. “I can win this. Please.”

And I could have taken her by the arm, brought her close and told her that she did not need to win back my trust because she’d never lost it. But I knew, sure as dawn, that it was not what she wanted. Needed. And I was my father’s daughter, so I offered her the very same grace I was once offered. My wrist snapped out and metal slapped against my palm.

I handed her a knife, pommel first.

“If you mean the words,” I replied, “commit. Carve them.”

Incomprehension, first, but I saw her eyes clear as she matched my gaze. I did not mean the plea, or the apology that came unspoken with it. Those were between us. What I wanted from her was conviction. The Hellhound leaned close to the tree, reaching inside, and carved. The strokes shook, at first, but grew certain. Her hand did not tremble. And when she withdrew, deep in the hollow of a dead tree waited these words: Marshal Juniper wins here. I smiled, startled.

“Here?” I asked, amused. “Exactly?”

“This tree is where we win,” the Marshal of Callow said, tone even, “and everyone else loses.”

She offered me back the knife, pommel first. I took it.

“Let’s go home,” I said. “It’s getting late.”

“Yeah,” Juniper said, eyes red. “Let’s go home, Catherine.”

We’d left alone. We came back together.

—

“First, we shape the box,” the Marshal of Callow said.

It was a surprisingly simple thing, when it came down do it. We had our palisade and trench from Kala Hills to the half-road, so the only way to go was south. The assumption in my head had been that it’d turn into a right angle facing the Rebel Legion line, but Juniper had seen otherwise. Sacker and her fellows had been clever in putting themselves between two forces that did not want to fight them, forcing them to dig in and confirm their position of kingmaker of this battlefield. The downside, though, was that the sappers of the Rebel Legions needed to dig their trench in both directions simultaneously. So we took advantage of that.

We began building westwards instead of south, a sloping line of defence headed towards Moule Hills. Immediately the Rebel Legions began trying to force us back by cutting through our path, keeping at the same distance neither of us had yet dared to break, but when they focused their efforts south the Loyalist Legions began pushing at them instead. Nim wasn’t any more interested in giving them leverage than we were, after all.

“The slopes grow steeper further south of Moule Hills,” the Hellhound said. “That leaves only a narrow passage through which they can move troops into the valley, if they attack. That will shape where they attack.”

“Which we don’t want them to,” I pointed out.

“Indeed. So while we raise our works we have to delay,” the Marshal of Callow said. “We must maintain the stalemate until Sepulchral’s main host arrives.”

She had notions as how that should be done, of course. The first was to put the Loyalist Legions on the backfoot by poisoning the source of water they’d been using since we cut them off from their supply lines: Nioqe Lake.

“We don’t have anything that can poison a lake that large,” I pragmatically said.

I’d pretty much kill the town of Risas as well, but I was less broken up about that when they’d been providing guides to Legion skirmishers. I’d offer them safe passage south through the territory I controlled, but I wasn’t going to weep about them being driven out if we did it. Which I wasn’t sure we could.

“We do,” Juniper grunted, “for the same reason that we had to use that lake for water. Arcadian water can’t be safely drunk.”

A hundred knights, Masego and myself went for a ride. We tore through Akua’s attempts to stop us and I opened a gate in the sky, making Nioqe Lake a third larger and entirely unusable for water supplies.

“Then slow the deserters,” the Marshal of Callow said. “The moment their walls are up they can afford to start provoking us and strongarm the Black Knight.”

She spent half a day with Pickler out in the field, studying the eastern slopes of Moule Hills, before asking me for Archer and the Huntress. Ballistas were moved, and then fired at the hillside exactly five times with the Named as spotters. The ensuing landslide didn’t kill anyone that we saw, but it did drop down a least of tone of rock right in the middle of the way of the Rebel Legions. They’d have to clear them out before they could get back to work.

“So we hit the Loyalists, after that,” I guessed.

“It’s necessary and they had to be last,” the Hellhound said. “By now they’ve used all their sudes to match our wall and the deserters’. But we don’t want them to be able to keep fortifying over the next few days, they would encircle Sepulchral’s camp with walls entirely. Thankfully, their wood reserves were used to make the ring of forts around the Aksum camp, so they are now entirely dependent on the wood cut down in Kala Hills.”

“So what do we do, drive them out?” I asked.

“That would be too costly,” Juniper replied. “There is another way. It hasn’t rained in days. All you have to do, Catherine, is live up to your reputation.”

We set fire to the damned hills. Masego and I with large columns of blackflame, but it wasn’t only us. Indrani and Alexis shot fire arrows, a raiding party with Squire and Apprentice started a swath with torches and fire spells. The blaze got out of control when the wind turned, burnt a chunk of the hills under our control as well, but for the better part of the day the wind had blown north. The Legions weren’t going to get anything but ash out of those hills.

“The Black Knight will dismantle Ogarin for spare parts,” the Marshal of Callow noted, “but that will take time and the townsfolk will resist. It should buy us long enough.”

—

It did.

Sepulchral had been six days as well, and we kept the stalemate going just long enough. Our wall was anchored on the slopes of Moule Hills, facing that of the Rebel Legions, while to the north the Black Knight had hemmed them in as well. Envoys had gone back and forth between those camps, but no alliance against the Army of Callow had emerged. We’d kept them on the backfoot until Sepulchral arrived from the west with the rest of her twenty-thousand strong army. The Loyalist Legions had not finished their encirclement of the camp up in Moule Hills, and so they were forced to evacuate the sole fort in the way of Sepulchral linking her forces together late in the sixth day.

And so, at least, everyone was here.

“My agents in the Rebel Legion camp tell me that the talks with Marshal Nim are souring,” Scribe told me the same day, in my tent.

“She’s still not budging?” I asked.

“She has promised to extract of Malicia promises to make suborning officers of the Legions of Terror with mind control spells,” Scribe said, “but she still refuses to turn on the Tower in any significant manner. Now there is division among their generals. Sacker is pushing for their force to declare in favour of Amadeus as Dread Emperor, but Mok is strongly opposed. He instead argues that if further concessions are extracted from Malicia, safeguarding the sanctity of the Legions, their reasons for breaking with the Tower no longer exist.”

“Jaiyana Seket?” I asked.

“Hedging,” Scribe grimaced. “There’s not telling which way she’ll end up leaning.”

I breathed out. General Mok was arguing to rejoin Malicia’s cause, essentially. And he’d never bothered to pretend he was anything but hostile to my presence in Praes, or indeed the Grand Alliance’s concerns about the Dread Empire. I’d warned them that my tolerance had limits.

“Have assassin kill Mok,” I said. “Frame Sepulchral for it if you can.”

“That should be-” Scribe began, but she was interrupted when Vivienne blew into my tent.

I cocked an eyebrow at my successor, who was looking rather harried.

“Viv?”

“Trouble,” she said. “I have a fresh word from the Jacks. General Mok was killed an hour ago.”

I glanced at Scribe, but she shook her head. I supposed not even the Webweaver worked that fast.

“Where’s the trouble?” I asked.

“General Seket got killed as well and they caught the people who supposedly killed both,” Vivienne said.

I swore furiously.

“They caught Jacks, didn’t they?” I asked.

She nodded.

“It’s… bad, Catherine,” she said. “There’s been brawls in their camp, people are saying this is a coup by Sacker done with our backing. That she’s planning to sell out Praes to the Grand Alliance.”

I swore again.

“If I may hazard a guess,” Scribe mildly said, “the figurehead of this belief will be the senior legate for either Mok or Jaiyana Seket?”

Vivienne looked startled.

“Mok,” she confirmed.

I leaned back into my seat, closing my eyes and rubbing the bridge of my nose. Well, that was a particularly convenient turn for the Tower wasn’t it?

“Fuck,” I said. “Malicia played us.”

She’d whipped the deserters into a frenzy against us just before a battle was to erupt and the seniormost officer with a clean reputation was most likely in her pocket. Maybe if there were a few days or a week for things to calm down this could be straightened out, but we wouldn’t get that long. Ten to one odds she had something nasty cooked up for Sepulchral’s army too, I thought.

“Tomorrow we have a battle on our hands,” I plainly said. “We need to pull off your plan tonight, Vivienne. Can it be done?”

She grimaced.

“I would have liked a day or two longer, to make contact with the right people,” she admitted. “But it is not impossible.”

“Then go get your cloak, we move with nightfall,” I said. “I’ll need you to inform Juniper, Scribe, because come dawn the blades will finally come out.”

Chapter 19: Vivienne’s Plan (Redux)

“A superior strategic plan can fail on tactical grounds should decision-making in battle be disconnected from strategic concerns. This is why training officers to understand these concerns is a priority for a modern army, and the foundation of our manner of warfare.”

– Extract from “The Modern Legion”, a treatise by Marshal Ranker

The Thirteenth Legion was something older Callowans avoided talking about.

My generation didn’t care about is as much, since we’d been raised to Legion garrisons and imperial governors, but I’d served drinks to enough soldiers that’d served during the Conquest – on either side – to hear the whole gauntlet of opinions on Legio XIII, Auxilia. Most of my people knew the basics, that it was a legion raised almost entirely out of native Callowans that’d sided with the Dread Empire either during or after the Conquest. Bandits and rebels, people called them, and a lot of things nowhere as nice. Led by General Jeremiah Holt, who’d once been Sir Jeremiah Holt, they’d not actually done much to help the fall of Callow when Praes invaded and only become a formal legion afterwards. Their main assignment over the following decades had been garrisoning Thalassina, but they’d done a few stints elsewhere in Praes. Never, however, back in Callow.

The thing was, some of the older soldiers who’d fought under the Fairfaxes actually had complicated feelings about Jeremiah Holt. The man was nearly seventy now and he’d been called a traitor for forty years but in his youth a lot of people had seen him as somewhat of a romantic figure. He’d been a rebel against the crown, sure, but before the Conquest the situation in Callow had been a lot more complicated that my people cared to remember. For all that Callowans like to pretend that the years before the Praesi rolled in had been a flawless golden age where our wise and benevolent Fairfaxes rulers had been beloved overlords, that was ignoring the realities of it. They’d been a popular dynasty, the Fairfaxes, but they’d also been two reigns removed from a brutal internal civil war and that sort of thing left marks.

The War of Cousins had shaken up the balance of power in Old Callow, with two branches of House Fairfax twining the line with respectively the Caens of Liesse and the Sarsfields of Summerholm before taking swings at each other for control of the throne. There was a lot of to say about that civil war, but ironically what mattered most was the people not mentioned in the writings about it: the northern baronies of Hedge and Harrow. They’d stayed aloof throughout the entire war, same as they’d been during the Conquest, because by the time that branch of House Fairfax my father destroyed came to the throne the north had effectively become a realm within a realm. With the power increasingly gathering in Laure, Summerholm and Liesse northerners had started resenting the authority of a distant crown that little aside from collecting taxes.

Enter Good King Robert, last true Fairfax king of Callow, and Sir Jeremiah Holt of the Order of the Antlers. The estrangement between the north and throne had sunk deep enough that Holt, a bold young knight of northern extraction, had rebelled against King Robert to seek the independence of the northern baronies and parts of the territory now under Southpool. He’d been fighting for the restoration of the ‘Kingdom of Dunloch’, the ancient northern realm that the Albans had conquered before turning to the last holdout of the Kingdom of Liesse in the south. The historical grounds for that rebellion were pretty thin, considering that before the Albans annexed the north it’d been more of an alliance under a prominent warchief than a proper kingdom and said warchief had surrendered in exchange for being named Duchess of Dunloch. Resentment of Laure had been strong enough up north, though, that Holt found more than a few knights and soldiers flocking to his banner when he raised it.

Their rebellion had been rather tame, very knightly. It’d been more a play of fox-and-hound with the Fairfaxes than the kind of violent resistance that’d followed the Conquest. Unfortunately, after a few humiliations too many King Robert had gotten serious about putting them down and bodies had started piling up. Holt lost most of his rebel troops and had to go increasingly bandit to stay in the fight, which tarred his reputation. Enter the Conquest and bandits popping up everywhere as troops marched east, leaving everyone’s holdings unprotected. A much grimmer Jeremiah Holt saw his opportunity. He’d been halfway to gathering a sizeable army of malcontents and robbers when Amadeus of the Green Stretch had reached out with an offer to him.

Self-rule for the northern baronies so long as Holt entered imperial service, as well as a formal military office for him and his men. Jeremiah Holt took the offer, famously, and slew a few hundred soldiers under the Count of Ankou before capturing the man himself and keeping the city out of the war by threatening to hang him his noble prisoner should anyone pass the city gates.

He’d never quite been forgiven for that by the older generation. Having one of their romantic heroes shake hands with the Black Knight and rise to the rank of general in the Legions of Terror in the aftermath had been one of the many hits the pride of Callow had taken after the Conquest. It’d been striking enough that I’d been surprised to learn after joining the Legions that there were songs about Holt – two of them, a sad one called ‘O Knight of Dunloch’ and a merry one called ‘The Ride at Luthien’s Crossing’ – because I’d never heard either of them sung. I tended to believe that if he’d ever been allowed to serve as a garrison in Callow his star would have risen, especially if he checked the abuse of an imperial governor, but then that was likely why my father had assigned the Thirteenth duties on the other side of the empire.

Today’s Thirteenth Legion wasn’t the same that’d formed during the Conquest, of course. Most those soldiers were either dead or retired, with the holdouts being high-ranking officers whose position wouldn’t require much fighting. But unlike other legions, the Thirteenth had become something a family trade while out east. Children and grandchildren of the original soldiers and officers made up most of the ranks, and while many of my people wouldn’t consider them countrymen the soldiers themselves believed differently. Praesi tended to call them Duni, but for all that the soldiers of the Thirteenth were now often mixed blood – not only Taghreb and Soninke but also from Ashur and the Free Cities – they largely considered themselves Callowans. An estranged tribe gone into exile, perhaps, but still Callowans.

And on that hinged Vivienne’s plan, because there was nothing more exiles wanted than to come home.

It hadn’t been easy to get into the camp. We’d approached under the cover of Night as well as night, but regular patrols and a solid ward layout had still slowed us down to a crawl. It’d been a game of patience, which had irked me considering the looming battle and how impatient to get this done it was making me. We’d eventually slipped in, though, if much later than I would have preferred: past Early Bell. Most the camp was still asleep but one of Vivienne’s spies had made contact with the legion’s junior legate, Alice Burnley, and it paid off exactly the way it was supposed to. Within half an hour of our arrival, the Thirteenth’s senior officers were shaken awake and summoned to an impromptu war council in the usual tent.

Where Vivienne and I waited seated in a dark corner, cloaked, as officers filed in one after another and the sturdy, grim-faced Legate Burnley fielded questions about the summons by deferring until the general was there. Jeremiah Holt was the last to come and I took a moment to study him from under my hood. Still built like a bull even at his late age, he was blue-eyed with a crooked nose and white hair that’d fallen atop his head. He moved gingerly but with assurance, for all that he seemed rather tired from being woken up at this hour.

“What’s this about, Alice?” General Holt asked. “Your messengers were tight-lipped about everything but the urgent need.”

His eyes moved to us, our shrouded silhouettes in the corner.

“Eyes of the Empire?” he asked.

I smiled in the dark and struck a match, revealing up my one-eyed face just long enough to light up my pipe. I pulled at the wakeleaf, breathing in deep and blowing it out in a long stream, as the half of the room that’d caught sight of the telltale details froze. Jeremiah Holt was one of them, but his surprise did not last long. He straightened, hand casually coming to rest on the dagger at his side.

“Good evening, Your Majesty,” the general of the Thirteenth evenly said.

“General Jeremiah,” I nonchalantly replied.

Half a dozen swords were out in the heartbeat that followed but their leader snorted at them.

“Put that away, you fools,” he said. “If they’d come for blood it would already be on the floor. If Alice let them in it’ll be for talks.”

His eyes went to Vivienne’s silhouette.

“Would that be the Webweaver or Princess Vivienne with you?” he asked.

Vivienne rose to her feet, pulling back her hood.

“You are quick to adjust,” my successor praised.

“I’d been wondering if one of you would come,” General Jeremiah said. “Nim believed not, but she’s always been better at reading the east than the west.”

“They’re here to make an offer, Jeremiah,” Legate Alice said. “I got oaths through the Jacks that blood won’t be spilled even if we refuse it.”

Blue eyes went to me, following the plume of smoke leaving my lips.

“And will those oaths hold, Black Queen?” he boldly asked.

“I keep to my word,” I simply said. “Good or ill. Have any of you heard otherwise?”

None refused me that. For all that I’d turned my back on the Empire, I was known to keep my promises. It was a reputation that’d cost me much to maintain but moment like this were why it had been a worthwhile investment. There were a dozen people in here, most above fifty but a few closer to thirty, and the tension went out of them all when I backed up Legate Alice’s words. The white-haired general snorted again, going to pour himself a cup of spiced wine before dropping into the seat at the head of the table.

“Let’s hear it, then,” General Jeremiah said, tone deceptively light. “What is it that you’re offering for us to tun on the Tower?”

There were murmurs, in the wake of his words, but no one bared the swords already returned to their sheaths. I laughed.

“Are you saying you no longer consider yourselves loyal subjects of the crown of Callow?” I mused. “A most surprising turn.”

There were a few chuckles but many more wolfish smiles. They had no love for my crown, these men and women. The few that’d once lived under the rule of Laure had been outlaws to it. But neither were they the Tower’s folk, because they’d never been allowed to be. The reason one legion had been left to garrison a wealthy city like Thalassina for so long without fear of corruption was that the Thirteenth was as estranged from Praes as it was from Callow. Even after a generation of living east of the Wasaliti they were still strangers in these lands, distant from its factional struggles. I glanced at Vivienne and she inclined her head. She was to take the lead: it was her plan and so hers to execute.

“You know who I am,” Vivienne Dartwick said. “I am now a princess, heiress to the throne in Laure, but I was once the Thief and a rebel of the Lone Swordsman’s band.”

“A hero who fought to restore the same throne many of us fought against,” General Jeremiah bluntly said.

“There are no Fairfaxes left, Holt,” Vivienne replied just as bluntly. “The Kingdom of Callow that will stand when this war ends will not be the same as it was in old days. Your war ended when Amadeus the Black opened the throat of the last of that line in a cradle. You have won it.”

A dark-haired man in his early fifties who by his uniform should be the senior legate of the legion, Eldon Hawley, broke in.

“Why’s it you doing the talking?” Legate Hawley challenged. “Princess you are, but it’s the queen who rules. What are your words worth, Dartwick?”

Some approving mutters followed, as well as glances at me. In the dark they could see little more than the red burn of my lit pipe and the smoke wreathing me, but it was enough. Vivienne stood in the light, upright and bearing a silver circlet, but the hard truth was that it wasn’t her reputation that had these people willing to hear us out. There was nothing I could do about that, though, without making it worse. It was a hurdle she had to overcome herself.

“I’m the one talking because I’ll be the one dealing with you in twenty years, legate,” Vivienne replied, unflinching. “You’re trying to make it a slight, but it is the very opposite.”

She did not elaborate. The general let out an approving grunt, eyes considering.

“It’s not a bribe and a pat on the back you’re offering us, then,” he said. “You’re in it for the long haul, and the long haul for Callow is you on the throne.”

Understanding spread through those that hadn’t followed along, interest coming with it. This lot had been offered many a bribe, in Thalassina. The Kebdana and their great vassals had been some of the wealthiest people in Praes. They’d not taken them then and they would not now. Gold wasn’t what any of these people were after.

“You have grievances with the throne in Laure and I’ll not speak to the justice or injustice of them,” Vivienne said. “It was before my time. But I tell you now that throne is dead and buried. What’s left behind is Callow, and it is that same land that beckons you home.”

“We’ve been out east for long, princess,” a fair-haired woman said. “Some of us were born here. We have families, husbands and wives and children.”

The blonde was Kachera Tribune for the Thirteenth, Sally Thoms, whose name might be right out of a Laure street but was deeply tanned from a Taghreb father who’d raised her in Thalassina. The city might be dead, but the ties were not. There were many in the Thirteenth so bound to Praes.

“And they will be welcome in Callow as well,” Vivienne said.

It wasn’t quite the right angle, I thought, and she saw it too from the hardening of a few faces.

“We’ve made homes here, princess,” the Staff Tribune said. “You’re asking us to abandon them and pretending it’s a favour.”

“Have you really?” I mildly asked.

Eyes went back to me. The Staff Tribune straightened, his close-cut grey hair lending him a certain presence under torchlight.

“We might not be Praesi-” he began.

“Duni,” I softly interrupted. “That’s what they call you, isn’t it?”

He looked angry at being interrupted, but none denied what I said. They’d all heard the word before.

“That’s all you’ll ever be, out here,” I said. “Useful servants. Serve for a dozen generations and it will mean nothing. You all know that already, you’ve seen it with mfuasa and they think more of those than you. Bad blood cannot be made into good blood, that’s the way of the Wasteland. You have reached the summit of what you can aspire to in Praes. So the question left to ask is simple enough.”

I shrugged.

“Are you satisfied?”

The silence was telling. Rebels and bandits were ever hungry men. I let the silence stand, passing the torch back to Vivienne.

“You sacrifice in going home, like all exiles,” the princess of Callow said, tone honest. “I will not pretend otherwise. So let me speak to what you will gain instead.”

That had a few leaning forward, those who’d struck closer to the bandit strains of the Thirteenth than the rebel ones. The ones with mercenary leanings.

“Amnesty for any crimes once committed in Callow-” Vivienne began, and already a few scoffed.

We’d known they would, but this step was necessary for the rest. General Jeremiah was studying her with a frown, as if wondering why she had so blundered.

“I take no alms from the throne in Laure,” the Supply Tribune bit out. “It was no crime to buck the tyranny of Fairfax laws then and it needs no fucking forgiveness now.”

“It does,” Vivienne replied evenly, “as by ancient custom it is forbidden for an outlaw to hold or be granted a noble title.”

That little sentence went off like a sharper in the tent. Even General Jeremiah, who’d not been known as Sir Jeremiah since the Order of the Antlers had stripped him of his rank, looked surprise. Legate Alice, who’d left our side to go stand with her fellow officers, was the one to voice her skepticism.

“Even out here we’ve heard that you two have been stamping out the old nobles,” she said. “And now you’re offering to make us of the same breed you want to smother? That seems like an ill fate awaiting us.”

I bit my tongue, for though I wanted to reply it was not me who should speak. It was Vivienne that needed to draw the distinction between what had been the policies of my reign and what would be the policies of hers.

“Nobles got in our way, after we broke with the Tower,” Vivienne said. “They were treated accordingly. Yet I’ll not pursue that enmity into my reign. The territories that were cut out as imperial governorships under Amadeus the Black will remain administrative provinces with appointed governors, but under that authority I will raise nobles again.”

I didn’t like it, I honestly didn’t, but it wasn’t the same for her as it was for me. Vivienne was a Dartwick, minor nobility but still very much a noblewoman by birth, and she wouldn’t come to the throne with the kind of baggage I brought. Orphan, apprentice to the Carrion Lord, villain. Nobles would actually be willing to work under her in a way they simply hadn’t been for me. She wasn’t going to undo the brutal work of centralization that my father and then myself had done, she knew better than that. That was the whole point of keeping governors: there would never again be dukes in Callow, that kind of power would only ever be held by the grace of the throne. Yet she was very much in favour of cultivating the presence of lesser nobles once more.

She had valid reasons to, I’d been forced to admit. Lesser nobility was how Callow had been able to maintain so many knights without bankrupting itself, pushing off the costs of that to noble families instead of making the state coffers bear it, and it was also a solution to our still chronic lack of qualified officials. Vivienne intended to turn my father’s orphanages into schools under the aegis of the crown, but that would take years and it’d never work outside the largest cities in Callow. Until then, she’d be relying on spare sons and daughters of the nobility to serve – and even after, she’d keep using them as a balance to keep the power of her own Laure bureaucracy in line. She had learned from Malicia’s reforms in Ater in a way I’d never thought to.

“Noble titles,” General Jeremiah calmly said, but I saw the huger in his eyes. “Would you care to elaborate, Princess Vivienne?”

“For you, the barony of Longcourt,” the dark-haired princess replied. “Which you might not be familiar with-”

“A week’s travel north of Liesse,” Jeremiah Holt calmly interrupted. “Known for its apple orchards, as I recall. The last baroness of Longcourt was a girl of fourteen that died at the Siege of Summerholm.”

“She was,” Vivienne said, hiding her surprise with some skill.

“The land was placed under the imperial governor in Liesse, but there are cadet branches to the family,” the general said. “That title would come with enemies.”

Vivienne smiled and so did I, pulling at my pipe. And there was where her cleverness had shined through. Because the dozen in this tent had already been high-ranking strangers in a foreign land before, made to step on toes just by being who they were. Half the reason they were even hearing us out was that they were sick of being in that role. They weren’t eager to start being the same thing only after uprooting themselves across two rivers to a land most of them hadn’t seen in decades if ever at all. Any of them picking up titles would make enemies of the relatives of the people who’d once held to those titles. This had been meant to be great hurdle, but Vivienne had instead managed to turn it into an asset.

“It does not,” Vivienne said, “but it does come with a wedding. I believe your eldest grandson is yet unmarried?”

The old man blinked.

“He is,” the general warily admitted.

“So is Holly Leyland, the eldest daughter of the man with the best claim to the title,” Vivienne said. “Both have already agreed to unite the lines, should you and your grandson agree.”

General Jeremiah seemed genuinely taken aback. My successor’s gaze swept across the rest of the officers.

“I offer twenty lordships to be divvied up among you as you wish, but in truth that is the lesser part of my offer,” she said.

She reached into her cloak, taking out a folded parchment and setting it down on their table.

“This is a list of sons and daughters from noble families in good standing that have agreed to marriage with officers of the Thirteenth or their descendance,” the princess of Callow said. “Age and rank in succession are included.”

The tent was as silent as a grave.

“This is not a trap,” Vivienne Dartwick gently said. “When I speak of bringing you home, I mean every word. I am not the Tower, to strand you among enemies and then use the fear to weaken all beneath me. Come back to Callow, and you will truly be back. All the land offered is in what was once the Duchy of Liesse and now lies empty, but this will not be solely a noble’s game. Freeholds will be provided to retiring soldiers and formal knighthood to any cavalrymen who are willing to join the knightly order I will found – the Order of the Stolen Crown.”

Kachera Tribune Thoms licked her lips then broke the silence.

“And what do you want in exchange?” she asked.

“Fight with us here,” Vivienne said. “On this field. When we march east to bury death for good, fight with us still. And when the war ends, come home. Be part of the peace we’ll all have fought for.”

She’d hit all the right notes, I thought as I watched them teeter at the brink, and still had things been even just a little different this would not have enough. But the droplet that’d tip the cup was that Thalassina was gone. It was where the Thirteenth had been for the longest, and when that city had died to the Warlock’s wrath many of the ties that bound the legion to the Wasteland had died with it. The same kin that they might have been afraid Malicia would kill as retribution to changing sides were already dead and buried. They had a lot less to lose now than they would have had five years ago and Vivienne had offered them more than they had ever hoped they might receive.

“We’ll need to talk it over,” Legate Hawley roughly said. “Bring more officers into it-”

I blew out a long stream of smoke.

“No,” I said. “Tonight. You have until the hour’s done to make your decision.”

Some looked angry, but General Jeremiah was not one of them. If anything he looked approving. Smart man.

“Any longer than that and the Eyes will be onto us,” he said. “You want us to march right now, don’t you? Smash through the palisades while we have the element of surprise and link up with the Army of Callow.”

I nodded. The moment the Thirteenth went over to our side or refused to, the Battle of Kala had effectively begun. When they moved all sides would begin to muster for combat, because to do anything else would be ceding the initiative to the opposition – and none of the four armies on the field were willing to do that, when all knew annihilation was just one mistake away.

“Come dawn there will be a battle,” I said. “Now’s the time to decide on which side of it you’ll stand. You’ve heard what Princess Vivienne Dartwick offers you. You know what the Tower will give you and the worth of Malicia’s promises. Choose.”

It was not a simple choice and they did not simply make it. They gathered among each other, talking in low voices as they argued faults and merits. Vivienne retreated, coming to stand by my side, but neither of us spoke as we watched it unfold. It wasn’t the kind of plan I would have made, and my fingers itched to see it play out. It’d give power and wealth to people that I honestly considered to be pretty shitty and untrustworthy, but beyond that there was too much… give to this. Making nobles diluted the authority of the crown. Making several nobles, all with close ties to each other and in the same region, was making a potentially dangerous power bloc. I would have preferred cornering them, burning their ties to Malicia and taking them in on my own terms.

A third Gallowborne, to match the one I’d lost and the one I’d spent.

Vivienne wasn’t me. It wasn’t that she didn’t see the same dangers I did, just that we didn’t have the same… instincts about how to deal with them. She wasn’t afraid of a Baron Jeremiah Holt because even if he grew powerful she was confident she would make him into an ally. Bring him into the fold, use that power to her advantage without needing to have something to hold over his head. And in someone who hadn’t been with me for so long I would have been tempted to call it naivete, but Vivienne wasn’t naïve. It was the same part of her that’d made her refrain from killing when she’d been the Thief, that’d seen her join the Woe when the odds were Callow would burn if she didn’t. She was willing to embrace foes in ways that I just wasn’t.

There was little of our old madness in Vivienne Dartwick, of the slights and long prices, and I could not help but feel that our people would be better off for it.

The officers of the Thirteenth chose, and they chose hope. They chose home and peace after the war. I saw it spread from one to another, the decision, until even the holdouts bents their heads and the same man who my people had once written songs about turned his blue eyes back to us.

“It has been,” Jeremiah Holt softly said, “so very long since I saw home.”

He breathed out shakily.

“An oath broken and an oath taken is a cheap price for that,” he said.

“Then kneel,” I said.

They did, but I did not rise. My hand touched Vivienne’s side and she met my eye, looking almost startled. I almost snorted. As if I would reap the harvest she had sown. No, those oaths were hers. She had won them, she would keep them. And the officers of the Thirteenth, on their knees, spoke their oaths to the princess of Callow. And with every oath the world shivered, until the same rebel who’d once fought a throne now swore to another. Jeremiah Holt spoke his oath, and when he swore to the princess of Callow the whole of Creation bore witness. Vivienne shivered too, the weight of the pivot pressing down on all our shoulders. Ah, I thought. Indrani had tried to tell me, hadn’t she? I’d gone too deep, too… narrow trying to figure out who Vivienne was. I should have known that the simplicity had been at the hear of her the whole time.

Vivienne Dartwick had entered the tent as a princess, and now stood a Princess. It was a simple as that.

I almost laughed, seeing the hope and awe in those eyes, because didn’t the Gods just love their little jests? Vivienne had once been a fine enough thief she’d earned a Name out of taking from Praes, and yet the greatest of her thefts only came now that she had left behind. As a girl, all she’d ever taken form the Dread Empire was coin and good. Now, though?

The Princess of Callow had stolen back an entire legion.

Chapter 20: Malicia’s Plan

The Battle of Kala began with three streaks of red light crisscrossing a dark sky.

Its prelude had taken place while most the Thirteenth still slept, hard men with sharp swords going into tents to end the lives of the soldiers the general staff believed would fight against rebellion. The purge was quick and bloody, followed by men being hastily roused, and the Thirteenth Legion began to move moments after a mage line sent up the lights that would inform the Army of Callow of our success. The legion left behind a significant chunk of its supplies and all of its siege engines: I’d heartily agreed with General Holt when he’d stated that the Thirteenth tried to leave with everything it would just get caught by the rest of the Loyalist Legions and rout. Treachery rarely made for strong morale, much less treachery interrupted halfway through.

The legion was not in a good position to turn on the others, no doubt a precaution of the Black Knight’s. The valley between Moule and Kala Hills had sprouted fortifications in three sets. First the Rebel Legions’, in an angled half-circle whose curve faced the east with its back anchored to Moule Hills. Then the mirroring sets of the Loyalist Legions and the Army of Callow, first running parallel from Kala Hills to the east until they reached the curve of the rebel trenches and then, still in a rough mirror, curving around the half-circle. The Thirteenth Legion, while assigned to the front, had not been posted facing us. Instead it was to hold the curve of the loyalist trenches, facing the fortifications of the Rebel Legions. That made leaving a more complicated task than we would have liked.

It might be possible to cross the trench the Thirteenth guarded and then march down the no-man’s-land down to my army’s positions to the south, but that would be… risky. The Rebel Legions might think they were being attacked and start shooting. Considering two thirds of the triumvirate of generals that’d run that army had just gotten killed and the surviving third was discredited, I was inclined to think they were nervous enough to start shooting without thinking if they caught sight of movement. That left only the option of getting out the hard way: through the camp of the Eighth Legion, which held the western half of trenches facing my army’s own. The three streaks of red light were meant to help with that chancy business and help they did.

Within moments, torches lit up the night as the Army of Callow began an assault on the Eighth Legion’s position from the front.

General Jeremiah had offered both Vivienne and I horses, but while she rode with the old man and his general staff I held back. There would be retaliation when someone on the other side realized what was happening and I needed to be ready for it. I kept to the side of the army, its soldiers giving me a wide berth, and rode slowly as I kept an eye on the distant camp in Kala Hills. The camp of the Fourteenth, holding the eastern half of the central trenches, lit up with torches first at the sound of the fighting. The camp in the distance was not far behind, though, and maybe a quarter-hour later the rebel positions were alight as well. I shaped an eye out of Night and tossed it up above, keeping an eye on the battlefield as armies began to move.

Surprise was working to our advantage. The loyalist sappers had built their walls cleverly, keeping much of the half-road behind them, but that’d been turned to our advantage. The Thirteenth moved briskly down the road and smashed into the side of the Eighth’s camp by surprise even as the legion was mustering to face an assault from the wrong direction. The rebels were staying out of it for now, probably wary of dipping a toe in this without having a better read on the situation, and I chewed on my lip as I loosely kept pace with the Thirteenth. I’d started trailing behind, wary of the hammer blow I’d expected but wasn’t coming. My little eye in the sky was beginning to glimpse the shape of a rout, meanwhile.

The Eighth had been taken by surprise, out of position and attacked from two sides. Goblin munitions deployed to hold the trenches had stopped cold the advance of the Army of Callow but General Wheeler couldn’t afford to pull away those men else General Zola would resume the charges. When the Thirteenth ran into the first few companies thrown hastily in its way it had slowed, but it had now smashed its way through them and the Eighth’s positions were collapsing. Too many of its legionaries were only half-dressed, and some enterprising souls from the Thirteenth had set fire to parts of the camp. Gods, at this rate we might actually destroy the Eighth as a fighting force. That’d be quite the coup, if one we’d not dared to hope for.

With one legion gone and one switching sides, the Black Knight would be –

“Ah,” I grimly smiled as power bloomed in the heights to the north, “there you are.”

Night swirled around me in thick currents, terrifying my borrowed horse into trying to buck me off until I stole away a sliver to force calm into his simple mind. I wasn’t seeing magic accreting anywhere yet, but it was only a matter of time until the enemy mages- my thought was interrupted by a subtle wave of power shivering across the Thirteenth. Instant. It’d been quick enough I’d not been able to do a fucking thing. And now legionaries were dropping to the ground, one after another. Like puppets with cut strings, just… falling to the ground. Weeping Heavens, I thought. What was this? The sorcery seemed to strike as if by random: it dropped ten soldiers in one company, thirty-three in another and then none in a third. Heart in my throat, I rode to a fallen soldier and unhorsed.

The rest of his tenth spread to make room for me, faces full of fear, and I swallowed a wince as I knelt in the dust by the dead man. Except, I realized a heartbeat after I undid the straps of the legionary’s help, this was neither a man nor a corpse. The dark-skinned woman under the steel was still breathing, if faintly, though she looked sick and she was shivering with fever. I laid fingers on the side of her neck and found the skin slightly shrivelled but the pulse steady. I heard the soldiers around me began to salute and turned to cast a look at the approaching mounted silhouette of the fair-haired Kachera Tribune of the Thirteenth, Sally Thoms. She saluted me, after a beat of hesitation.

“Your Majesty,” she said, stumbling over the unfamiliar address. “The general sends me to ask if you have any insight on this curse. It is crippling our offensive.”

I looked away, my lone eye turning to the shallowly breathing woman I was still laying a hand on. Something about this was niggling away at me. The suddenness of the effect, unlike any war magic I’d ever seen, and the shrivelled skin. There was something familiar about this, somehow, but where would I have… Suddenly I breathed in.

“Tribune,” I said. “The rations your legionaries have been eating, where have they been coming from?”

She looked surprise.

“You think us poisoned?” she asked.

My look grew impatient and she swallowed.

“Part is from our own stocks, ma’am, but half has been coming from the supply depot in the main camp,” the Kachera Tribune said.

And there it was, good as confirmation. General Jeremiah had said that the Black Knight had not believed we’d approached him, but evidently she’d taken precautions anyways. And not just her, because I had seen this magic before. Just never used like this, and I moved my gaze back to the downed legionary so that the officer would not see triumph in my eye and misunderstand. I let it linger though, the taste of victory. Allowed myself to enjoy it. Because the last time Akua Sahelian had used that ritual, she’d left a few thousand Spears of Stygia dead and shrivelled husks before using the power to open a Lesser Breach. Now, instead, she had chosen to spare lives. To incapacitate instead of kill, even when the incentives were many to do otherwise.

All these corpses could be undead, right now, with the power she would have gotten back. Or she could be hammering away at the Thirteenth with a spell powerful enough that even I would struggle to protect the legion from it. Instead she has stayed her hand. Proved she was not the same woman she had been at First Liesse, even in the face of greater gains than those for the taking back then.

“I’ve seen this magic before,” I said. “It won’t kill them or continue to drain them. Light or healing sorcery should be able to fix most of the damage.”

I followed her back to the general staff, after, though I sent up another Night eye to gauge the situation. Our overwhelming advantage had turned to ash in our hands in a matter of moments. At a guess I’d say that maybe a quarter of the Thirteenth had dropped under the ritual, punching holes everywhere in its formations and causing widespread chaos. The Eighth was using the time to consolidate its position and I could already see the Fourteenth moving towards the melee to reinforce. Considering the Army of Callow’s attempts to breach the trench were still a bloody stalemate – Zola had gotten men to the palisades, but Wheeler had gotten his mage lines in position and was torching everything in sight – this now had the potential to go very badly for us.

I still had Night at my fingertips but I was hesitant to use it. It’d leave us exposed to a counterstroke from enemy mage cadres and I could solve one of our two problems at most. Either I’d slow the Fourteenth or blast our path south open, but I couldn’t do both. Now quickly enough, anyway. I was still weighing the risks when I got to General Jeremiah and found that the choice had been made for me.

“Princess Vivienne is leading my cavalry in a delaying action against the Fourteenth,” the old man said. “I if I might-”

I raised a hand to interrupt him, looking through my eye in the sky again. There she was, leading six hundred heavy cavalry against the Fourteenth’s vanguard. The enemy looked to have been sloppy with composition, they’d gone heavy on crossbowmen and too light on regulars, but she was still outnumbered more than three to one. I held back my wince. I’d have to trust her, then, and do my own part. The Night eye turned to the positions in our way south. The trench and palisade were facing the wrong way to stop us, but General Wheeler was the veteran commander of a sapper-heavy legion: already there were stakes and mantlets put up in our way. Mage lines were waiting behind lines of regulars, the enemy general’s intent plain enough to read. Now that the battle was turning in his favour, Wheeler wanted to keep us contained here until reinforcements arrived and we could be surrounded. Time for a reminder of who he was dealing with, perhaps.

“I have come a long way, through winding paths,” I spoke in Crepuscular, voice rising in prayer. “Yet behold this barren realm, this crown of ruin!”

The Night roiled around, like a wind made of darkness, and I felt talons biting into my shoulders. I felt Komena smile against the side of my neck, pleased at the destruction to come.

“Let me match horror with horror, might with might, and know no master in this.”

My limbs were trembling and the general staff had all backed away, looking at me in a mix of terror and fascination.

“So let the sun weep and the Crows have their due,” I smiled, “for in the end all will be Night.”

I’d only used this working once before, in Hainaut, and as the sky lit up with black fire I was reminded as to why. My vision swam, but I forced myself to finish it: I raised my hand, snapping my fingers, and the Hells were unleashed. A young black sun exploded, streaks of flame tearing through ground and men and shielding spells as screams filled the air. Black flame began to fall in a heavy rain, leaving only a horror of the dead and dying where once the Eighth had stood in our way.

“Your Majesty,” General Jeremiah carefully said, “are you-“

I spat to the side, wiping my mouth. It tasted like vomit, though I’d not thrown up, and this wasn’t even done. I raised my staff, the old general instantly going silent, and after pointing it at the horror swept it through. As it passed the black flames guttered out, leaving behind only great trails of smoke. I spat to the side again, leaning back tiredly in my saddle. Gods, my bad leg burned.

“Get your legion moving, Jeremiah Holt,” I rasped out. “I don’t have another one of those in me, not for a few hours.”

It was another hour before we made it to safety, a full quarter of the Thirteenth Legion left behind either as corpses or prisoners, but we made it. I waited at the edge until our Princess made it back victorious, a makeshift banner for her knightly order flying high as thousands of throats cheered themselves hoarse.

Now the real battle could start.

—

By midmorning the lines in the sand were drawn.

The wounded had been seen to, the dead burned. I did not bother to send envoys to the Rebel Legions after I saw four crucified bodies hoisted atop their palisade: the same four Jacks who’d supposedly assassinated General Mok and Jaiyana Seket. I didn’t know who was in command, Sacker or one of Malicia’s plants, but whoever it was they were hostile. Yet the rebels had not returned to the loyalist fold, if the way both armies kept the trenches facing each other manned was any indication. It’d be a battle with four sides to it, not three. Our attempts to reach out to Sepulchral came to nothing: the Rebel Legions were running patrols and west of Moule Hills and shooting at our people on sight. I sent a pair of riders to take the long way around, but it’d be hours before they were anywhere near the Aksum camp and hours more before they could return to us with anything useful. No, when it came to Sepulchral’s intentions we were still running blind. That had me somewhat uneasy.

“We’ve gamed out the engagements with all possible stances on her part,” Juniper told me, unmoved. “Whether she stays holed up or goes on the offensive, she’ll tie down largely the same number of loyalist troops anyway.”

That sounded almost absurd, considering that with the defection of the Thirteenth in fact Dread Empress Sepulchral now commanded the largest of the four armies in Kala – around twenty thousand, even with the losses of her vanguard – but Juniper wasn’t blowing hot air. The camp in the hills she’d taken for her own had easy slopes down mostly facing the north and east, approaches where Marshal Nim had built forts in a since-broken attempt to encircle the camp. We expected a single legion to be assigned to defending those forts, the Eleventh, with the reserve being kept close just in case. Sepulchral led a traditional Praesi noble army, which meant they were pretty shit at taking fortifications if magic couldn’t level the walls.

Good luck with that when Akua Sahelian was running the mages for the other side.

The Loyalist Legions certainly weren’t going to win that fight, but the Black Knight honestly shouldn’t be wrong in believing a single legion should be able to keep Sepulchral contained long enough for the fighting in the south to be settled. If no one else intervened, anyway. I sighed.

“Malicia will have something afoot in that camp,” I said.

“Let the Tower have its tricks,” the Hellhound said, “so long as we have the field.”

There was little more left to do save hope it would end up as she’d said. We’d already tossed the dice, it was too late to have qualms. The legions and our army spent the time preparing for the fight all could smell in the air, but there was an odd sense of restraint. Like no one wanted to be the first to swing a sword and get the butcher’s ball rolling. In the end, it was us who fired the first shot: Archer shot a legate from the Fourteenth who’d made the mistake of wandering too close to her range and with the woman’s death rattle hostilities began. I wasn’t actually fighting, to my mounting frustration. Masego and I were on the rampart of a fort, overlooking the battlefield and awaiting enemy magic. We were meant to be defensive assets for now, not go on the offensive, and though I knew the sense in it the sight below had my nails biting into wood.

It was a bloody slaughter.

First came the siege engines. The scorpions and ballistae of the enemy began pounding at our palisade, knocking down chunks where my mages did not reinforce quickly enough, and our own engines replied in kind. A heartbeat later the rebels entered the fray, and to my relief they’d picked a side: their own. They were firing at both the Army of Callow and the Loyalist Legions. Already I could see what Juniper had told me about, the ‘box’. It was a corner, the square-shaped area where our fortifications were facing the loyalists to the north and the rebel to the west. The weak point of our defensive setup. Bombardment from both sides was already taking its toll, the sheer number of engines that facing two different sets of legions signified having an immediate impact.

Marshal Nim theoretically had the same weakness in her setup facing our own weak spot, but in practice she was better off: the Army of Callow had fewer siege machines spread out over a set of fortifications just as long.

“Are we simply going to fire at each other with machines all day?” Masego asked me, sounding pleased. “That sounds rather civilized.”

“No,” I sighed. “Now comes the bloody part, Zeze.”

Rising from their cover in the trenches, legionaries climbed over the solid grounds and began charging at the enemy fortifications. They came for us and we for them. Across the great line splitting the valley, across the half-circle and its mirrors, men and women in legionary armour raised their shields and charged. From atop palisades mage lines began firing volleys of fireballs, crossbow companies filled the air with bolts. Down in the no-man’s-land, screams and death bloomed. It was the kind of messy, ugly butchery that only came from well-trained forces hammering at each other. Legionaries tried to form testudo formations to take the edge off sorcery and arrows, but on all sides the same model of scorpions were turned on those attempts.

Those deadly bolts punched through shield and mail alike.

“They are not winning,” Masego said.

I turned and found him frowning. Puzzled, and perhaps a little appalled.

“No one is winning,” he continued, frown deepening.

That’s war, I almost said.

“First we bleed,” I said, “and then Juniper’s plans begin.”

The priests were giving us an edge, I saw as the hours passed. The body count kept mounting and the men grew tired, but the fighting continued. Twice rituals were attempted against us, but both times we shut them down. Light healing did not need time and carefulness the way mage healing did, which meant it could actually be done on the frontlines: this was a meat grinder for everyone, but unlike our enemies we could keep some of our men in the fight. We didn’t have the numbers to fight a war of attrition against two sets of legions, though, which was why Juniper had made plans otherwise. So far everything had come down along fairly predictable lines, which meant now generalship would begin to matter.

Which turned out to be a problem, because against our predictions the Black Knight was moving the Seventh south to reinforce her battle line. Juniper and I had been sure the Black Knight’s own legion would be kept in reserve for hours yet, held back as a precaution in case Sepulchral ended up giving the Eleventh trouble. Four thousand fresh troops would be enough to breathe vigour into an attack on our defences, I thought, and already the melee between the trenches rested on a knife’s edge.

“Fuck,” I muttered, looking at the Seventh’s dust trail rising high. “What do you know we don’t, Black Knight?”

Leaving my post, I headed out to speak to Juniper and found she had an answer for me. Not out of any prodigious insight, but because the two envoys we’d sent this morning had turned back early and brought back news.

“There’s fighting in Sepulchral’s camp,” Juniper growled.

“I’m guessing you don’t mean the Eleventh is attacking it,” I said.

She glared at me. Fair enough. Whatever Malicia’s scheme had been in there, evidently it had crippled them as an army. It made sense that the Black Knight felt comfortable sending her reserve into battle if Sepulchral’s twenty thousand were basically out of the fight. That was something of a problem.

“We need to get that army moving,” I grimaced.

“Good of you to volunteer,” the Hellhound replied.

“Not even queenship gets me out of the shit jobs,” I sighed. “Should have aimed for empress.”

Juniper snorted and gave me the Order of Broken Bells to lead. My knights weren’t going to be charging trenches anytime soon, and the enemy’s remaining horse was also still at large. I wasted no time, saddling up and riding at speed full south. Going all the way around Moule Hills to get to Sepulchral’s camp would take hours, even riding horses, but there was no alternative. We passed by the silhouettes of the Rebel Legion camp in the hills, deep behind their valley fortifications, and I noted it did not look heavily defended. Sacker or whoever had usurped her command were putting their back into the valley battle. I could see the sense in it, even if it was Sacker that’d given the order.

The rebels didn’t want to win the battle, they wanted everyone weakened to their bargaining position improved. Either Marshal Nim or myself winning would be an actual problem for them, they were sure to kneecap whoever pulled ahead.

We kept riding hard to the north, eventually finding the same path that Sepulchral’s main host had taken to link up with its vanguard in the heights. There were wagons at the bottom of the slope and tents too, the camp having proved too small for the whole army of the rebelling High Lady of Aksum. We got closer and immediately I winced: not only was there no picket to see us coming but what looked like supply wagons were actually being left unguarded. There were some soldiers at the bottom of the slope, maybe a few hundred, but they were disorganized and didn’t actually notice us coming until we were in charging distance. Levies, I thought. Rubies to piglets those poor bastards were levies wanting to be left out of the mess in the heights.

Our arrival unsettled them but the shield wall they tried to make to discourage a change was visibly shaky. I hadn’t come here for a fight, though, so instead I whistled for an escort of knights to follow me and pulled ahead. It took a bit for them to realize I wanted to talk and then choose someone who would, but eventually a pair of middle-aged Soninke shuffled forward warily.

“I’m not here to kill you,” I bluntly said. “I’m here to speak with Empress-Claimant Sepulchral.”

A harsh laugh from one of the two.

“A little late for that,” he said. “The old witch’s finally dead.”

It was easy to get them talking after some prodding. Apparently Abreha Mirembe had died overnight. Some had claimed it was old age that’d done her in, but both her designated heir Isoba Mirembe and his cousin Sanaa Mirembe claimed it to be assassination. They promptly accused each other of the deed, which had seen violence ensue. Sanaa Mirembe, sister of the same Fasili Mirembe who’d served Akua and died at the Doom, had proved to have many supporters among the Aksum men. Isoba, however, was engaged to the daughter of the High Lord of Nok: those troops had largely sided with him. Fighting had been breaking out all day with short breaks to negotiate, but the breaks were getting shorter and the fighting bloodier.

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. Malicia had fucked up that army pretty good. If I were a betting woman, I’d bet that Sanaa was the Tower’s ringer in that fight but I couldn’t be sure. Besides, in Malicia’s shoes I wouldn’t actually want Sanaa to win by too much if I wanted her to win at all. The costlier her victory, the less of a threat she would be after being called to heel. No, I decided, just having a ringer was too simple to be a plot of Malicia’s. Better odds she had someone under Isoba as well, fanning the flames so that the factions would keep bleeding each other instead of coming to an arrangement. Worse, I couldn’t see an easy way out of this. I wasn’t sure I had the men to force Isoba’s claim, I thought, and even if I did it’d take too long.

I needed that army to get marching an hour ago.

“Are they fighting right now?” I finally asked.

“No, they’re still in talks,” one of them said. “The moment they leave the tent and the corpse, though, they’ll be back at-”

My eye sharpened.

“The corpse is still in there?” I pressed.

They nodded.

“It’s why the truce is observed while in the tent.”

I left them to that, riding away and back to the Order. Talbot came up to me but I ignored him, closing my eye to think. Would it work? Could it work?

“Your Majesty?” Brandon Talbot asked.

I opened my eye. It was my best shot.

“Form up,” I said. “We’re going into the camp.”

I felt the weight of his gaze on me, but he did not question the wisdom of the decision. He was a reliable sort, Talbot. The way uphill was difficult, but the loyalist sappers had pretty obviously gentled the slope. It was usable, just not the kind of thing you ever want to lead a cavalry charge up through. Or any charge, honestly. We ran into actual defences the moment we reached the heights, at last. The division in the camp was pretty blatant, tents and furniture having been used to make makeshift barricades facing each other while bristling armed soldiers faced each other. I saw – and smelled, Gods take pity on my nose – that horses had been butchered by the hundreds while tied and their carcasses left to rot in the sun, but along with that horrid mess two parts of the camp were being avoided.

The first was a pavilion the size of a small castle and enchanted to look like one, which I assumed to have been Sepulchral’s personal quarters. It was now neutral grounds for negotiation, however long that would last. The second was a maze of large cages of black iron, which only people in scarlet livery every came close to. I could see misshapen silhouettes within, some of them snapping at the servants in scarlet and others trying to claw their way out of the cage. Right, Aksum. The Cauldron of Monsters, once famous for its use of monsters in battle. At least the squabbling soldiers had been smart enough to stay clear of that. Neither side moved to block us as we formed up on the heights, but the repositioned to be prepared for a fight if it came down to it.

Gods, it better not. We didn’t have the room for a charge and they’d bury us with corpses if they had to. No, I was going to put on the fancy hat and bargain my way into that tent. The Order was just here to… help temptations stay at bay. It took half an hour for all my knights to make it up in the camp but I waited it out, only then riding forward with a small escort. Someone must have warned the squabbling Mirembe, because both of them came out of the tent with escorts of their own. I led Zombie towards them, pleased I wouldn’t need to posture to get that talk after all, and sped up. Trumpets sounded, and I almost laughed at the pageantry – did I really require that kind of announcing? – before I realized they were coming from too far north.

The trumpets continued to sound the alarm.

“ATTACK,” shouts came in Mthethwa. “THE LEGIONS ARE HERE!”

Huh, that might actually end up to my- I caught sight of movement from the corner of my eye, feeling a ripple of magic. A small thing, repeated many a time. A few hundred cages had opened at once, and as my stomach dropped I saw a scaled beast the size of a battering ram slink out and taste the air with a forked tongue. Well, I thought, fuck. Magic rippled again but I almost laughed. What were they going to do, open the fucking cages twice? A heartbeat later a hold opened in the middle of the camp, the sides of it inscribed with runes.

“I really ought to know better by now,” I admitted.

At least I knew what Akua was going to do with that stolen power from earlier, I mused as a Lesser Breach screamed open and devils began pouring out. I sighed, cracking my neck and loosening my shoulder. Time to get to work, then.

After all, if it were easy what the Hells would they need me for?

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Interlude: Juniper’s Plan (Redux)

“Armies, like water, take the path of least resistance.”

– Dread Emperor Terribilis II

They were wildly outnumbered, surrounded on all sides and faced with horrors most. It was, Grandmaster Brandon Talbot thought, just another day in the Black Queen’s service.

He was already looking forward to the mad caper that would get – most of – them out of this alive. He turned to look at the Black Queen, who was grinning a hard grin that swept the doubts right off the frame of any knight close enough to see it. Confidence rippled out through the Order, passed from knight to knight like a whisper. And why wouldn’t it? How many times had it seen them laugh in the face of death and leave victorious, that grin? Once more, Brandon Talbot fervently prayed. Brandon’s queen cracked her neck then sighed.

“Well,” the Queen of Callow drawled, “isn’t this a right mess, Talbot?”

He swallowed a shit-eating grin. It was going to be one of those, then.

“Positively uncivilized, Your Majesty,” he agreed.

“Ain’t it just?” she said, the Laure drawl rearing up its head. “Now, looking at this situation before us, I can’t help but feel that it’s missing something.”

“So much as a speck of godliness?” Brandon tried.

She snorted, then erupted into a small chuckle like he’d said a joke.

“Oh, Talbot,” she mused, “the things you say sometimes.”

A heartbeat’s pause.

“What’s missing, of course, is more monsters that want to kill everyone,” the Queen of Callow nonchalantly told him. “So let’s remedy that lack.”

Brandon remembered a night when he’d been a boy and he’d snuck out of the manor in Marchford with his sister. It’d been summer and they’d gone out into the hills, bravely defeating sheep-shaped with wooden swords before collapsing exhausted in the grass and looking up at a sea of stars. He remembered the breeze, how warm it had been against his skin. That was what Night felt like to him, when the Black Queen used it – that warm breeze against his skin. There were goddesses behind that power and should they frown upon him he thought it might be a terrible thing to behold.

But they were passing fond, instead, and so he felt a warm summer night’s breeze against his skin as the Queen of Callow ripped open a wide gate into Arcadia.

Just in time, for madness was seizing the enemy camp. Monsters were tearing into men, howling devils flying through in riotous flocks and for some godforsaken reason the Praesi were still fighting each other. On the others side of the gate Brandon glimpsed a screaming blizzard, but when the queen rode into the white he shouted orders to follow. The Order formed into a column and went through in good order, the edges of their formation hacking away at the monsters and devils that were already nipping away their ranks, but it was not long before all had passed through. The grandmaster had run regular drills with mages to be able to charge in and out of gates at the drop of a hat, considering how often it was being used a tactic these days.

The whipping winds almost deafened him as he cross, but not so much that when he approached his queen he could not hear her shouting. Squinting he tried to make out what she was looking at, finding with surprised it appeared to be fae. Maybe a half-dozen of them, riding on pale horses and looking utterly unconcerned by the cold. Was Queen Catherine making a bargain, an alliance? He spurred his mount closer to join her side.

“-and that smirk makes you look like an asshole,” the Queen of Callow shouted. “I could kill you and all you friends with a hand tied behind my back, even if I had no fucking eyes.”

Ah, Brandon thought. The fae were not only pale, they were utterly livid.

“How quick you are to give insult, when still protected by oath,” one of the fae shouted, “yet if-”

There was a flash of boiling-hot Night and half the fae’s face melted off.

“Boring,” the Black Queen said. “Hope you have more friends, otherwise I won’t even be able to work out an appetite for supper.”

The fae screamed, which Brandon thought might be something worth worrying about before screams answered in the distance and he decided it was definitely something worth worrying about. Queen Catherine glanced at him, having finally noticed his presence.

“Ah, Talbot,” she said. “Good, get the Order in formation. We’re going to have get out of here in a hurry, I can feel at least a hundred of them coming.”

She frowned, then cocked her head to a side.

“Damn, that’s a Duke for sure and he feels pissed,” the Black Queen gleefully said.

“I’ll see to it, Your Majesty,” Brandon said. “Are we to be fighting an enemy in particular?”

“We’re going to take the big tent that looks like a castle,” Queen Catherine said.

Ah, the one stinking of magic and heavily defended. He really should have been expecting that. The grandmaster of the Order of the Broken Bells saluted, and rode away to muster his knights.

The storm was getting worse and the fae angrier, leaving soon sounded just fine to him.

—

It was a graceless thing, this battle.

“All this shady shit they’ve pulled and still it comes down to the melee,” Staff Tribune Ligaia muttered in disdain. “So much for the scheming witches.”

Marshal Nim Mardottir grunted back, noncommittal. Her old friend – as much of a friend as a human could be – wasn’t the first one today to grumble about the plots of the Empress and the Warlock and how they were staining the honour of what should have been a clean battle. She was, though, the first one to complain the scheming hadn’t been effective enough. In both cases, the Black Knight tended to disagree. Malicia’s surgical assassinations and hidden assets had paralyzed both the deserting legions and the Sepulchral rebels, though according to the Eyes even after being framed for an attempted coup Sacker had wiggled back her way to command by swearing to be hard on the Army of Callow. As for the Warlock’s ritual against the Thirteenth, it had done more to improve Nim’s opinion of the woman than weeks of smile and pretty talk.

It had been both effective and restrained, showing regard for the well-being of soldiers that’d served the Dread Empire loyally for decades before being led astray. More regard than the Tower had thus far shown for the legions that served it, one might argue. If one wanted to be hung a traitor.

“If we can rout Sepulchral’s brats quick enough we can win this battle before nightfall,” the Black Knight rumbled. “It’ll cost us bloody, but I can see the writ.”

A casual look at the melee raging across the valley showed only men dying pointlessly on a field. The deserters to the west, aggressively trying to bleed everyone else, while across the valley to the east the Legions of Terror and the Army of Callow lost hundreds every hour struggling over the same two hundred feet of solid ground. Casualties had been mounting all day, the Black Knight had already lost near two thousand. It was worse for the Callowans, though. Sacker was going after them hard with her siege engines and the Thirteenth’s treachery had left them underequipped and tired from the night fighting. The Army of Callow would be the first to break. The Black Knight’s gauntlet closed with grinding sound of metal on metal before she pushed down the swell of anger. She’d thought better of Jeremiah.

What had the Black Queen offered to turn him?

Sometimes it felt like she was the only person in Praes who gave a shit about the Dread Empire. Malicia was scheming herself into the grave, the Carrion Lord was setting fires left and right and all the while nobles were at each other’s throats like the middle of a fucking invasion was the time to settle their grudges. Even the Legions, which should have been a pillar of stability, were falling apart. Thousands had deserted over the mind control hook. It wasn’t that Nim didn’t understand the disgust, the sense of betrayal, but could Malicia really be blamed when half the damned Legions had gone the way of the Carrion Lord a year before? It was not madness, if it’d turned out necessary. Mok had argued it smacked of slavery, though, and not been wrong.

His offered bargain – returning to the fold in exchange for turning on Malicia – had been a damned silly thing anyway, and one Nim could not accept lest the Legions of Terror fall apart entirely. Malicia had given the order to keep stringing him along until Sepulchral was in place and Nim had done it, with a heavy heart but done it anyway. Mok had been a friend, once, but duty was duty. And when all the pieces had been in place the Empress had paralyzed one enemy army and turned another irremediably against Callow, over a day’s span turning the Black Queen’s position from superior to imperiled. No, the Empress had proved over and over that she was an able woman. But she was also one who still had implanted commands in the minds of hundreds of her own officers. They would only be removed at the end of the war. Nim should not begrudge that, given the stained record of loyalty of the Legions over the last few years. Should not.

Her gauntlets ground again.

“Ah, our beloved sorcerous overseer returns,” Staff Tribune Ligaia muttered. “What glamour, what grace, what a stupid fucking thing to wear on a battlefield.”

Snorting in an amusement, Nim turned to follow her subordinate’s gaze. Lady Akua Sahelian, who some already called the Warlock even if the Powers had not yet granted her that in truth, was wearing an ornate red dress on a field where almost all the Named present were after her head. The Black Knight could not think of a goof reason for it, save possibly because Soninke highborn were all fucking mad and this one madder than most. Nim had yet to parse out Sahelian’s game, what stood behind the warning about the pattern of three and that convincingly raw tirade about the Tower. She’d had confirmed the bit about the pattern, asked old friends who’d learned a few pieces of namelore.

Nim would have preferred relying on the learned folk of Husse-il-Ossa, what humans called the Hall of Skulls, but none of the seventeen kings and the thirteen queens had far-lore to share on Names. Unsurprising. She had risen high enough among her people to know more had been lost over the centuries than the old crowns cared to admit. Human learning had been made to serve, instead, and human learning had said Akua Sahelian likely saved her life. This was not a pleasant position to be in, but these were not times for pleasantness. The Black Knight need only look to the three armies in Legion armour hacking at each other like animals on a dusty field to be reminded of that.

“Lady Black,” the Warlock greeted her, offering a bow. “Staff Tribune Ligaia.”

“The imperial’s courts further south, in case you got lost,” Ligaia scornfully said.

“As usual, Lady Ligaia, your helpfulness is as a balm upon my soul,” the Warlock smiled back with seeming delight before her expression sobered. “I happen to bring more urgent news, Marshal.”

The golden-eyed witch – Powers, that colour was eerie even on humans – turned to meet Nim’s stare.

“The Lesser Breach has been closed,” Sahelian said. “That should mean either Queen Catherine or the Hierophant are in the camp. I cannot think of any other here with the power to so quickly achieve this.”

The ogre shook her head.

“The Hierophant’s still out there,” the Black Knight said.

She could feel him, through Survey. The aspect born out of decades of battles had become like an unearthly sense, an ability to take a single look at a battlefield and know what all the pieces in play were. The Black Knight had taken more than a week to learn to recognize the particular pulls at her instinct as being specific Named, but now that she had it took only a moment to find them. So long as they were ‘visible’, anyway, a nebulous distinction she still sometimes struggled with. The aspect had more esoteric applications besides, she’d learned, pairing with another to turn a simple trick of power into something entirely more deadly, yet such things must be used only with care. There were rules to fighting between Named that she was still only faintly aware of, no matter how many dreams of Amadeus’ life the Powers saw fit to send her.

“Then it must be her,” the Warlock said.

Nim wondered if the girl knew of the faint undertone of yearning that always crept in her voice when the Black Queen was brought up. It was the worse kept secret in Praes that the Queen of Callow and the Warlock had been sleeping together during their years abroad, but while most assumed it had been a coup on Sahelian’s part to prepare her later betrayal the Black Knight believed otherwise. That break hadn’t been a clean one, for all that the Warlock had bound her fate to the Tower’s.

“Take the mage cadres and go support the Eleventh,” the Marshal of Praes ordered her. “The Mirembe remnants pulling together would be trouble. You have my authority to take any measures necessary to ensure they do not, Warlock.”

“How exciting,” the golden-eyed witch drawled. “By your will then, o Black Knight.”

Nim waved her away irritably. Sahelian was a viper, but she was a competent viper. If the Black Knight had to be saddled with a caster of that calibre – which were always trouble, the old Warlock had been too – it might as well be one who knew her business. Her attention returned to the battle in the valley, the bloody melee in three parts. The Army of Callow had edge ahead in the morning, the Black Knight thought, but now that Noon Bell had come and gone it was increasingly on the backfoot. An hour ago Nim had allowed free use of munitions on the front against the Callowans and the difference in stocks was beginning to tell.

Juniper of the Red Shields had clearly stacked the western corner of her defensive line, knowing it was the weak point, but the Black Knight was beginning to think the other woman had made a blunder. Her eastern flank was wavering. Already the Callowans had nearly been pushed back into their own trench and the pressure was only increasing. Had the young Marshal of Callow thinned her eastern flank at the expense of her western one, knowing the latter would bear the brunt of the casualties? The Black Knight could not deny what her own eyes were seeing, what her aspect kept drawing her attention to: there was an opening to take. Nim turned an eye to Ligaia.

“Pass the word,” she said. “The Fourteenth is to mount an all-out assault on the eastern flank. Commit the reserves, mages are to turn to fully offensive fire and the siege to concentrate for a breach.”

It would not matter if Sepulchral’s brat had some sense beaten into them, the Black Knight thought. Not if the battle to the south was already won, and this campaign with it.

—

Juniper ripped into the dried mutton jerky, swallowing a mouthful of meat after barley chewing it. Gods but she’d been ravenous all day. She bit off another piece then paused halfway through chewing, turning to look at the woman to her side.

“Doesn’t taste salted,” she said.

Aisha wrinkled her nose.

“Swallow, Juniper,” she said.

The Hellhound rolled her eyes but indulged her Staff Tribune. She then turned back an expectant gaze. Aisha smiled, pushing back a strand of that soft dark hair before answering.

“I had it washed and dried again,” Aisha said.

Juniper, like most orcs, preferred meat without seasoning. It was a small thing, but it was those that spoke loudest. Juniper felt a sharp swell of fondness, one of those moments that always brought her dangerously close to thinking about biting that smooth neck and a hundred more things after that. Years of control kept her body from moving, though she noticed that Aisha had caught the glance to the neck and her lips quirked. Nothing was said of it, but the shared knowledge hung between them in the air. Dragging her eyes away, Juniper of the Red Shields turned her attention back to the battle in the distance. A look into her Baalite eye confirmed the trend she’d seen forming over the last half hour: the Fourteenth had committed to an all-out attack and the eastern flank was buckling.

As it should. She’d ordered General Zola to thin it.

“It’s time,” Juniper said, licking her chops. “Have the fallback order sent.”

Aisha briskly nodded, rising from her seat to pass the order as Juniper stayed in her own and watched the eastern flank through the Baalite eye. Concentrated ballista fire had torn through chunks of the palisade and the Fourteenth, though green, was well-trained. Their backline was already bringing wooden planks to the fore that’d serve as makeshift bridges to cross the trench and allow legionaries pour through the breaches. Flags and sorcery had Zola informed now was the time to pull out and the general did what she could. Her legionaries had been getting pushed back into their own trench by the Fourteenth and that didn’t leave a lot of room to maneuver. She got out those she could and began pulling away from the palisade.

The Fourteenth, howling and victorious, followed the retreating Army of Callow. Against most armies Juniper’s counterstroke would have resulted into a rout, but this was the Legions of Terror. The young legionaries were not baited into a hasty pursuit, instead getting shouted back into line by sergeants and lieutenants, so when sixty feet behind the palisade they found the Army of Callow reformed into a shield wall the did not get scattered. Instead the Fourteenth formed its own shield wall in time and the lines collided. Juniper sucked at her teeth. It would hold, she decided. The Fourteenth needed to cross a trench and blown-up chunks of palisade to reinforce its own shield wall, effectively slowing its advance to a crawl.

The Fourteenth would be tied down there for hours with little to show for it, should nothing change. Good.

The Baalite eye moved to the northwest, where the Seventh Legion was marching down the road to reinforce. Nim would be sending her legion to back up the Fourteenth, the Hellhound knew, unless she found a better opening. Juniper just have to give her that opening, to heat up that old veteran’s lizard blood and bait her into going after a victory. Juniper rose to her feet to give the order herself, the one that’d most matter in this entire battle. It would be a rider that carried it, not flag or sorcery. Otherwise the Black Knight might smell the trap. And away the rider went as Juniper returned to her pavilion and her seat in the shade, Baalite eye tight in grasp and Aisha returned to her side.

“This is it,” Juniper gravelled. “The knife’s edge.”

The moment that would make or break the Battle of Kala. Even as the situation on the eastern flank stabilized, the breaches stopped cold, the western corner began to waver. It’d been hammered at all morning from two sides by engines and legionaries, assaulted relentlessly. Thrice rituals had been aimed at smashing the palisades, only the Hierophant’s intervention keeping the magic from breaking the stalemate. Bravely the legionaries of the Army of Callow had held, but now they were wavering. Their eastern flank had just been punched through by the Fourteenth and enemy soldiers were spilling around the shield wall, the Black Queen was nowhere in sight and the pressure was only increasing. They broke, first in singles and then in clumps.

That was, at least, what Juniper was trying to sell.

And that was the danger, the knife’s edge, because a feigned retreat could so easily turn into a real one. Once soldiers got running, no matter the reason, it was hard to get them to stop. Juniper had built her box, even though its walls could not yet be seen, but it might yet be blown apart by the same men she meant to hold it. Pickler’s sappers did what they were meant to, carpeting the grounds with smokers that obscured everyone’s line of sight as legionaries ran and legionaries pursued. Not only the loyalist but after a few moments the rebels as well, a chunk of wall in front of them just as undefended. Sacker, Auntie Sacks, would order it. She couldn’t afford to let Nim take those fortifications, else her plan of bleeding both sides would go up in flames.

The last thing the Rebel Legions wanted was to be penned in by the Loyalists Legions, meaning they had to take that palisade so the Eighth could not.

Smoke rose into the sky in great swaths and Juniper clutched the Baalite eye so tightly her knuckles paled. What would win out, the Marshal of Callow wondered. The fear, the instinct to run and keep running, or the trust? The Army of Callow had grown to trust its commanders, fighting on foreign fields, but the fear had grown too. Hadn’t Juniper felt it herself, that poison that spread through the veins and blackened everything? More than just felt, she had wallowed in it. She’d glimpsed, though, a light on the horizon. A way to settle it all at last. The Hellhound leaned forward, jaw shut tight as she looked at her soldiers move. Haven’t you ever wondered? Where we stand, compared to the best. We’ve fought Procerans and rebels and corpses, but this? This is the standard. The reigning champion. The mother we must murder to surpass.

“Come on,” the Marshal of Callow murmured in Kharsum. “It can be done. We can beat them. Trust me and we can beat them all.”

Soldiers ran, past the lines and the officers waiting with their whistles and shouts. Juniper’s heart leapt up in throat, but it wasn’t done. The same hard iron that’d seen the Army of Callow through the Camps and the Graveyard, through the Boot and Hainaut and dozen more battles, it told. Some kept running, but some fell into line. And that was all that was needed: a few people standing. Men gathered to them like a standard, lines firming, and Juniper began to laugh. In the distance, sappers began to raise mantlets. A box, formed out of the eastern corner of trenches and palisades and the second corned the sappers were now making of wood. A box filled with smoke, and soon to be filled with only Named and her enemies. Juniper rose to her feet, passing the Baalite eye to Aisha.

“Juniper?” she asked.

“Look into it,” the Hellhound said. “Northwest.”

Aisha did.

“The Seventh Legion,” Juniper stated, “is no longer moving to reinforce the Fourteenth. It’s moving to reinforce the Eighth.”

The dark-haired woman put down the Baalite eye after a moment, smiling.

“It is.”

The Hellhound flashed her fangs at the horizon, triumphant.

“Where’s that wagon with the roof again?” she asked. “I need a nap.”

Aisha started in surprise.

“Catherine is not back from Sepulchral’s camp, we don’t know-”

“She chose me,” Juniper said. “I choose her. She’ll get it done, and that means the last decision that matters in this battle has already been made.”

Juniper of the Red Shields, Marshal of Callow, walked out the pavilion with steps lighter than they had been in years.

—

“What the fuck is happening in there?”

Ligaia wasn’t asking anything that the rest of the general staff wasn’t silently wondering. The Black Knight surveyed the movement of her own troops, but she found nothing but the obvious. The Eighth Legion had entered the smoke and was engaged in a brutal melee against the Army of Callow and the deserters, Sacker pouring her soldiers into the grinder to make sure she wouldn’t get enveloped by any single force. The Seventh was reinforcing, but the truth harder to swallow was that those reinforcements were needed. Between the casualties of the Thirteenth’s treachery and the brutal blind fighting in the smoke the Eighth was getting mauled. Nim watched the movements of the troops, towering above her officers, and her fists began to grind.

“Ma’am,” Senior Sapper Licker said, catching her attention. “We’re at risk now. The deserters are still hitting our trench but we can’t spare the men to hold it unless we send reinforcements from the Seventh. The flank’s getting stretched too thin.”

“Your recommendation?” Nim asked.

“Deploying goblinfire,” Licker evenly said. “They’ll answer in kind, but it’ll lock down that entire front. We can focus our efforts on the breach in the smoke.”

The Black Knight hesitated. Already she could make out currents in the battle. The Fourteenth was deadlocked, while her legions were pouring their strength into the smoky breach. So was Sacker, and with the main front of contention between the loyal legions and the deserters the tendency would only increase. We have the advantage, Nim reminded herself. The Seventh were fresh and the Army of Callow stretched thin, while Sacker’s rebels were tightly packed – it would be difficult for them to mount a harder push because there simply wasn’t enough room at the bottom of the hills for them to muster. Senior Sapper’s Licker was going to make the breach into the fulcrum of this battle, but it was a fulcrum the Legions were best placed to triumph in.

It would get bloody, but it would get done.

“See it done,” she ordered.

And with all of it resting on one breach, there was only one thing left. Nim would have to head into the smoke herself, lead the Seventh personally. Tempted as she was to Delegate one of her personal guard and guide them through Survey, her instincts ran against it. Half-hearted commitment here would be punished, she dimly felt.

“Ready the Warhammers,” the Black Knight ordered. “I’ll lead the push into the breach personally.”

—

The Duke of Boreal Lights had been helpful enough to die taking out the Hellgate, but Brandon found the man’s retinue decidedly less obliging.

“Why-”

He hacked into the flesh but the blue-skinned fae turned into ice, shattering and reforming.

“-won’t-”

Even cutting the bastard thing’s head off didn’t help. It turned to mist and reformed, and then it had the gall to stab at him. Brandon slapped away the spear with his shield and stabbed it in the eye because, really, where was it getting the bloody nerve? It should have been dead six times over by now.

“-you-”

Oh and now the devils wanted a piece of him as well. The grandmaster slice through the wing of the howling monkey-creature and deftly led his charge to kick it after it fell, turning to parry a spear blow and smashing the fae’s face with his shield with a grunt.

“-bloody-”

Oh, the broken nose didn’t even come back even after it turned to mist. Brandon snarled, smashing its head repeatedly with his shield as the fae rocked back in pain and dismay.

“-DIE!”

The bottom of his shield went into the creature’s skull with a wet squelch and finally it dropped to the ground. Panting but vindicated, Brandon turned to have a look around. The rebel Praesi had finally stopped fighting each other, after only half an hour of still hacking at their kin while the world went to the Hells, but the Eleventh Legion had reached the camp and even with the truce the defence was too disunited to drive it back. Outnumbered almost four to one, the legionaries were still making meat of the rebels – though it helped that the devils flying around everywhere avoided them like the plague and it’d started raining acid on their foes. That wasn’t Brandon Talbot’s problem, though. Now, where was the queen?

Ah, there she was. Near the castle-tent, fighting what looked like a pitch-black land octopus with suckers that spat out an acidic goo. A tower of black flame took care of that as Brandon rode to her side, pulling back his knights with him as he did – there was danger in stretching themselves too thin even of the rebel Praesi seemed to be avoiding fighting them – but by the time he arrived she was tossing a dead fae in the path of a devil belching vivid red flames while trying to fend off what looked like… a hippogriff? No, not quite. He might never have seen one of those outside heraldry, but while the creature had horse’s legs and tail it instead of a hawk-like appearance it had great crow’s wings and head.

It also bit off the head of the queen’s horse, before she stabbed it in the neck.

Brandon rode at a gallop, smashing into a devil that tried to fall upon the queen as she leapt with a loud grunt of pain from her dying horse to the monster and Night bloomed like a sickly wind. With a satisfying crunch he smashed the bloody thing’s skull with the pommel of his sword even as another clawed at his armour with screams of pain and the hymns burned bright. By the time he was done, the queen was sitting astride the dead crow monster with a smugly satisfied look on her face. No, not dead Brandon saw. Undead, for it blinked and let out a happy screech that had him wincing in pain.

“This is mine now,” the Black Queen happily announced, and a heartbeat later she was aflight.

Godsdamnit, Brandon thought, that was going to be just as bad as the damned fae flying horse. It’d been impossible to catch up to her when she rode that one, and at least that bloody thing hadn’t had claws. He looked up, saw she was still headed for the great pavilion and rode after her with a sigh. Some Praesi household troops were in the way but it was nothing lances and a gallop couldn’t disperse. He saw the queen disappear into the pavilion, which was a relief until he heard the fighting in there. He charged in with a wedge of a hundred behind him, smashing into what looked like a three-way brawl over a corpse. Sepulchral’s squabbling heirs and a company of Legion heavies, led by-

Oh, the most beautiful woman Brandon had ever seen in his life. Would ever see in his life. He ought to dismount and kneel, to pledge service and love and-

“General Lucretia, if you don’t stop glamouring my knights I’m going to feed you to my horse.”

The warmth went out of the world. Brandon came back to himself, sweat drenching his back, and realized with shame that he’d been halfway out of the saddle. Many of his men had been no better. His fingers clenched around his sword. Another abomination best put to the sword, this smiling woman among the legionaries.

“Black Queen,” the general spoke in a honeyed voice, “there is no need for-”

“I warned you,” Catherine Foundling said, voice echoing of distant caws. “Bite off your tongue.”

Power rippled out, and while the dark-skinned general shrieked and fled in a flap of dark wings as she spurted blood many of her legionaries ended up struggling with the same order. Brandon looked around and smirked. Some of the Praesi seemed to be struggling as well, but not a single knight of the Order had been affected.

“Forward,” he shouted. “Forward and drive the Legions out!”

A shout forty years too late, but better that than never. Even the Praesi rebels gathered themselves long enough to attain usefulness and they helped push out the legionaries, which retreated out of the pavilion after heavy losses. That did not, unsurprisingly, end hostilities. Brandon’s queen had led her… mount near a corpse on a table made of solid gold and pearls, which seemed to rile up the Praesi. Two nobles – they had the look, the attitude and most of all the golden eyes – led the charge, loudly arguing though they refrained from violence.

“The succession of Aksum is no matter for outsiders, it is-”

“It is already decided,” the boy lord shouted. “It was made official years ago, Sanaa, that I am heir. Your grasping attempts to pretend otherwise-”

“You are the creature of Nok, not a true Mirembe,” Lady Sanaa scoffed, “and-”

“Gods Below, this might be the most terribly tedious shouting match I’ve ever heard,” the Black Queen said, Night billowing around her. “Here’s a solution: neither of you are in charge.”

The staff of yew she always carried was lightly tapped on the corpse, which Brandon now saw was that of an old woman. The pressure of the Night went out and the body shuddered. This did not, unsurprisingly, seem to please the two squabbling nobles.

“It is against law for undead to hold any noble title,” the young lord scoffed. “Do you think putting strings on a corpse will make it otherwise?”

“This is absurd,” Lady Sanaa hissed. “For once, Isobe speaks truth. By what right do you meddle in our affairs?”

The Black Queen smiled, pleasant and mild, which had Brandon tensing. That was usually the smile that preceded corpses beginning to drop. Beneath her the crow-winged chimera stirred, looking up with cruel eyes, and in the magelights of the pavilion the dark fringes Mantle of Woe seemed to meld into the creature’s feathers.

“By what right,” the Queen of Callow softly said. “You lot keep asking me that, don’t you? Nobles and officers and even Malicia herself. By what right do I meddle in the affairs of Praes, which is not mine to rule and a sovereign state beyond my reach?”

Her sole eye burned with feverish light.

“By what right?” the Black Queen hissed. “You dare ask me that, you pack of jackals who bleed Calernia as it struggles for its very right to exist, who writhe and bite and have a thousand times turned the east into a madhouse?”

The Praesi flinched away, but Brandon leaned forward with an eager smile. His knights too. They knew it well, that weight in the air. Had learned to love it, for though it was the herald of terrible things that terror was ever turned away from them. She was a queen in black, adorned in wrath and dread, but she was their queen to the bone.

Let all the world fear her, save the sons and daughters of Callow.

“You made yourself my mess to handle,” Catherine Foundling snarled. “That is my right. The east is your prison and I am your fucking warden, rattling the cage until you fall in line.”

Brandon felt it then, the… pressure. It was suffocating and ever soul in the pavilion seemed to be choking on it. The queen through them all with her gaze, and wherever she looked knees buckled.

“So what will it be, Mirembe?” the Queen of Callow said. “How many of you do I need to butcher before the lesson sinks in?”

Silence was her answer.

“I thought so,” Catherine Foundling quietly said. “Get up, Abreha.”

The corpse did, looking around blearily. As if she’d just woken up from a long nap.

“Your Majesty?”

“Yes,” the young woman smiled, “I am that. Now let’s get this army moving, yes? We have work to do.”

“I await your orders,” the corpse said, bowing her head.

“First we’re going to slap away the Eleventh,” the Queen of Callow said, “but after that? Well, we’re going to march.”

“Where to?” the corpse of Abreha Mirembe asked.

“We’re going to visit my old friend General Sacker,” Catherine Foundling coldly smiled. “And remind her what happens when people cross me.”

—

The hammer went down, pulverizing the sergeant and the legionary next to him. The Black Knight withdrew the weapon, shaking away the pulp as her Warhammers fanned out around her. The melee was turning to their advantage, as much as Nim could tell in this maze of smoke, but her instinct was pulling at her. Something was wrong. An arrow streaked through the smoke, which she tried to swat down but missed by an inch. One of her retinue screamed as it went through his eye, dropping to the ground and twitching.

“Archer,” the Black Knight snarled.

She and the Silver Huntress had been scything through her soldiers and her personal guard alike, taking lives and then melting away before they could be caught. The sole time Nim had thought she’d caught the Huntress she’d run into the Barrow Sword instead, who had somehow managed to scar enchanted armour straight out of the Tower’s vaults with a bronze sword. The Black Knight stomped through the smoke, sweeping away another handful of legionaries with a blow but finding no trace of the Archer. In the distance someone died in a flash of silver Light, the Huntress’ signature.

Nim wouldn’t fall for that again. Going hunting for them only ended up in her swinging at smoke while she took one arrow after another. None had penetrated the armour so far, but the Light would shatter the enchantment fully in time.

“Forward,” the Black Knight shouted.

Her soldiers shouted back. There were more enemies ahead, full companies now, and the sound of sharpers in the distance. The fighting grew harsh but they broke through, Nim leading the charge, until she made out distant shapes ahead. A wall? A few more steps forward, slapping away an arrow from the Archer come for her neck, and she realized it wasn’t a wall. Not exactly. Mantlets had been placed as some kind of rough palisade, and before them she saw a sea of blood and flesh. Munitions and crossbow bolts shredded anyone that came close. What was this? She took another step forward, but she felt sharp pressure from her left. Nim backed away and a spell of blue light passed through where she’d just stood.

The Hierophant?

No, she thought as pressure came from the right this time and she caught a blade with her gauntleted hand. The Squire looked up at her through his helmet, blue eyes burning, and the Black Knight felt her stomach drop. The boy had come for her, as Sahelian had warned. She tried to crush the sword but he ripped it free, dancing away from her hammer blow with speed he’d not had last the fought. Another arrow needed swatting away, and then as she tried to smash the Squire darting close a swirling spell of darkness seized her foot. She was pulled off her feet, and while she backhanded the Squire away he landed on his feet with his sword up. This wasn’t a good fight, she thought, they had her swinging at ghosts and-

The Black Knight breathed in sharply. When had been the last time she’d slain a legionary with the marking of the Army of Callow? Often it was hard to tell in the smoke, but she couldn’t recall. There’d been a few at first, isolated, but she’d been fighting for hours in the smoke now and it had been long. But no, that made no sense, why would Sacker commit so thoroughly to this breach if she was losing so many men? The Squire came for her from behind but she smashed her hammer into the ground, bumping him up and backhanding him away. An arrow wreathed in Light streaked for her side but the Black Knight screamed, smashing through it, and when a spell that was a blue drill of light struck at her armour it dispersed against the enchantments.

In the distance power bloomed, once and then twice, and though one disappeared the second struck close. Nim was half braced for a betrayal by the Warlock, but the magic that descended was not treacherous: a massive gale of wind blew, cutting through the smoke. Suddenly half the obscured battlefield was revealed, and what Nim surveyed with a single glance had her freezing. The Rebel Legions were being routed. Not only were their corpses carpeting the ground where the Seventh had broken their push, but in the distance smoke rose from where they camp was in Moule Hills. Had someone hit them from behind?

Oh, Nim thought. That was why Sacker had been committing to the push her. With her back aflame and only one way out – the goblinfire had closed the other – if she did not break through here her legions were at risk of being surrounded and slaughtered to the last. An arrow flew but this time the Black Knight saw it come from far and simply stepped out of the way, then punched through a wavy spell and swung at the Squire. The boy ducked out of the way and then slid under her, scoring a blow against her leg and cutting into her greaves, but she kicked him away and he went tumbling. She pursued, trying to end this even if lore said she might not, but he ducked behind a blood tree of all things.

Nim’s hammer went right through, wood flying as the rotten thing half-collapsed. It was hollow, and though she was already aiming another blow at the Squire her aspect tugged at the corner of her eye. Inside the dead tree, words had been carved in Lower Miezan.

Marshal Juniper wins here.

Nim breathed in sharply, the Squire retreating as she slowed her steps. Looking around, the Black Knight could not see a single company of the Army of Callow on the field. Only manning the mantlets to the south and west, and in front of them piles of bodies were piled so high they were almost a second wall. It suddenly fell into place and marshal felt like she was going to be sick. The Marshal of Callow, Nim realized, had baited both her and Sacker into pushing their main offensive here, through this… box. And then she’d withdrawn her own soldiers to the edges, and let her enemies slaughter each other under the cover of smoke. They’d been fighting each other all afternoon, ruining their armies against each other as the Army of Callow mopped up the edges and waited. The Legions had lost, Nim thought. Rebel and loyal alike, they had lost – and they would continue losing as long as they fought.

There was only one word left to speak, she knew, before this day could end.

“Retreat,” the Black Knight shouted, and it tasted like ashes in her mouth. “Retreat!”

Chapter 21: Amadeus’ Plan

“Is there not a stark absurdity to what a battle truly is? Thousands of strangers on two sides of a field, prepared to slaughter each other because half a dozen men on either side told them to.”

– King Edmund of Callow, the Inkhand

Seen from the above, it was easy to understand why General Sacker had agreed to the cease-fire.

The Rebel Legions were like a bottled rat, now that the Black Knight had called for a retreat of her own army. Juniper had wasted no time surrounding their position in the valley, turning all engines on the tightly-packed ranks, and Sepulchral’s own army had hit them in the back even more brutally at my order. Sacker’s troops defending her camp had collapsed under the combine pressure of mage cadres and Nok wavemen, archers who lived up to their sharp reputation. It’d been a bloody business, feeding levies into Legion fortifications, but we’d caught the rebels unaware and the disparity in numbers had them collapsing in short order.

The camp was ours now, the parts we hadn’t torched anyway. That’d left the Rebel Legions surrounded between steep hills, stripped of supplies and room to maneuver as the noose tightened around them. To annihilate Sacker’s army, nothing would be required of the Army of Callow save that it hold its own palisades while at a generous advantage. All Juniper needed to do was wait while Sepulchral hammered at the Rebel Legions from behind with her great numbers and fresh troops. The rat would be pressed against the bottom of the bottle, squeeze so tightly nothing was left but ground flesh and blood. So when the offer had come from Juniper, it’d only been natural that General Sacker accepted a cease-fire and talks.

Zombie the Seventh took nothing more than the pressure of my knees to be guided into a gentle downwards glide. The creature – she wasn’t a hippogriff, not exactly, but given the similarities I was currently leaning towards ‘hippocrow’ – had proved to be eager and obedient after I’d raised her, perhaps because the Sisters had taken a personal interest in the process. Komena in particular had felt intrigued, enough to lend a hand to the process. Regardless, my latest Zombie had proved to be a very good girl indeed on top of being even quicker in flight than I’d thought she would be. Turns could get a little tricky, mind you, but Zombie clearly relied more on Creational laws than magical ones when it came to her flight.

Compared to my last flying mount, anyway.

The no-man’s-land between our position and that of the rebels had been cleared for the duration of the talks, legionaries returning to hide behind their walls, and the empty space made it all the easier to pick out the delegations. Juniper didn’t seem to have brought any officers with her, but she’d been wise enough to bring Indrani and Alexis as bodyguards. There wasn’t a lot that’d be able to get past those two. Sacker, on the other hand, had with her two men with the painted insignias of senior legates on their armour. There were half a dozen regulars with them, but they might as well be decorations for what it mattered.

I landed half a hundred feet away, Zombie’s arc smoothly turning into a run and slowing down as we approached. The Mantle of Woe trailing behind me, sword at my hip and yew staff lowered, I brought my mount to a halt before the delegations.

“Marshal Juniper,” I smiled. “Congratulations are in order.”

The Hellhound scoffed, but I could see the pleasure she was badly hiding.

“Could have gone better,” Juniper said. “But we can save that talk for the camp, Warlord. There are more pressing matters to settle.”

“So there are,” I agreed, eye turning to the three top officers of the Rebel Legions.

“Black Queen,” General Sacker blandly said. “Greetings.”

Someone had remembered my warning, I noted. Good. I’d been completely serious.

“Sacker,” I said.

“The legates with me are-”

“Irrelevant,” I bluntly interrupted.

The human of the pair, a middle-aged Taghreb, looked furious at that. She didn’t speak out, though. The orc seemed to take it in stride, which raised my esteem by a notch.

“Either you can speak for your entire set of legions or this conversation is pointless,” I said. “I did not come here to indulge in petty games.”

“I can speak for our men,” General Sacker flatly said.

A look to the legates – the light caught in her fake eye, reminding me I was not the only woman here to have lost one – served as both a quell and confirmation. Neither gainsaid her.

“Good,” I smiled.

“We’re willing to surrender,” the old goblin said, “under certain terms. Guarantees need to be made that no soldiers will be harmed. Regular food and water. We’re willing to sit out the rest of this war if-”

She was serious, I realized. How many soldiers did she have left of the thirteen thousand she’d begun the day with? Couldn’t be more than eight, after the beating they’d taken. And she still thought she was in a position to strongarm me. I’d been too soft on these people, I suddenly realize. The Rebel Legions had taken my coin and grain before selling me down the river without a second thought, and the way I’d just taken it had made them think I was easy pickings. I’d held back, out of a desire to maintain the armies of Praes for the greater war and out of respect for my father.

It was long past time I stopped.

“Archer,” I said, “nock an arrow.”

I heard a chuckle and did not need to turn to know she obeyed. I met Sacker’s eyes evenly.

“You seem to have some grave misunderstandings about the nature of your situation,” I said. “So letme be clear: if I tell Archer to fire that arrow eastwards, Sepulchral’s army will resume its attack.”

The goblin scoffed.

“You’d lose-”

“I don’t give a shit how many of them we lose,” I coldly said. “I’ll spend her entire army if that’s what it takes to break you.”

I harshly laughed.

“Terms?” I mocked. “You’ll sit out the war if? I didn’t come here to negotiate with you, Sacker. I did that once before and you fine fellows me in the back. We’re past making deals.”

I struck my staff against the ground and the sound rippled out, dust flying up.

“You can surrender unconditionally,” I said. “Or Archer will shoot that arrow and I’ll fucking kill you all.”

Sacker’s face tightened, her ever half-closed eyes opening fully. She studied my face and whatever she found there had her hesitating. She turned to Juniper.

“And you have nothing to say to this, Marshal of Callow?” she pressed. “Your men will be the ones spent for this madness.”

Juniper’s face hardened and she bared pale fangs.

“Every sack of grain your soldiers ate, every crate of steel you used, could have kept some of my legionaries out west alive,” the Hellhound growled. “And what did we get for it? Be careful now of calling on sentiment. You might not like what you let out of the cage.”

Sacker flinched. Juniper had been as a niece to her, once. Maybe she still was in some ways. But personal ties cut both ways. She turned her eyes back to me, knowing better than to ask for anything out of the likes of Archer and the Huntress. Hells, of the two Alexis would probably be the hardliner. She had that traditional heroic disregard for the lives of anyone that might be considered to stand under Evil’s banner.

“Many officers will balk,” General Sacker told me. “If you do not offer guarantees-”

“So let them balk,” I shrugged. “We can have this conversation again in half a bell, when I’ve put another few thousand in the ground.”

The genuine indifference in my voice, I thought, was what got it through to her I wasn’t bluffing. I absolutely wasn’t. I’d just make sure that the household troops from Askum and Nok were the vanguard for the assault instead of the levies, to keep the casualties of the attack where they deserved to be. The goblin sagged.

“An hour,” Sacker said. “Give me an hour to talk the officers into it without bloodshed.”

I glanced at Juniper, who looked like she was biting down on the answer she wanted to give but did not have the authority to. No objections there, then. I might as well give the rebels a little more rope, lest the noose turning into an outright hanging.

“An hour,” I agreed. “If I don’t have your formal and unconditional surrender by the end of it…”

I did not finish the sentence, or particularly need to. Sacker and the legates left, tails between their legs, and returned to their lines.

I got my surrender before the time had passed.

—

“We are now victims of our own success,” General Zola sadly said.

No one in the war council – our usual, save now with the addition of General Jeremiah Holt – argued with that, because it was the honest truth. We’d forced the Rebel Legions to surrender and the Loyalist Legions to retreat to their camp in northern Kala Hills, but we now had fresh problems on our hands. Namely, seven thousand eight hundred and seventy-nine prisoners of war that we needed to keep an eye on. And keep under a roof, fed and with enough water to live. We were effectively being forced to supply a second army of prisoners and our supplies would be stretched to a breaking point if we did. Much of the Rebel Legions’ own foodstuff had been either burned or looted when Sepulchral’s forces took their camp.

Some of that I could get back from them, but I didn’t want to take too much. The Praesi law that undead could not hold noble title meant that Abreha Mirembe’s hold on her own army was painfully fragile, holding mostly because the soldiers from Nok were going to stick around as long as it looked like Isobe was still going to inherit Aksum. Otherwise those forces would be marching away by now, leaving behind them a vicious Aksum civil war. No, I had to leave Sepulchral some of the goods. Asking back for half was reasonable, I decided, and I’d set Vivienne to arranging it.

“I prefer the troubles of a great victory to those of a great defeat,” the Princess in question snorted. “We have supplies enough to push back the issue for a few days without it denting our reserves too much. We can keep our attention on more pressing matters.”

Juniper cleared her throat.

“Speaking of,” the Hellhound said. “Pickler, what is your timeline on the work?”

After the surrender came and the rebels laid down their weapons, there were only a few hours left before sundown. Since it was clear there’d be no more fighting for the day, Pickler had taken to bettering our position in anticipation of tomorrow. Companies of unarmed prisoners had, under the wary eye of our own legionaries, been set to taking down the enemy’s fortifications: tearing down their palisades and filling their trenches.

“Our palisade will be the only one standing come dark,” Sapper-General Pickler said, “but the trenches are harder work. Maybe half of it done in time, if we’re lucky. I gave orders to focus on the road, it’ll be easier for us to move troops across if we need to go on the offensive.”

“Can goblin prisoners not be put to work in the dark?” Brandon Talbot asked.

I grimaced at that and wasn’t the only one.

“They’ll run,” I said. “And do just that if we’re lucky. They’ve a lot more goblins than we do, too, so even if we put our own goblin legionaries as overseers it’d be a major risk. Better to just left the work unfinished.”

“Agreed,” Juniper said. “It is only a precaution, regardless. I don’t believe that Marshal Nim will be going on the offensive. Her losses appear to have been extensive.”

I cocked an eyebrow.

“We got casualties estimates for her too, now?”

The tall orc nodded. With the casualties taken in the early skirmishes around the region, the desertion of the Thirteenth and the mauling the Eighth had taken during the night our guess had been that the Black Knight had been fielding an army about sixteen to seventeen thousand strong. How many were left now, though?

“At least five thousand and a half dead,” the Hellhound said. “Tentatively we’re pegging her current strength at eleven thousand.”

I let out a low whistle. With the Thirteenth as last moment reinforcements, this morning we’d fielded around fifteen thousand men. Our butcher’s bill had us at twelve thousand eight hundred and twelve soldiers now. Almost thirteen thousand strong. Gods, even Sepulchral had lost more men than we had: her twenty thousand had, between civil war and battle and desertions, tumbled down to maybefifteen thousand now. Gods. Our total losses had been less than half of those of every other army on the field individually, not even put together.

Juniper had, over the span of an afternoon, not upended the balance of power so much as murdered it and buried it in a shallow grave. Weeping Heavens. I found my glass of water, emptied it on the ground and leaned back my seat to grab a bottle of aragh. I poured myself a finger, then found a few grins and cups headed my way. When everyone had their own in hand, I solemnly raised my cup.

“To the Hellhound,” I said, “and the Battle of Kala.”

It was with rowdy cheer my toast was taken up, drinks going down and being poured anew. I met Juniper’s eyes and grinned, enjoying the dark flush to her cheeks. Aisha even talked her into a cup of her own. I laid back into my seat, enjoying the warmth of the tent, and breathed out weeks of worry. They could be put to rest, for a few hours. We’d earned it.

After all, for all the troubles of victory I’d rather be in this tent tonight than any of the other three.

—

With morning came the time to make the difficult decisions.

The Black Knight still had a sizeable army holed up in Kala Hills, but so long as Sepulchral remained on our side the threat was mitigated. None of my general staff had an appetite for trying to force that camp immediately, especially not when leaving the Legions in it would make them wither on the vine. We’d poisoned Nioqe Lake and Nim herself had poisoned the main wells in the region, so in at most a week their water situation was going to start getting dangerous. Only the scale of the losses they’d taken in battle would prevent it from being an issue even earlier. Taking into consideration our numerical advantage – we had the Loyalist Legions outnumbered almost three to one – and our fortifications in the valley, it would be suicide for the Black Knight to attack us. That meant we had enough breathing room to handle our own internal troubles. The most urgent of them was, unsurprisingly, what to do with the several thousand prisoners we’d taken.

“We can’t handle feeding them for the rest of the campaign,” Aisha said. “And even if we could, we need to begin marching on Ater soon. There is no practical way to bring that many prisoners with us on the march.”

“We should keep the officers of tribune rank and give the Fourth’s Justice to the rest,” Brandon Talbot advised.

Gods, that stupid name. It was what some of my men had taken to calling the punishment I’d given the Helikean cataphracts after capturing them back in Iserre: broken fingers and being stripped of equipment.

“This is a wild land,” Aquiline said. “It would be kinder to simply kill those warriors than to maim and release them. The sword will hurt less than claws.”

“It would be a death sentence to release them like that,” Vivienne agreed. “Ideally we would ransom them instead, but they’ve managed to burn every bridge they have. There’s no one left who’d pay for them.”

“Amadeus might,” I objected.

“He can’t afford the price,” she frankly replied.

“We should seek to recruit soldiers instead,” General Jeremiah said. “It would make up for our losses, and the Army of Callow has expertise in assimilating legions.”

I rather admired the entirely unashamed way he said.

“That was my thought was well,” I admitted, “and Juniper’s too. How did that go?”

The Hellhound sighed.

“Malicia poisoned the well,” she said. “Most of the rank and file are convinced we assassinated two of their three generals just before making common cause with Sepulchral after a coup failed. Maybe three hundred volunteers, and I wouldn’t trust them right off.”

Fucking Malicia. I might have given the order to kill Mok, sure, but I wouldn’t have been sloppy enough not get blamed for it afterwards.

“They might not be willing to fight for us,” Vivienne said, “but they might be willing to fight against the Black Knight.”

She paused, choosing her words.

“We could offer some of the soldiers freedom in exchange for serving as the first wave of an attack against the camp in the hills.”

I chewed on that for a moment. Juniper looked on the fence, but the idea appealed to me. Sure it’d be putting troops we didn’t trust all that much in our order of battle, but it’d also soak up casualties that would otherwise thin my own ranks. And, even better, I wouldn’t be expected to keep feeding those soldiers after they went their own way.

“We’d have to limit the numbers,” I said. “Else we’re just releasing an army into the wilds.”

“Organization will be tricky,” Juniper said. “I’ll want to position them so if they turn against us it won’t lead to disaster.”

That wasn’t a no, and after a round of debate the idea was adopted. Aisha left the tent to begin organizing it. That didn’t entirely solve our prisoner problem, though, since two thousand at most was what I was comfortable arming again. The arguments went in a circle. No one thought we should feed the prisoners or keep them with us, but most of the measures that’d make them no longer a problem for the rest of this campaign also effectively consigned to death by Wasteland. Everyone agreed, at least, that we should keep the high-ranking officers as prisoners. Execution was floated as an option – by Talbot – but even those that didn’t balk at killing prisoners thought it might lead to mass unrest among the imprisoned soldiers.

“Even arming half of them would be a mistake,” General Zola argued. “With that many soldiers, which we agreed would be needed to survive the Wasteland, they have enough men to begin seizing the private armories of nobles and towns. They would rearm and pursue us.”

“We don’t know for certain that they would,” Juniper grunted. “But I take your point. I don’t want to leave that force at our back either.”

And that was the crux of the issue, really. We all wanted to march on Ater, where the war on Praes would be brought to an end, but we needed to clean up house first. That would mean dealing with the Sepulchral situation, later today, but also tying up all our other loose ends. Marshal Nim’s army needed to be decisively broken or made to surrender, and after that was done I didn’t want Sacker’s army nipping at our our heels when we moved south. Hells, to be frank I didn’t want them involved in that siege at all. They’d not proved to be trustworthy enough to be allowed to, and they’d failed to be victorious enough to force the issue their way. I could just see them stumbling into us at the last moment and fuc- wait, no.

“We’re looking at this wrong,” I said. “Juniper, how long do you expect operations in Ater to last?”

“Two months at most,” she said.

Longer than that and we’d be forced to make a deal anyway. Procer was already buckling, if we wanted there to still be a west by the time we returned we couldn’t tarry.

“So we strand them,” I said. “We keep the officers and arm enough they should be able to survive the Wasteland, but we take all their mages. If they don’t have any access to the Ways…”

“Even at their fastest possible pace, they’ll arrive along after the dust is settled in Ater,” Juniper finished, tone considering.

“Best we end things with the Black Knight before that,” General Jeremiah pragmatically advised. “Still, seems a sound enough plan.”

Not the most elegant way to deal with prisoners, but we didn’t have time for elegance. A round of agreements, some more enthusiastic than others, saw the matter settled.

“We’ll be receiving Sepulchral this afternoon,” I said, “to confirm the terms of our cooperation. Once she agrees to lend her aid to an assault on the Loyalist Legions, I believe we should begin preparing for an attack.”

“Agreed,” Juniper growled. “We have the numbers to properly squeeze her now. I want to swing part of our force out east around Kala Hills and encircle her. The same paths they used to ambush us there can be turned against them now.”

The discussion grew animated after that, commanders pitching in for a plan to either force a surrender out of Nim or crush her army irreparably, but I excused myself eventually and Vivienne did the same. We needed to get moving if we were to be ready to receive Sepulchral.

—

Abreha Mirembe wasn’t exactly my creature.

You could barely tell even she was dead, since it was poison that’d done her in and she’d been pretty ghoulish even before biting it. I’d raised the would-be empress as undead through use of the Night, but that didn’t exactly give me control over her. I could move her limbs, sure, and inflict pain on her soul. But I couldn’t control her mind, save through coercion. She’d showed me deference since her raising, but that wasn’t the effect of the Night so much as the knowledge that I could send her back to the grave with a snap of my fingers. I was uncomfortably aware that the ties binding me to her were not meaningfully all that different from those binding Malicia to Sargon Sahelian.

I’d soulboxed a High Seat too, it just happened that said box was their own corpse.

We kept the audience private, as small as it could be. That meant two people on our side, Vivienne and myself, and three on hers. High Lady Abreha herself, her designated heir Isobe and the niece that’d tried to usurp his place, Sanaa. Considering the only reason Sanaa was still alive was that she had enough supporters among Aksum’s army and vassals that her death would caused armed reprisals, I expected relations between her and her aunt to be frosty. To my surprise, Sepulchral now seemed to be favouring her over Isobe and takin no pains to hide it. Praesi. Abreha must have decided that a closely-fought coup was a sign of talent and begun to reconsider succession. Isobe was displeased by that undercurrent, by these talks and most of all by me.

“Rumour in the camp is that he blames you for this,” Vivienne murmured into my ear.

I blinked at her.

“Why?”

“He lost a lot of face in front of vassal lords and household troops when you and Lord Tanja humiliated him,” the Princess said. “He’s been saying that if not for that more would have stuck with him instead of turning to Sanaa’s camp.”

That might be partially true, I thought, though ironically enough Razin had probably done more damage than I did. It was a little much to blame me for his own failure to gather a solid core of supporters, though, especially when he’d been the one starting with a – oh Gods, I’d been spending too much time with Praesi if the decisions of someone like Abreha Mirembe were beginning to make sense to me. Best get this over with. After half-hearted courtesies we got to the meat of the talks, which was defining what Sepulchral’s position would be going forward.

“I want you to formally renounce your claim on the Tower,” I said.

“That cause is lost,” Abreha conceded. “Yet renouncing it will have costs for my supporters. I’ll not lay down arms only to have a puppet ruler installed in Aksum.”

“We can understand that concern,” Vivienne diplomatically said. “I assure you, neither Callow nor the Grand Alliance intends to intervene in your matters of succession.”

The old woman laughed.

“A nothing promise,” she said. “You will have to do better than that. You want my army for your siege of Ater, and I want sturdier assurances in return.”

“We could always offer our services to Malicia instead, should you-”

Sepulchral’s hand slapped Sanaa across the face. I hadn’t even made her do that, so I cocked an eyebrow.

“Count this a favour, girl,” Abreha said. “There are some people you don’t threaten unless you’ve made the decision to go through with it. They’ll just kill you if you do.”

Sanaa liked furious and humiliated, but to her honour she appeared to be listening. Huh. Maybe I wouldn’t be having a little conversation with Scribe about her, after all. I had no intention of leaving the High Seat closest to the border of Callow in hostile hands, but if she could learn that made drastic steps unnecessary. Vivienne cleared her throat.

“Assurances of what nature?” she asked.

“I want it confirmed by whoever climbs the Tower that I’ll legally keep my title until the end of the war against Keter,” High Lady Abreha said, “with all attached rights, including that to designate my own successor.”

I traded a look with Vivienne, who nodded.

“That could be arranged,” I said. “I take it it’s a formal Grand Alliance demand you’re looking for.”

The old woman grinned.

“I want it written in the treaty that settles this dance,” she confirmed.

She really was an old fox, I thought. That way no matter how ended up ruling the Dread Empire they couldn’t actually try to oust her afterwards without bringing down the Grand Alliance on their head. She was using a continent-spanning coalition as the guarantor of her succession. If nothing else, I had to be impressed by the sheer gall.

“I can’t formally agree to that without speaking with Cordelia Hasenbach, though I expect agreement on her part,” I said. “That said, I have half the Majilis of Levant in my camp at the moment and they’ll back those terms so I’m comfortable giving you a provisional approval.”

They were amenable to helping us against Marshal Nim with just that, so it was brisk business afterwards. They departed some hours after and I caught Abreha as she left, away from the others so we could have a quiet conversation.

“So what is it you’re actually after?” I asked.

She looked surprised, like she had no idea what I might possibly be implying. It was just a little too smooth to be believable. I cocked an eyebrow and she smiled.

“Who knows how long you war will last?” she said. “It might be a different empire, by the time the dust settles.”

“All about staying in the game, huh,” I said.

Abreha Mirembe cackled.

“It’s the very thing, Black Queen,” Sepulchral said. “Perhaps even the only thing.”

—

We spent three days recovering and planning our offensive against the Black Knight, whose army had further fortified its position in Kala Hills but not since moved. There was some trouble with the prisoners, people trying to flee in the night, but we’d disarmed them and the Wasteland was not kind. Those that got out did not get far, and bringing back the mangled corpses to display them soured the appetite for that kind of adventure. Our count of recruits rose to around four hundred but came to a hard stop after that, with further efforts yield nothing. Aisha’s efforts to make ‘volunteer companies’ that would fight against Nim were more successful, though, reaching close to the two thousand that I’d been willing to allow.

The rebels might despise us but they were scarcely fonder of the Black Knight, who had spurned their offer of joining forces in favour of remaining loyal to the Tower, and many found freedom in arms in the wake of fighting ‘Malicia’s dogs’ a rough but fair deal. Juniper and the general staff were putting the finishing touches on our plan to break the Legions with as few losses as possible to us, aiming to push the deaths on Sepulchral and the volunteers as much as we could without being too obvious about it, but I flitted in and out of those meetings. Most of my time was spent with Scribe and Vivienne, scrambling to get a read on the situation in the rest of Praes.

We still couldn’t scry properly, but that was a regional effect. Sending mages further out and then arranging messages being carried by horse worked, well enough that Cordelia was able to send her assent to High Lady Abreha’s terms and secure her alliance to us. I enjoyed the relative light demands made by this on my time, but the relative sense of safety was ripped out of my grasp without warning on the morning of the fourth day after the Battle of Kala. Even if Masego hadn’t immediately come for me I would have known something was up: the amount of power I could feel coming out of the Black Knight’s camp was like a lit beacon to my senses.

“War ritual?” I bluntly asked.

“No,” Hierophant immediately ritual. “And it is two rituals. One of them, the smaller, is making a gate into the Ways.”

I blinked.

“You told me the Ways wouldn’t be usable for a few days still,” I slowly said. “That they were still too fragile for large troop movements.”

“They are,” Masego said. “Which is why I believe the other ritual is meant to stabilize them in some way, or at least accelerate the process of that recovery.”

“That can be done?”

“I cannot,” Hierophant reluctantly admitted. “At least, I have not yet grasped how it might be done. It is possible that either Akua or other talented mages have found such a solution, however.”

“So they’re trying to slip away into the Ways,” I pressed.

“That seems likely,” he agreed.

Fuck. And that would mean facing this same army again, only holed up behind the walls of Ater. I could think of few things I wanted less. Juniper was of the same opinion and we hastily mobilized. Hierophant probed with spells and figured out the stabilizing ritual would need to finish before they could begin moving out, so we had a few hours to spare at least. Enough that we arranged for the volunteer companies to be armed and put in front while Sepulchral’s army deployed on the plains below the enemy camp. It all took long enough that Masego confirmed the stabilizing ritual was done by the time we began to march in battle formations, which meant I was now fighting the Battle of Maillac’s Boot again only from the other side.

We couldn’t even muster our whole army for the attack, since at least three thousand had needed to stay behind to keep an eye on the prisoners, so this was going to get messy. Taking a fortified uphill Legion camp with only hasty preparations? We sent the rebels and the volunteer companies as the first wave. To my distaste, I saw that Abreha had sent in her levies first. I could understand the sense in that, professional soldiers didn’t grow on trees, but it would be a slaughter. Still, horns and trumpets sounded. There would be blood. Soldiers marched up the hill, and atop it a thin crest of legionaries formed a shield wall of their own. Steel glittered under the sun, a sea of it.

It was an accident when it happened. They began singing, on one side and the other, with just a few beats of difference.

“Boot goes up and boot goes down –

There goes their callow crown.”

The Legionary’s Song, most people knew it as. Some called it Swallow the World instead, but they were fewer. The legionaries which had been named rebels began to sing it, moments before the legionaries that had been deemed loyal did the same. There was a beat of hesitation, steps slowing, and the songs melded.

“And no matter how high the walls

We’re all gonna make them fall.”

The couplet ended to the sight of the legionaries that’d been climbing the hill stopping. No arrows followed, no devastating barrage of spells or munitions.

“They can send us their pretty Knight,

Their killer all decked in white,

Only now we’ve got one too –

And he always gets his due

.

They got a wizard in the West

But now matter how he’s blessed

We got a Warlock in the Tower

Who’ll use his bones for flour

.

Let them keep their priestly king

Cause no matter how sweet he sings

We’ve got an Empress black as sin

Who’ll take his throne with a grin.”

It was a happy song, or at least meant to be. And yet somehow the tune that the wind carried all the way to me was mournful. A lament.

“We’re the Legion and the Terror

They’re in the right but we’re meaner

So pray hard boy, and pay your toll –

We’re gonna swallow the world whole.”

Atop the hill, legionaries looked at legionaries down it. And someone, some faceless man or woman, threw their shield on the ground. Their sword. And something hung in the air, a weight, as armies that had been savaging each other for weeks looked at each other. Someone in the volunteer companies threw down their own shield, and then it was like floodgates had opened. Shields and swords and helmets fell to the ground. And then, in the most damning of silences, the soldiers left. Nim’s, the rebels, even some of mine – the Thirteenth most of all, but had I not devoured legions before? The Army of Callow spat back out some of those sons and daughters.

Even some of the levies bolted, melting into the river of deserters.

“-Majesty, Your Majesty,” Brandon Talbot called.

I glanced at him.

“What should we do?”

I looked atop the hill. How many of her men had Nim lost? I couldn’t tell, but it was not few. Same for us, and somehow I knew that when I returned to camp prisoners would have joined the flood as well. We’d all brought armies here, waved banners and played games. Won and lost. And after two weeks of brutality, an army was walking away. Could I really blame them? What were any of the people here fighting for? Even those of us with causes had dragged them through so much dust they could hardly be recognized.

“Nothing,” I finally said. “Nothing. Let them go.”

Even the Black Knight what few had left to flee with. We would meet again in Ater, to end it all.

A song and then silence: so ended the Battle of Kala.

Refuge

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Interlude: South

“Coincidence is just fate bereft of faith.”

– Dread Emperor Malevolent I, the Unhallowed

Kallia liked to think of Mercantis as what would happen if a city ate other cities until it grew fat.

It helped her fix the story of this place in her mind and that was the most important thing for someone who wanted to prowl its nights. Which she often did. Though the Painted Knife was the leader of the band of five that had been sent to the City of Bought and Sold, she preferred to leave handling the merchant lords to Rhodon. The Royal Conjurer had been a powerful man in the court of Helike for many years, before fleeing the Tyrant’s ascension, and he knew how to deal with the fat schemers that infested this city like maggots would a corpse. And where he struggled, well, there were few in Mercantis whose buried skeletons could not be found out when Alain and Angelique both took to looking for them.

The Relentless Magistrate had toppled three merchant lords, two of which had been members of the Forty-Sole Court, since arriving in the city. He’d done this by proving materially and in excruciating detail how they were breaking the laws in the Consortium, causing a feeding frenzy among rivals. Angelique’s own work never saw the light of day, the very lucrative – and technically legal – trade of poisons and favours she’d begun at the highest levels of influence granting her access to halls of power where no foreigners would ever be allowed to stand otherwise. Rhodon had not been shy in using them to get obstacles out of the way when it came to the task the Grand Alliance had assigned their band: burning Praesi influence out of the city.

And yet, for all the work of those three, in the end it was Teresa and Kallia who found the first hint of the plot. They’d gone drinking outside the city on one of the outlying shores, the Grizzled Fantassin calling an old acquaintance who’d ‘put on the yoke’ and become one of the mercenaries permanently contracted to protect Mercantis instead of a proper army. Teresa drank and brawled with the man through the evening, but when their glances took on another tone Kallia made herself scarce. She’d gone out to look for another place to drink – and perhaps a man of her own to throw backs with – but instead what the Painted Knife found was an assassination.

Two corpses later a grateful mercenary captain told her everything he knew, which in truth wasn’t much. Many officers had recently been offered large sums of money to accept retirement. The captain had refused, preferring the soldier’s life, and now wondered if some of the other mercenaries he’d thought uninterested in retiring were corpses instead of truly gone to Dormer. Come morning, Kallia brought the oddity up to Teresa and watched the old woman’s face harden.

“Someone’s tightening their reins on the mercenary companies,” the Grizzled Fantassin said. “Placing their own officers in key positions.”

The Painted Knife grinned.

“A plot,” she enthused. “We must defeat it.”

Finally, something she could do instead of exploring the city and struggling with the impulse to cut everyone in this place who owned ‘indentured servants’. Even Wastelanders despised slavery, for all their many other sins. They brought their findings to Rhodon, who punctured their ardour.

“It is Merchant Prince Mauricius consolidating his position,” the Royal Conjurer said. “This is not likely to be a large enough scandal to topple him should it come out, and even if it were such an outcome is not desirable. His most likely replacement is more inclined to the Empire than the Grand Alliance.”

The Consortium usually kept its Praesi clients at a distance, Rhodon explained, but the sheer amount of coin the Dread Empire poured into the city meant it tended to have friends in high places. The perceived high-handedness of the Grand Alliance and plans of a great city at the heart of the continent had only encouraged that trend.

“Seems odd he’d bother,” Angelique told them over dinner, after being informed. “The Merchant Prince already controls funding for mercenaries unless contradicted by two thirds of the Forty-Stole Court. What are these men going to listen to, if not the money?”

“Yet he is not a man with a reputation for pointless action,” Kallia frowned.

“No,” Rhodon murmured. “So what is it that has the man afraid of being contradicted by two thirds of the Forty-Stole Court?”

And so once more they went on the hunt, for anything that would turn so many of the most powerful men and women in the city against Mauricius was bound to be important. Teresa returned to the outer shores to try to get a grasp on how many of the mercenary companies were being subverted and meanwhile Kallia set her finest bloodhound on the hunt.

“The Merchant Prince’s affairs are all protected by law,” Alain Monduc said. “Even his most mundane papers are considered as being ‘of state’. There is no way for foreigners to access them, which will limit us to witnesses.”

Kallia did not know the average lifespan of a witness in Mercantis that a wealthy man wanted dead, but at a guess she’d venture days. Meaning that if Alain’s investigations were caught on to, their sole evidence was going to be swiftly disappeared.

“Ah but that’s where you have it wrong, darling,” the Poisoner girlishly smiled. “There is simply no lawful way for foreigners to access such papers.”

The Magistrate looked like he was choking on sheer outrage, to the Poisoner’s open delight, but when copies of such papers appeared on his table just before noon her mastered his anger.

“Copies are not strictly illegal,” Alain stiffly said. “And there is some leeway in the process of gathering evidence for a trial.”

Angelique looked rather robbed by the lack of explosion, which was probably half the reason the Magistrate had forced himself to be cordial. Weeks of following paper trails and Kallia being sent out to follow men and eavesdrop on their conversations at night ultimately led the Relentless Magistrate to an odd conclusion.

“Mauricius is not preparing a coup,” Alain announced, “but preparing against one. Every single measure we’ve unearthed was defensive in nature.”

Which made little sense, for the First Prince had strictly warned against trying to remove Mauricius from his position and the Black Queen had shrugged her assent. Even if Kallia did get her hands on something that could topple the Merchant Prince, she was to pass that information to the Grand Alliance instead so that it might be used as leverage in negotiations. So who was the Merchant Prince afraid would remove him?

“It could be the Tower,” Angelique said. “Rumour has it that he had murdered the man Malicia wanted as Merchant Prince instead.”

“The Empress has a reputation has a practical woman,” Rhodon replied. “It would be unlike her to force an enemy where she could court an ally instead. Besides, meddling too deeply in the affairs of Mercantis would see it react harshly. It would look for protection against her, not fall in line.”

“Let us pray the Empress fumbled the pig, then,” Teresa said. “It would be a gift of the Gods for Mercantis to go the way of the Grand Alliance. We could use the gold.”

Kallia looked questioningly at Alain, but the other Proceran seemed just as baffled by the expression. Arlesite, the man mouthed with a shrug.

“But whatever it is he’s afraid of, he’s nearly covered,” Teresa continued. “He’s got a little over half the mercenary companies in his pocket now. The key officers at least.”

“If it were a Praesi plot, he would not have spent a fortune of his coin warding against it,” Alain opined. “He would have passed the matter to us. He’s certainly not been shy about using us as bears in his pit so far.”

True enough. The verbal duels of the Royal Conjurer and the Praesi ambassador had turned into a form of local entertainment and they’d all been tacitly allowed to go after Praesi spies in the city so long as there was little collateral damage.

“There’s not many people left who could pull off a coup,” the Poisoner noted. “The Black Queen is in Praes, the Free Cities in another civil war and even the merchants would balk at taking the Dead King’s coin.”

“If there is no outside backing, it has to be an internal enemy,” Rhodon mused.

“Which makes no sense,” Angelique said. “Only the Forty-Stole Court could depose him and it’s more divided than it was before he was elected. He’s been playing the faction that wants a rapprochement with the Grand Alliance against the Praesi stooges to carve out a faction in the middle. No one has the votes to depose him, so what is it that he’s afraid of?”

Kallia sighed. She’d never enjoyed plots and schemes. It had almost gotten her killed in Levante when she’d failed to figure out whose body the Spirit of Vengeance wore during the day, if the- suddenly she paused.

“What if the vote were rigged?” the Painted Knife asked. “You said that the Empress might want to be rid of him, Angelique, and Rhodon you once told us that his most likely replacement is in the Empire’s pocket.”

The Royal Conjurer hummed.

“Mind control?” he said.

“I was thinking of possession,” Kallia admitted. “I have known spirits that could ride men unseen and nudge their thoughts.”

“It would explain why he might expect to be able to use the mercenaries against the Forty Stoles and not be murdered for it afterwards,” the Poisoner mused. “If he freed them and then made a show of returning control, it might instead strengthen his position.”

“The entire city would sing his praises,” Alain agreed. “A man can do much, with the love of the people behind him and debts of gratitude among the great.”

“The best contracts are those you snipe another company to,” the Grizzled Fantassin grinned. “Let’s see if we can’t get all that gratitude headed our way instead, yes?”

The plan was weeks in the making. Angelique had to burn through most of her favours and it still wasn’t enough: they had to knock out guards so they could enter the Court unseen. Alain guided them through the halls, as the only one of them who’d ever been in here before – when he had presented evidence in trials – and Teresa paid off the mercenaries that’d agreed to help them smuggle in the barrels over the last few days. It still almost when to the Hells when an early guard patrol ran into them, but the Painted Knife got in close and dropped them before they could raise alarm. They rolled the four great wooden barrels with them into the great hall after Alain kicked the door open, to the great anger of the merchant lords in assembly.

The Royal Conjurer obeyed Kallia’s shouted order and gathered his magic, striking down with great gouts of flame and blowing up the barrels. Mist swept over the hall, still holy and in heavy enough a cloud that it would disrupt either spells or possession.

And then, to Kallia’s horror, nothing at all happened.

The shouts from the furious merchant lords got louder and the Painted Knife wondered if she had just ruined the relations between the Grand Alliance and Mercantis when one bloodcurdling scream pierced through the din. Merchant Prince Mauricius dropped out of his seat, screaming in a way that no throat could, and when he rose flakes of his face began to crumple. Underneath was a pitch-black skin, but there was nothing human about it.

“Devil,” someone shouted.

Kallia cocked her head to the side. Huh. They’d been wrong but it had worked anyhow, so… win?

Win, she decided, and grinned.

—

Penthes’ tall walls had kept the city in the war long past the time where a man less desperate than Exarch Prodocius would have surrendered.

Penthes has lost all its territories save a few holdout river fortresses, stood without allies and the city was beginning to starve. The supplies and mage support the Tower had sent were not enough for a city-state of that size to stay fed when encircled. Now that Basilia’s army was equipped with proper dwarven siege engines, the walls were no longer a surmountable hindrance either. In truth, if not for the presence of the Bellerophon army beneath the walls Basilia would have already ordered the city to be stormed. She’d had a swath of the southern walls reduced to rubble by trebuchet bombardment, but she was wary of committing her army to investing the city if there was a chance the Republic would strike at her while she did.

Helike still had the finest army in the Free Cities, but its numbers had thinned. Basilia had long been aware that one severe defeat was all that stood between her and the Helikean army ending as a fighting force for a few years. It was why she’d been so aggressive in her campaigning: so long as she was on the offence, she could force the battles on terms favourable to her. Now that streak of victories had been dragged to a halt, first by the presence of Bellerophon at the siege and then by what had followed Basilia’s army entrenching for a few months: diplomacy. The Secretariat had been the first to send envoys, but Mercantis had not been far behind and eventually even Atalante – at the urging of First Prince Cordelia, her agents said – had sent representatives.

Nicae and Stygia already had envoys, arguably, as Magister Zoe Ixioni and Princess Zenobia Vasilakis were personally leading the troops their vassal states were contributing to the war. Not that the vassalage was official, or for that matter Zoe Ixioni’s rule. Officially speaking she was still only a magister, though one who’d been voted emergency powers by the Magisterium without an end to those powers every being specified. Basilia tended to think better of Zenobia, who at least had no pretend she was anything but an absolute ruler when she’d crowned herself princess of Nicae. Regardless of the petty details, the fact was that six cities of the League all had envoys or armies here beneath the walls of seventh and last.

General Basilia found it highly amusing that while the city of Penthes and its ruling exarch had been made political nonentities, the siege of Penthes itself had turned into a diplomatic hotbed for the entire League of Free Cities. It was the sort of irony Kairos Theodosian would have delighted in, she suspected, and might even have gone out of his way to arrange. She had not, but Basilia was no Tyrant. That was not her calling, nor did she feel as if it should be. Ye of Helike, do as you will. The testament of the last Theodosian had not invited his people to follow in his wake: they were to do as they wished and nothing else, that was the very point.

Basilia had found her own wishes leading her to the walls of Penthes, to the threshold of what might very well be the defining hour of the League of Free Cities.

It was not delusion on her part to believe that. Zenobia and Ixioni agreed: there was an urgency in the air, a desperation. At first the Atalante priest-philosophers that’d been sent as delegates had only visited to sneer and snipe at the proceedings, but now they came by every other day and were negotiation in earnest. They couldn’t afford not to, when Delos had sent one of the highest-ranking members of the Secretariat – Nestor Ikaroi – as its representative and begun to seriously back a reform of the League of Free Cities. The preachers were terrified of being left out in the cold, surrounded on all sides by states bound in alliance. Still, for all that the talks were moving it would have been a lie to say they were succeeding.

“Ikaroi isn’t moving an inch even when we give ground elsewhere,” Magister Zoe noted as the day’s talks ended. “He’s usually a reasonable man, so I expect he’s under orders by the broader Secretariat.”

Basilia made a noise that conveyed both agreement and disgruntlement.

“His current concessions are not insignificant,” Princess Zenobia said. “Formal recognition of the imperial realm of Aenia and you as its empress is not something I thought we’d get out of the Secretariat without putting a sword to their throat. The scribes hate change the way a cat hates water.”

“They would have been forced to bend on that sooner or later,” Basilia said. “I hold the land, even if they might wish it otherwise. Getting me named protector of the League is where the power lies.”

In practice it was not Basilia herself who was named but the imperial office of Aenia, which she happened to hold. It had been her notion to name the empire that would unite Nicae, Stygia and Helike together after the great Aenos Basileon, the sole claim to unifying authority in the region that predated the foundation of the League. It was the general’s intention to follow in footsteps of Basileon and unite the Free Cities once more, but she knew she must be careful lest she follow in the footsteps of Dread Empress Triumphant instead. Even if she could take all of the League by force, she could not hope to hold them. No, better to first unite the western cities – Helike for soldiery, Nicae for trade and Stygia for fields and mines – and let her successors finish the work.

For that, though she needed an edge that would prevent the four other cities from turning on her empire in a decade after the dangers had passed. Something that would set Helike apart from the rest. To secure that she’d proposed to the other cities of the League the creation of an office under its auspices: protector of the League of Free Cities. She’d been careful not to outright step on the powers of the Hierarch, instead suggesting the protector would lead the armies of the League in time of war and see to the defence if its borders against all foreign powers. Tying that authority to rule of Aenia had been the scheme, as it would ensure that Basilia’s line would have hereditary power over the League of Free Cities.

Delos was balking at that, Ikaroi’s suggested compromise of Basilia herself holding such power for her lifetime and then it being subject to election like the office of Hierarch being the most they were willing to offer. Atalante wasn’t as entrenched in its opposition but was demanding instead that anyone holding such an office must follow the House of Light, which was… controversial. Trying to throw slices of Penthesian territory at the Secretariat had yielded no further concessions, even when Basilia had gotten serious and offered strategically important border fortresses. Mercantis seemed to be playing all sides, Merchant Prince Mauricius’ envoys propping up Delos and Atalante publicly while making her assurances of support in private. So long as the privileged position of the City of Bought and Sold was maintained they would not go against her, they swore.

Considering Mercantis had served as middlemen when she’d needed siege engines from the dwarves, Basilia could not simply toss the snakes out of her tent the way she wanted to. She might need the Consortium again before it was all over.

“Delos has a particular distaste for hereditary power,” Magister Zoe said. “I am not surprised they’re proving to be the most troublesome holdout. Atalante was ruled by queens, once, but the Secretariat had held the power for millennia.”

In some form, anyway, as the scribes insisted their current government was descended from the provincial one Aenos Basileon had placed to rule over the city, thus making them the sole true descendent of that founding empire. Every city save Helike and Bellerophon claimed some kind of relation to the old empire, actually. The Trakas of Nicae claimed descent of the man himself, Stygia that the Magisterium was a regency council until restoration of the empire, Penthes that their first exarch was Basileon’s chosen successor and Atalante that the man himself had been buried under their city – and so they were the custodians of his empire, until the Gods Above raised him from the dead.

Not that the old stories had ever mattered much, save when Bellerophon tried to get the empire formally dissolved by the League every few years and those same cities balked.

“At least the Glorious Republic is staying out of our way,” Princess Zenobia drily said. “I suppose that is the best to be expected out of them, lack of direct harm.”

Everyone’s positions were calcifying, Basilia felt. She knew the feeling, knew how it could be the death of progress. She’d seen it at work in Helike, in the years before the Tyrant had restored the city: factions biting at each other around an indolent throne, no one winning or losing anything of worth. No one was going to move much from their current negotiating positions and that might be the death of this entire enterprise. Bellerophon’s absence was an integral part of the stalemate, Basilia finally decided. The Republic was made up of mobs and madmen, but they were part of the League – and without them coming out on either side, Delos and Atalante felt they still had some breathing room.

If nothing else, some form of accord with the Republic would allow her to at finish off Penthes for good and turn up the pressure.

“We’re done for the day,” the general said, rising to her feet.

“Indeed?” Magister Zoe said, cocking an eyebrow.

“I must talk to some people,” Basilia said, meaning People.

Getting to the Bellerophan camp wasn’t difficult, or even being noticed when she approached: as usual they had at least twice the number of sentries they needed. Getting one of those soldiers to acknowledge that presence was more difficult, even with a company of kataphraktoi at her back. She pounded at the gate until they were forced to admit she was there, and then a harried-looking general was rustled up to speak with her. Two blank-faced kanenas stood behind him, which no doubt did little for the man’s confidence about getting through this conversation alive.

“I seek to address the People,” General Basilia bluntly said.

“As a foreign despot-”

“I am a general in service to no crown,” Basilia corrected.

The man looked taken aback, looking back to the kanenas. Their faces were still as a pond and just as unreadable.

“There are no diplomats with the army,” the general said. “You must head to Bellerophon and make your request there.”

“That would be inconvenient,” Basilia said. “Might I not simply, under observation by the kanenas, make my address and let Bellerophans convey it to the people by scrying ritual?”

“Bellerophon does not use scrying rituals,” the man replied without missing a beat, “which are trick of wicked foreign tyrants and have never worked, may a wind of locusts blow in their faces for a hundred years.”

Basilia blinked. Bellerophon absolutely did use such rituals.

“Do you perhaps have an alternative with superficial resemblances?” she hazarded.

“Communication rituals are a recent innovation of the Republic,” the general shamelessly said. “They can serve similar purposes on occasion. It is not, however, in power to accede to your request.”

The kanenas frowned and the man winced.

“As I have no power,” he hastily added, “for it rests entirely in the hands of the People, may they rule peerlessly and without mistake for another thousand years.”

Basilia waited to see if the general was going to start bleeding from his eyes. Ten heartbeats passed and he didn’t, which was a promising sign.

“How may such a request be accepted or denied?” she pressed.

They had no answer to give her, so negotiations ended for half an hour while they went away to figure it out. Another woman entirely returned to answer, with two different kanenas at her back. Basilia decided not to ask what had happened to the general. From what she remembered of Anaxares’ mournful ramblings, that would be a good way to get the man killed.

“Your request can be accepted or denied by a provisional vote of the entire camp,” the woman said.

“May I ask for such a vote?”

An hour later she was informed that she could. It took another two hours after she did ask, and then they conceded that a provisional vote would be held. It was dark by then but while Basilia sent for food and took a pause to piss, she did not wander far. If she did, she was sure to lose these people. It took until Morning Bell until the votes were counted, but the kanenas found an irregularity with some of the ballots – some had been written in ink that came from Delos – so another vote had to be held. Three hours later, Basilia was woken up from her nap on her horse to be informed that the vote had gone in her favour. Though bone-tired and aching from the restless night, she took the only shot she was likely to have.

No doubt by next week the People would have cooked up a new law that made even her unlikely station unfit to ask questions of the Glorious Republic.

She left after passing along her message – offer, really – and crawled back into bed until noon. Delos and Atalante came later the same day to try to dig out of her what she’d been up to, but she put them off. It wouldn’t last forever, but thankfully the Republic had been quick in arranging for a general vote on her proposition. As soon as they’d held a vote about whether to hold a vote, anyway, which pushed the answer back another day. With typical subtlety, the envoys from Bellerophon walked into her tent as she was seated with those from Delos and Atalante.

“The Republic welcomes your recognition that Hierarch Anaxares is still among the living,” the man said.

There was surprise from the others, but why wouldn’t she? If there was to be a seat above her own in the League, best to leave it in the hands of a man either dead or uninterested in filling it. Permanently, if she could.

“Furthermore, your question over the status of the Dead King has been put to debate and the People have reached conclusion,” the man continued. “By popular vote, Trismegistus of Keter is declared an Egregious Millennial Despot and an Enemy of the People. The so-called Kingdom of the Dead is declared unlawful.”

She bit down on a grin. Ah, and there was the trick. Basilia couldn’t declare war on anyone, because when a Hierarch ruled foreign affairs of the League were strictly under their purview. As Anaxares himself had once said during the invasion of Procer, however, there could be no state of war against a state that was not legitimate. If, say, Basilia led troops of the League to ‘oversee the dissolution of Keter’ then by the Bellerophan definition of the term it would not be a war. By the look of the frown on Ikaroi’s face, he’d already put together as much.

“And the proposition over the office of Protector of the League?”

“Under the current terms of election, the People support the creation of such an office,” the man said.

Such terms being every city having a vote, same as the election of a Hierarch, but instead of unanimity only majority would be required here. Helike would vote for itself and its vassal cities, whose votes would be maintained as independent ones, would vote accordingly. To secure a permanent majority, all that Basilia now needed to do was take Penthes and dictate in their terms of surrender a permanent vote for the reigning monarch of Aenia for this office. And she’d be able to take Penthes now, because as of tomorrow she was going to request the help of the People in overseeing the dissolution of Keter. The same army currently in her way would serve as the vanguard of this worthy enterprise.

“I gratefully receive the People’s wisdom,” General Basilia smiled.

Already she could see Nestor Ikaroi and the Atalante priests reconsidering their position. But it would not, she suddenly realized, be enough. The shock of this turnabout hadn’t quite pushed them over the top. The mire would continue. When messengers entered the tent she was grateful, as the pause would allow her to gather her thoughts and think of a way through, but the way the faces of the foreign envoys paled caught her attention. Magister Zoe leaned in close to whisper in her ear.

“My people say that Merchant Prince Mauricius had been revealed to have been replaced by a devil,” she said. “The city is blaming Praes for it.”

Basilia let out a low whistle.

“Why are they so unsettled?” she asked, discreetly gesturing at the envoys.

Zoe Ixion grinned sharply.

“Because the Forty-Stole Court has voted unanimously to ask for an alliance with the Empress of Aenia,” she said. “They want protection.”

And so the calculations in the eyes of the envoys changed again. The mire in their negotiations now looked like the Tower’s work, to keep the south from solidifying in a single block. Worse than that, they knew that if Basilia began getting funding from Mercantis she might lose patience with them playing for time and decided that this could be settled with armies instead. And with that much coin behind her she’d be able to win that damned war, too.

“Perhaps reconsidering our position on the office of Protector is needed, considering the developments in the League and abroad,” Secretary Nestor Ikaroi calmly said.

There were some noises of assent from the Atalante crowd and General Basilia Katopodis smiled. She knew better than to think this her triumph entirely, but it was sweet nonetheless. Sweeter still was the knowledge that the Gods were blowing wind in her sail, for what else but Fate could this assembly of coincidence be? The Old World was ending, she could feel it in her bones. The age was crumbling to dust, its relics falling one after another, and now something else was beginning to emerge from the ruins. And under that new sun, Basilia thought, there would be room for a new way of doing things. The deaths throes of the Age of Wonders would change the League of Free Cities, she swore it.

The word shivered in approval and somehow she knew that, somewhere down Below, Kairos Theodosian was laughing.

Interlude: North II

“Twenty years will blend friend and foe.”

– Taghreb saying

Hakram Deadhand stood in a shadowed corner of the tent as his allies raucously argued, watching them in silence. The leaders of the dominant clans of the alliance, the Howling Wolves and the Red Shields, were trading the usual insults and boasts with the representatives of their allied clans. Dag Clawtoe and Oghuz the Lame towered above all others in that conversation, as had been the case from the start. Their clans were the largest and wealthiest, their deeds the greatest – in Oghuz’s case, anyway. Juniper’s father had been a famous champion for the Red Shields before his leg wound. Dag instead must rely on lesser deeds and the reputation of the cousin that’d overshadowed him all his life.

He was only the jemmek of the Howling Wolves, the camp-leader, even though Grem One-Eye had not returned to the Steppes in decades.

Adjutant did wade into the talks. He preferred not to. The moment to speak would come when the tent was empty and it was only he and Catherine, when he could complete her vision with what he’d seen and she hadn’t by virtue of not being so close to it all. Detachment had been in Hakram’s blood since he was but a boy but he’d made his peace with the feeling. Found the uses in having blood that rarely went red. Calm was what let you see with clarity and tonight, calmly looking at the alliance in this tent, what Adjutant saw was a losing proposition. The conversation was going through familiar, pointless circles.

It would take more than champions and challenges to cut into Troke Snaketooth’s support. It was attacking the symptom instead of the sickness: Troke was not popular because he had many champions, he had many champions because he was popular. The chieftain of the Blackspears was growing more powerful by the day, and the longer the conversation went on the more Hakram realized that none of them had any idea of what to do about it. It was not that they were fools, or dim, but that they’d never had to deal with being this position before. The Blackspears had a foul reputation, while the Howling Wolves and the Red Shields had been held in high honour for decades.

They were still popular even now, but the ground was shifting under their feet. Hakram thought that under all the boasts and shouts he might be hearing a thread of disquiet. They could feel it too, the wind turning against them.

There was no point in staying here, Adjutant realized. No solution to be found in this tent, only the same conversation had in one of a hundred different ways. Yet he was not discouraged, for Hakram Deadhand had already figured out where he would find his answer. Adjutant was one of the Woe, and so he knew that one could learn from enemies as well as allies. Still silent, he slipped out of the tent and into the muddy grounds of the great camp surrounding the fortress of Chagoro. Not too long ago, Hakram had received an invitation by Sigvin of the Split Tree Clan to begin private talks with the Blackspears in Callow’s name.

He still held no intention of accepting that invitation, but it brought something to mind: the Split Tree Clan itself.

As early as the delegations that’d been sent to Wolof he’d thought that alliance strange. The Blackspears had a reputation as feckless liars, while the Split Tree were known instead as cleaving close to old ways. They were known for their shamans, many of which could use magic, and for being willing to serve as mediators in the disputes of others. They were not a large clan, though, or one known for its warriors. So Hakram had assumed the alliance with the Blackspears to be a marriage of convenience: they were large and powerful but of poor repute and without a speck of magic to call on. The weaknesses of the Blackspears would make the Split Tree influential over them, difficult to dislodge even after Troke Snaketooth took power.

Except something didn’t fit in that story. Adjutant hadn’t noticed it the last time he’d gone to the edge of the territory claimed by the Split Tree Clan, but now that he knew what to look for it was hard to miss. Troke Snaketooth had been showering his allies and servants in wealth so that the display might attract others to his banner, but there was no trace of that wealth in the Split Tree camp. No herds of sheep put to roast, no great barrels of aragh and batak freed to flow, no baskets full of pottery and ivory and furs. No thick rings of gold and jewelled earrings. The Split Tree Clan was the most important ally to a wealthy chief on the rise, but it was not visibly gaining from that position. So what was it getting paid in, power? That was not enough.

Power might satisfy the chief and his closest circle, but a clan was more than these. They would see their friends and allies growing wealthy while they did not and there would be rumbles of discontent. So what was it that the Split Tree were getting? Hakram’s instincts told him that behind that truth lay the key to the alliance around the Blackspears, the key to understanding his foe. Perhaps even the key to turning this around. Unwilling to simply retreat after having come all this way, Hakram wandered off to the closest marketplace and bought a few skewers of horse before returning to lean against the tall post marking the edge of the Split Tree grounds. He’d been seen from the start, so he was not surprised when someone came out to meet him.

Or who it was that’d been sent. Sigvin wore one of those tunics showing a generous eyeful of her scarred shoulders, which a thick braid only drew attention to, but this time Hakram’s gaze did not stray. The calm was on him, the itch to understand what made something work. The same part of him that’d made a game about stacking stones to see how people would play it.

“If it’s my tent you’re looking for, Hakram, you’ll have to offer me a drink first,” Sigvin said, flashing her fangs flirtatiously. “And maybe tell me about Keter, since tales insist you’ve been there.”

The tall orc did not answer, continuing to look at her clan’s camp as he finished the last bits of his meat and tossed the skewers aside.

“Adjutant, then,” Sigvin mused, tone changing.

Hakram inclined his head to the side in agreement.

“You would have gone into the camp if you meant to accept Troke’s invitation to talk,” she continued, humming in interest. “So what is it that does bring you here, Deadhand?”

He had half a dozen lies ready, but what would be the point? What he wanted here was nothing for them to fear. Nothing they would not want to give him.

“I want to understand what the Split Tree gets from this,” Adjutant said. “Why this alliance, why now? Why are you so tightly bound to a clan you wouldn’t have looked at twice a decade ago?”

Sigvin did not look reluctant or cautious but pleased. He’d thought she might. And why wouldn’t she, when for the first time since Hakram had come to Chagoro he was trying to understand her clan instead of stepping over it?

“The answer is in your question, Hakram Deadhand,” Sigvin said. “A decade ago. Give or take a few years, that’s how long you’ve been gone isn’t it? Since you took to the Legions.”

“Give or take a few years,” Hakram agreed.

“The first of our kind Named in centuries,” Sigvin said. “And you never even came back to the Steppes.”

There’d been a lot of that talk when he first came here, especially as an envoy of Callow, but it’d died out after the first few crushing victories in duels. It wasn’t his people’s way to question strength.

“I wouldn’t be Named if I had,” Adjutant bluntly replied. “I found my path far from here and it did not lead back until now.”

And, for all that it had cost him and might yet, he did not regret it.

“An even more damning answer,” Sigvin replied just as bluntly. “You don’t see it because you were of the Howling Wolves and then a soldier far away, but we are not so blind: the Legions of Terror are eating the Clans, bit by bit.”

Hakram felt like scoffing but restrained himself. It was obvious she believed every word and Adjutant believed Sigvin to be an intelligent woman. She would have a reason to believe this.

“The Legions are making the Clans richer,” he replied instead, “and without the need to fight each other for that wealth. Our people return home with learning and allies. We have more influence in the affairs of the Tower than we’ve had in centuries because of the same ties you condemn.”

She shook her head.

“It’s the wrong sort of wealth, Adjutant,” Sigvin said. “It’s imperial coin, which we use to trade with them instead of each other. Our people come back using the Praesi system of measurement, building forges the goblin way, organizing warriors in companies instead of warbands. It’s hollowed out your own clan without Dag Clawtoe realizing it. The Howling Wolves don’t war for cattle and land anymore, they send their youths south and wait for the gold to return with them. Only gold’s not all that comes back. They began training their youngbloods in Legion drills a few years back, did you know? To give their youths an edge when they send them south to enrol.”

Sigvin paused, strong face twisted in disgust.

“Not if,” she said, “but when.”

There was much he could answer to that. Praesi measurements were superior in almost every regard to those used by learned orcs and them alone – horns and fingers – while goblins were the finest metalworkers on Calernia and warbands were unfit for anything but raiding as a military formation. It would have been easy to dismiss her words as that of someone from the old order, afraid of change even when that change was for the better. Except Sigvin was not a fool. So he looked at the camp of the Split Trees again with fresh eyes. Hide tents, but it was rare for a tent to be made all of the same hides. Different hunting grounds, trade with other clans. And on the people the jewelry was of many styles, be it thick torcs of the eastern steppes, the silver piercings from the headwater clans or the looping earrings of the south.

The Split Tree Clan was traditionalist, Hakram had known that, but he’d not truly considered what that would mean.

Their wealth, their gains, were made in the traditional mould of orc clans since the founding of the Empire. To the Split Tree, wealth was something temporary. Won when the clan claimed good riverside land for a season and pottery could be made from clay, when good grazing lands allowed the clan to stay long enough for smithies to be raised and weapons of quality forged. Surplus was traded to other clans to fill needs, and when the clan was in a strong position it went raiding – either other orcs or humans. That stolen wealth was brought back and used to strengthen the clan, sometimes even to absorb smaller neighbours. If things went well for a few years, the clan grew.

Clans too large were unsustainable, so the largest ones would then split into two and head different ways.

It was a rough way of life, but it had worked. The harshness of the Steppes culled the weak but it also ensured that there could never be a kingly clan standing above all others: hunger bit victors just as deep as the vanquished. As a closed circle, the old ways of the Steppes really did work. Only now the circle was no longer closed. The Legions since the Reforms were not the same as the armies of the old tyrants, which had once a reign drafted orcs by the hundreds of thousands for a campaign and then sent them back to the Steppes after the war. The modern Legions kept orcs for decades, taught them Praesi ways and enriched them before sending them home.

And Hakram Deadhand had seen this same machine at work before.

“The Carrion Lord really is a magnificent bastard,” he admitted. “I had little sympathy with the moaning of Callowans when his works were improving so many of their lives, but I understand a little better now.”

Sigvin frowned.

“I don’t follow,” she said.

“You think what you’ve found is a coincidence, then,” Adjutant mused. “That’s understandable, as you never saw the same unfold out west. But this is happening on purpose, Sigvin.”

Because that was the Carrion Lord’s way. The Clans could not truly be a part of a stable Praes as they were, so the man had set to smothering the aspects of orc culture that weren’t compatible with the Dread Empire he envisioned: the raiding, the nomadism, the factionalism. And as was typical of that particular monster, he’d gone about it through a method that the people being changed would not fight because it benefitted them. Because Sigvin was right to see the Clans being made dependent on the south, being bound tighter, but she was missing something: most orcs were better off this way. It was why the Legions and the Carrion Lord remained wildly popular in the Steppes to this day.

The Legions introduced wealth from the outside instead of the same limited wealth being competed over by clans, which meant that the Clans could actually grow now. And the way to bring home that gold was war, which Hakram’s people loved, and it just so happened that it drained the Steppes out of the same youngbloods who’d be pushing for raids and fighting between clans. And it was a form of war that required training, which took time, so why shouldn’t clans move less? They could afford to now that they were wealthier, anyway. Which they would remain, so long as they kept sending warriors to the Legions. Then once those soldiers returned home, having fought side by side with each other and humans, they found that fighting with the Clans and the rest of the Empire lost its allure.

How many of your old army friends would you have to kill so you could steal cattle worth less than a few months of Legion pay?

Hakram sighed. This wasn’t Malicia’s work. It was not the Empress’ way to change a system when she already mastered it. Yet she’d likely recognized the trend and was not against reversing it, because orcs truly integrated into Praes were yet another power block she must handle. One that espoused military virtues she distinctly lacked, to boot. Shortly before the Liesse Rebellion, Malicia had forced the Clans to pay the tributes they’d withheld during the reign of Nefarious, which had had the effect of lowering orc enrolment in the Legions. This now seemed less like an isolated incident and more the like the beginning of a comprehensive policy that had just recently received its crowning jewel.

Malicia made lords of the Steppes, Adjutant thought, which seems like bringing us into the fold but is functionally the opposite. Her lords of the Steppes did not hold land. They collected the orcish tributes on behalf of the Tower, which was an additional layer of separation between Praes and the Clans. Gatekeepers of influence who, by the very limitations of their role – duties that would see them despised by other orcs, authority that derived directly from the Tower – could never rise to be a threat to her reign. Now that elegant little twist, the gift that doubled as clipped wings, had Malicia’s signature over it. And it explained why the forces behind the Blackspears were so willing to cut a deal with the Dread Empress.

“So when Troke makes cause with Malicia, your clan backs him because he’s not just looking to be a lord of the Steppes,” Hakram gravelled. “He wants to be the High Lord of the Steppes.”

Someone in a position to undo Legion influence, who by virtue of their title could stand between the Clans and the Empire and force a heathy distance. Sigvin bared her fangs at him, openly pleased.

“So you do understand,” she said, then slightly bared her neck in a display of vulnerability. “I had feared you might not.”

No wonder the Split Tree were good as sown to Troke’s side, he thought. Both the Red Shields and the Howling Wolves were heavily tied to the Legions and had no intention of changing that policy considering how it’d paid off for them. As far as the Split Tree Clan was concerned, the alliance behind Hakram was perhaps the sole coalition of clans they could not under any circumstances allow to win. Otherwise the Legions would sink their hooks into all the larger clans and the trend would grow irreversible. Adjutant pushed off from the marking post.

“Leaving already?” Sigvin asked.

“I need to think,” Hakram simply said.

About how this could be turned around.

About whether it should.

—

It took time to gather two hundred stones, enough that darkness fell.

At the edge of the great camp that’d risen up around Chagoro, Hakram Deadhand sat alone in the dirt with a bright moon hung high above his head. Before him lay only flatlands of long grass and the distant rising expanse of the Northern Steppes, a horizon of nothingness crowned by cold stars. And just the way he had when he’d been a boy, Hakram stacked stones. Seventy in a pile to the left. A rough estimate of the clans that backed Troke Snaketooth and his Blackspears, the orcs that stood behind the dream of a High Lord of the Steppes. Forty-six in a pile to the right, Dag and Oghuz and old loyalties. The promises of the Conquest, faithfully kept, and hunger for more of the same.

In between the piles stood a sea of undecided clans, smaller alliances that a day’s turn could make or break. Orcs with their ear to the wind, waiting to hear how it would turn.

Through this, Hakram had laid out the bare shape of the taratoplu taking place at the fortress of Chagoro. This was the game he had been playing since he came here, promises and sigils and duels. It was the game Troke Snaketooth had been beating him at, would keep beating him at. Hakram did not know the lay of this land the way the Blackspear chieftain did, the friendships and feuds and shared stories that bound the Clans together as a people. Which meant, in truth, that he had been playing the wrong game. So Hakram leaned forward to trace three symbols in the dirt with a finger of bone: a helmet, a skull and a fang.

The helmet he knew best, what it stood for. The clans that had tied themselves to the Legions, to the Reforms, to the empire promised them by the Carrion Lord. The chiefs who wanted to make some camps permanent, kept through all seasons. Only part of the clan would stay at first, for forges and drilling warriors and trade, but it would grow from there. Southern wealth pouring in, ever-closer ties to the empire, old ways abandoned in favour of more practical ones. Clans that heeded this new path would flourish, those that resisted it would whither and die. That path for the Clans had its roots in the alliance under Dag and Oghuz, a tie strong enough that repeated defeats had not shattered their faction.

The skull he’d only begun to understand today. The clans that saw ahead of them a world where the Steppes were swallowed up by the Empire, where orcs forsook Kharsum for Lower Miezan and began singing of emperors instead of warlords. Where the Steppes grew ugly towns like tumours, imperial colonies of greenskin legionaries in the heartlands of the orcs. Those clans wanted disengagement. Ties with the Legions weakened and a unifying leader – be they warlord or high lord – to keep the Tower at bay so the Clans could become as a nation. Because that was what lay behind Sigvin’s talk of culture: the Steppes as a kingdom within the Dread Empire.

That path had its roots in the backers of Snake Troketooth, but would not have great loyalty to the man. It had chosen him as a candidate because he could be influenced and served their purposes, not out of any love for the cheiftain

And the last, the fang, was somehow both the simplest and the most complex of the three. It was everyone else, the chiefs and clans who cared nothing for either sort of talk. Hunger had no philosophy, for all that the Wasteland liked to pretend otherwise. The great majority of the clans would follow who promised the best plunder, the most food, who allowed them to settle grudges to their advantage and earn glory in battle. Some of these had gone Troke’s way already because he looked like the winner and they wanted to be on the winner’s side. There was no vision of the future behind them save a gaping maw biting down on the world, and more orcs thinking this way than the other two put together. It was a path without intent, the Clans remaining as they were and letting Creation pass them by. Walking away from the end of the Age of Wonder, guests in their own world.

These were, Hakram Deadhand thought, the three paths now laid out for the Clans: integration, disengagement, abstention. Only they were all flawed, he thought, and so he turned to address the night.

“You would argue for the helmet, I know,” Hakram said. “Even though you refused your own people that fate and crowned Vivienne so she could reforge the broken shards of the Old Kingdom.”

Catherine would lean the way of the Legions because the Legions were as much her home as the land she’d bled so much for. It would change the orcs, she might argue, but would it be for the worse? Raiding put the Clans at odds with everyone around them, internal wars weakened them as a people and permanent towns would make life better for tens of thousands of orcs. It would be a greater good than evil, she’d argue.

“But there will be a price,” Hakram told the night. “We will become the Duni of the north. Good for fighting and labour but not truly Praesi. We lose everything that we are without becoming equals.”

Perhaps in one or two generations if the Reforms held that would become untrue, but that was a roll of the dice. Would the Reforms hold? Even if the Carrion Lord came to rule, as Catherine wanted, would his successors continue his policies? It was betting the fate Clans on trust in a Tower whose steps dripped with the blood of a thousand coups. Hakram’s gaze drifted to the left, where another ghost waited for him to argue with. There was not a doubt in his mind that Vivienne Dartwick would be on the side of disengagement, of the skull.

“You’d argue that the Split Tree are right,” Hakram said. “That Praes would ruin us and only distance can prevent it. A High Lord of the Steppes would keep away the Tower and let us strengthen ourselves, make our own laws and change on our own terms.”

But that, too, was ignoring some truths. Because even Sigvin, who cursed the Legions with her eyes, had not spoken of ending ties with them entirely. Engaging with Praes enriched the Clans in a way that isolation simply could not. Starvation was no longer decided by the year being good or bad, by a raid or a war having gone one way or the other. Already the Clans traded almost as much with humans as they did with each other, by the estimates of the Eyes, and ending that trend would starve and impoverish half the Steppes. The Clans could live without Praes but to grow, to thrive? The Dread Empire was needed.

As for the Praesi, the land the orcs lived in was a heavy hand on the fate of the people.

“I don’t believe we would hold, without either war or Praes,” Hakram told the night. “We are not Callow, Vivienne. Even at our peak, we were not a nation in the human way of it. We unite against something, someone – or when there is another way to gain aside from eating each other.”

How long would the closed kingdom that Sigvin dreamed of truly last once the war ended? How many clans backing Troke would stay loyal, when their bellies were full and their chests filled with plunder and there was nothing left to do but return home to the same old feuds? It was building a tower on sand. And that left only one path, the fang. Burying one’s head in the sand, failing to make anything of the great gathering at Chagoro. And so the night could only wear one face: golden eyes and dark skin. Akua Sahelian. Another who now sat at crossroads, the threshold of changes only dimly felt.

“I can break it,” the Adjutant said. “The taratoplu. I would only need to raise another two past forty stones to take the wind out of Troke’s sails, and I… know that it can be done.”

The aspect pulsed in him faintly. Find. If he went looking for the hammers that would bring down this house, he would find them. This he knew, sure as dawn. Hakram could prevent anyone from winning, play on greed and fear and hope. Had he not stood at the side of the uncontested mistress of that method for many years? And it was what he was meant to do, as the Adjutant, if he could not secure the help of the Clans for the Grand Alliance. It was better than letting them side with Malicia. And yet he did not rise.

“What is it like, Sahelian, where you sit?” he asked the night. “It is cold away from the fire, cold enough madness earns the ring of sense and certainties turn to sand between your fingers?”

Hakram had gotten a taste of what it would be like, losing Catherine. Losing the Woe. Becoming just another of those left behind, buried or forgotten. And while the shard of fear at the heart of that had been put to rest by the Grey Pilgrim as a city died around them, there could be no return to the way things had been afterwards. It was different now because he was different and she was different. Pretending otherwise did neither of them any favours. Now they both knew they could hurt each other in ways they could not, would not forgive.

There was no unlearning that.

“I don’t want to ruin them,” he admitted. “To give them a nothing-future, to rob them of the pivot everyone else was allowed.”

And this was something he wanted for himself. What a small, terrifying truth that was to be echoing so large in his mind. Because Hakram knew that, as much as he would like to blame the ghosts and the night, he was the only one here. And already he knew, deep down, that if he was not satisfied by any of the paths others would lay out for the Clans then there was only one answer left.

He just didn’t want to look that truth in the eye.

Instead he looked back at the camp, the torches lighting up the night around the tall Soninke fortress. What did he owe these people, anyway? Hakram had left for the War College and never looked back. Life in the Steppes had left him adrift, a leaf in the wind. It had been a long way from here, from this land of gnawing, that he had found a home. What did ten thousand miles of snow and the poor fools in it matter to him, that he should sacrifice for them? And it would be a sacrifice, he would not delude himself otherwise. He and Catherine had been bound by an oath under moonlight, and it would be the end of that oath. Even if it was taken again, it would not be the same.

So Hakram turned his gaze ahead, finding… nothing. Empty plains as far as the eye could see, bathed in white. The same kind of emptiness he had glimpsed in Scribe after she was cut adrift. He’d wondered, sometimes, if she had been like him from the start. If becoming one of the Calamities had been like someone blew colours into a world of grey, like finally she could taste and hate and want to be someone. Only it’d not been about the Calamities, had it? It’d been about the Carrion Lord, and the Carrion Lord had set her free of his service in an act of loving cruelty. Cat still thought Eudokia would turn on them, but Hakram knew better. No one would risk being scalded like that twice.

And had Hakram not, this very day, boasted in the privacy of his own mind that he knew how to learn from enemies and allies both? The Webweaver had been one and the other, at different times, and ever a warning since they encountered each other in Salia.

“A temple built on a single pillar will fall,” Hakram said, quoting an old Miezan proverb.

And he still did not want to ruin his kind. To make them less than they could be. There was a path to chart, he thought. One he could dimly make out in the gloom of the night. A way to take from the empire without being taken, to stand without standing alone. It would be dangerous and delicate, play great powers against each other and raise a banner that could not be easily lowered. But it could be done. Hakram just wished that someone else could do it in his stead. Yet the stones did not lie, he thought, looking down. They never did. In a game of diminishing returns there could be no winner, only shades of defeat.

And if not Hakram, then who?

Moonlight painted the empty plains pale, and the stones at his feet too. Adjutant – no, not that anymore he thought. Perhaps never again. He was not making the choice of that path. Hakram Deadhand rose to his feet, bathed in moonlight, with no one to pull him up. A western breeze rustled across tall grass, a shiver, and old words came to him. The Old Boast, which orcs had once sung blade in hand when the hands and blades were still theirs.

“I made an empire out of nothing

So,

Warring under the summer sun

Rivers ran red, the sky did weep

As I raised a city of clay

To rule men from far away.

But as my glory fades to gray

And rides to me my own red day

Now I know clay does not keep,

And that rivers, both ways they run:

So,

I made an empire out of nothing.”

Stillness reigned in his wake. Warlord, the wind whispered against the grass. The poem was an old boast, an old warning. Kingdoms came, kingdoms went and so much for their petty kings. People were never as important as they thought they were.

But if not Hakram, then who?

So he went back to the torches, to the camp.

To the work that needed doing.

Interlude: North III

“The diplomat’s victory is to let the opponent win on your terms.”

– Prince Fernando of Salamans

Hakram hadn’t put armour on.

A loose shirt, trousers and boots were all he wore as he held his axe loosely in his grasp, watching his opponent move. Dag Clawtoe had laughed off the challenge at first, thinking it a jest, but the laughter had gone away when Hakram failed to join in. The older orc was taking the duel seriously and had come in champion’s garb: helm, mail and greaves. Dag kept his shield up and his sword raised, circling as warriors pounded the ground around them. The jemmek was liked by his clan and their allies, but orcs liked a good fight even more.

“I’ll end it without killing you,” Dag Clawtoe growled.

Hakram did not answer. It was one of his weaknesses as a champion – the way his people saw it – that he had no taste for that sort of banter. The rough edge of his tongue he reserved only for people he was going to kill. The tall orc took a step forward on the black earth and without missing a beat Dag attacked as he moved. A short push forward, shield steady as the blade thrust up towards his armpit. A smooth movement, well practised, and Hakram’s limbs of steel were not as quick as those of flesh had been. It didn’t matter, because he’d been waiting for the strike: the moment his foot touched the ground he was already pivoting, carrying his momentum forward as Dag’s thrust passed him by.

His elbow smashed into the other orc’s helmeted forehead, slamming him to the floor.

Warriors roared in approval as Dag cursed and rolled away, slapping away Hakram’s light swing with his shield before rising into a crouch. He’d lost his helmet, as Hakram had wanted. The leather strap had snapped and the helm fallen into the grass, shaking free Dag’s hair – a long black braid going from his forehead to his back. Hakram almost rubbed at the elbow that’d struck the helm, but he knew he was imagining the ache. Steel did not grow tender from striking at steel. Hakram rolled his shoulder, loosening it, and waited for the wary jemmek to come for him again. Dag hesitated, but he would be jeered at by his own warriors if he looked afraid of the fight.

So he came, measured this time. A feint to the left, trying to draw Hakram’s blade, but when it passed without answer the other orc shot forward. Surprised, Hakram took a step back that saved him from being swept entirely off his feet when Dag’s shield bashed into his chest. His footing slipped but he backed away again, only to earn another bash – at the head, but he was ready this time. Hakram’s axe came down and though he’d misjudged the distance it still came down on the shield arm Dag had exposed by striking. Instead of the axe-head against mail it was the shoulder that found its mark, a clean blow that had the jemmek shouting in pain.

The arm wasn’t quite broken but it was hurt. Dag was no greenhorn, though, and pain didn’t stop him. Hakram was hit in the shoulder by the shield, forcing him in a backwards stumble, and in a discreet thrust under that cover the jemmek’s sword came for his belly. That he caught with fingers of bone, steel scraping the pale, but the other orc used the grip to tackle him. Hakram rocked backwards, swallowing a curse – if he was pushed to the ground this was lost – as Dag smashed their foreheads together with a hellish scream. He dropped his axe, useless so close anyway, but even pushing back he found that Dag had the advantage on him. Hakram growled and tried to smash their foreheads again, but Dag put the shield in the way. Inspiration. Steel fingers closed around the rim of the shield, yanking it down. The other orc roared in pain, his wounded arm twisted, and fangs flashed as he ripped through his own shield straps to break free.

That’d been a mistake.

Hakram arm rose and he bashed Dag’s head in with the freed shield. Dag drew back, yelping, but it wasn’t enough. One, two, three more hits to the head and down Dag Clawtoe went. Eyes wide and unseeing he dropped onto the black earth, only barely conscious. It was done. Hakram breathed out, tossing away the shield. Howls and shouts of approval erupted around them, dragging back Dag to some semblance of wakefulness. He rose to his knees, expression still dazed.

“Why?” the other orc asked, quietly enough he was barely heard beneath the shouts. “I’m not the chief, Deadhand. What would you take from me, being camp-leader?”

Hakram shook his head.

“They backed you,” he said, gesturing at the warriors around them. “And they still will.”

Dag scowled, confused.

“They back you,” Hakram calmly said, “only now you back me.”

Confusion turned to anger but the other orc did not argue. It was not the place of the defeated to argue terms with the victor. Yet there was still an argument ahead of him, Hakram thought as he left the duelling circle and traded backslaps with cheering warriors. Further back Oghuz the Lame, chief of the Red Shields and the other leading light of the alliance, was waiting with a few of his warriors at his side. The old orc snorted when Hakram approached.

“You’re not a Red Shield,” Oghuz said. “Unlike Dag I don’t owe you the courtesy of accepting a challenge.”

“It’s not a fight I’m looking for,” Hakram said.

“Isn’t it?” Oghuz scoffed, but after a moment he sighed.

He barked as his warriors to give him space, room enough that the two of them would be able to speak without being overheard.

“That was a mistake,” Oghuz said, gesturing at the duelling grounds. “Dag had weaknesses as a man to front for but you have even more. You think we’ll just let ourselves be pressed into Callow’s service in, Named or not? It’s a worthy queen you’re serving, Deadhand, but she’s not one of ours.”

Hakram did not bother to answer that. It was a pit of an argument, one he wouldn’t be able to climb out of should he fall. So he took another path.

“The duel,” Hakram said. “What did you think of it?”

“You’re more used to using a shield with that axe,” Oghuz replied. “And you still cover for the metal like it’s flesh when you don’t think about it.”

Hakram waited a moment, knowing the old champion would have more to say.

“It was unkind to Dag to stretch it out,” the older orc added. “You could have knocked him half dead with that first elbow strike.”

The tall orc smiled without showing teeth.

“No,” he said, “I could not have.”

Because he could no longer feel his aspects. Could barely even see his Name through the shadow cast by what he might yet become. Oghuz did not miss the implication. There weren’t a lot of reasons why Hakram would be losing his Name, and only one that walked hand in hand with forcing himself to the front of the alliance between their two clans. The old orc let out a low hiss, worrying his lip.

“I do not seek service to anyone,” Hakram said, and like that the other man knew it to be true.

Now it was on Oghuz to decide whether or not Hakram Deadhand was someone he could live with as the Warlord of their age. Tension stretched out.

“Ours are hungry Gods,” the old orc finally said, leaning on his cane. “Best to eat our fill before they catch up.”

A look up and down.

“You’ll do.”

A pause, then a calculatingly casual question.

“Do you get on well with my daughter?”

Hakram grimaced. That wouldn’t be happening. Even if Juniper didn’t kill him Aisha absolutely would – and she’d probably get away with it too.

“Too much woman for me,” he replied, and the old man laughed.

That was one alliance behind him then, Hakram thought. Time to visit the other.

—

He was being watched.

The twins were already waiting for him when Hakram reached the grounds of the Split Tree Clan. Sigvin and Sigvun were easiest to tell apart by the ritual scars on their bodies: the latter’s looked like woven crescent moons, the former’s like crisscrossing bite marks. Sigvun had once implied he wouldn’t mind Hakram getting the sort of closer look at those scars his sister had been granting, but the tall orc had turned him down. His preferences were well set. The twin had shrugged it off and Hakram was on amicable terms with both – as amicable as one could be while trying to have opposite warlords elected, anyway. He might kill them, or they him, but it wouldn’t be killing done in the red.

“Back already?” Sigvin teased.

Sigvun cocked a hairless brow.

“Should I speak to our kin about raising a pillar?” he gravely asked.

Hakram rolled his eyes. Old-fashioned, the Split Tree. Hardly anyone still hung woven crowns on sculpted pillars anymore: weddings were family feasts under a shaman nowadays, not ceremonies to attract the blessings of spirits.

“Take me to your chieftain,” he said.

Though both kept light expressions, he could see the stiffening in the way they stood. Uncertainty in Sigvun’s eyes but triumph in Sigvin’s. She thinks she has swayed me, Hakram thought. In a way she had. The twins agreed without trouble but the light conversation died and they walked the rest of the way in silence. He spent the time considering he knew of Hegvor Allspeak, chief of the Split Tree Clan. Which was little, for though Hakram could think offhand of half a dozen feuds she had mediated and how he did not even know the old woman’s age. Much about the chief herself was obscured, which he suspected to be on purpose.

He was not made to wait long before being led to a great tent where three orcs, by the looks of them none younger than sixty winters, waited seated. Introductions were briskly made. The oldest shaman of the clan, Bjarte, sat to the right. To the left sat Gulda Hardhead, the most honoured champion of the Split Tree, and between them sat a woman of long white hair with a hard scar across her nose. Hegvor Allspeak, whose eyes were of an unsettlingly pale yellow bordering on green. Hakram was invited to sit across from them at a low table, an honour that was not granted to the twins. They sat on the ground, near the back of the tent. The two were trusted, Hakram thought, but their age meant their influence was limited.

Hegvor pushed across the table a small bowl and cut of dried meat.

“I offer you meat and drink from my table,” the chieftain said.

Brutally salty sheep and hard aragh were what Hakram wolfed down, but that was an old and well-known negotiating trick. At least they hadn’t used Taghreb spices, which would have had him panting for water throughout the entire talks.

“Hail, Hegvor Allspeak,” he said.

“Hail, Hakram Deadhead,” the old woman replied. “The twins say you ask of my time.”

“I do,” he said.

She frowned.

“Not, I think, for what Sigvin hopes of you,” Hegvor said. “So what it is you have come for, Deadhand, if not to lend your name to the better cause?”

Hakram’s dead fingers laid against the table, its intricate carvings dimly felt to his senses. Like a… pressure, nothing like what a hand of flesh had been. And the pressures were lighter now, for the same reason that Hakram thought he would no longer be able to Find something he sought.

“Before I answer that question,” he said, “I want to describe something to you.”

The bone fingers drummed against the wood, a sound like a rat gnawing.

“Within a week the taratoplu will have to disperse because it can no longer be fed,” Hakram said. “As the pressure mounts on all clans to gather behind a banner, the Graven Bone and the Stag-Crowned will cede territories to some of the clans bordering them. Those clans will then come to support Troke Snaketooth and get him elected as High Lord of the Steppes.”

The Graven Bone and Stag-Crowned were the two strongest supporters of Troke, despite being the two largest southern clans after his own, because Malicia had also named them lords of the Steppes. They would be his natural lieutenants, the highest under him after his election. That was well worth territorial concessions to their own rivals, especially when this was an offer that the Blackspears themselves could not make – if Troke was seen to be weakening his clan to rope in others, he would be made into a laughingstock.

“Dread Empress Malicia will recognize the title and formally charge High Lord Troke with putting down the rebelling High Seat of Nok,” Hakram said. “Most clans will fall in line at the prospect of plunder and even the Howling Wolves and the Red Shields will join the host.”

Utter silence from across the table.

“To secure Troke’s position after the sack, the Wolves and the Shields will be given the honour of being the first into the breach at Nok,” he calmly continued. “You’ll collude with either Malicia or High Lord Dakarai to make their losses crippling, then keep them crippled after you withdraw to the Steppes by keeping away returning legionaries.”

His fingers skittered across the wood still.

“You keep propping up Troke, after that, but begin looking to the future,” Hakram said. “Marry a rising name in the Bones or the Stags to one of your kin, then lay the grounds for them to be Snaketooth’s successor. Then you begin pushing for what you actually want.”

The tall orc showed teeth.

“At a guess? Bringing back the bronze urus as our coinage, a council of shamans to mediate clan disputes like in the ancient Hordes and fixed yearly gatherings under enforced truce,” Hakram continued. “If Troke backs you, all the better. If he doesn’t, he has an accident and you get the prepared successor in power where they will be duly grateful.”

Hakram’s dead hand went still.

“How close am I?” he asked.

A long moment of silence.

“Only one yearly gathering,” Barjte said, the shaman smiling. “We would consecrate holy grounds for the first time since the Miezans, our High Seat of the Steppes.”

Good, Hakram thought. They had, without knowing it, come to agree with one of his own notions in principle. Now he just needed to survive the rest of this conversation. His eyes were on Hegvor, so he was surprised when the answer came from behind.

“I told you, grandmother,” Sigvin erupted. “We should have tried to bring him from the start, it’s such a waste that-”

“Be silent, girl,” Hagvor peevishly cut in, “until you stop thinking with your snatch.”

Sigvin’s mouth closed with an angry click of fangs. Her grandmother – the things you learned, Hakram mused – turned a cool gaze on him.

“You’re a clever man, Deadhand,” she said. “So tell me the reason you’ve come up with that I should let you leave this tent alive.”

So much for drink and meat from their table, Hakram thought amusedly. His people were not the Taghreb, to hold the law of hospitality as sacrosanct, but that’s been a rather hasty turnabout. Still, there was nothing like the threat of death to get a man’s blood flowing.

“It won’t work,” Hakram said. “Even if you kill me and get away with it, even if I say nothing, it won’t work.”

Gulda Hardhead bared her fangs.

“You think us fools, boy,” the old champion said. “Think we haven’t thought it through, maybe, that since we keep to old ways we’re just sav-”

“I think you haven’t read reports of the Eyes of the Empire annotated by the Scribe,” Hakram calmly interrupted.

A start of surprise.

“You know things I do not,” he said. “That I could not learn or did not care to. Are you so proud to believe the opposite cannot be true?”

Because if it were so, if they were a closed door, then he would have to kill them all. Something pulsed in his belly at the thought, almost eager. A craving not entirely his. He had rustled feathers with the brusque answer, but where Gulda was growling and Bjarte looked politely skeptical their leader only looked thoughtful. Considering. Examining where she, too, might have been wrong. Something like hope bloomed in Hakram, chasing away the bloodthirst.

“Trade,” Hagvor Allspeak finally said. “You think trade will bury us, even if we restrict it.”

“You’re a decade too late,” Hakram said. “The total volume of goods traded between the empire and the Steppes is now about three fifths of what is traded within the Steppes, by the Tower’s estimates.”

Surprise from all of them, but only the chief and the shaman grasped what that implied. Hagvor grimaced.

“You can’t cut the flow of goods without impoverishing and starving too many people,” Hakram said. “Either Troke turns on you to keep his seat or he’ll be facing rebellion from half the clans.”

“An empty tent is an invitation,” Bjarte quoted.

They realized it too, then. Their measures were all sensible ones. Bronze urus could be minted in the Steppes, there were rich deposits of tin and copper barely touched, and it would mean no longer being dependent on Praesi coinage. A council to mediate disputes would clamp down on internal wars save those sanctioned by the ‘High Lord’, which would be used to purge enemies of the throne. Holy grounds bound to the title of High Lord would make an effective capital for the Clans that could serve as a place of truce and a way for the Split Tree to begin their revival of what they considered to be the heart of orcish culture.

Only none of this could be done if Troke bucked them off or the Clans fell into civil war. In Hakram’s opinion, Troke cutting them loose to keep his seat would likely result in civil war anyway – without their diplomatic support and reputation, he was a much weaker man and their people responded only one way to weakness. And while that civil war burned, Praes would turn its attention to them. It might be that the exiled orc legionaries would return with the Tower’s backing or that the Empire would raise other lords of the Steppes outside Troke’s authority, to be honest the exact form didn’t matter.

Whoever held the Tower would not tolerate a troublesome and rebellious bloc just like the Tribes existing in the north of the Dread Empire, so they’d intervene. Weaken and divide. The end result would likely be what the Split Tree were trying to avoid in the first place with their grand plan: southern clans tied up with the Legions and permanently at war with the fading clans further north. A buffer state the Tower could use as manpower for its armies and could never rise to become a threat to Ater.

“We will adapt,” Hagvor Allspeak finally said, tone weary. “Change our approach. For this chance I thank you, Hakram Deadhand.”

Hakram hummed. He did not take the implied dismissal.

“Your answer’s not in closing the door,” he said.

“It’s even less in being eaten by the Tower,” Hagvor curtly said.

“It’s too late to cut ties to the degree you envisioned,” he bluntly replied. “It would cost too much to too many people who have no reason to listen to you except force. But that’s the wrong approach, anyway, because distance isn’t what you actually want – it’s just the method you decided would get you that.”

“And what would you know of what we want, Adjutant?” Gulda Hardhead scorned.

Hakram wondered if she truly disliked him or whether this was a ploy. One friend, one foe, Hagvor striking the balance. Regardless, there was an odd pall on the room after she spoke. Most faces were touched with a frown, Bjarte even casting a wary look around. They can’t feel the Name anymore, Hakram realized. The pressure of it. The longer the conversation had gone on, the more the last wisps of his moonlit oath had gone away. Casting the Name in his face rang wrong to their ears because he no longer held it. The chieftain considered him with wary eyes. He smiled amicably, never showing teeth.

“You want a unified orc state with strong enough foundations that the empire can’t absorb it,” he said. “You want to avoid the Steppes being empty because all the youths went south to the Legions, coming back only to live in Legion towns and raise their children to do the same. You want to avoid clan weavers abandoning the trade because it’s easier to buy ten baskets from Okoro at a copper each, to avoid storytellers reading from Praesi books instead of learning the old sagas by rote. You want for there to be someone other than Soninke scholars able to read our glyphs in forty years.”

Gulda rocked back like he’d just slapped her across the face.

“I understand what you want perfectly,” Hakram Deadhand. “You’re just going about it wrong.”

His steel hand clasped the edge of the table, making it creak.

“You think that by making a few opportunities you’ll turn our people away from Praes, but you’re not looking at the numbers,” he said. “You’ll make a standing army at your holy grounds, but how many warriors will be able to be part of it? A thousand, five? The Legions will take anyone and make them rich. And maybe destroying the clans with ties to the empire would make room, free land and wealth, but it won’t work like that in practice. Not unless you slaughter the entire clans and none one has the stomach for that so they’ll move into the Empire, migrate, and then it’s the same problem you thought you avoided only the border’s thirty leagues south. Your fundamental mistake is that you are denying opportunities instead of offering better ones.”

“We cannot outbid the Dread Empire,” Hagvor quietly said.

“Then stop kneeling to it,” Hakram flatly replied. “You are trying to mend this from a position of weakness that no one has forced on you but yourself.”

“There’s not enough support for rebellion,” Gulda Hardhead told him.

Her tone was, he noted, significantly warmer than before.

“Not for secession, maybe,” Hakram replied. “But rebellion? We’re already rebels just by gathering here. How many clans do you think would scream their throats sore in approval, if the proposal was instead to march on Ater and cram our terms down the Tower’s throat?”

“Many,” Bjarte said. “But what would that solve, Deadhand? We get lenience for a generation, that is all. All the dooms are pushed back, not ended.”

The white-haired chief hummed at him.

“You want to make… opportunities,” she said. “That rival theirs. Only they’ll be ours, not the Tower’s.”

“Trading with Praes, learning from it, being tied to it – this is the trend of the Steppes,” Hakram said. “And it cannot be reversed without prohibitive costs. But none of these are unhealthy if they don’t lead to our being digested by the Empire. And the key to that is for us to offer another way.”

“There is not enough wealth in the Steppes,” Bjarte said. “Ours are not rich lands, save in grass and frost.”

“So why does the Empire care to assimilate us in the first place?” Hakram replied. “Manpower. Warriors. That is what we make that they want from us, Praes and Callow both. Orcs soldiers have been the backbone of the two most successful armies Calernia has seen since the days of Triumphant.”

Hagvor caught on first.

“Mercenaries are illegal in Praes,” she pointed out.

“Laws change at the end of a sword, in this empire,” Hakram calmly said. “All the time. Why should it not be ours, for once?”

Rumbles of approval from the twins at his back. The older heads needed more, though. Could see further.

“These armies took more than orcs to be victorious,” Hagvor said. “They make war in a new way. Companies, not warbands.”

“Let warbands do the work of warbands and companies the work of companies,” Hakram said. “If we must raid, let us raid. But battles are a soldier’s trade and best left to soldiers.”

They didn’t like hearing it, but that was the reality of it.

“Clans can’t make an army like that,” Gulda Hardhead said. “Not on the move. It takes too much training for the drills. You’d need a settlement to support it.”

“A settlement where the wealth of retiring legionaries could flow,” he replied, “and be put to use to benefit the Clans instead of unmake them.”

Many orcs who’d lived in towns and cities for decades would balk at returning to tents anyway. They all knew that. A solid roof over one’s head was a comfort few liked to let go of. And while they didn’t like the face of it – a town for Legion orcs, for those who wanted to leave the old ways – they’d already agreed to a city in principle. Their holy grounds for the High Lord of the Steppes would have been the same thing, only smaller and poorer and badly run.

“It might grow to threaten our ways, this settlement,” Bjarte said. “The sole city of the orcs yet not bound to their ways.”

“So send shamans and teachers,” Hakram said. “And if you worry of the Clans being adrift, raise your holy grounds in the Steppes to rival it.”

Hagvor’s eyes narrowed, the eerie tint of them making them look like jewels in the light.

“You speak as if this settlement would not be in the Steppes,” she said.

“No,” Hakram said, “it wouldn’t be.”

A beat as she figured it out.

“You mean to keep this fortress,” she said, sounding a little impressed.

“If the Dread Empire of Praes would keep us in the fold,” Hakram Deadhand said, “then let it pay for that privilege. Lands and rights. Is that not what all the High Seats rebel over?”

Hard smiles all around. He had them, he thought. Only the mirth went away.

“Troke has made bargains with the Tower,” Hagvor Allspeak finally said. “They would not pair with the path you describe.”

“No,” Hakram quietly agreed, “it is true that Troke Snaketooth cannot deliver this to you.”

And he said nothing else, only meeting her eerie eyes with his own unflinching stare. Silence stood, stretched, stayed. Like a physical force, strong enough to cut with a knife. Until the white-haired chieftain rose to her feet, limbs cracking and back bent. Hakram did not look away.

Risen, she knelt.

“Warlord,” Hagvor Allspeak swore, and so it was true.

Hakram breathed in as every other in the tent knelt the same, letting the feeling settle over him. The claim. Already he could feel his rivals. One the south, distant and faded. An old claim, long set aside but not quite gone. Grem One-Eye still stood with few equals in the eyes of his people. And another one, closer and sharper and just as aware of him as Hakram was aware of them. Troke Snaketooth had been further along his path than anyone else dreamed of.

And so, Hakram thought, it would end in red.

—

Within the hour Troke Snaketooth gave answer.

With unfortunately characteristic cunning, the chief struck where no one had expected him to. Four fires erupted across the camp, which was not unusual given the loose approach of some clans to precautions against this, but these were no accidents. They burned down three of the largest repositories of dried meat in the great camp surrounding Chagoro and the largest tent of the Brazen Bird Clan – whose territories near seaside salt flats made the main trader of salt in the Steppes and the sole clan to have brought a large amount of it to the taratoplu. Troke had burned the food reserves and the ingredient needed to preserve butchered animals. Clans would now live on the cattle they could butcher, which would not last a week. Three, four days at best.

Now that a rival had appeared Troke meant to force a vote while he still had numbers and the wind in his sail.

It was a good strategy, Hakram was forced to admit. The chief of the Blackspears tried to summon the clans into the fortress barely an hour after the fires, claiming they needed discussion, which would make things even worse. It would deny Hakram time to grow his support: the Split Tree were mustering like-minded clans in his behalf, but those talks would take time. Two hours was not long enough. It was Oghuz who found a solution: he ordered some of his warriors to terrify their own clan’s herds and let the cattle loose, resulting into a stampede away from the camp. The Red Shield refused the summons, as they urgently needed to gather back their sheep and pigs.

Oghuz’s champions then loudly implied that this scattering was no accident and that all of Troke’s opponents might come to face the same troubles, which had enough clans wary of the Blackspears the Snaketooth had to push back the talks until sundown.

Torches lit up the great hall of the fortress of Chagoro, which in truth had been the mess hall before being made into gathering grounds for the Clans. No more than three heads could enter by clan, which still meant more than six hundred orcs packed tight between the walls. Each chieftain came with a painted shield, their vote to cast, though counting them could get… combative. Accusations of miscounting or lies were common and usually settled in blood – every chief had come tonight with a champion among their three. The Blackspears and their allies had come first, at least an hour early, so they had the back of the hall to themselves and an imposing position. They looked many and strong, which mattered more than most like to admit.

Hakram would make Troke rue that trick before all said and done.

He came as one of the three for the Howling Wolves, standing with the clans of his birth as the shaman whose day it was to officiate – a woman from the Arrant Axes, a Blackspear ally – sang one of the old songs of praise to the Hungry Gods and reiterated these to be truce grounds. Only duels would be allowed here, no red fights. Unsurprisingly, though half a dozen chiefs clamoured to be the first to speak it was Troke who was chosen by the shaman. The chieftain of the Blackspears was a tall and well-formed orc, with short choppy hair and three golden rings in each cheek that made the pale scars on his face stand out. He was not built as thickly as some orcs, but as a warrior he was second in his clan only to his husband.

Skarod Longaxe, the envoy that had come to Wolof and now stood at his husband’s side with cold eyes. Hakram would rather avoid fighting that one. There were a lot of dirty jokes about the reason for that wedding being that Skarod should have been called Longspear instead, but the champion was one of the finest killers in the Steppes. He’d killed three dozen warriors in duels without taking a wound, it was said, and only gotten better since. Hakram was not certain he would win should they fight.

“We’re about to go hungry,” Troke Snaketooth said.

His speaking voice was smooth and carried clearly. That’d been practised, Hakram was sure of it. The man had always been ambitious. There were murmurs among the assembled orcs, but no great exclamation of disagreement or surprise. Most chiefs had either put it together or made a friend who had, by now, though only the two larger alliances would have a decent idea of the days left before it happened.

“Three days, my shamans say,” Troke revealed. “Three days before we’d forced to leave behind this fortress and the choice we’re meant to make here.”

He swept the hall with his gaze.

“Shame,” Troke Snaketooth snarled. “Shame on you, on us. How long are we going to stand here quibbling when Praes lies open to our south? Are we going to have to skulk back to the Steppes with our tails between our legs because we couldn’t agree on how to swallow the meat in our maws?”

A chief from the far north took offence to that and was given turn to speak by the shaman, but though the man was right that High Lord of the Steppes was a larger choice than what Troke pretended it was not a popular refrain with the hall. Seeing that, the man turned insulting and that was a mistake. Challenges were traded and Skarod Longaxe stepped forward. The chief’s two warriors were slain and his own leg crippled as Skarod forced three duels back-to-back. It was a statement, meant to cow smaller clans, but Hakram thought it a mistake. Skarod had taken no wound and tiredness would pass, but if Troke sent out his husband on his behalf too often he’d look like a coward.

The next challenge he’d have to field himself, Hakram thought, or take a hit to his reputation.

Other chiefs stepped forward to accuse Troke of using the situation to grab power, but all toed the line and their accusations weren’t winning the hall so they petered out. No one wanted to fight the Blackspears if it won them no support. It wasn’t going to be that easy to call for a vote, though. A chieftain from the east, baring her teeth wildly, tossed out a different sort of challenge.

“You speak for you and yours, Troke, but there are others,” she said. “Other claims. Will Dag Clawtoe not speak up, if he seeks to be our Warlord?”

That hadn’t been arranged, though if it took much longer Hegvor had seen to it someone else would speak along the same lines. Chiefs just liked seeing bears fight in the pit, so many were willing to get that fight started themselves if need be. Only this time it was Hakram who stepped forward, axe at his hip. He could feel Troke’s stare on him, the recognition of the claim. The hatred from him and soon his husband. They’d not know for sure until now, then.

“Dag Clawtoe is not who we would we acclaim for Warlord,” Hakram said. “I am.”

Surprise, some laughter – he was a cripple, after all – but more murmurs. After the initial beat, though, the sound of blades on shields. All save three of the clans that’d supported Dag for Warlord were making known their support of him. Fools had listened to the nose, Hakram knew, but the clever had been counting shields. The shaman called for silence, then reluctantly granted him the right to address the hall.

“You’ve heard of me,” he said, without false humility. “I’ve fought more battles than anyone in this hall, led armies to victory in the west. I’ve killed fae and Revenants, monsters and Named. I’ve been to Arcadia and back, walked beneath the gates of Keter and seen the First Prince of Procer kneel. I’m Hakram Deadhand.”

He stared down the hall.

“You’ve heard of me,” he gravelled.

Blades on shields, not only from his allies this time. His people did like a good boast. It didn’t mean votes, but it meant he was being heard.

“I stand for Warlord by the weight of my deeds,” he said, using the old turn of phrase. “Let them raise or bury me.”

A voice finally cut through, belatedly given right to speak by the shaman.

“You’re one of the Black Queen’s,” a chief shouted. “Are we going to kneel to Callow? Fuck that.”

“That oath came to an end,” Hakram said. “I am the Adjutant no longer.”

A beat of silence, an idea.

“Do you not agree, Snaketooth?” he added.

Troke looked unpleasantly surprised at being called on, hesitating at the answer. I win whatever you do, Hakram thought. Either the Blackspear would lie and deny their shared claim, an action that would weight on any confrontation between them afterwards – a finger on the scales, Catherine would put it – or Hakram would be vouched for by his strongest rival. A word none would gainsay.

“He’s not the Adjutant,” Troke said, and tried to speak but shouting drowned him out.

The shaman called for silence.

“He’s not the Adjutant,” Troke repeated, “but he’s worse. You’re a guest, Hakram Deadhand. You left for the Legions and now you come back for the crown Callow can’t give you. What would you know of the Steppes?”

Rumbles of approval. Particularly the northern clans, from the Lesser Steppes or close. Some of those thought it suspicious when orcs even talked to humans, much less fought at their side.

“I am an orc,” Hakram laughed. “What more do I need to know?”

That landed too, to Troke’s visible distaste. Orcs were not so united in their answers about what it meant to be one of their kind that everyone – or even most – in this hall would agree with what Snaketooth would mean by it.

“Funny, though, that making war west would make my scalp less green in your eyes,” he continued. “Do you enjoy killing other orcs so very much, Troke?”

Blades on shields. The Blackspears were not beloved even if they were on the rise. They’d crossed many of the clans closest to them over the years, some under Troke himself. The Snaketooth was wise enough not to engage in that, which left room for another chief to speak up and keep questioning whether Hakram was a Callowan spy or not. The woman insulted him quite bluntly, obviously looking for a duel, but Hakram wouldn’t fight her himself. Her clan was too small for that and she was likely looking to make a name through this. He looked back, and though Dag was visibly eager to be called on Hakram spoke another name.

“Oghuz.”

The old orc laughed, appreciative. Oghuz the Lame’s blade stayed in its sheath as he walked up to fight Chieftain Sarai of the Drifting Leaves. In front of a crowd of hundreds, the old champion brutally beat to death the challenger with his blackwood cane. All it cost him was a cut on his bared arm, which some in the hall would recognize as a habit from his old champion days: there was one such scar on his arm for every kill he’d made duelling. It was not a statement as bold as Troke’s, but it served as a stark warning for anyone trying to make a name off of fighting him: try it and you might be remembered as a figure of fun instead.

The right to speak was spread around after that, the shaman granting it to every chieftain trying to drum up support for their own candidature as Warlord – or High Lord of the Steppes, as some took a page from Troke’s book instead. Neither Hakram not the Blackspears spoke up again, not openly anyway. The alliances behind both of them sent people to speak with other clans at the back of the hall, trying to buy support of their own more quietly. For all that many oaths had been given outside this hall, there was a long tradition of deciding which horse to eat only at the very last moment.

Maybe an hour passed and people were getting restless. Dag came to him as Hakram listened to the chief and shaman of the Ice Eaters, who was promising that he knew a ritual involving bathing in human blood that would give magic to all orcs should he be chosen as Warlord. Well, he was definitely standing out from the others.

“We’re up to fifty-four,” Dag told him. “Troke’s nearing on ninety, we think.”

Hakram nodded, thinking.

“Call a vote,” he said.

Dag looked confused but nodded anyway. An allied chief asked for the right to speak after the Ice Eaters chief left in sullen silence and used it to call for an acclamation, a demand the hall took up with relish. It was rare for an assembly to last so long without a vote being called, often one was asked at the very start, to make it plain where everyone stood before the talks began. Troke smelled something was wrong, Hakram thought, because otherwise it would not have been wariness on his face. All those who would stand for Warlord or High Lord strode out, and without further ceremony shields began to be tossed as their feet. Troke and Hakram’s supporters threw their shields quickly, already convinced, but most of the hall did not. A handful of other chiefs earned about thirty shields between them, but most clans were holding off to see what happened to the leading candidates.

That patience was rewarded when the Split Tree Clan and its seventeen closest allies walked right past Troke to throw their shields at Hakram’s feet. They moved to stand with the alliance after, to roars of surprise in the hall. Hakram almost smiled, because suddenly the back of the hall that Troke had claimed and filled no longer looked like a solid wall of support. It looked a little empty while staying very, very visible. Didn’t I say I’d make you rue that trick? The final counts were hard to be certain of, but Hakram trusted his eyes: seventy-two to eighty-one. Troke had received more support than expected but the gap had closed.

Now everyone in the hall knew that this ended with one of them the victor, so the real fight began.

Champions first. It was a roughly even trade of victories and defeats, with little unexpected save that Dag distinguished himself by winning thrice – though, unlike Skarod Longaxe, not in consecutive duels. The first few duels were without rancour, but by the seventh the tone had changed. Champions went for kills, not blood, and enmities were made. Without a clear victor in the violence, the fight was passed on and so Hakram stepped out of the crowd as Troke did. Armed, both of them, but it wouldn’t begin with steel.

“Deadhand,” Troke Snaketooth said, enunciating every syllable. “Pretty name. How did you get it again?”

“When I faced a hero and lived,” Hakram replied. “Without a Name of my own.”

“When you lost a hand to a hero,” Troke said. “Only you’ve lost more than that since. How much orc is there left in you, Deadhand?”

It’d been a certainty the man would bring up the crippling, but Hakram still had to push down a grimace. He was past doubting himself over what he had lost, but his kind had poor opinions of the crippled. Having borne a Name – still having a Name, for those who did not understand the details and there would be many – made up for it some, as such things were forgiven in the renowned. Grem famously lacked an eye and was not held in contempt for it. But that was only an eye. Hakram had lost three limbs, nearly a quarter of his body was steel and bone.

Even among those who supported him, many faces agreed.

“All orc, where it matters,” a woman’s voice called out.

Hungry Gods, was that Sigvin? Whoever it’d been there was a gale of laughter as Troke bit down on a scowl. That was one way to disarm the line of argument, Hakram supposed.

“You like to talk about who I am,” Hakram noted. “Who you are.”

“Because I don’t know you, Deadhand,” Troke said. “Who here does? You boast you’ve fought in many wars, but what I hear is that you’ve fought for everyone but us.”

Hakram snorted.

“Us, Troke?” he said. “Who’s that? How many of the clans in this hall get to be called us?”

“We’re orcs,” Troke scoffed. “We get-”

“We’re nothing,” Hakram cut through.

Something like glee passed through Snaketooth’s eyes as rumbles of anger passed through the hall. Troke kept silent, all the better to give Hakram enough rope to hang himself with. The tall orc cast a long look around, unmoved by the anger.

“You don’t like hearing that?” he said. “Good, you shouldn’t. It doesn’t make it untrue.”

He gestured around them.

“Look at us, huddling in a Soninke fortress arguing which Praesi city we should sack before we run back to the Steppes,” Hakram scorned. “Half the armies on Calernia are fighting the greatest war this continent has ever seen and what does Troke Snaketooth offer you – Nok?”

He laughed, sharp and mocking.

“The least of the High Seats, and after the Ashurans already looted it,” Hakram said. “For that privilege we’re supposed to lick the Tower’s hands like loyal hounds?”

“So you want us to lick Procer’s arse instead,” Troke said. “Is that what you’re getting at? We ought to sign up with the Grand Alliance and go die for some fucking idiot princes in some nowhere out west? So much for the fucking War College.”

Laughter and blades on shields. The War College was disliked by some, Procer by nearly all. Callow was respected, in a way, but the Principate? It was the decadent idiot of orc stories, the avatar of excess and cupidity. There was not a thimble of esteem for the Principate of Procer to be gathered in this entire hall.

“Procer’s not my trouble,” Hakram dismissed. “But this kind of talk, Troke? It’s why I called us nothing.”

The Snaketooth had a wary glint in his eye. Last time that utterance had not burned Hakram like the other orc had thought it would. The tall orc instead turned to the chiefs around them, the clans.

“In five hundred years, when they talk of the fall of Keter, the war to end all wars – what will they say of the orcs?” Hakram asked the hall. “Where will the Clans be in that story?”

He sneered.

“Knifing each other over a few dozen chest of loot while the real powers of Calernia carve the land up into great realms, the empires of the coming age. That’s what it gets you, playing the Tower’s game.”

“So you want us to rebel, like Callow-”

“You talk more of Callow than I do, Troke,” Hakram cuttingly replied. “Do you need a recommendation to enrol in its army?”

Hard laughter, not kind to the chieftain of the Blackspears. It put the man on the back foot long enough for Hakram to keep speaking.

“We became part of the Dread Empire of Praes because of the promises made under the Declaration,” he said. “Do you think those promises were kept?”

Rumbles of approval.

“Well?” Hakram challenged. “Do you?”

Shouts, some harder to parse than others, but the screams of NO were clear.

“If the Praesi don’t keep their end of the bargain, then why are we still on our knees?”

Blades on shields. Troke’s face darkened. He was losing the hall and knew it.

“High Lord of the Steppes,” Hakram scorned. “What a way to call burying your head in the sand. Troke offers you Nok and Malicia’s blessing, do you want to know what I offer?

YES, the assembly shouted.

“I give you Ater and all the Tower owes us,” Hakram said.

A roar.

“I give you Keter, riches and glory for a hundred years,” Hakram said.

The roar grew.

“And when we come home at last, we’ll raise a city from the stones we took from theirs,” Hakram Deadhand thundered. “One great enough that even in a thousand years they will tremble at the return of our Horde!”

The roar drowned out everything, and as it rose something grew within Hakram. Sharpened, refined it. And, the tall orc thought as he met Troke Snaketooth’s eyes, the same thing was weakening inside his rival. The tide was turning, and that meant there was only one way for Troke to win now. The chieftain of the Blackspears slowly unsheathed his sword as the roar finally died down.

“Castles in the sky,” Troke Snaketooth bit out. “Their fall will kill us all. Answer for that, Deadhand, with a blade.”

“If you champion nothing, Troke,” Hakram replied as he took his axe in hand, “that is the sole prize you can win.”

The other orc was quick. Quicker than he should be, even as tall as he was. There was an unnatural swiftness to his limbs, the kind that came from a claim settled into one’s bones. Hakram was fresher to his own, but he knew Names in a way that Troke did not. The chieftain’s slash found only steel as Hakram turned and let his arm take it, while he continued to pivot and swung at the man’s head. Troke dropped below the blow before the arc had even begun and Hakram bared his teeth. He knew how to win. They broke and circled each other as feet stomped against stone and blades against shields, their steps careful until Hakram went on the offensive.

A wild chop, cutting down with the beginnings of Name strength, but Troke caught the haft of the axe with the side of his blade and withstood it. Hakram drew back and the chieftain’s footing shifted as he gathered momentum, preparing for a throat that would go through Hakram’s throat. But then the tall orc took a hand off his axe, his bone one, and slapped at the side of Troke’s head. It was a blow that’d hurt but not kill. Catherine would have taken it and finished the thrust, Indrani would already be wrenching her swords of his eyes. But Troke had not yet learned to set aside the instincts of a Name, and so he went to block the slap with his sword instead of finishing the thrust. He’d begun to move before his mind could catch up to the choice.

And so Hakram caught the blade in his dead hand and smiled. He squeezed, steel grinding against bone with a horrid sound, and then the sword broke. Troke’s eyes widened and he was pulling away, but the man found the head of Hakram’s axe resting against the side of his neck. Someone let out a hoarse shout behind them. The Snaketooth’s gaze did not waver.

“I knew it might end this way,” Troke said, grinning ruefully. “But I was hungry, Deadhand.”

He breathed out.

“No regrets. Finish it.”

That was the way, wasn’t it? The red, blood and rage and victory all in one. But he’d never had the red in his blood before, so why start? Hakram’s axe drew back and he swung, Troke’s eyes closing as the flat side of the axe head came to rest against his neck.

“It is finished,” Hakram said.

The man’s eyes opened in startled surprise.

“I have a use for you, Troke Snaketooth,” the Warlord said.

All around them shields were cast down and orcs knelt. The shaman had not called for acclamation, but some things were beyond ceremony. Two hundred shields fell at his feet, as inevitable as the coming of dawn. It was done. The Warlord thought of a moonlit oath, then, and part of him felt like weeping.

But it was done, raised and buried.

Interlude: West II

“The easy wars are the ones where one side’s right and the other’s wrong. The terrible ones are where they’re both right, because once they know that there’s no wrong they’ll flinch away from.”

– Aretha the Raven, Nicaean general

They were losing the war one victory at a time, Hanno thought.

There’d not been a defeat in Hainaut since the great battle that’d destroyed the principality, and still its defenders were losing the land. Hanno among them. Undaunted by a string of defeats in the fields, the Dead King had begun attacking with renewed vigour and it was working. The trouble was that while Hanno’s army had been crushing the dead wherever they met, it could only be in one place. It could not both prevent the dead from reopening the tunnels at Malmedit and prevent them from breaking through at Juvelun, it could not both fight the army coming from Luciennerie out west and relive General Abigail from the latest siege at Lauzon’s Hollow.

Hanno’s army was spent and exhausted, ever victorious and ever smaller. And even worse was that they were no longer truly an effective shield. The Dead King had begun ignoring the defences in Hainaut and sending large flying constructs – named Pelicans, for their head resembled those of the birds – over the walls to disgorge warbands in Arans and Brabant, where they wreaked havoc before being slain. The Pelicans themselves avoided fighting, however, and though Antigone had brought down several with storms and lighting more kept coming. General Abigail believed that soon Keter would begin landing mages the same way to create disrupting forces by slaying and raising villages.

The Fox’s instincts were sharp enough that Hanno was not inclined to doubt them.

From what he heard, it was much the same to the west. Princess Rozala and her Named had pulled off a miracle just south of Peroulet but the defence line there had still failed for a time and it’d been costly to restore it. To the northwest, the Kingfisher Prince had smashed through every army on his way south to Brus while a sea of undeath nipped at his heels. Then to win his home some respite Frederic Goethal had turned back with half a dozen Named and his retinue to destroy a Crab, getting severely wounded. He would have gotten himself dead instead, had Otto Redcrown not ridden to his rescue and led their retreat through an avalanche. The love ballad about it was highly popular in camp.

Yet for all that the singing did the souls of soldiers good, it did not change the truth of things: the defences south of Cleves were teetering on the brink of collapse and those north of Brus would not hold when the tide came. Everywhere the war was being lost, and as was always the way when doom crept close men looked for someone to blame. The Army of Callow was the least harmful, simply insisting that if the Black Queen were there the dead would already be routed, but others were not so measured. The First Prince was cursed for weakness, Amadis Milenan men lost at the Battle of the Camps that might now turn the tide and the League of Free Cities for having made it all worse.

It was worse between Procerans. Lycaonese blamed feckless southerners, having lost half their princes and all their homes defending strangers they held in contempt, while Alamans cursed the Lycaonese for having drained their lands of men to defend the indefensible and Arlesites for being miserly in helping with the defence of the realm. As for the Arlesites, more and more they questioned their very presence in these parts. Why should they stand against nightmares when their own homes were yet untouched? Should they all die and leave their homeland undefended for when the storm came? Desertions would have been common if there was anywhere safer to flee to. Hanno had kept the army from coming anywhere near Neustal, knowing he’d lose hundreds to Julienne’s Highway overnight should he approach the fortress.

Hanno had been giving hope where he could, though not always in manners comfortable to him. Too many called him Lord White, and some of the rumours from further south… He had pushed down the discomfort, it was a small price to pay for keeping the armies from despair. The Lycaonese captains he had supported when the northerners had almost split over returning to their homelands had begun to look to him for orders, like the Brabantine levies, and even fantassins now sought his commands instead of Princess Beatrice Volignac’s – she whose very lands they were fighting in. There was a time where Hanno would have taken a step back, after realizing he now led what was effectively the second largest military force left in Procer, but no more.

The Truce and Terms had been forged under an understanding: he and Catherine would see to the affairs of Named while Cordelia Hasenbach saw to the affairs of state. It was never to be a perfect arrangement, not when Catherine Foundling was also an influential ruler in her own right, but there had been a balance. All contribute, all held up their part. Only now the First Prince no longer did. Reinforcements were no longer coming, the flow of soldiers and supplies tapering off. Salia was not holding up its part of the bargain, the promise that mortal law could see the war prosecuted without need for Named to step in. So what reason was there for Hanno to step back?

He would not hide behind a broken bargain when his duty was clear.

And so he had spoken with Antigone, who had spoken in turn with the only father she remembered. Which led him to a cool morning, standing with only her at his side as in the distance the sun rose and a brisk wind twisted around them. In the distance smoke rose in curtains, Keter’s armies ever making a hundred fresh devilries to unleash, but here on the hills the only thing to mar the green grass was soft dew. Greenery and water shivered both as the Witch of the Woods finished the last of her spell, clouds high above dispersing as if they’d been swatted through. A weight settled on the world, dew turning to mist as the grass began to twist and grow.

In the rising mists stood a giant out of the old stories. Bronze-skinned like others of his kind, but none of the Gigantes would ever dare to claim kinship with Kreios Maker-of-Riddles. It would have been absurd, in their eyes, as a fly claiming kinship to a hawk. The Titanomachy kept to no king, but that was only because it kept to something simpler: a god. There had been many, once, but now only one still lived. Crippled, left a shadow of himself. And yet Hanno knew without a doubt that even the spell-shadow now staring down at him could snuff his existence out with a thought. The ancient Titans, the founders of the Titanomachy, had done a great many arrogant things.

Calling themselves gods had not been one of them.

“Antigone.”

The voice was fond, thick with affection. Hanno’s comrade shifted, head dipping down and to the side to show both love and reverence. What had led Antigone to be raised by the Titan he did not know, much less what had convinced the ancient creature to teach her of the powers of the Gigantes, but their closeness had been evident from the first time he’d seen them. The Riddle-Maker had no such fondness for him, however, and the gaze was not so kind when turned to Hanno.

“White Knight.”

“Lord Titan,” Hanno replied, simply dipping his head.

Reverence but not love. Insincerity in the language of the Gigantes was seen as highly offensive. Worse than an insult, which at least was clearly conveyed.

“I am told you would make a request.”

He straightened.

“I would,” Hanno said. “This war, Lord Kreios, is one we are losing.”

“So it is.”

The indifference was plain to hear. The Riddle-Maker did not involve himself much in the affairs of his own descendants, much less these of humans. To that pale and patient gaze, they were like mayflies: come and gone in a moment. What did petty wars matter to the last of the Titans?

“It will not be like the others,” Hanno said. “The Intercessor has meddled. Should it be lost, there will be consequences.”

The Titan’s gaze was cold.

“To you.”

“You are wrong, Lord,” Hanno replied. “If this were a crusade, perhaps, but this war is not that. The east came as well, and now the south rises. The world stirs. This war will not be like the others.”

Consideration.

“The Young King no longer withholds strength.”

A concession.

“Your request?”

Hanno breathed in. Many a time he had thought of what he might say, of what words might sway an entity that had known more years he had known breaths. A hundred speeches he had crafted and discarded, only to admit the truth to himself: there were no words that would do it. Convince the Riddle-Maker should he not wish to be convinced. All he could do was ask and hope.

“Fight,” Hanno of Arwad said, and the word rang of power. “Stand with Calernia, with life and hope. Stand with us and fight.”

Silence.

“All things pass,” Kreios Maker-of-Riddles said. “You and he alike. Fate cannot be gainsaid or turned back: what must be will be.”

“Apathy?” Hanno replied. “Is that your answer, last of the Titans? Is that the wisdom your many years have to offer us?”

He glared, defiant.

“I see no wisdom in this,” he said. “Only weariness, and what worth is that? Who in this world is not weary, Riddle-Maker?”

“There is no word in any tongue your mind can comprehend,” the Titan said, “that would touch a sliver of what true weariness is. How could you? You grope at a speck of dust in the face of eternity and call it an end. You are not even a beginning, child. You are the dust of dust.”

“Then what holds you back?” Hanno challenged. “If none of it matters, if we are but dust, what stays your hand?”

The dark-skinned man raised his chin, glaring up at the shape in the mist.

“Retreat from the world all you like, it does not retreat from you,” Hanno said. “It will knock at your door, Maker-of-Riddles. It may be that you would weather our destruction, but would the Titanomachy?”

“All things pass,” the Riddle-Maker simply said.

Hanno scornfully laughed.

“It may be that you are worse than the elves,” he said. “Even they, in the face of oblivion, can muster more than a shrug.”

That, at last, earned a reaction.

“If you knew the truth of your insult, you would swallow your tongue,” the Titan said. “What the Dawning King schemes is abomination. Parcelling godhead into children, forcing a spring rightfully denied.”

“And this shines kindness on you?” Hanno coldly said. “What a prize to claim, that your apathy is less a curse on Calernia than abomination.”

“Your fight means nothing,” the Titan said.

“He’s right,” Antigone said.

Silence. Surprise.

“Antigone?”

“We don’t deserve saving,” the Witch of the Woods said. “It’s still true, what you told me when I was a child: we are petty creatures, humans. Most of us are not worth the saving.”

The last of the Titans watched the woman he had raised, wearing her face of painted clay, and said nothing.

“But it’s not about us,” Antigone said. “It’s about you.”

She moved her head to the side, titled it back. Grief, question.

“You stand at the crossroads again,” Antigone said. “Do you want to be the seven or the one?”

Hanno’s eyes narrowed. He had known that pattern to be older than most suspected, but whatever ancient lore she was speaking of was beyond even the reach of Recall. The Riddle-Maker’s pale eyes stayed on the woman he’d raised, silence stretching, and suddenly the pressure vanished. The mist dispersed and the wind began to blow again. The spell-shadow of Kreios was gone.

“Will he come?” Hanno asked.

Antigone’s shoulders were tense. I don’t know, she signed. Hanno of Arwad ruefully smiled, looking up at the sky. This morning the answer had been a no, he thought.

It was a small step forward, but still a step.

—

It was Lyonis that had done it, Cordelia decided.

On the great map at the heart of the Vogue Archive, the grey of death had spread. Bremen and Neustria were both lost to the dead and already the norther border of Brus was being tested. Once the generals of the Dead King had found paths through the swamps, once the thousands of Lycaonese slain were armed and assembled into battalions, the push into Brus would begin and the death knell of Procer would ring. And yet those news had not resonated strongly, down south – only Lycaonese principalities had fallen and Cordelia’s homeland was barely considered part of the Principate in some parts.

It was when the dead had smashed through the last few strongholds in Cleves and toppled the hastily raised defences in northern Lyonis that the panic had begun to spread. Princess Rozala had done the impossible – won three battles in three days with the same army across a breadth of sixty miles – and broken the enemy offensive before restoring the defences, but some had still slipped through. For the first time since the war had begun, bands of undead had made into Lyonis. One had even made it as far south as the border of Salia before being ridden down.

Despite Cordelia’s best efforts to maintain the calm, planting rumours it’d been bandits instead, panic had spread like a disease in every direction. The people of the Principate were being confronted with the fallibility of the realm they’d been under all their lives, the thought finally occurring that this wasn’t simply another crisis: Procer would be annihilated if it lost and it was undeniably losing the war.

Riots had been only to be expected. In Salia at least Cordelia had been able to put down largely without blood using the alchemical compound the Concocter had sold the Assembly the recipe to. Elsewhere the rioting had been put down violently if it had been put down at all. Entire swaths of Iserre were now in revolt against both Cordelia and their own prince while the ports of eastern Creusens had seized grain barges meant for further north before beginning to turn away all ships. That was not the worst of it, of course. This very morning her spymaster Louis de Sartrons had brought news of a smaller but more personal grief.

Princess Francesca, her friend and ally of almost a decade, was dead. Her palace had been swarmed by a mob of rioters and disaffected soldiers, who’d dragged the sixty-four years old princess into the streets and splattered her head with a rock before displaying her on a pole. It had happened, Cordelia was told, because Francesca had refused to consider what her distant cousin and successor proclaimed within the hour: Tenerife was seceding from the Principate of Procer. Envoys were being sent, Louis had told her, to Empress Basilia of Aenia and the League of Free Cities. Tenerife was leaving a sinking boat in favour of the protection that might be offered by a rising one.

The principality of Orense had followed suit within the week, deposing its distant prince still fighting under Princess Rozala and installing his youngest daughter in his stead, a thirteen-year-old girl who signed whatever the rebel leaders put in front of her to avoid having her throat cut and her ten-year-old brother shoved into the seat instead. Those were the open rebellions, but there were those more discreet.

Cordelia’s steadfast ally Prince Renato of Salamans had regretfully informed her he would no longer be able to send food and men north. If he did, he would lose this throne within the month. Prince Salazar of Valencis had done the same thing but less honestly, speaking instead of ‘unforeseen delays’ in sending both. Cordelia’s authority strengthened the further north one went, it could be said, but even there it was thinning. Orne, Cantal and Creusens now refused refugees at their borders no matter what was ordered. The only principalities that still obeyed Cordelia were those who felt the Dead King looming over them and even that rule was not ironclad.

Panic was making men do foolish things. Prince Ariel of Arans, spooked by the growing incursions of the dead into his lands, was trying to approach Callow for protection again – and willing to go under Laure for it, should that be the price. Cordelia was more amused than offended, knowing that neither Queen Catherine nor Princess Vivienne would be remotely interested and that Duchess Kegan, the regent in the capital, was of the opinion that everything east of the Parish should be left to burn. Worse than that was the talk in Brabant, where civil unrest had been placated only by the ruling princess abdicating and promising the offer the crown to the man the people saw as their salvation: Hanno of Arwad, the White Knight.

Cordelia’s agents had told her when the Brabant levies had begun to call the man ‘Lord White’ but, now that the sentiment was spreading through their homeland, she was facing the very real prospect of Prince White. The First Prince was not sure she had the votes to prevent confirmation of such a title by the Highest Assembly if the matter came before them. It was a sign of the times. Salia’s authority was weakening and now a hundred petty kings were emerging from the cracks on a once-great realm. And yet what could she do? So very little, when it came down to it, but that was no excuse for inaction and apathy.

Cordelia Hasenbach would not stand before the Heavens having known idle hands while the Principate of Procer burned down around her.

And today she would be laying eyes on one of the ways she might yet stem the tide. The weapon had been moved out of Aisne, which was now too close to for her tastes, and brought to Salia itself. Outside the city proper, requiring an hour’s ride there and back, but Cordelia would make the time to look at the angel’s corpse with her own eyes regardless. The test done in Aisne had made it necessary: if the First Prince was to use such a weapon, she would first gaze upon it. It was the last of what was owed. The man she’d chosen to oversee the matter awaited her at the edge of the grounds, mounted as well, as Cordelia allowed herself a genuine smile: even in these circumstances, it was a pleasure to see Simon de Gorgeault again.

“Your Most Serene Highness,” the older man said.

“Simon,” she warmly replied.

She had not forgotten his actions during Balthazar’s attempted coup, or his loyal service since as her Lord Inquisitor. He’d put down the title to serve here instead, but it had taken little urging. They both knew that spending time curtailing the House of Light now be much like closing the blinds on a home aflame. Besides, she had needed someone she could trust to handle this. He led her through the small houses where the priests and soldiers lived and to the temple that had been chosen to host the corpse. Larger than such a temple out in the countryside should be, for it hosted the tomb of some distant Merovins, but not a structure of great beauty: it was all worn pale stone and tall angular ceilings.

Once windows of tainted glass would have added some charm, but over the years some had been broken and replaced by simple green glass. Yet the temple was large enough and it was placed far from prying eyes, which was what had been required.

“I would advise that you gather yourself before entering, Your Highness,” Simon said after they dismounted. “It is… an experience.”

Cordelia silently nodded, eyes going down to her palm. She could faintly feel the burn of laurels against it, a pale echo of the searing pain she had felt the night she caught the coin of the Sword of Judgement. Simon de Gorgeault led the way into the temple, guards closing the gates behind them, and silence washed over Cordelia. It was as if the air had turned to water, and though she gulped down breaths she found her heart going wild. Simon’s cheeks were flushed but he seemed otherwise unaffected, perhaps from practice. Cordelia eventually gathered her bearings, smoothing down her dress and proceeding further into the temple.

There must have been rooms and halls she walked through, but she could barely see any of them. The slipped through her mind as if it were oily fingers. All that the First Prince recalled was movement, and then she stood before it. The weapon. The ealamal. It felt like the bones of a grand creature, curving along the ceiling, but there was nothing natural in this: wings of burnished copper spread wide, touching… something. A spine, Cordelia’s mind insisted, but it was not of bone. Her eyes shied away from it and what she could glimpse seemed like stone sometimes, though impossibly small compared to the burning wings of copper, and yet at others it seemed like translucent spike of swirling colours. Her eyes watered from trying to look at it.

“Only priests capable of wielding Light can look directly at it, Your Highness,” Simon said.

“The wings seem as though they might be simply copper, but the… spine,” Cordelia quietly said. “That is not of Creation.”

“You have not looked long as the wings, then,” Simon said. “That is for the best. I have known shallower seas.”

Cordelia shivered.

“But it worked, when used?” she asked.

“It is as an amplifier for Light, and something more too,” Simon agreed. “It carries something of the Choir of Judgement within itself and spreads it wherever it goes. It would incinerate undead and devils it touches, certainly, but beyond that the matter grows complicated.”

“It did not kill anyone who could use Light,” Cordelia said.

“But it killed soldiers as well as the criminals, Your Highness,” Simon said. “Not all of them, but many. Should a wave of such power pass over Procer, hundreds of thousands will almost certainly die.”

Judgement was strict and not inclined to mercy when doling out punishment. The weapon, when used, seemed to mimic the harsh attentions of that Choir. And people were only people, with all the frailties and wickedness that implied. Should the weapon be used on a large scale, many thousands would be slain. But not all of the Principate, Cordelia thought. Many, too many, but not all. And even should Catherine’s worst predictions come true and the Intercessor seek to influence such a weapon – which should not be possible, with Judgement silenced by the Hierarch’s spirit – to spread over all of Calernia, it would not represent annihilation. Some would survive. It would be a monstrous order to give and a horrifying outcome, the First Prince would not pretend otherwise.

It would still be preferable to letting the Dead King kill every living thing on the continent.

“Have it prepared for use,” Cordelia rasped out.

The former head of the Holy Society stiffened.

“I have misgivings, Your Highness,” Simon said. “I understand your instinct: it will take months of priests pouring Light to make of the corpse something that would give the Dead King pause. Yet such power, when gathered, has a way of demanding use.”

“In five months, the Principate will collapse,” the First Prince of Procer said.

The older man paused.

“We have too many refugees, Simon, and not enough fields,” she said. “I have been staving off the end by buying every scrap of grain I can borrow and beg, but the point of no return has come and gone. We have too many refugees and not enough fields, we are no longer sustainable.”

“Can Keter not be toppled?” the older man asked.

“Undead will be at the gates of Salia by the time our armies encamp below the walls of the Crown of the Dead,” Cordelia said. “I expect by then the south will have effectively seceded anyhow. I have ensured our armies will have supplies to carry on that last strike, but I can do no more than that.”

“Can the Chosen not turn the tide?” Simon asked, almost plaintively.

“The Chosen,” Cordelia hissed, “are the backbone of our defeat. How much time did we spend wrestling them into order as again and again they threatened the foundations of the alliances keeping us alive? The Damned might be a pack of rapacious killers, but they never gave us half the trouble the Chosen of the Heavens did. The Red Axe, the Mirror Knight, even the White Knight himself.”

She clenched her fists.

“I was promised that the Named would be seen to, but in this only the Black Queen kept her word,” Cordelia Hasenbach harshly said. “The White Knight failed utterly in this, and I will not now rely on him when the fate of every living soul in Calernia rests in the balance.”

She stared down Simon of Gorgeault.

“Have it prepared for us,” the First Prince repeated, and this time the ring of an order was unmistakeable.

The laurels burned against her palm, but Cordelia did not flinch. She would do what she must so keep the west in the war until the last moment. And should it stumble, should it fail?

She would, again, do what she must.

Interlude: East III

“Red runs the Tower’s mortar.”

– Praesi saying

Within an hour of entering Ater, Akua Sahelian was sought out for a conspiracy to overthrow the Empress. By the end of the day, no fewer than seventeen such offers had been made to her.

“It is all very tasteless,” she mused. “A defeat against an invading enemy – Callowan, too, how classical – paired with a great gathering of nobles at the imperial court, everyone scheming to overthrow the Tower and a vague sense of doom looming over all these proceedings. One would be forgiven for thinking they’d stumbled into a tragedy written now by Adomako. Any moment now we will stumble into a scene of overdone symbolism.”

The golden-eyed sorceress paused.

“A wounded gazelle being fought over by lions,” Akua decided. “It’s always lions, isn’t it? There is an excessive fondness in our writing for the beasts, Kendi, given their general uselessness.”

“You are mad,” Kendi Akaze harshly replied. “And not even in the way fools honour. Do not think I will not sell you out to the Tower at the first opportunity.”

Perhaps it was the presence of the Amaranth around her neck, the way the ancient artefact drowned out all the pettier emotions, but Akua had found herself growing fond of the man. He was remarkably straightforward in his hatred of her, and though he had not attempted to kill her since their mage duel in Kala she suspected it was only a matter of time until he tried again. She did not blame him for this, of feel particularly offended. She had led the man’s sister and several of his kin to their death at the Folly they named after her, and that was a better reason for hatred than most.

“I expect several of the nobles who approached me for treachery did so on Malicia’s behalf,” Akua amusedly replied. “Not that my having committed to nothing will soothe her fear of me in the slightest.”

“And why should she not fear you?” Kendi said. “All the world knows you seek her throne.”

“Naturally,” Akua agreed, draining the last of her cup.

She had lost the habit of pairing wine with antidote. The taste was no longer familiar to her, after drinking from other bottles. Her fondness of it had thinned. Her fondness of many things had thinned, the sorceress thought, and rose to her feet.

“Let us be off, Kendi,” Akua said. “There is time to be wasted and I would waste it elsewhere.”

Out in the City of Gates, not these luxurious apartments that felt like they were closing in on her from every direction. Like a noose slowly tightening. Kendi made an unpleasant comment about her intellect, charmer that he was, but he followed. He always followed.

How else, Akua thought, could he find the moment to stick the knife?

They went into the streets of the capital, followed by a horde of shadows. Spies belonging to three dozen different lords and the Eyes, soldiers, Sentinels and two – no, three assassins. Really, an illusionary veil? Akua had first made her reputation bleeding fae, this was insulting. She informed the man as much after melting off his limbs in a cloud of acid before turning to ask her other would-be assassins to try it again tomorrow, for she was not in the mood for sport today. Her shielding spells came up quicker than the arrow came down, so a few blood-curling screams later the last remaining assassin fled.

“Someone will succeed,” Kendi told her. “Sooner or later, you will fail.”

“I can always count on you for perspective,” she replied, patting his arm fondly.

He looked like he’d swallowed a lemon, which put her in a good enough mood to make up for the sloppy assassination attempts. Even the Jacks would have done better, and they’d only been around for a few years on top of being led by a whiny heroine. Akua found, as she walked the streets, that Ater was a pot about to boil over. The capital had swelled with refugees not only from Nok and the outskirts of Thalassina but now also the swaths of the Wasteland that’d been ravaged by the civil war. It was said that the City of Gates held half a million people within its walls, but she knew that to be inaccurate – it was usually closer to three hundred thousand, only growing when famine struck other parts of Praes.

At the moment, though, she suspected that there truly might be five hundred thousand people in the city. A disastrous number to try to keep fed during a siege, no matter how full the Tower’s granaries, and the city was poorly equipped to host them besides. Large swaths of the capital were abandoned, and though it was better than living in the streets making a home in those districts was barely livable. District mages would keep the sewers working, the wards in good state and keep an eye out for epidemics but wouldn’t really go out of their way to help beyond that. There were only so many of them and the city was enormous.

It’d once been custom for wealthy nobles to patronize sections of the city, but Malicia had stamped out the habit to consolidate her control over the capital. Would she reconsider now? Unlikely, Akua decided. The situation was too volatile for the empress to be willing to take on such a risk. Her wanderings through the half-ruined streets were noticed not only by spies and soldiers but also by the refugees themselves: someone must have recognized her, for a crowd began to gather. And, as crowds were wont to be, it grew angry. At first she wondered if she would have to retreat under shield spell as a mob tried to tear her apart, but then laughter choked up her throat as she made out what was being shouted.

“Down the Tower,” the crowd shouted.

“Death to Malicia,” the crowd insisted.

And, worst of all-

“Warlock, Lady Warlock,” they shouted. “Sahelian. Save us, Sahelian.”

Save us, Sahelian, Akua dully repeated. Had anyone ever spoken more absurd a sentence? It would have been the work of a moment to whip these dirty, desperate people into a raging mob. The fear was thick here, the Black Queen’s name on half the lips. The Queen of Callow would come and kill them all, they said, like she’d done to the refugees that’d tried to cross into the Fields of Streges. She was here to bury the Empire, bury them with it, and it was all Malicia’s fault. Five years ago you would have rioted at anyone trying to overthrow her, Akua thought. How quickly gratitude faded in the City of Gates.

“They’ll turn on you too,” Kendi said from behind her. “Tear out your throat like animals. It won’t last.”

It would have been so easy, to whip them into a frenzy and send them rioting into the streets. To sow the seeds of a chaos only she could calm and through that, oh through that she would rise. Climb the Tower until there was nothing left above, no one worth bowing to. So Akua climbed a broken house, a sea of people gathered before her, and told them the truth.

“The Black Queen will not kill civilians,” she said. “The Army of Callow quarrels only with the Tower. Stay indoors, stay out of the way, and you will be safe.”

It was not what they’d wanted to hear, she thought, as a rippled went through the crowd. They’d wanted blood, wanted death, wanted something to sink their teeth into. It was easier than going back to their hovels, afraid and cold. So she gave them something more.

“I have nothing left but my magic to offer you,” Akua said, “but that much I will give you. Bring your wounded, your sick. I will see to them.”

Something more than fear and cold. The first few were children – broken limbs, coughs, lungrot – but by the time she was done with them already people had begun to act. To organize. A run-down mansion that was clean and dry was opened to her, beds dragged into the great hall and what clean linen there could be rustled up volunteered. Strangers did this who had not known each other for an hour, with a smoothness that surprised. Jino-waza. A few hedge mages came forward and she taught them a spell to boil water and conjure clean water before continuing with the work. They came in as a trickle, already a line running outside for half the district and kept in order by large men with makeshift cudgels, but the trickle never slowed.

Akua’s magic did not tire. Fingers reattached, infections burned out, broken bones soldered. Cuts closed, parasites flushed out, nerves regrown. She had done this all many a time, after the Army of Callow saw battle. With Night instead of sorcery, but she was only better for the change. She was not sure how long she healed, the faces and people blending, but eventually she found she was drenched in sweat. The Amaranth kept getting caught in the red silk collar, so she set it down to the side and returned to the work. Immediately the heat washed over her, form the fire and the people and the Wasteland’s pounding sun, but she mastered herself. A man was ushered in with his young daughter.

She had a fever, which Akua’s finding spell told her was from an infection in the stomach. It would be more tedious than difficult to heal, which she informed them of. The man – a tall, heavy sort with soldier’s scar – looked heartbreakingly relieved.

“I knew you’d come through, Lady Sahelian,” he said as she began the spell. “You’ve always done right by us.”

Curious, she spared the man a glance.

“I mean no rudeness,” she began, and he snorted.

“I was only a soldier,” he said. “But I served under you at First Liesse. Would have at the Second too, if my wife hadn’t gotten pregnant with my youngest. The name’s Kamau.”

There was, to her dim horror, open pride in his voice at having served her. How desperate must you be, that the memory of my follies is the raft you now cling to?

“I was never disappointed by any of those I led into Liesse,” Akua said, uneasy at the lie.

At feeling the need to tell it.

“It’s been hard times since,” Kamau admitted. “What with your lord cousin taking over in Wolof, some of us were sent away. We tried to head south, but it… didn’t go well.”

“The Green Stretch turned you back?” she asked.

“No, not them,” the man said. “Callowans on the other side of the Wasaliti. Just farmers, at first, but then the Legions – the Army of Callow, I guess they call themselves out west – got bloody too.”

He grimaced.

“We lost my wife fleeing back to the Blessed Isle,” he admitted. “It’s only this one and my son now. I have no words for how grateful I am you’re helping her.”

His eyes turned harsh.

“Would that you’d killed them all at the Doom, Lady Warlock,” he said. “We’d be better off for it. Next time, yeah?”

Her throat tightened, the magic flowing from her palm into the girls’ belly almost wavered. I used you, she almost told the man. I used you all, until you were spent and dead and when you were I never looked back. Can you not see that? Can you not see that soldiers swung the swords but I own every death?

“It was a bitter day for all who knew it,” Akua croaked, lips gone dry.

“Been a lot of those since you started the wars – I hear the scholars call them the Uncivil Wars,” Kamau said, but suddenly paled. “Not that I meant this was your fault at all, Lady Warlock, I-”

Could not possibly speak a sentence more damning than that one, Akua thought. But she painted a smiled on her face, moved the lips and soothed his fear.

“Need not explain anything,” Akua said, then withdrew her hand from the girl. “It is done, dear. Be careful to drink only water until tomorrow, and don’t eat anything even if you get hungry. Your stomach is very sensitive, you’ll spew it right back up and it would hurt you.”

The little girl gravely nodded, and her father led her out after another round of apologies that she dismissed. Akua felt faint, as she next man was ushered in. How many of the people she had healed today were in the capital because of an action she had taken? Her folly had been used as the pretext for the Grand Alliance to go to war, for Ashur to ravage the coasts of the Empire, but there were faults closer to home. It was her banner raised that had begun the civil wars that were still raging across Praes, her schemes that had… Akua laid a hand against the wall, dizzied. She felt Kendi’s eyes on her, considering.

Forcing herself not to move with unseemly haste, she put the Amaranth back on and let the ancient grief of the crystallized tear wipe away the knots in her stomach. She returned to the work, learning from men as she did that the High Lady of Kahtan had sent mages do imitate her and now dozens and dozens of highborn were doing the same. When finally she tired, her magic grown sluggish, she told the people as much. Some refugees wept as she went, but more cheered and even more bowed. It sickened her. She turned to the Taghreb woman who had first thought of using the mansion, had risen through the crisis as a leader of sorts.

“I am using you, you know,” Akua said. “To raise my reputation.”

It was true, she thought. It must be true. It was one thing to spare a man, a forgivable whim, but this… she had purpose, reason. She had taken an opportunity offered. The other woman shrugged.

“Maybe,” she said. “But what does that matter, to the people you healed?”

Akua flinched away from her, from it all, but she was not to be allowed to retreat in peace.

“That was reckless,” Kendi said. “She could have turned on you, told the crowd. You just came close to dying.”

“I am always but a moment away from dying,” Akua replied, forcing nonchalance.

The dark-skinned man rolled his eyes.

“Yes, mile thaman Sahelian, lovely,” Kendi said, “but I don’t mean philosophy-“

“Neither do I,” Akua curtly interrupted. “Do you think my return to flesh came without a price? Somewhere in me lies a way for the Empress to kill me with a word. I do not speak in metaphor, Kendi, when I say I am only ever a moment away from death.”

That silenced him, though she was not sure whether the quiet was thoughtful or surprised. No doubt he would soon begin to consider how the Empress might be incited to put her life to an end. Tired of it all, Akua moved towards the centre of the city. The Black Knight, at least, could be relied on for cold company. Marshal Nim was not the Legion headquarters of the capital but instead at her own manse, which Akua promptly headed to. That the servants allowed her and Kendi to enter was a surprise, but not so much of one as the fact that Nim was very obviously drunk. As mfuasa were trained to Kendi went to a corner just out of sight, where he could easily be forgotten, but his gaze missed nothing.

“Marshal,” Akua greeted the ogre. “It appears you have me at something of a disadvantage, drink-wise. Will you not offer me your hospitality?”

Only the Black Knight did not stare her down coldly, call her a snake or sent her away. Instead, to Akua’s dismay, the ogre twitched and then wordlessly gesture for her to sit. Most chairs here were built with ogres in mind, and the bottles on the table were closer to a barrel than what the sorceress would have meant by the term, but Akua found a carafe of terrible Aksum gold and a glass that was not larger than her head. She took a sip, then grimaced.

“This vintage is a war crime,” Akua noted, “and I should know.”

Marshal Nim stirred, as did the golden-eyed mage’s hopes, but they were just as swiftly dashed.

“You were right,” the Black Knight said.

“As is only natural,” she replied, hiding her alarm.

“Malicia doesn’t trust the Legions as far as she can throw them,” the Black Knight said. “I am to share command of the defences with the High Lady of Kahtan.”

Who commanded the largest of the highborn armies come to reinforce Ater as well as the largest coalition of nobles not under Malicia’s thumb. In olden days that would have made High Lady Takisha the Chancellor, but nowadays it mostly meant that the Empress was scheming to kill and discredit her.

“I can’t even blame her, after Kala,” the Black Knight cursed. “They deserted, Sahelian. Deserted!”

A bottle of wine hit the wall, shattering with enough glass spraying everywhere that it would need wheelbarrow to clean up. Akua eyed the other woman clinically. Nim was drunk, obviously, but more than that she was despairing. Not only had she been decisively beaten by Marshal Juniper on the field – which must have stung, considering the Hellhound had not been all that highly thought of among the upper ranks of the Legions – but in the wake of that defeat almost a third of her army had deserted rather than fight. Now she had only her last loyalists and the skeleton legions that’d been left in the capital, a force weaker than the one Marshal Juniper had already beaten.

The Legions of Terror she had been fighting to preserve were effectively dead. The soldiers that’d walked off the field at Kala would not be returning to anyone’s banner any time soon and the Tower would not forget or forgive that desertion – no matter how earned it had been. Even the legionaries who had stayed would be asking themselves why they were still fighting for the madwoman in the Tower that’d turned two thirds of the continent against them. Her Role was broken at Kala, Akua decided. She failed in the central conceit of it, which was ‘the general of the Empire’s armies’. She must either find a different Role or lose her Name.

And Akua, who had tried to save her life and helped at every turn, was here in her moment of weakness. I could promise you the Legions you want and mean it, Akua thought, and for that you’d follow me. It was the right place, the right time, with the right history behind it. The Gods Below were offering a Black Knight of her own on a silver platter. All it would take was making promises that Akua genuinely believed would be in the interest of the Empire: the Legions had become one of the pillars of Praes since the Reforms, they were well-worth preserving and kept separate from politics exactly the way Marshal Nim wanted them to be.

All it would take was for Akua to speak sweet nothings with a silver tongue.

“You are a fool.”

Oh dear, that’d been her speaking hadn’t it? No matter, she could still salvage this.

“Are you truly so weak-willed, Black Knight?”

Not only was this distinctly not a sweet nothing, Akua thought, but it was arguably the opposite. An insulting something? She drank a bit more war crime to wash down the taste of whatever madness had seized her. Nim was shaken out of her daze by the insults, at least, which was a form of progress. Towards nothing pleasant, but progress anyhow.

“Even if I smash your head in for that, I’ll still be dead before the month is out,” the Black Knight said. “I know what a pattern of three is, Sahelian. I have won once and since suffered a draw. That boy will have my head soon enough.”

“Then find a way to lose on your terms,” Akua harshly replied. “Are you a Marshal of Praes or a maudlin child? Defeat need not mean death. Even Fate can be gamed. As for your precious Legions, what did you expect?”

“That they would stand behind their Black Knight,” Nim roared.

“They did,” Akua calmly replied. “You are not him.”

That cut deep, she saw, but she was not done.

“Did you think this would be easy, Nim?” she mocked. “That you would earn a Name to pluck ripe peaches from the tree? You are villain.”

She threw her own glass against the wall. It shattered most satisfyingly.

“You are the Black Knight of Praes,” Akua hissed. “Have some fucking pride. You lost and your ideal is in tatters, what of it? Do you think a hundred of your Name have not stood where you do, all ashes in their hands and blood in their mouth?”

“It can’t be salvaged,” the Black Knight replied, eyes wild. “We all saw-”

“Then raise it again from the ground up,” Akua cut in harshly. “Or are you so enamoured with being the lesser of your predecessor that you can not do the same he did? This was never going to be handed to you, and it offends me that for even a breath you thought it might be. You are Named to struggle, to rise above what you were. If you cannot tolerate the way of the world, then change it.”

Marshal Nim rocked back.

“I – you,” she stumbled. “What is this, Sahelian?”

“A disappointment,” Akua scathingly said. “I thought better of you, Marshal. A petty idealist you might have been, but you did not lack for spine. The Hellhound did not take if from you on the field, so where was it mislaid?”

Nim looked as lost as she was drunk.

“I thought you would,” she said, hesitated.

Make an offer, she did not say.

“What are you, that I should?” Akua said, rising to her feet. “Naught but a broken thing which knows not what it wants or what it seeks. You have no design, no fire, not even a plan. You call yourself Named but you are a dandelion, a victim of wind and whims.”

She was panting, by the end of that. And wondering if it was the Black Knight she was castigating.

“Stand on your own feet, Black Knight,” Akua Sahelian said. “What use could anyone have for you before you do?”

And so she rose to hers, dizzy. And looking at Nim’s face she felt like cursing, like weeping, like screaming at the top of her lungs. Because when she had walked into this room the Black Knight had been a woman who might had made a deal with her, but now she looked at Akua like someone who wanted to follow her. Like ragged Kauma in the ragged mansion, handed scraps of a fate and yet so odiously grateful. Did she need to set fire to the city, before someone at last screamed enough? Akua fled.

“She will know what you are in time,” Kendi said. “And hate what she sees then.”

“She should already hate me,” Akua bit out.

By the time they got back to her manse it was dark, and so the highborn came out to play. The ones that had approached her during the day were fools and amateurs, but those who fully intended to see the Empress usurped now came crawling out of the gutters. The invitation she received was not signed, but that was the way of such conspiracies. She put on a cloak and returned to the streets, Kendi following dutifully, to see what the conspirators had to offer. One could not topple the Tower without the support of powerful backers. The heavily warded manse she was led to by a guide was dark, and she was brought to a room where twelve sat masked at a great table.

Amused, she stared down the woman at the head of tit.

“You are sitting in my seat,” Akua said.

There was a ripple. Laughter, offence, some just surprised by her gall. Kendi disappeared into a dark corner, already forgotten by almost everyone in the room.

“That remains to be seen,” an indistinct voice replied through the mask.

“Does it now?” Akua mused.

It had been hours since she used magic. She was still exhausted, but her disdain for this farce lent her strength. Power billowed out tearing through the anchored illusion forcing shadows and then, obeying her will, cutting cleanly. One after another, twelve masks dropped. Some were hastily caught, but not enough.

“High Lady Takisha,” Akua noted, locking eyes with the woman at the head of the table. “How bold.”

“I’ll have to kill you for this,” the High Lady of Kahtan coldly said.

She laughed, scornfully, in the woman’s face.

“Ah yes, so that instead these fine conspirators might instead support your bid for the Tower,” Akua said, running a finger across the table. “No doubt you gathered this little event because you were able to climb it on your own. You are known as a woman highly lacking in ambition.”

A moment of silence.

“She has you there, Muraqib” a masked man carelessly said.

“Without my support and that of my vassals, you have no chance of success,” High Lady Takisha evenly said. “This will have a price. First comes the restoration of the Name of –”

“No,” Akua said.

Startled surprise. This was not, the sorceress knew, how this conversation was meant to go.

“Pardon?” High Lady Takisha said.

Akua was so very tired of this, she realized. Of the cloak and dagger plots, of the pit of hatred and betrayal that was the Tower. Of this empire of endless teeth, guzzling down its own people not to achieve anything but for the mere purpose of continuing to exist. And they were part of it, too, these masked fools before her. Teeth in the maw.

“You do not make demands of me,” Akua said, and it felt good.

“You are mistaken if-”

“Who are you, Takisha Muraqib, that I should take heed of you?” Akua asked, honestly meaning the question. “All I see is the last rat standing. What have you won, what have you done, that your displeasure should give me pause?”

“Hard talk, coming from the Black Queen’s concubine,” a man bit out.

“I would have more power as Catherine Foundling’s bedwarmer than you ever have or ever will wield,” the golden-eyed aristocrat laughed in his face. “That’s why you’re here, all of you, in this room instead of halfway across the city plotting to back someone else.”

She swept the room with her gaze.

“So let us dispose of the pretence that you are owed for this conversation, that this is a favour done onto me,” Akua said. “You are vultures circling a wounded lion but too afraid to take the plunge. I need you?”

She moved her lips into a smile.

“You need me,” Akua corrected, “and you, High Lady Takisha, are still sitting in my seat.”

Silence stretched out, and something like relief welled up. At last, she thought, the end. They would balk and turn on her, Malicia would end it and- and Takisha Muraqib, hatred in her eyes, rose to her feet. No, Akua thought. No. How can you not seen that I have nothing to threaten you with, no one behind me? You are a High Lady of Praes, the sharpest of irons, so why are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory? Why, you misbegotten Hellgods, do I keep winning?Appalled, Akua Sahelian took her seat at the head of a table where twelve of the most powerful lords and ladies of Praes sat.

“They measure your back for knives already,” Kendi told her as they left. “You will not be forgiven for this.”

“Then why,” Akua sadly asked, “did they let me do it to them?”

She returned to the manse, sagged into a seat, and closed her eyes. Exhausted beyond words. Behind her she heard Kendi moved, but somehow she was still startled when pain bloomed on the side of her head.

—

Akua woke up. The Gods were laughing and Akua Sahelian woke up. Her back hurt, and fingers found a bloody scar on it, but she was breathing and when she rose in her bed she found Kendi Akaze seated across from her, eyes smiling. On a low table before him there were two objects. One was the Amaranth, smashed to pieces. The other looked like a strip of bone, carved with so many rows of small runes that it was hardly recognizable.

“Lodged in your spine,” Kendi amiably said. “It was difficult to remove it without paralyzing you, but I managed.”

“Why?” she croaked out.

“Because you are in pain,” he said. “And I want you to drown in it without your necklace to save you.”

“This is madness,” Akua hissed.

“Is it?” Kendi said. “I followed you today. You have won the people, the Legions, the nobles. The Empire is in the palm of your hand, the Tower yours for the taking.”

He leaned forward.

“And what do you think of that, Akua Sahelian?” he asked.

He was not lying, she realized with anguish. She’d known it too but shied away from looking the truth in the eye. After a lifetime of scheming and murdering, after struggling and betraying and burning every bridge there was to burn, the Empire was in the palm of her hand. She let it sink in, settle into her mind, until an answer came from the heart of her.

Akua threw up all over the marble floor.

“That’s what I thought,” Kendi said with cold, hard satisfaction.

—

Catherine Foundling was coming to kill her.

The knowledge of that circled Malicia’s thoughts like a vulture, never close but never far. Amadeus’ little orphan, turned into a brutal warlord, was marching on Ater to kill Alaya of Satus. Malicia tried to set the thought aside, but all the news brought to her only made it stand out more starkly. Her impostor in Mercantis had been unmasked, the devil slain and now the Forty-Stole Court was maddened with rage. They had cut all ties with the Tower, placed the Empire under embargo and offered a fresh round of loans to the Grand Alliance at courteous terms. And, worst of all, they had sought the protection of Empress Basilia of Aenia.

A title the entire League of Free Cities had recognized after the fall of Penthes, along with the worrisome one of ‘Protector of the League’. Not only had the entire League of Free Cities followed Mercantis in severing ties, but now all its ports were closed to Praesi ships and the city-states were mobilizing for war. To join the war against the Dead King, Ime believed, but she could not be sure. All Malicia could know was that there was only one large military force on Calernia uncommitted to warfare, and that it was her hard-bitten foe. That hatred would linger for decades, lead the south to oppose her for the rest of her reign. If she had one.

Catherine Foundling was coming to kill her.

Ashur was still sundered in two, but it was no longer starving because Malicia no longer controlled the fleet meant to blockade it. The necromancers that’d usurped the fleet of Nicae through use of Still Waters no longer took her orders. They had taken to raiding the coasts of Ashur and the League for plunder and corpses. For now they traded with Stygian slaver ports for supplies, but that would be clamped down on by ‘Empress’ Basilia. They’d have to find other ports of call eventually, and Malicia feared that the Tideless Isles – scoured clean of corsairs by Ashur – would appeal. Her own masterstroke turned pirate might begin raiding the coasts of Praes.

Out west the Dominion had been stabilized by the First Prince’s clever diplomacy after the Isbili were wiped out in some sort of blood magic ritual, but the Black Queen had won the higher prize by making the leading couple of Levant her pupils. Procer itself was finally collapsing even in the face of Hasenbach’s inhuman efforts to keep it together – the first secession had happened six months later than Malicia’s prediction, which was a staggering delay. The First Prince had kept together her empire with little more than letters and diplomacy as it tumbled into utter ruin. Malicia was genuinely admired the feat, but Hasenbach had not lasted long enough. The collapse was happening too early, there was nobody left in the Grand Alliance in a position to contest Callow’s influence.

And Catherine Foundling was coming to kill her.

And all the ruinous reverses abroad were nothing to what trouble had now fallen on Praes. Wolof had been knocked out of the war, the alliance of Aksum and Nok subverted by a foreign power and now Okoro was cowering in its fortresses. The Clans had elected a leader, but Malicia was uncertain whether or not it had been Chieftain Troke Snaketooth. All the informants of the Eyes had gone silent overnight, and while the orc she’d made bargains with had been in the lead last she heard, there was no telling who had triumphed. Worse, the horde of greenskins was not only going nowhere Nok but it was very clearly marching on Ater, burning and pillaging everything in its path. Malicia was now facing the distinct possibility that even if the Grand Alliance retreated the Clans might still sack a weakened Ater.

Ater itself was slipping her fingers. She could feel in the way that Rule was weaking, the wat fewer people truly saw her as the Dread Empress of Praes. Sentiment in the streets was turning against her, the Legions were a mutinous wreck riddled with desertions and the nobles come to attend the imperial court had plots the way stray dogs had fleas. She’d remained ahead of them, so far, but she was a dancer with a shrinking stage to dance on. Gods, even district mages were getting murdered out in the ruined districts. With a goblin steel blade, so it was likely some Legion deserter stirring up trouble. The only force Malicia could still truly trust in was the Sentinels, and the thought had rage frozen in her throat.

These were the same soldiers that had nailed her father to the floor of his own inn, and Catherine Foundling was coming to kill her.

The brutal little bitch could not be bargained or reasoned with, she was out for blood and no matter what Malicia threw at her she seemed to come out on top. The battle in the Wasteland that should have broken her army had instead seen it reinforced, Marshal Juniper crowned the finest general to come out of the War College and Sepulchral bending the knee. It was even more ridiculous than Wolof, where even captured she’d somehow still claimed victory. Next she would be struck by lightning and somehow gain the power to call on storms, the absurd chit. There was no going around her, either. The First Prince no longer even bothered to read her letters and with Mercantis turning on her she no longer had an intermediary.

Only strength would make the Queen of Callow listen, and while the host gathered in Ater’s shadow outnumbers the Army of Callow it was not Malicia’s. It belonged to a hundred different nobles, too many of them traitors. And even if it gave battle, the empress was not certain it would win. The Army of Callow had humbled even the Legions, which had triumphed against the armies of the old Praes handily. Malicia still had the Tower’s arsenal, and for the first time in her reign she was deploying the artefacts and horrors that a thousand tyrants had sealed in deep vaults, but she had… concerns. Even should these powers bring her victory, it might be the kind worse than a defeat. Yet what else was she to do?

Alaya did not want to die, and Catherine Foundling was coming to kill her.

It was a relief when Ime came to meet with her, a distraction from her thoughts and their downwards spiral. Connect told her that her spymistress’ loyalty had weakened but not in a harmful way. The nuance was hard to read, but Malicia had learned. Ime must have thought of running, then. She had not, Malicia remined herself. For now, that was what mattered.

“Akua Sahelian spent most of yesterday healing refugees,” Ime said, moments after being seated. “She then met with Marshal Nim in her private manse. Late that evening, she disappeared into a warded location – my agents were slain trying to find out with who. There were no survivors.”

“I will summon her to the Tower, then,” Malicia said, cocking an eyebrow. “As was the intent from the start. With the alternative being death, she will give us the names and facilitate a purge of the most disloyal.”

“I thought you might say that,” Ime evenly said. “But she’s too dangerous to be allowed to live, Malicia. She has too much support while yours wanes.”

Malicia stilled.

“What did you do?” she harshly asked.

“I used the kill switch,” Ime said.

The empress mastered her anger. Only she had been supposed to be able to give that order. Yet another way her authority was weakening.

“Now we have no match for the Hierophant,” she said. “Which might well lose us the siege.”

“It’s much worse than that,” Ime said. “I used the artefact, but she’s still alive. It was removed, Your Majesty. We no longer have a leash on her.”

Malicia’s fingers clenched. The Warlock – or close enough – was now free to act against her without deterrent. And she could not simply order her killed, because even should such an attempt work and fail to trigger an uprising against her killing Akua Sahelian might well get her killed by virtue of there being no one able to stop Wekesa’s son from mauling the defences of the capital. Her mind spun, looking for angles, but there were none. No answer, no clever trick.

From her silence, Ime must have come to the same conclusion.

“I advised against recruiting her,” Ime quietly said. “She’s always been a risk-”

“I know what you advised, Ime,” Malicia barked out. “I assure you, there is no need to remind me. I deemed it necessary at the time.”

She’d meant to kill the Sahelian or surrender her back to the Grand Alliance’s custody the moment an arrangement was reached, either way ending her as a threat. Where had she found a mage trustworthy and skilled enough to find the artefact in her spine, much less remove it?

“We need to prepare to pull out of Ater,” Ime advised. “Set our enemies on each other and approach again from a better position. It might be time to seriously consider wedding either Sargon Sahelian or Jaheem Niri. It keeps them committed and us in the game.”

Jaheem Niri was already married, not that he wouldn’t murder his wife in a heartbeat to become the imperial consort. The prospect of marrying either was repulsive enough that Alaya felt physically nauseous. She closed her eyes, looking for any other way. Ime stayed silent for a long time, then rose to her feet.

“I will prepare what I can, Alaya,” the spymistress said. “Think on it, that is all I ask.”

The empress stayed alone in the council room for a long time, with only silence and that ever-present thought for company. Eventually she rose to her feet, the sky outside turned to night. Sleep, she thought, sleep would put it all in perspective. But her quarters were not empty. On the table by the enchanted window, a woman was leaning back her seat, boots against the rim of table two hundred years old as she looked down at the city. Fair-haired and tanned, she had in her hand a crystal glass from Malicia’s personal cabinet that she was refilling with wine from a silver flask. In her lap lay a lute, old and worn but still beautiful.

“I am told you are particularly vulnerable to Speaking,” Alaya said. “I wonder, would I even need to vocalize to make you kill yourself?”

The Wandering Bard turned to offer her an insolent blue-eyed grin and a sloshing toast that spilled wine on her leathers.

“Those who live by the sword tend to get killed with swords,” the Bard shrugged. “You know how it is, I’m sure.”

“You are on the Red List,” Malicia said. “Kill on sight.”

“And yet here I am,” the Bard noted, “still breathing.”

A moment of silence.

“So you are,” Malicia conceded.

The other woman laughed throatily, by the sound of it already well on her way to drunk. The empress knew better than to believe it made her any less dangerous.

“Have a drink with me, Dread Empress,” the Bard said. “I had… well, I wouldn’t call it luck all things considered, but it was a fateful draw.”

Best to humour her for now. Malicia stepped aside to take a cup from her personal cabinet, which as she’d suspected was wide open already, and took a glass match for the Bard’s own. She set it down on the table, eyebrow cocked, and took a seat of her own. Casually, as if this were not the knife’s edge. The Bard set down the lute on her lap to lean forward, pouring Malicia’s glass uncouthly full from her flask. The empress politely took her cup, breathing in the scent, and froze. She took a tentative sip. It was truly horrid wine, somehow tasting of mud, but Alaya knew it well. She’d been drinking it for years with someone now lost to her. Her heart clenched.

“Fate’s a bitch,” the Wandering Bard confessed. “I should know, I’ve served as the closest thing Calernia has to one since before… well, written calendars really. Only the Riddle-Maker’s older and his kind didn’t really bother with that sort of thing.”

Ice, let her be ice. Smooth and cold and polished enough this old monster would see only her own reflection.

“You will not distract me with interesting fragments of history,” Malicia said. “You came here with a purpose.”

“It’s the only way I can go anywhere,” the Bard snorted, then drank deep of her cup. “Gah, definitely not a lucky draw. But as I was saying, my good – well, you know what I mean – empress, I feel like the time where we were enemies has passed. At least temporarily, yes?”

“You killed Sabah,” Alaya evenly said.

“You liked her,” the Bard noted. “So did I. Most people did, I imagine, when she wasn’t eating or killing them. But she needed to die so I could get my way. So she did.”

Ice, ice. She would not think of kind smiles or the children left behind, for where would that lead her? Only ice would see her live out the year. Malicia moved her lips into a smile, did not let it reach her eyes.

“And how many of my troubles can be laid at your feet, I wonder?” Malicia asked.

“The funny thing is,” the Bard said, “honestly not that much.”

She waved a hand dismissively, trailing wine all over the table.

“I work through Named,” the Bard said, revealing nothing the Eyes had not already told her, “and Named haven’t been your problem. Your empire has been going to shit because you Role doesn’t match your Name.”

“Is that so?” Malicia politely smiled.

“You’ve been ruling like a Chancellor,” the Bard said. “But the Chancellor’s not meant to be on top of things in these parts. A Dread Empress is meant to add, inspire, create. You’ve been dividing, lessening, binding. Chancellor’s work, and that’s why it’s all been going downhill: you no longer have other Named on your side to compensate for that.”

“I told you history would not distract me,” Malicia said. “Did you think namelore would?”

“I just like to talk,” the Bard artlessly confessed. “But let’s be all business, if you want. You have a problem: Catherine Foundling very badly wants you dead and there’s no one left in a position to stop her.”

“Ater still stands,” Malicia said.

“Said every Dread Empress who ever got murdered,” the Bard replied, rolling her eyes. “It’s not a siege that’s going to decide this. You’ve got an empire’s worth of stories come home to roost in Ater, Allie, and that’s what kills or saves you.”

“And here I had thought it would be a blade,” Malicia smiled.

The Bard snorted.

“Sure, if you want to be obtuse about it,” she said. “The blade’s just the natural consequence of the story turning against you. It doesn’t drive the carriage, it’s a destination. And you’re in luck, my friend, because it happens that destination your-head-on-a-pike just isn’t doing anything for me. It’s a bit of pain in my ass, to be honest.”

“What a fortunate happenstance,” Malicia said. “I, too, would prefer to avoid my decapitation. You have thoughts on how this might be achieved?”

“I’m all about thoughts,” the Bard agreed. “Just so many thoughts. So lemme share one with you: do you know when a Named is most vulnerable?”

“At the end of a pattern of three, presumably,” Malicia said.

While those did not necessarily end in death for the villain involved, that did seem to be the prevalent trend.

“Nah,” the Bard slurred, “it’s just before they come into their Name. See, that’s the spot where they’re riding fate but they’re not really protected yet.”

The empress considered the other woman a moment, drinking shallowly from her cup.

“I am told,” Malicia said, “that Catherine Foundling is coming into a Name.”

“Defence isn’t how you win this game,” the Bard said. “So we’re going on the offensive, you and I.”

Malicia’s eyes narrowed.

“How?”

“It’s not set yet, what she’s turning into,” the Bard said. “So we nudge it so it becomes what we need. The east that is land and armies and politics, all the things that pass, instead of the East – the story, the idea. Old Evil and buried grudges, the other half of the world. She’s only as dangerous as what she keeps, you see.”

She was starting to.

“And when she transitions?”

“There’s this joke I love,” the blue-eyed Bard enthusiastically said. “It’s from Ashur so, you know, it’s not actually funny, but it’s great anyways and it goes like this – and stop me if you’ve heard it before!”

She cleared her throat, which somehow had her spilling a third of her cup over her own lute and then cursing before wiping it off effectively with her sleeve.

“Right so there’s this man who goes to a priest, a Speaker,” the Bard said. “And he says that his daughter’s taken up with some Praesi, proper smitten. So he’s come for advice because he needs a time, a place and man to officiate.”

The Bard began chortling, already taken with her own joke.

“So the Speaker gives them, only the man comes back the day after all riled up,” she said. “Says it was a disaster. Why, the priest asks. Did the wedding not go well? And then the man erupts: wedding? I was asking about-”

“-a funeral,” Malicia finished.

It was easy enough to infer from context. The Bard pouted.

“I don’t know why people keep doing that to me,” she whined. “No wonder you’re a villain.”

Malicia ignored her… ally’s petty moaning, herself taking petty satisfaction in having caused it.

“A time, a place and a man to officiate,” Dread Empress Malicia mused. “That is all?”

“That’s the good thing about Catherine, Allie,” the Intercessor grinned, all teeth and malice. “You can always count on her to bring the knife.”

Chapter 22: Advent

“Every crisis is an opportunity, Chancellor. Mostly an opportunity to die, but occasionally other things as well.”

– Dread Empress Malevolent II

“I always forget how ridiculously huge Ater is,” I said.

In the distance the tall ramparts of the City of Gates loomed, crowned with bastions atop the inner walls and the gargantuan silhouette of the Tower rising to touch the clouds. It was an impressive sight, the kind that gave you pause even if you knew – as I did – that it was rare for the Dread Empire to actually have enough military strength in the city to man the entire set of walls properly. The capital was so large that if it were not so terribly fortified it might actually be indefensible, though another school of thought back in the College had argued that the size was actually part of the defences. Tyrants in the Tower had never been shy about drawing their opponents into abandoned districts before setting them aflame.

“Surely Salia is even larger,” Arthur ventured. “It was raised in fertile lands near a river, not at the heart of the Wasteland.”

“In size Ater is larger,” I noted. “Entire sections of it are usually abandoned, though, and Salia definitely has more people in it.”

The Squire eyed the capital of the Dread Empire with a skeptical look on his face, which had me smothering a smile. Back when I’d first come to Ater I’d been too wrapped up into myself and what Amadeus was teaching me to really take it in properly, but arriving as part of an invading army was giving my fellow orphan a bit more perspective.

“I don’t see how they can feed that many people,” Arthur admitted. “Or even have enough drinking water. Is it an underground source like Hainaut?”

“Five different underground lakes,” I confirmed. “The Miezans built a bunch of enchanted funnels when they first took over the city that feed a system of fountains anyone can take from, but there’s been works since. Dread Emperor Vile made aqueducts and cisterns when the population got too large and Dread Emperor Tenebrous-”

“Isn’t that the one who turned into a giant spider?” the Squire asked, sounding amused.

“Allegedly,” I snorted. “No knows for sure, though there sure are a lot of them under the city nowadays. Anyhow, Tenebrous made an enormous reservoir to catch rain and freeze it, a reserve for when the city is in drought.”

It was a pleasant change to be able to tell when Scribe was approaching. Like a touch in the back of my mind, a star I could see shining in the black whenever I closed my eyes. One of many.

“Vile’s cisterns were dismantled under Dread Emperor Venal,” Eudokia said, standing right behind Arthur.

Who nearly jumped out of his skin, swallowing a curse. It was a nostalgic sight: she used to do the same to me back when I was the Squire.

“That’s the one who thought Ater was a shithole and tried to build his own capital, right?” I asked.

“Indeed,” Scribe agreed. “The cisterns were lined with silver for purity enchantments, he had them broken down to use the metal in coinage.”

Well, the man had come by his regnal name honestly.

“They were never replaced?” Arthur asked.

“Much later,” Scribe replied. “Maleficent the Second had the silver statues in Delos’ great library melted down and used for replacements after the Secretariat tried to refuse her access to their histories.”

She’d had a way with insults, Maleficent the Second, when she wanted to make a point. It was said she’d had the third of the Magisterium that’d refused to surrender to her enslaved and forced into the Spears of Stygia as an admonishment.

“So thirst isn’t going to make them surrender,” Arthur said. “What about food, though?”

I cocked an eyebrow at him.

“Do you want a lecture on how the imperial tax system works?” I drily asked.

“Is it murder?” the boy drily replied. “I’m guessing murder is involved.”

“Ater has the largest granaries in the country,” I told him. “They’re massive, the size of palaces.”

“Even with the field ritual gradient and rotations introduced under Nefarious, the fields around the city can only feed a little under half of Ater,” Scribe said. “The remainder comes from taxes. High Seats are charged with collecting a tenth of the harvest in their lands and that of their vassals, which is then sent to Ater.”

“Independent lords can have harsher or lighter burdens, depending on whether or not the Tower likes them,” I added, “and the freeholders of the Green Stretch are bound to sell a third of their harvest to the Tower at a fixed price.”

Less than it was worth, usually, but it was part of the terms they leased the land from the Tower at.

“Malicia improved the yields for Ater significantly during her reign,” Eudokia admitted, “by changing the laws so that lords could pay part of their monetary taxes to the Tower in food instead. Poorer lords with good years leaped at the opportunity, and with Callowan grain pouring in all the while there is a truly prodigious amount of foodstuffs in the city at the moment.”

“We’re not going to starve them out,” I summed up. “They’ve got six months in them, at least, and maybe as much as a year if they ration severely enough.”

We did not have six months, I kept to myself. Cordelia believed that Procer would finally break in five, but we had to leave Praes before that: it’d take us at least a month and a half to return west and half a month to muster for the attack on Keter. We had three months here, to be generous, but that’d be a razor-thin margin. Two was more realistic, two and maybe the odd week tossed it on top of it. Which meant we would need to either force a surrender or take the city by force, storming the walls. I was very much trying to avoid the latter, because the last of the Legions would bleed us dry for it. The entire city was a fucking deathtrap of old artefacts and half-buried monstrosities. If we didn’t get several demons tossed at us before this was over I’d eat my crown. I cast a look at Scribe.

“You needed me for something?”

She nodded.

“There is word from the High Lady of Kahtan,” Eudokia said.

Takisha Muraqib was the leader of the largest chunk of enemy troops outside the city, so I’d made a point of trying to approach her for a settlement the moment I could. If she turned on Malicia a lot of nobles would follow her example, which might well take the city for us without an assault. Loyalty in Praes was a lot like horse racing: people loved a winner, but if the champion limped all bets were off.

“We’ll talk later,” I told Arthur. “Sit down with Apprentice and figure out tactics for fighting the Black Knight indoors or on a street, it’s where you’re most likely to run into her. If you come up with something solid, we’ll try it out on Named.”

I already had several particularly vicious exercises in mind. As far as I was concerned, you’d never really had to deal with a proper ambush until you tried grounds that the only son and pupil of Wekesa the Warlock had been given an hour to trap. Last time he’d temporarily ended gravity in a warded circle, which had been spectacularly amusing to watch on top of being very humiliating for the kids.

“I will, Your Majesty,” the Squire swore. “We’ve been talking over ideas on the march.”

“I’ll look forward to it, then,” I said.

The kid – young man, really, but it was hard to think of him that way – left promptly to get to it, which left me weathering Scribe’s mild gaze. I raised an eyebrow at her. The one over the dead eye, I was trying to train myself into doing that. It drew attention to the eye cloth, made the faint-hearted uncomfortable.

“Mentorship is not without danger,” Scribe said. “Especially mentorship of a hero.”

“I don’t teach him myself,” I said. “Been careful about that. All I’ve done with him is talk, never so much as a spar.”

“Given your own teacher, I would have thought you aware that the talking is the most important part,” she replied.

“Named can learn from others without being pupils,” I said. “It’s not like every time you pick up a trick or a bit of tactics from someone you’re wedded to them as mentor and apprentice. I’ve learned things from Malicia and Captain. Hells, I learned from the Pilgrim once or twice.”

Not that he’d ever gone out of his way to teach me anything. Besides, I’d been careful to give neither tricks not tactics to Arthur Foundling. If I ever ended up on the other side of the field from the kid, I wanted as much of my repertoire still up my sleeve as I could fit.

“It’s a fine line,” Scribe noted. “I do not seek to scold, to be clear. It is your choice to make, and you have drunk from deeper wells of namelore than I ever did.”

“Always thought that was weird, to be honest,” I admitted. “The Calamities were around for almost sixty years in one form or another, it seems strange most of you never picked up more. Malicia too, I guess, but her I can understand. It’s not like any hero made it to the Tower in her lifetime.”

“It was always Amadeus who saw to those tactics,” she said, “so in a sense most of us never considered it any more necessary to acquire skill in this area than we would have thought to rival Wekesa or sorcery or Sabah in strength.”

“You still survive decades and decades as Named,” I said. “You had to have learned some things.”

“I suppose in detail my experience outweighs yours,” Eudokia mused. “Prior to the Truce and Terms being founded I’d encountered many more Named. But you’ve no doubt realized by now that there is no truly reliable method to deal with Named opponents.”

“Swords tend to work,” I drily said, “but I catch your drift. The same story you can ride to kill someone will get you killed against another.”

“I imagine I’ve read more stories and studied foreign myths than you have,” Scribe said, “for the same is true of Amadeus, but I do not have the… knack. I can make a plan and execute it, but I find it difficult to improvise and adapt a victory the way you did against the Arcadian courts, for example, or at the Princes’ Graveyard. It requires a mindset that I struggle with, as do most Named.”

“A lot of us tend to specialize,” I agreed.

“It narrows our understanding of the world and the way we seek victories,” Scribe said. “In that sense you are anomalous, though not unique.”

Yeah, I had no delusions there. My father’s way of using stories was different than mine but no less dangerous, and there’d been several points in the Tenth Crusade where Tariq had come very close to either killing or shackling me. Kairos had been up there too, the mad bastard, using the methods of the Old Tyrants with prescient skill. I also figured that Ranger had to be good at reading stories, to have survived this long antagonizing the amount of Named she had. Nobody acting like that lived as long as she had without being able to tell when a story was going to get you killed.

And there was, of course, the patron goddess of namelore waiting above it all: the Wandering Bard, the Intercessor. Who had declared war on me in Wolof only to disappear into thin air. I would have liked to call it impotence on her part, but that was the kind of delusion that’d get me killed. If I hadn’t seen her it’d been because she was moving her pieces into place, preparing her killing stroke. And since there was only one part left to this campaign, the fall of Ater, inside the City of Gates would be where she waited for me. I shook my head free of the thoughts.

“So what did High Lady Takisha reply?” I asked.

“She is willing to meet,” Scribe said. “Yet I would temper your expectations: Princess Vivienne believes Takisha won’t move unless we promise to back her for the Tower.”

“Is there anybody in this fucking country who doesn’t want me to back them for the fucking Tower?” I growled. “Any moment now some hell will spit out Traitorous so he can bloody well ask me too.”

“It is unusual that you would be so sought, in my opinion,” Scribe noted. “You have dealt with or rule over every major amalgamation of power east of the Whitecaps, an amount of influence that I some ways surpasses what Malicia wielded after the Conquest.”

I clenched my fingers and unclenched them. I’d made a claim, before raising High Lady Abreha from the grave. One of authority over others. Creation was moving to meet it. I was finding it easier to parse out what people wanted – my instincts already whispered that Vivienne was right, High Lady Takisha would not move without the Tower as a prize – but that was the lesser part of it. I could feel Named, now. When I closed my eyes, I could see them like stars shining the dark. Only it wasn’t all of them. Most heroes I couldn’t make out. Vivienne yes, and the Squire when he was close, but never the Silver Huntress. Authority, I thought. It was about authority.

And the clearest part of it was that Below smiled on me herding their own, a warden to villains.

“Influence doesn’t always pay off,” I finally said. “Let’s go talk with Juniper, Scribe. See what our options are before meeting up with High Lady Takisha.”

—

The Marshal of Callow wasn’t one to mince words, so she came out with it bluntly.

“Depends if they’re stupid about it or not,” Juniper said.

Our maps of Ater were accurate, as there hadn’t been any major works done in the capital since they’d been drawn, but they were unreliable in the sense that they’d didn’t tell us what parts of the city were being inhabited at the moment. Malicia had taken in refugees by the thousands so a lot of the empty districts would have filled up, but which and by who was anybody’s guess. Scribe and the Jacks had a few people in the city, but it was a drop in the bucket for a place that large. I doubted even the Tower had a full accounting to use, and for all her faults the empress had built up a prodigious bureaucracy in her seat of power.

“I’m not going to stand here and defend the stock of Praesi aristocracy,” I said, “but let’s assume they won’t make the worst possible choices.”

“Then we’re in a tricky position,” Juniper said. “When it comes down to it, Ater isn’t really a city that can be sieged the traditional way. It’s the incarnation of a logistical pit: to surround a city this large with any real strength, enough to keep away sorties, you need an army large enough it’s impossible to feed in this region.”

Which meant massive supply lines stretching over some of the most dangerous lands on Calernia, in constant danger in collapse before enemy soldiers even got involved. If you were a foreign army, anyway. The High Seats are much more manageable wars on their hands, which went some way in explaining why so few external enemies had been successful against Ater compared to internal ones.

“That much we’re agreed on,” I said. “We’re not going to try, and by the looks they’re well aware of that.”

Our eyes moved the map between us. Ater had nine gates, massive things that had once needed specially bred monsters to be opened or closed until they were replaced by gear mechanisms a century or two back. Of those nine gates, three were currently still open. The Army of Callow was encamped to the west of the capital, near an abandoned town that had large and deep wells, but the three gates on the eastern side of the capital were wide open. Which only made sense, given that a gaggle of nobles from all over Praes had brought around thirty thousand men from various private armies and encamped there. They’d not entered the city, as it was against the laws of the Empire to bring troops inside the capital without permission and no one was yet ready to move against Malicia, but our scouts confirmed there was constant movement through the gates.

“High Lady Abreha is but a week behind us,” Scribe noted. “Her army tips the balance of power in our favour.”

“Eh,” I hedged.

“We can likely beat the noble armies on the field,” Juniper agreed. “They have no unified command structure or proper organization.”

“And they’ve got a lot of household troops, but they’ve also got a large proportion Taghreb tribal levies,” I said. “Good raiders and irregulars, not so great in a shield wall. In a stand-up fight on plains, we’ll smash that army to pieces.”

“It will not give us that fight, I take it,” Eudokia ventured.

“They’ll retreat into the capital,” I said. “Use us as leverage for getting their troops inside without officially rebelling against Malicia. Given that her trustworthy forces are running thin, she’ll likely have to bend.”

“The remaining Legions are around eight thousand strong,” Scribe noted, “but even my people never got a good read on the total number of Sentinels. Too many of them never leave the Tower.”

“You gave us a floor of eight thousand so I’m assuming at least ten,” I noted. “I’m skeptical how good they’ll be in a fight, considering their heads are supposed to be fucked to the Hells and back to make them perfectly loyal, but it shouldn’t matter anyway considering most of them will be tied up keeping the city from falling apart. I’d be surprised if Malicia can shake loose more than two or three thousand to throw at us.”

“Pickler believes she can breach the capital’s walls, and if she does I believe we can take Ater after High Lady Abreha reinforces us,” Juniper said. “But that holds only if the nobles stay out of it. Otherwise they’ll bog us down in the outer districts and we’ll be forced out by spellfire.”

We were at a massive magical disadvantage here, even with Masego weighing heavily on the scales. The sheer amount of mage cadres we’d be facing if the enemy got to mobilize fully against us was pretty daunting. There were at least a few hundred mages capable of High Arcana in Praes, and almost all of them would be shooting at us. And that was without even getting into diabolism, which I saw as pretty much inevitable. It was a historical staple of Praesi getting cornered.

“Keeping the nobility divided and unable to coordinate defences seems a priority, then,” Scribe said. “Should I begin arranging assassinations?”

“Not yet,” I said, then bit my lip. “Assassin, could he get High Lady Takisha?”

If she got killed, her High Seat would tear itself up over succession and Kahtan would no longer be able to serve as the banner under which all the lesser Taghreb nobility gathered. And the Taghreb were where the manpower was at, right now. The Wasteland had bloodied itself with continued civil war, while the Hungering Sands hadn’t really seen any action aside from raids since Foramen was seized by surprise. If we broke up the southerners into smaller squabbling blocs and then hit Ater before someone could step into the power vacuum, it was possible they’d stay out of the fight.

“Takisha is remarkably paranoid when it comes to her personal safety,” Scribe admitted. “Three layers of amulets at all times and frequent body doubles. Even odds Assassin would get to her, being conservative.”

“We’re holding back on that, then,” I said. “Look up targets that would destabilize the coalition behind her, but I’m not pulling the trigger on that yet.”

If we took a swing and missed it’d make negotiating with her pretty awkward afterwards. Praesi didn’t take this sort of thing as personally as most people would, but it certainly wouldn’t win me any favours.

“None of that matters when we haven’t addressed the dragon in the hut,” Juniper said. “There’s an army as large as all of ours combined marching on Ater as we speak.”

“Three weeks away, at the current pace,” Scribe said. “Matters could be resolved here before it arrives.”

“I’m not sure that’d be an improvement,” I admitted. “Until we know who the warlord leading the Clans is I’m not keen on punching a hole in the walls of Ater.”

Juniper snorted.

“Let’s not take the fucking city only to have to hold its busted walls against one hundred thousand orcs,” she summed up. “The military wisdom of the College shines in us still, Catherine.”

I grinned back at her.

“Wisest heads of the age, Hellhound, that’s us,” I replied.

Scribe let out a little choking sound but did not go as far as contradicting us.

“We’ve sent scouts their way and I know Hakram’s still alive,” I said. “I’m inclined not to think the worst.”

I could feel his Name, see its star out in the black.

“If Dag Clawtoe had been elected, Hakram would have scried us by now,” Juniper retorted. “I don’t like it.”

“If the Blackspears were in charge they’d be burning Nok by now, not approaching Ater,” I pointed out. “I won’t pretend I’m not concerned, Juniper, but Adjutant will bring this home. He always does.”

“We should prepare for the eventuality that they are foes, at least,” the Hellhound pressed.

I grimaced and thought it over. It’d split our focus, but to be honest at the moment there wasn’t much for the Army of Callow to do. We were preparing an offensive for when Abreha – and High Lord Dakarai of Nok, who’d joined her with a small retinue – arrived with her troops, but it would be Pickler and her sappers handling the most of that. Charging into a breach wasn’t the kind of fighting that required extensive preparations, just guts and steel.

“Do it,” I finally said. “But make sure the general staff knows it’s theoretical. I don’t want half our camp convinced we’re going to be fighting the Clans.”

Fighting a warlord – maybe even just rumours we would – might actually cause desertions from the part of my armies that’d been the steadiest through several wars. As far as I knew, the loyalty of the Legions had never been tested in this manner and I suspected it was for good reason. A lot of orcs put loyalty to the Legions or the Army of Callow higher than allegiance to abstract things like the Tower or my crown, but I wasn’t so sure that loyalty would win out if it was their own clans on the other side of the field.

“I’ll keep it quiet,” Juniper said.

“Which leaves only one force unaccounted for,” I said. “Amadeus of the Green Stretch.”

Scribe studied me.

“You’re sure he’s here?” she asked.

“I know Ranger’s in the city,” I said. “And they’ve stayed together until now.”

I’d actually learned a little something courtesy of the Lady of the Lake, aside from her rough location: whatever it was that bound me to Named, it was possible to cut it. Temporarily, at least. The… tie began to reform after half a day had passed, more or less, and from what I could feel Ranger was becoming increasingly irritated at having to cut it off again and again. I bet Sever would have done it permanently, I thought with some amusement. I’d have to remember to tell her when we ran into each other, along with a pleasant question about how it felt to be inferior to inferior to the Saint even posthumously.

“He’s a dangerous man, Catherine, but he doesn’t have an army,” Juniper said. “There’s only so much he could do.”

I winced at that, and so did Eudokia. There was a moment of silence, the two of us waiting for something brutally ironic to happen, but nothing showed up save an increasingly puzzled look on the Marshal of Callow’s face.

“Don’t repeat that,” I finally said. “It might end up costing us.”

She still looked skeptical, but in matters of namelore she knew better than to contradict me. I dragged myself to my feet, massaging my upper leg to press down on a cramp. Had I taken herbs today? I couldn’t recall. I’d gotten too used to Hakram arranging these things for me. Might as well have another cup if I was going to be riding Zombie.

“A short detour and we’ll get moving,” I told Scribe. “Let’s go find out what High Lady Takisha has to tell us.”

—

Scribe despised riding horses even though she’d been doing it for decades, which I never ceased to find hilarious. Zombie disliked having to stay on the ground to keep up with the other Named and my escort of knights, but she perked up after I promised her meat when we returned to camp. She was unsettlingly fond of pig guts, which she ate very messily before grooming herself for hours. A truly vain creature, my mount. I approved. At this point I’d been through these little meetings often enough that I wasn’t surprised when the Praesi came in dressed richly enough to pay for a bridge across the Hwaerte and I didn’t bother to take it in the way I had with the Sahelians. No, this time it was a smaller detail I got stuck on.

I’d arranged a meeting only with High Lady Takisha, but there were three great aristocrats waiting for me.

The first was Takisha Muraqib, a handsome dark-haired woman in her fifties with a dignified air and enough gold on her it’d likely add up to several ingots if melted down. Arguably now the second most powerful in Praes, as the fall of Foramen to goblin hands had led all the Taghreb nobility to gather behind her. The second was High Lord Jaheem Niri of Okoro, a strikingly good-looking man with warm golden eyes and a roguish smile. He had to be what, in his mid-forties? He had a daughter a little younger than me, but she wasn’t his oldest. The real surprise, though, was the third. High Lady Wither of Foramen, once Matron of the High Ridge Tribe. Pickler’s mother.

Also the sworn enemy of High Lady Takisha, and according to my spies still very far away.

No wonder the Matrons of the Confederation of the Grey Eyries had sent word they were sending a delegation north to Ater to treat with me. It would be in part so they’d have a seat at the table after Ater fell, as I’d expected, but now a second reason was looking at me through pale yellow eyes. The High Lady of Kahtan might despise Wither and want to take Foramen from her, but that enmity was nothing compared to how much the Grey Eyries hated the traitor who’d turned on them in exchange for becoming recognized as High Lady by Malicia.

Still, this reception was a surprise and not a welcome one. It was taking me by surprise in multiple ways and suggesting there were undercurrents to imperial politics I’d not sniffed out. A dangerous thing, to treat carefully with. It was fortunate that I was such a dab hand at diplomacy these days.

“How long have the three of you stood so close?” I asked, cocking my head to the side. “One hour, two? And no one’s dead. That has got to be some sort of record.”

I hear the knight behind me choke down on a snort. The Praesi were less amused. Wither was impatient, Takisha sneered and High Lord Jaheem raised his eyebrows in a way that suggested rolling them without ever actually doing it. Impressive trick, that.

“We greet you, Black Queen,” High Lady Takisha began, “and in-”

“Spare me the speech,” I cut through, tone flat. “I arranged talks with you, not three High Seats. I might be considered justified to see this as a breach of our truce terms, so let’s get to whatever point the three of you made yourselves to stand together to make.”

“This is poor diplomacy,” High Lord Jaheem said. “High Lord Sargon spoke better of you.”

“Sargon was a stepping stone, not the last thing between me and the end of this irritating little war,” I replied. “He got as much courtesy as I’ll ever afford High Seat. You, though?”

I smiled toothily.

“Count yourselves lucky this doesn’t begin and end with knives.”

“You don’t have enough knives to get this done, Black Queen,” High Lady Wither said, voice startling reedy. “That is our point. If you come for Ater steel in hand, you will lose.”

“That’s arguable at best,” I noted. “But I’ll generously assume you came with something to offer, since only a fool would think I’ve come to Ater just to walk away.”

“We are willing to support a negotiated settlement with the Tower,” High Lady Takisha said, tone irritated. “So long as the sovereignty of the Dread Empire remains untouched, there is some room for compromise.”

I cocked an eyebrow over my dead eye, unimpressed by the phrasing, and to my satisfaction I saw her glance at the cloth.

“I sacked Wolof without needing to break its walls, broke the Legions in Kala and now my army is camped beneath the very walls of the City of Gates,” I said. “If some room for compromise is the best you have to offer, we’ll be resuming this conversation after I’ve killed a few thousand more of you.”

“You would refuse terms without hearing them?” High Lord Jaheem said.

“I’d refuse to humour posturing,” I flatly replied. “You’re here to do me a favour, I broke through your front door and set fire to your house. If you want me to stop torching everything in sight, make it worth my while.”

“We would be willing to support armies being sent to aid the Grand Alliance,” High Lady Wither said. “It’s an open secret you’re badly in need of diabolists.”

“That’s a start,” I noted.

“The Blessed Isle can be formally ceded back to the crown of Callow,” High Lady Takisha said.

Huh, hadn’t seen that one coming. On the surface it was a worthless piece of land, considering it was a blackened wasteland ruined by my father’s use of massed goblinfire, but that was a surface perception only. It was a strategic stronghold, the best way to keep Praes penned on its side of the Wasaliti should it decide to get unruly.

“That’s worth something,” I agreed, “but it’s not why I’m here. The Tower would need to sign the Liesse Accords.”

They didn’t look too pleased by that, but neither were they surprised.

“We might support such a thing, given the right incentives,” High Lord Jaheem said. “The text as we’ve obtained has some… concerning inclusions.”

That sounded like someone after diabolism exemptions, which wasn’t happening, but I wasn’t above throwing some minor concessions elsewhere if that was what it took.

“The final draft of the Accords has not been made,” I said. “There is still time to negotiate.”

“That is reassuring to hear, Your Majesty,” High Lady Takisha smiled.

I just bet, I thought.

“And who would it be that negotiates the terms of the Accords for you?” I asked. “Who do you mean to replace Malicia?”

Akua, I guessed. Had to be. She was the only prominent person left in Praes with enough power to be considered and not enough enemies to be too badly opposed. And what a knife in the belly it would be for this lot, when turned away from them. Just in time for me to cram my father down their throats. Silence stretched on for a moment.

“We do not mean to replace the Dread Empress,” High Lady Takisha said. “We are loyal subjects, Black Queen.”

My eye moved between them, and appallingly enough they looked serious. Not about being loyal, that was just absurd, but about not supporting Malicia being deposed. At least not here and now.

“Dread Empress Malicia has made herself too much a foe of the Grand Alliance and an ally of the Dead King to be allowed to keep her power,” I plainly said. “You might have believed this to be negotiable, but allow me to now disabuse you of that notion.”

I leaned forward, cold-eyed.

“If I have to burn Ater to the ground around her to see her driven out of the Tower, I will.”

My gaze swept over all of them.

“If I must step over your mutilated corpses to get my way, do not believe for a moment I will hesitate. The Dread Empire has been nothing but thorn in our side as most of Calernia fights to hold back the annihilation of all life on this continent,” I said. “There is not a speck of sympathy left for any of you west of the Wasaliti: I could raze every High Seat and even the fucking heroes would applaud.”

I drew back, put on a friendly smile.

“Malicia is a stone around your necks,” I said. “Put up someone else and then we can talk.”

“Your threats are empty, Black Queen,” High Lord Jaheem said. “You do not have long before you must return west with diabolists, else this campaign will have doomed your allies.”

I met the man’s golden eyes with a cold smile.

“I still have months,” I said. “It’s my patience that’s in danger of running out, Jaheem Niri. Beware of that, while you still can.”

Yet even as I spoke, I knew there were no grounds no win here. I’d made a mistake, I could feel it. Not in refusing to bend over the matter of Malicia or making it clear how far I was willing to go over the matter, but somewhere else. Focusing, I could almost feel it out. Neither Jaheem Niri nor Wither were surprised, they had expected this, so it was High Lady Takisha who’d wanted this conversation to happen. Why? What did she gain? She wants to move them, my instincts whispered, but I could not yet tell to which purpose. I almost could if I focused, but somehow I was sure that if I closed my eyes the stars in the darkness would distract me. But Takisha had gotten something she’d wanted from this, that much I was certain of.

Time to cut my losses before she got more.

“There is no point to this conversation,” I stated. “I tell you only this: when we resume it, the terms will have grown starker.”

I left them to that, casually tossing in the insult of not giving proper courtesies while leaving. Already I was frowning, lost in thought. I’d just taken a hit without knowing about it until it was too late, and I still didn’t know what it’d been for. I did not have as clean a read on the forces at play in Praes as I’d thought I had, and if I kept it up it would cost me.

It was time to sharpen the same knives I’d wielded at the Graveyard.