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\epigraph{``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. \emph{A crown is not a privilege}, she'd once
told Frederic when they'd been younger. Unsure of their power, of where
they stood. \emph{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 \emph{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 \emph{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 \emph{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\ldots{} 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 \emph{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 \emph{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.