webcrawl/APGTE/Book-5/out/Ch-063.md.tex

\hypertarget{chapter-45-long-prices}{%
\chapter{Long Prices}\label{chapter-45-long-prices}}



\epigraph{``Grudge is born of blood, carried by it and redressed through it.
As they who came before me swore, I so swear: there will be no peace nor
rest `til the Cradle is reclaimed.''}{First Oath of the People, taken by all in the Duchy of Daoine at age
seven}



I'd once had a conversation with Akua, after Indrani had hit the bottle
hard enough during our `council' that she'd ended up snoring on the
table. We'd talked about him before, of course: the Dead King. The
Hidden Horror, the Abomination, the last king of Sephirah -- all that a
hundred more titles, a treasure trove's worth of grim honours accrued
over the centuries. We'd all been spinning our schemes around the
ancient thing in Keter since the invitation had first reached me in
Callow, and no small amount of talk and ink had been spent over the
thought of what he might intend. In a sudden moment of honesty, sharing
a shoddy table with a woman I still sometimes remembered to hate, I'd
admitted that the Dead King's ambitions were opaque to me. Assuming he
even had any. What could the immortal ruler of a near-untouchable realm
truly desire from Creation? All the wants of a mortal ruler were in his
hands already: wealth almost absurd, authority absolute, the adulation
of the people he'd forged to worship him as their sole idol. What was
there, in all the world, that the King of Death could not obtain with
either a snap of his fingers or use of the patience in which he was
peerless?

Companionship, Akua had eventually suggested, and perhaps there was some
truth to that. When he'd spoken of the Bard it had been with an almost
fond manner of respect, though they were foe in all things and more than
once she had ruined him. Yet while I would not deny I'd had my moments
of arrogance over the years, I would not seriously countenance that my
potential apotheosis had been reason enough for him to stir the Crown of
the Dead to war. Malicia's invitation had been an open door but walking
through it had been his own will and the purpose of that will escaped me
still. Even if he ended up successful beyond a monster's wildest dreams,
even if he devoured the continent whole and brought forth a thousand
years of darkness\ldots{} then what? A fleet raised, and through ships
the tide of undeath was to be taken across the Tyrian Sea? Or into
Arcadia, perhaps, some other Hell or for true ambition to the Heavens
themselves. It was difficult, I would admit, to truly think on the scale
and scope of someone like the King of Death given the comparative speck
of a life I'd lived. Yet I did not believe that the soft-spoken, patient
monster I'd seen make of his own home a pyre for apotheosis would choose
as his path endless war on all the world.

Akua had challenged me on that, surprised by my certainty. In some ways,
she'd argued, the Dead King was the pinnacle of what being partisan of
Below meant. For all that the Hidden Horror had slumbered beyond his
borders sometimes for centuries at a time, that only one villain in the
history of Calernia had ever been his better. May she never return. How
else but war was the King of Death to subjugate the entire world? It'd
been a stark reminder, that conversation, that the people who'd raised
Akua Sahelian had seen conquering the world as an admirable thing to
aspire to. Believed that it was natural to believe so, that all others
did as well. Her peers, her highest servants, her kin: her entire little
world had shared that madness. It must not have seemed like madness at
all, I thought, when you were in the warm embrace of that world. How
could it be, when everyone who mattered believed it reason as well? But
Akua was still a Wastelander, a highborn, in ways she might never
entirely shake. It blinded her to the truth that the Dead King's
victories had sprung from his rejection of everything the brood ever
circling the Tower held dear. See, the thing with the kind of game that
Neshamah was playing was that the opposition only needed to get lucky
once -- and they had forever to take yet another swing, praying for that
golden day. And every time the Dead King went to war, Above got another
shot at him.

An endless war, for Neshamah, was a long and elaborate suicide by odds.

Oh, we'd not peered at the heart of the Hidden Horror and unfurled its
deepest secrets that night. We were, after all, both so young and taught
to think in the terms of a war that rarely made it so far west. But it'd
stayed with me, the thought that patience was not a skeleton key to the
Dead King's every trouble. He could retreat back into the Serenity when
he misliked the cast of something, true enough, but that had costs -- in
champions broken, in secrets unearthed and tricks revealed. Much of that
knowledge died with those who'd learned it, so soon gone, but the
important bits -- those that might one day destroy him? The Intercessor
would hoard them, and them dole them out to heroes whenever opportunity
arose. Patience allowed him to set the battlefield as he preferred, to
stack it, but the battle still had to be fought. Why offer a
hundred-year truce, if not because he misliked the shape of this
particular battlefield? The paramount virtue of an existence like the
Dead King had to be cowardice, in this world of ours, and that meant
retreating immediately and without qualms the moment it seemed like
there might be a genuine threat after him. That knowledge was no
skeleton key either, though, for he remained the Hidden Horror. There
were so few things that could be a threat to him, when it came down to
it, and even in the dawn of days the Bard had named him adept at
avoiding weakness.

The ability to take back a Revenant from the grips of the Dead King
would be a strategic threat, but not an overwhelming one. Save if I was
prepared to assemble my own army of dead Named to match his, which would
taint my reputation beyond repair in my seat of power and antagonize
near every possible ally, it was little different from losing one of his
champions to the blade of a hero. Of course, I'd not simply petitioned
Sve Noc to aid me in clawing back the free will of the Good King: we
were doing it while the guiding will of the Hidden Horror was still
inside. Now, I was no mage and my learning in such matters were still
young. But I knew, from having raised corpses and bound them to my will
as well, that the kind of fine control that I'd seen displayed here
could not be done without \emph{investment}. I couldn't be sure what it
would cost him, if we succeeding at trapping whatever part of him he'd
disseminated into the Revenant, but that hardly mattered. The Dead King
was, not to belabour the title, dead. He no longer healed, in body and
soul. Every loss of him was a \emph{permanen}t loss. And so, as the
might and attention of doom-crowned Sve Noc poured into the corpse of
Edward Fairfax, I returned to a familiar place. Surrounded by the
absolute pitch black of nothingness, I stood leaning on my staff and met
the gaze of Neshamah in the\ldots{} flesh, so to speak.

``I do not hold much respect for recklessness,'' the Dead King said.

I replied nothing. The hourglass had been flipped, I thought, and it was
not for me the sand was running out. Oh, there was no real guarantee
that we'd succeed at trapping him. But even if we failed it would be at
a cost, and greater to him than us. For all that the King of Death had
made attrition his sharpest sword in some ways, it may yet be turned on
him to cut just as deep.

``Still,'' Neshamah said, ``your use of it as a calculated measure
continues to surprise.''

It would have been an empty gesture to look at anything other than him,
for there was nothing else to look at, so I did not bother with the
theatrics. I did not speak either, though. It was not me, who had come
to bargain -- though I had schemed the coming of this conversation, I
would not deny.

``You will require guarantees as to the Hierophant's life,'' he said.

I inclined my head in agreement. I'd been worried, since the start, that
there might be some things that not even the Pilgrim's resurrection
could take back. Or that his hand would be forced early to spend that
aspect on some life I cared less for, preventing the use I needed for
some lesser prize. Receiving assurances from the Dead King was
preferable, for though he was no fae bound to his word he had to know
that if he crossed me on this after making a promise I would never
bargain with him again. Recklessness, he'd called this. Like in these
struggles of ours there was meant to be a manner of cordiality, mayhaps
not of fair play but at least of an\ldots{} understanding that this was
a game, a play, a sport to be had. \emph{Do not forget}, the ache in my
leg whispered. \emph{Do not forget.} I bared my teeth in a feral smile
at the King of Death, the savage pupil of savage teachers, and let that
pretence die. We were no Proceran princes making courtly war, for there
could be no such thing as a war courtly.

``Six months,'' I said.

``Pardon?'' the Dead King said.

``You armies will not advance a single step for six months,'' I said.
``This, and the release of the Hierophant. That's my offer.''

``You overestimate the strength of your position,'' Neshamah warned.

``You have,'' I murmured, ``taken my friend and now bargain with his
life while scheming the death of others dear to me. You arranged the
destruction of my armies, of near everyone I've ever cared for. But for
my intervention, you would have buried Iserre in death and borrowed
Hierophant's hand for the deed.''

``You clutch the remains of what you once were, Black Queen,'' the
Hidden Horror said. ``It does no favours to what you have since
become.''

``It was never really personal to me, before,'' I told him. ``You were a
foe, but in some ways an ally as well. In principle I thought it tragedy
that others died to your invasions, but no one weeps for faces they
never knew nor loved.''

``A taste,'' the Dead King said, ``of what is to come. They will be
strangers, Catherine Foundling. One day, and sooner than you believe,
they will all be strangers.''

``And if that day comes, I may yet become the horror you foretold,'' I
admitted. ``But today, Dead King?''

I limped forward, into his space, with cold eyes.

``Today you are the thing that \emph{took my friend},'' I hissed. ``The
thing that would have slaughtered the Woe and the Army of Callow without
batting an eye. I `overestimate the strength of my position', Merciless
Gods.''

I struck at the nothingness we stood on with my staff, the sound ringing
like a thunderclap.

``You think after this I'm not willing to try falling off the cliff
together, Neshamah?'' I said, tone sharp. ``To gamble on which of us
will find our wings on the way down? Look at my back, King of Death, and
see what is writ there -- when given the choice between risking ruin and
kneeling, I've only ever replied one way.''

A moment passed.

``Has your tirade ended?'' the Dead King calmly asked. ``No purpose was
served by it, save the thinning of my patience.''

``You have my terms,'' I coldly said. ``Six months and the release of
Hierophant.''

``That is no bargain,'' he said.

``Aye,'' I replied. ``It's a price. And if you know a single thing of my
people, you'll know ours are always long.''

``I've more than a single hostage in my possession, even if the Tyrant
has once more turned,'' the Dead King said.

``I knifed Black when we last spoke before ordering him to find his
decency,'' I said. ``He's since arranged the starvation of several
hundred thousand innocents. Try again.''

``If you are to assemble your coalition against me, you will need a
ruler for Praes,'' he replied. ``You cannot tolerate the continuation of
Dead Empress Malicia's reign, which leaves him your sole reputable
candidate.''

My fingers clenched. It'd been too much to hope for that playing it off
would work.

``Amadeus of the Green Stretch and Masego the Hierophant,'' Neshamah
said. ``For assurances I will not take the life of either on this field,
your crows will loosen their talons.''

I breathed out.

``No,'' I said.

His eyes tightened the slightest bit, which on another man would have
been frustration and surprise.

``Down we go, Dead King,'' I said. ``Gods help neither of us, the fickle
pricks.''

``Assurances,'' he said. ``And three months.''

It meant he wouldn't release Masego, that whatever purpose he was using
my friend's body for he would continue until the very last moment. But
three months, Gods even just three months? It kept the Lycaonese in the
war instead of letting them stumble down the slope into oblivion, and it
was enough breathing room to turn this war from lost to losing.

``Night's not over,'' I said, matching golden eyes to mine.

``Once more, in this we agree,'' the King of Death said. ``Bargain
agreed?''

``Bargain agreed,'' I replied, and darkness broke.

---

The Sisters had not reached apotheosis gently, and their works were not
gentle ones. Yet this was a matter of theft, of taking, and in such
matters we were all well-learned. Sve Noc, discerning my thoughts as
they formed, loosened their grip on the Revenant just enough that the
wisp of spoke that'd been the Dead King's will slipped away into
nothingness. And along the footpath the Hidden Horror had used to
withdraw, rapacious Night coursed down. Imperious and grasping, it
devoured what bound the man who had once been the Good King Edward
Fairfax to his subjugator in Keter. Komena, I knew as she deigned to
brush her thoughts with mine, wanted to claim him in the Hidden Horror's
stead. To have a Fairfax flagbearer of her own, to spread the Tenets of
Night wherever dusk was known. For where, among the realms of men, were
more fertile grounds for her red-handed lessons than the war-torn fields
of Callow? Andronike, ever cautious and calculating where her sister
craved clash of arms, felt more inclined to snuff the Revenant out.
Mastery over the tainted carried risks, she grasped, and brought
opportunities for that most dangerous of foes who our war against was
only beginning. Why chance it, when there was little need? I disagreed.
With both of them I disagreed, and though it was not in the nature of
prophets to argue with prophecy or of heralds to argue with the message
born, that was not the lay of our ties. It was for my contentious nature
most of all they had raised me to be First Under the Night. And so when
I spoke the Sisters listened, and our wills joined in miracle.

King Edward Fairfax, Seventh of His Name, breathed his first free breath
since he'd died below the walls of Keter. That was the first of the two
great workings I would unleash today.

``It has been,'' the Good King said, ``many years since I last tread the
streets of sunny Liesse.''

Letting out a long breath, I opened the floodgates and Night begin to
fill me. A rising tide of power, too much of it for me to able to shape
or grasp with my own hands. In the sky above us all, deafening shrieking
noises began to fill the air as hellgates were torn open one after
another. This already half-ruined realm began to shudder at the
roughness it was treated with, a sinking ship with yet another hole made
in the hull every few moments.

``You appear to have incensed the Abomination, Queen Catherine,'' King
Edward said.

``I tried to strong-arm him into some fairly major concessions,'' I
admitted. ``It appears he believes I am in need of an admonition.''

Night continued to pour into me, a tide rising, until the world around
me turned into an oil painting: imprecise, as if smudged, but no less
beautifully coloured for it.

``So it does,'' the Revenant said. ``I thank you now for the breaking of
my chains, you who they name Black Queen, but I must wonder at the price
of it. What dark patrons have sought my indebtment?''

``Nothing,'' I said. ``You owe not a single thing. Miracles are not
bought and paid for, even those of the Night.''

``A gift,'' King Edward said, sounding unconvinced.

``I have request to make of you,'' I admitted. ``Yet it would be
meaningless if you did not agree of your own free will. And so there
will be no talk of debt, to either myself or Sve Noc. On this all three
of us agree.''

``Mercy gifted without strings, yet with purpose,'' the Good King said.

He sounded, I thought, almost glad.

``I am a priestess,'' I said. ``But also a queen.''

And there were so very few things that a queen could afford to do with a
single pure benign intent, in the end. Virtue alone did not win wars, or
keep people fed through winter. In the distance, as if in an entirely
different world, the Tyrant of Helike was still speaking. The devils
around us and afar were boiling like a pot about to tip, stirred into a
murderous frenzy by sorcerous means and now swelling in number with
every passing moment. The Saint of Swords fought still, unbending and
without pause, and though I could almost hear the Rogue Sorcerer's
panting breaths in my ear still spellfire spun out and devils died. Yet
the battle around us, coming to us, seemed almost like a distant scene.
I already knew that it was not out there victory or defeat would be
found.

``Your petition, Queen Catherine,'' the Revenant said. ``I would hear
it.''

Leaning tiredly on my staff, I raised up a palm and compressed
everything I could of the Night in a ball. My will failed, though
stubbornness made that defeat slower than it should have been. The
forces I was trying to wield were simply too large. But where I faltered
the will of the Sisters drew me up, and with their two grips -- one deft
and soft, Andronike the spinner of weaves, the other imperious and
coarse, Komena the breaker of spears -- an orb of pure Night formed
above my open palm.

``Can you hear them?'' I asked. ``Our people, the echoes of them in this
place. The indelible mark a terrible slaughter leaves long after it has
ended.''

``Like songs woven of wails,'' Edward Fairfax softly agreed.

``The foe who did this I slew and made my own,'' I told him. ``Though
that end is a pittance, to the madness that was the Doom of Liesse. But
there is an enemy that stands before us, using her works for ruinous
purpose and waging war on all the world. That, too, is a scale to
balance.''

His eyes flicked to the orb of Night.

``One last time,'' he said, ``into the breach.''

``It will kill you,'' I warned. ``There is little kindness in that
power, and it was not meant for your hands.''

``I am long dead,'' the Good King replied. ``And \emph{kindness} is not
what I would have of this day.''

Edward Fairfax had no longer been young, when he was claimed, and I
suspected even if he had been few would have called him handsome even
then. But to the strong cast of his face there was a manner of regality,
like it had been hewn from stone and taken the noblest properties of
that make. Helmetless, his crown of white hair was the sole he wore and
the sword in his hand was bare. Without a sheath to return to, for there
was none at his hip, it would never be allowed to rest.

``The war never ends, Queen Catherine,'' he told me, tone quiet. ``The
faces and the borders, the foes and the friends, they are but the
shallowest measure of the thing. Not all tyrants reign from the Tower,
and many who have hunted the wicked partook of wickedness in the hunt.''

I inclined my head.

``One should not confuse striking at evil and doing good,'' I quoted.

``Lest good become the act of striking,'' the Good King completed, tone
approving. ``You understand, then. That when your evil is no longer
necessary, Black Queen, to linger would be to stray from the narrow path
you have tread.''

My fingers clenched.

``I know,'' I croaked out.

Dead fingers snatched the Night from my palm, clenching into a fist and
letting the darkness sink into the flesh.

``Then rise, Callowans,'' King Edward called, voice like thunder. ``Rise
once more, for we yet have debts unsettled and House Fairfax calls on
you \emph{one last time}.''

There was a heartbeat of silence, a stillness like death. And they
answered, as they had for centuries, for even a grave made for a petty
hurdle when it was a Fairfax calling you to war.