webcrawl/APGTE/Book-3/tex/Ch-100.md.tex

\hypertarget{chapter-65-elision}{%
\section{Chapter 65: Elision}\label{chapter-65-elision}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``A hero should not confuse striking at Evil and doing Good, lest
their Good become the act of striking.''}

-- Theodore Langman, Wizard of the West
\end{quote}

I slumped against the wall, catching my breath, and resisted the urge to
deck Robber in the face. He looked like he was enjoying this way too
much for it to be healthy. That'd been a close call, inside the room. At
this point I was unsure whether Diabolist was actually out to kill me or
not -- she'd been hinting pretty heavily she wanted me to be the Black
to her second-rate Malicia -- but just letting me get hammered by those
arrays until I was burnt pulp would have been enough to get me captured
even if it didn't get me dead. Dead might be the better outcome of the
two, if it came to that. Assuming it even stuck.

``How the fuck did you all get in here?'' I panted.

Robber alone, I could have bought. He was tricky that way. But there was
a full line skulking around the corridor. Some were wounded, I noted,
and not just by blades: there were tell-tale marks of spellfire on some
of their gear. They'd been in a scrap before getting here, but I'd
assume not even the Special Tribune's pack of marauders had been
audacious enough to assault this horror of a palace. Goblins were a
blade best used in the dark or in the enemy's back. There was a reason
they weren't put in shield walls.

``Special Tribune Robber, ready to report,'' the wretch said, sparkling
with insolence.

I was going to regret this, I suspected. But at least odds were good I'd
be able to sift out a few useful nuggets out of the mixture of lies and
blatant exaggerations he would offer.

``Proceed,'' I sighed.

That he saluted with the wrong hand before beginning to speak, I
thought, was likely emblematic of what was about to follow.

``So,'' Robber said, ``we were just walking around, staying out of
trouble.''

``Were you,'' I flatly said.

``I'm a great believer in the sanctity of law and order,'' Robber said,
putting hand over his chest.

It was, I noticed as a splitting headache dawned, over the wrong side to
be covering his heart. Idly I glanced up and chalked up the lack of
thunder following that audacious blasphemy as yet another sign the Gods
Above were washing their hands clean of this whole mess.

``Then wights started swarming over the arrays we were supposed to blow
up, which was all right,'' the goblin told me. ``But \emph{then} mages
showed up, and the key places got locked up real tight. So then Captain
Borer -- that's him right there, a repeat troublemaker I've had to
report him several times-``

I glanced at the side where he was pointing and found a smaller goblin,
with dark green skin tinted even darker over where his eyebrows would be
if his kind weren't hairless. It made it look like he was perpetually
frowning. He looked pained, but also reluctant to outright contradict a
superior officer.

``We should make trouble, is what Borer said,'' the Special Tribune
blithely continued. ``It's pathologic with him, I've been looking into
getting him a mind healer.''

``I imagine they'd take a single look at you and run screaming,'' I
mused.

``That's racist, Boss,'' Robber informed me, trying to give me what I
assumed to be doe eyes but ended up looking like a goblin wearing some
poor doe's skin and batting his eyes through the horrifying flesh mask.
``Anyway, as the qualified voice of reason I put my foot down. Was about
to look for some important people to help have some falls down the
stairs when we ran into Lord Black.''

My eyes sharpened and I leaned forward. This was the first I'd heard of
my teacher since we'd parted ways, unless you counted Diabolist boasting
she'd captured him.

``He's not with you anymore?'' I pressed.

``No,'' Captain Borer said, before I could be strung around some more.

``That's another gold star of shame for you, Captain,'' Robber told him
with a leering grin. ``I expect you to wear all twenty-three of them on
your chest when we return to camp.''

``You don't have to do that,'' I told the poor bastard. ``Robber, stop
fucking around. I don't have the time to spare. Where's Black?''

The goblin turned serious, or at least as much as close as he could ever
get.

``He took us to visit an old friend,'' he replied. ``General Fasili
Mirembe. The Carrion Lord figured he wasn't outside with the vanguard,
you see. He had to be in a room somewhere he could command from without
risking his very expensive blood.''

``Why target \emph{him}?'' I frowned. ``Diabolist is the head of the
snake. Fasili getting the axe wouldn't actually change much.''

``That's exactly what Borer said,'' Robber baldly lied. ``Only much less
respectful. The Black Knight did that weird smile thing -- I see where
you get it from now, it was kind of uncomfortable seeing it on another
face -- and told us that if you want to learn how to bury a villain, the
first person to hit up is always their second.''

My fingers clenched.

``He was after something that Fasili would have,'' I said.

``Skeleton key,'' the goblin said. ``There's only supposed to be one,
but you can't stab your warchief in the back if you can't \emph{get} to
her.''

``That's how you got in here,'' I deduced. ``But your people look like
they've fought. There was resistance?''

``There was a whole garrison of dead around him,'' Robber acknowledged.
``We couldn't handle that much, not even going in quiet. So Lord Black
made a distraction.''

I closed my eyes and silently cursed. \emph{Fucking Hells, Black.} A
dangerous gamble at the darkest hour that would allow extremely
important information to reach me in my moment of need? That explained
why Robber had gotten here exactly when I needed him to -- my teacher
had effectively twisted Creation's arm into ensuring as much. At the
price, it seemed, of getting overwhelmed by Akua's minions and taken
prisoner. He was playing shatranj with us all and treating himself a
piece like any other. I spat to the side and turned my gaze onto Robber.

``If it went down this way, you'll have gotten more than a key,'' I
said.

That large a sacrifice would have impact. It would get me an edge of
some sort.

``He told me to pass along a message,'' the goblin said, and this time
there was no humour in his voice. ``It went `Only one strike. Make it
count.'\,''

And there it was. The way out of the coming trap that Diabolist would
have laid for me. I grit my teeth. We would have \emph{words} about
this, if he survived the day.

``How much of your cohort is left?'' I asked Robber.

``A bare hundred,'' the Special Tribune replied. ``Dug-in mages are
tricky to handle.''

Considering that meant half his men were gone, that was something of an
understatement. I rose to my feet and rolled my shoulder. Those fire
arrays had \emph{stung}, cloak or not.

``All right,'' I said. ``Here's what you're going to do.''

I spoke, and as I did his grin got a whole lot nastier.

---

I'd been taught that, while assaulting the stronghold of a villain,
there were three things to watch out for.

The first was the monster. It wasn't always a greater devil or a demon,
though admittedly that was the traditional Wasteland playbook. Some
entity, usually difficult to handle, would be leashed somewhere in the
lair to be used as a way to beat down an enemy too powerful for the
villain themselves to handle. It was too much to hope that in this case
it would be the greater devil we'd shanked before entering Liesse --
that'd been a gatekeeper, and while it would have been difficult to
handle on my own it wasn't the kind of brutal counterstroke that someone
with Diabolist's resources would be able to keep around. I had a fight
ahead of me, and it wasn't going to be a pleasant one. My advantage here
was that even by villainous standards, Akua was \emph{massively}
arrogant. She wanted me for her attack dog, apparently, so she wouldn't
open the game by sending whatever her monster was after me. She'd want
the personal touch, at least until I backed her in a corner and those
kinds of considerations went out the window. Considering I'd had to hack
my way through both fae courts over the last year to varying degrees, my
bet was on something related to Arcadia. I'd even had Masego and Archer
send Summer after her neck a few months ago, so it made sense that I'd
be made to pay for that one way or another.

The second was the trial, because there was more to killing a villain
than just running them through. There was always a cost, a crucible you
had to go through to earn that kill. The peasant boy that ended up
slaying the dragon didn't just pick up the magic sword in a rubbish
heap, he had to \emph{bleed} first. What made a hero a hero wasn't the
fancy weapon or the birth right, it was the courage. Or whatever other
trite and actually fairly common quality they'd had in them all along.
The shade that had once owned the sword would force a test, or the devil
guarding the phylactery whisper some sweet temptation. I was of the
opinion that lacking that kind of trial was why the Lone Swordsman
hadn't gone out in the blaze of glory, just two stomps to the back of
the neck. We'd been opposed, yes. But there'd been little personal about
it except for mutual dislike. To me he'd been a means and then a
liability. To him I'd been a symbol of everything he wanted to destroy.
Behind that, neither of us had thought of the other as more than a
stepping stone towards the real fight. Diabolist wasn't a lit sharper
tossed at me by the Hashmallim, though. The higher the both of us rose,
the clearer it had become that the story could only end with one of us
dead or kneeling. I was partial to dead. That wouldn't come without a
price.

The third was the pivot. Fight between Named were never as simple as who
pulled out their aspects first or who was better with spell and sword.
While an animated corpse without a single aspect and a shaky mantle, I'd
been able to beat a still-fresh Heiress and Lone Swordsman in Liesse
because while they went for blood I'd gone for the story. It'd felt like
a complicated thing to juggle at the time, but in retrospect it'd been
fairly straightforward. Here, now that we'd returned to the very city
where I'd once died, there were a dazzling amount of moving parts.
Black. Warlock and the Woe. The Empress. And Diabolist herself. That
last thread, in my eyes, was what would make or break this day. There
was a moment ahead where the weight of Creation's attention would be on
both our shoulders, and when that moment came the one of us who made the
choice first was going to be the one who got to walk away. There was a
lot of danger to that. Spinning that wheel with William had been one
thing because the Lone Swordsman, for all his many flaws, had
principles. He had lines he hesitated to cross even for a win, if only a
few. Diabolist did not. Her principle, ironically enough, was the same
that the Legions had chanted outside her gate. Victory mattered,
everything else was dross. If I wanted to win, I had to go into that
room ready to cut down something I loved.

She had Black. I did not like the forming shape of this.

My sword was already bared when I found the heart of the palace. The
Dukes of Liesse had been kings, once, and their ancestral seat still
looked the part. The flight of steps before me had not been built to be
lightly ascended. The granite was rough, the steps too tall for more
than one at a time to be climbed. What began as a broad procession grew
narrow as it rose, leading to tall gates of bronze that now stood
sealed. Behind them, I knew, awaited the woman I had come to kill.
Sorcery permeated the air here, so thick that every movement felt like I
was stirring unseen wisps. So thick I could not tell if there was an
array hidden, which meant there was one\emph{.} The very trap, I
thought, that Black had let himself be taken to help me beat.

I took a step forward and \emph{split}.

---

Catherine Foundling found herself tired, after a hard bout in the Pit,
and slept at the Rat's Nest. She never stumbled across a man raping a
girl, or what came of it.

---

Catherine Foundling bet on herself in the Pit and lost, without having
meant to. Her savings thinned. She never earned enough to go to the
College.

---

Catherine Foundling had watch sergeant's a hand around her throat,
choking the life out of her. The man began to speak, but through his
belly emerged a sword that keened.

---

My boot touched the stone. I was myself, across three lives I had never
lived and one I was living. I began the climb in utter silence.

---

Catherine stood in the crowd when they hung Governor Mazus. It was
vindication, sealed by the choked cries of the man that was just another
Wasteland leech. But the Rat's Nest would not pay for her her tuition in
Ater, not anymore, so she sought Booker and made a deal. In the months
that followed she no longer came on the nights where bruises were what
men paid for. She earned gold with a sword in hand, catering to the
howls a mob that would settle for nothing less than death. The coin she
earned was drenched in blood, but blood was the trade she had chosen and
she made her peace with that truth. Catherine did not know blades well,
when she began, and her opponents did. She learned, but when she stood
among the crowd of cadets awaiting placement in a company she had only
one eye and more scars than a girl her age should have.

---

Coin was what killed the dream, not the schemes of foes she would never
meet. Catherine found her savings disappearing like smoke, and Harrion
telling her the Rat's Nest could not longer afford her was the final
nail in the coffin. It was a bitter truth, and the bitterness seeped
into her bones. The orphanage had taught her enough for a position as a
tutor or tradeswoman, but the thought of it had her choking in anger.
Impotence cut deepest of all. When Governor Mazus hung she was not in
the crowd: her brawl with a guard that had hands prone to wandering had
ended with the woman's neck snapped. Marked for the gaol, barred from
the Pit by Booker, she took the offer when it came. Better the Smugglers
than the Assassins or the Thieves, she decided.

---

Catherine did not believe in heroes, but she believed in debts. When two
monsters cloaked in black arrived in the alley and struck at her saviour
over the cooling corpses of her would-be murderers, she chose her side.
They survived only by the skin of their teeth, the Lone Swordsman losing
a hand to a moving shadow as a large woman turned into twisted
abomination. They fled the alley, the city, the region. It was doomed,
she knew. The monsters always won here. But for the first time since
she'd been born Catherine Foundling breathed free air, and it was
intoxicating. William learned to listen to her, after she opened the
throat of the first Eye of the Empire after them. It was in Summerholm
that her Name found her. \emph{Squire}, the Heavens whispered. She knew
whose death was needed to become more.

---

The War College taught Catherine her limits. She was good. Swift with a
sword, clever with her mind and with a talent for the unexpected. Tiger
Company fostered her skills, seeing in her lieutenant or captain in the
making, and for a time she was sergeant under the cold-eyed ogre they
called Hune. It was not the already-famous Hellhound that put blood in
her mouth. It was Lizard Company, Morok's brutes shattering her tenth
and leaving her broken on the ground. One of the orcs stomped her wrist
twice, calling her \emph{Wallerspawn}, and it never healed properly. She
never forgave their kind for that, not the wound but the blind ugly hate
she glimpsed in the orc's eye. Goblins were tribe of their own,
regardless of company, and the better Praesi pretended she did not
exist. The worst made sport of her, and settling that with teeth on the
ground made her as feared as she was alone. She had the talent to make
captain, but was never elected by the others. Sergeant was the highest
she ever rose at the College.

---

Catherine could afford the tuition now -- and she could ten times over,
because she was good with a lie and even better with a knife -- but she
no longer wanted to go. She'd had a glimpse of the true face of her
people, beyond the well-worn stories of the Old Kingdom. Every night she
rubbed elbows with murderers and thieves, not one of them Wastelander.
What was there to save? Within two years there were only two above her
in Liesse who belonged to the Guild of Smugglers, and only one after
gold and whispers were traded. She left the title to the other, but the
reins were her own. The quotas imposed by the Tower rankled, but she
knew better than provoke that beast. It was the rest of the gutter she
turned to, the forgotten and the ignored. The Hedge Guild folded first,
after their most dangerous mage was found strung up downtown. The King
of Thieves stole two shipments from Mercantis as a warning against great
ambitions, so when she got her hands on him she melted down his pretty
crown and poured it down his throat. The Assassins offered truce. She
told them to kneel. Blood followed.

---

They killed their first Calamity the day before she turned eighteen. The
Warlock was a monster, but a monster who loved his son. That was the
death of him, and half Summerholm as well. The Penitent's Blade beheaded
the sorcerer among the ashes of his tower and Squire mustered enough
kindness to have the Apprentice's corpse left by his side for the Praesi
to bury. They were growing. Thief, Bumbling Conjurer, Hunter and Bard.
William found them and bound them, but it was Catherine who made a sword
of them all, that wielded it against the Empire. The scent of rebellion
was in the air. They ghosted across the land of her birth, followed by a
thousand spies, and wherever they went governors and generals died. The
Empress sent more. The Black Knight drew them into Liesse and burned the
city around them but they were gone, gone through the corpse of an angel
and back to haunt him soon enough. Procer sent coin and promises but
both were spurned. They had sworn to see Callow free, whatever the cost.
One foreign master would not be traded for another, and as the flames
burned higher and the graveyards grew full.

---

She was twenty-three when rebellion came to Callow. Long past the
College, Captain Foundling had seen luck good and ill.~The Fourteenth
Legion, raised in the year after her graduation, had offered better
opportunity to rise than the old legions already thick with veterans.
But peace, oh peace was her trouble. It took three years to go from
lieutenant to captain, and the tribunes above her were all young and
hale. Her company was obedient and well-drilled, but loved her little.
Most were Praesi, and her reputation in Ater had followed her to the
camp. The droplet that tipped over the cup was that the Fourteenth never
fought. It was sent to garrison Summerholm as the other Legions fought,
dispersing riots and patrolling empty streets as her desperate
countrymen died in droves in the south. Vindication, that the Empire
could not be fought and beaten. Vindication but no hope. It had been
long since Captain Foundling was last kind, not since she'd killed men
for gold in the Pit, and so her conscience went untroubled when she
slipped poison in her superior officer's ale. That was the game, in the
Wasteland, and if it must be played she would. She would rise whatever
the cost, to her or anyone else. After that it was only a matter of
patience and skill. Staff Tribune Foundling was twenty-nine, when civil
war erupted, and through chaos she rose higher still.

---

The Guild of Assassins cost her a hand and a permanent limp, before they
were broken over her knee. From blood-filled gutters Catherine Foundling
fashioned her crown. There was only one throne in the Empire, this she
knew, but come night from Harrow to Dormer her will was the writ of law.
The Tolltaker they called her now, for there was no sin under Callowan
sky she did not get a cut from. A woman with ink-stained hands came one
morning and presented her two scrolls. One held a seal, the Tower's own.
The other a list of quotas. It was not a negotiation, and neither of
them pretended otherwise. She thought of that, when the heroes came and
asked for a way to enter Summerholm unseen. They were going to kill the
Black Knight, they promised. She smiled and said she would arrange it.
The coin she got from selling their location to the Praesi was spent on
a beautiful mansion in Whitestone, where the nobles of Laure still
huddled and pretended relevance. After the heroes were all killed, she
put it to the torch. Because she could. Because she had no reason not
to. To remind the soft-bellied aristocrats living there of what fear
tasted like. She watched the flames and wondered when it had all stopped
mattering.

---

My boot scuffed the last step and I stood before the gate. Closed, but
kept so by sorcery. It parted without a sound when I pushed and before
me the throne room stretched. Tapestries hung from the rafters like
columns, each an old triumph of the Empire presented in colourful cloth.
The contrast to the bare stone of the floor was stark. Runes shone on
the walls and balls of blue flame lit up the darkness bright as day. My
gaze moved to the back, where the Diabolist awaited. Languidly sprawled
on the old throne of the kings of the south, Akua Sahelian watched me
with bright eyes. There was no sign of Black. She wasn't keeping him
here, then.

``Swiftness, Catherine,'' she smiled, ``has ever been your unmaking. You
never learned patience.''

``\textbf{Break},'' I replied coldly.

The throne shattered like a cheap bauble and the wall behind it too.
Diabolist fell prone, laughing, and I had no intention of allowing her
to cast. Frost formed at the edge of my sword as I shot forward, granite
cracking under the force.

``What your Hierophant has wrought, I claim,'' Akua said.

The last word reverberated. Aspect, I thought. Then it felt like a hand
around my throat, and I screamed. There was a vice around me, and as my
Name desperately clawed at it I found myself stumbling while Diabolist
rose.

``I told you, didn't I?'' the dark-skinned woman said. ``That this ends
with you kneeling. What I have claimed, I bind. It is \emph{mine}.''

I fought it. My knee shook and slowly began to bend, so I wrested my
hand from her control and stabbed my blade into the leg. Pain flooded my
mind and I embraced it.

``Kneel, Catherine Foundling,'' Akua Sahelian ordered. ``And rise my
Black Knight.''

``Fuck you,'' I gasped. ``He's-``

``Dead,'' Diabolist said. ``He was not the kind of man easily kept
prisoner. Why take the risk?''

I buckled, and one knee touched the floor.

---

Rebellion spread across Callow like a wildfire. Liesse first, but then
the south rose up and wherever they went spears were dug out from fields
and cellars, ploughshares hammered into swords. Old banners were dusted
off, and when the knights of Callow knelt before her the whole kingdom
boiled over. It was a bloodletting unlike any Catherine had ever seen.
Garrisons swarmed by angry mobs, mages killed with stones and knives and
clubs. The Empress gave answer with a hard hand. The day after
Summerholm was liberated, Legions surrounded the city and torched it
with goblinfire. The rebellion flinched. Assassin dogged them every
step, even slit Hunter's throat, and though she killed him twice with
William's help he always came back. The fought the Praesi near
Marchford, a pitched battle, and they would have won had some orc
commander not disobeyed her general's orders and attacked instead of
retreated. In the wake of the defeat madness spread. There had gone
their last chance to keep any of this contained. It was no longer a war
but a hundred smaller ones, and wherever they went they won but they
could not be everywhere. The south held, nonetheless, and though the
central burned the fight was far from lost.

Then Procer invaded, seizing the Red Flower Vales.

The Praesi had been ready for it, unlike Squire. They retreated to the
ashes of Summerholm, destroying everything as they went. Fields salted,
villages torched and wells fouled. If they could not have Callow, it
would be as much a Wasteland as their home. The banner of the kingdom
grew ragged, but still the people rallied to it. Every man and woman who
could hold a sword took one up, and though the levies died by the
thousands the tide was turned back. The Lone Swordsman hung seven
princes and one and the Conjurer, long grown beyond the bumbling,
brought down the mountains on the Vales. Shut, for good. The host
marched to the ruins of Summerholm, the last foothold of Praes in the
kingdom, and there the Black Knight awaited. Three days and three nights
the battle went. The Hwaerte ran red with blood. But in the end
Catherine Foundling rammed her sword through the back of the Black
Knight's neck and from that death rose Knight as well, decked in white.
The monster's bag of tricks had finally run out but oh, the cost. Callow
was not a kingdom, it was a graveyard and an army. The Fields of Streges
were taken back, and through those lands Callow reborn marched to
reclaim the Blessed Isle. Whispers awaited them there. Dread Empress
Malicia was dead, murdered in the Tower.

Dread Empress Magnificent, First of Her Name, awaited them as well. With
a host the likes of which had not been seen since the days of
Triumphant: demons and fortresses aflight, swarms of devils and every
greenskin not buried in Callowan fields.

``Kneel,'' Akua Sahelian ordered, crowned in dread.

---

General Foundling had struck a deal with the devil. The Empress had been
losing her grasp for years now, and High Lady Tasia Sahelian might be a
viper but she was a viper on the rise. She swore the damning oaths, and
over the corpse of every other senior officer in the Fourteenth rose a
general. It was on the fields of Callow she fought her part of the war.
The nests of rebellion that sprang up all over the Old Kingdom when the
Praesi turned their knives on each other were carefully brought into the
fold of her legion, promised the settling of old grudges against the
same generals that had crushed Callow in the Conquest. Even the knights
came to her banner, after High Lady Tasia's mages broke the right minds
and reformed them into something more flexible. One occupying legion
after another shattered even as the war became a thing of horror in the
Wasteland, and from that destruction General Foundling made herself a
force to reckon with. The Knightsbane, drawn and quarried by Liessen
chargers. General Sacker given a true red throat instead of one her
legion affected. Orim the Grim, a smile carved on his lips as he bled
out. Marshal Ranker burned alive, save for the black hand that was her
old boast. Wherever she went, legends died.

Nearly every cadet that had gone through the College in her days was
dead, either at her hand or that of Sahelian assassins. It was Grem
One-Eye and his second, the one they called the Hellhound, that broke
her siege of Summerholm and pushed her back in the heartlands of Callow.
With but a handful of ragged legions they beat her again at Denier and
smashed her one last time near Marchford. It didn't matter. The High
Lords had risen one and all in the backing of a villain for the Tower,
ome going by the Name of Heiress. Tasia's own daughter, it was said. And
if One-Eye was fighting General Foundling in Callow, he was not winning
the war for Malicia in the Wasteland. Word trickled that Heiress
levelled half of Ater winning a duel against the Warlock, that the Black
Knight had retreated to the Steppes to raise another army with the
Empress. Marshal Grem and the Hellhound retreated to Summerholm and
Callow was Catherine's, finally. The Imperial governors were seized and
executed, even those allied to the Sahelians, and General Foundling
refused a crown but prepared for the next part of the war. It never
came, the embers smothered when a Hellgate was opened in the heart of
Summerholm. The last true stronghold of loyalist resistance, wiped out
in a single night. Before dawn, precisely a hundred Callowans died for
every governor she had killed.

A warning that did not go unheard.

Procer seized the Red Flower Vales, declaring the Tenth Crusade and
forming a coalition that spanned half of Calernia. General Foundling
began talks with the First Prince, but they ended when a ziggurat of
stone large as Laure cast its long shadow over the very city. Dread
Empress Magnificent, First of Her Name, had come to reminder her of
oaths taken.

``Kneel,'' Akua Sahelian ordered, crowned in dread.

---

The Praesi were at each other's throats, but what did the Tolltaker
care? The quotas would not change no matter who held the Tower. But
then, oh wonder of wonders, months passed and the war continued. Then
the first two legions were pulled out of Callow to reinforce the
Wasteland, and that was just the scent of opportunity wasn't it?
Catherine Foundling had left behind the illusion that there was
something remarkable about her people along with her girlhood years, but
she was Callowan still. For small slights long prices, and there had
been so \emph{many} slights offered since the Conquest. The Tolltaker
mustered her empire of ghosts and crooks, and began a waltz with the
many devils claiming the floor. It was a long and bloody night, when
every Imperial governor in the old kingdom found death knocking at their
door. The nobles, feckless wastes that they were, gathered in hidden
rooms and plotted a nation born anew. She had no interest in dead
dreams, and so the right whispers fhad Eyes of the Empire rounding them
up for treason. They were looking for her as well, of course, and the
Legions with them. They found nothing, for her kingdom was not made of
castles but of a hundred ugly pacts made in the dark. Those could not be
besieged, could not be fought on the field.

There was blood in the water, and so the west stirred. Procer marched
into the Vales, filling every nook and cranny with their dead before the
Legions could be dislodged. A host of Procerans marched into the central
plains, claiming that they had come to put Gaston of Liesse on his
rightful throne. So the Tolltaker had him killed, right in the middle of
his precious little army. She had never enjoyed anything half so much as
watching sixty thousand foreigners milling about, trying to think of
justification for their invasion. They spoke of liberating Callow, in
the end, and as they tangled with the remaining legions Catherine found
her own amusements. The pot of rebellion was already boiling, so she
helped it along. Weapons from the Kingdom Below, acquired through
Mercantis, reached the hands of mobs. The Assassin came for her but she
set the warehouse aflame with stolen goblinfire and whatever the
creature had been, it did not crawl out. She learned to live with a hole
through the lung, her breath always rasping. One by one the last
aristocrats of Callow found knife in the back or poison in the cup, even
as knights emerged from the south and fought both Procerans and Praesi
for rule of the land.

There was no great plan, no matter what her lieutenants believed. There
was only the dance, and every day she lasted against the monsters was
yet another victory. The rebel in the Wasteland won, though that part of
Creation had come to deserve the name twice over in that making, and
after claiming the Tower she moved west with all her strength. Hellgates
bloomed across the land and Procer retreated back behind the Vales
before calling for a crusade no one else wanted. The knights fought
against the tide, valiantly, and equally valiantly they died. In the
wreckage of it all Dread Empress Magnificent, First of Her Name, came to
Laure. The call came and the Tolltaker went, for someone who cared for
nothing had nothing to lose. In the throne room of ancient Fairfax
kings, a Praesi stood and looked down at her.

``Kneel,'' Akua Sahelian ordered, crowned in dread.

---

Across three lives I had never lived and one I was living, I knelt. A
face as beautiful as it was terrible allowed a smile of triumph to
flicker.

---

\emph{Only one strike. Make it count.}

---

I/General Foundling/the Tolltaker/the White Knight rose, and shoved
steel through her throat.

---

My boot touched the stone. I looked up to doors of bronze wide open and
began the climb, humming the tune to a song I had never heard.