webcrawl/APGTE/Book-3/tex/Ch-024.md.tex

\hypertarget{villainous-interlude-proscenium}{%
\section{Villainous Interlude:
Proscenium}\label{villainous-interlude-proscenium}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``We should never forget that for a great evil to be defeated, a
lesser evil must first become great.''}

-- Queen Eleanor Fairfax, founder of the Fairfax dynasty
\end{quote}

Liesse was under siege, though forces had yet to deign test her walls.
With the Summer Court having seized both Dormer and Holden, the two
Callowan cities closest to the Waning Woods, the Empire had abandoned
the south and begun mustering north of Vale instead. With fae hunting
parties scouring the land coming from the west and the east, Akua had
been forced to rely on her own wiles to keep her territory safe. Summer
was holding court at Dormer and the true threats had yet to take the
field, but even lesser nobles of Arcadia were dangerous enough. Unlike
those of Winter, they would not control and subjugate the population:
all those who did not immediately bow to the Queen of Summer were
destroyed a riot of flame. Which was rather unfortunate, since Diabolist
still needed southern labour to finish her work in Liesse. The fae were
not being accommodating of her timetable.

Gathering a force of her own to field had proven tiresome, though she'd
been granted an unexpected boon. Since she'd publically sacrificed the
last mercenary force she'd hired in Mercantis -- not that the merchants
had particularly minded, after she'd paid up her very expensive penalty
fees -- hiring fresh blood had been difficult. The war in the Free
Cities had ensured the most reputable companies were already all being
employed by one side or the other, anyway, leaving behind only the
dregs. Levantine raiders too savage for that already savage nation, a
company of unreliable drow exiles and, amusingly enough, Helikean
soldiers who'd been enemies of both the Exiled Prince and the ruling
Tyrant. The last of those three were the steadiest, but they numbered
only a thousand.

The boon, she had engineered herself with the gracious help of Mother
and Dread Empress Malicia. Even as the south of Callow went up in
flames, the Wasteland had gone to war with itself. After High Lady Tasia
of Wolof had defaulted on several payments owed the Tower for granted
privileges, Akua's cousin Sargon had immediately attempted a coup.
Normally he would not have dared: it was one thing for Cousin Sargon to
set himself against Mother, another to attempt the theft of the due of a
Named. But the Diabolist had sent him a discreet message, conceding to
his claim in exchange for several concessions involving gold and sundry
favours. Armed rebellion exploded in Wolof before the day was out.
Sargon had won the initial skirmish after deploying a dozen powerful
devils, at which point Mother had responded by unleashing a demon on his
men. The mess that ensued escalated in brutality.

Dread Empress Malicia sent in all the Legions garrisoning Praesi
territory to restore order even as what remained of the Truebloods
watched the greatest among them being cornered like an animal. Akua had,
naturally, reached out to the most prominent members left. Gold, men and
mages had flowed to her territory as Holden fell to the Summer Court and
she became flanked on both sides. Including her mercenaries, Akua now
had slightly over ten thousand soldiers under her command. Of them
almost a tenth were mages, though only a handful of those could touch
High Arcana. Still, it had been an effort to keep the delight off her
face: oh, the kind of things she could \emph{make} with this many
spellcasters at her disposal.

And she would have to make them, of this there was no doubt. No
reinforcements were coming for the foreseeable future. The legions of
the Wasteland were busy keeping Wolof contained, and would not be able
to march anywhere for months. There'd been talk of some of the legions
guarding the Red Flower Vales under Marshal Grem One-Eye coming south as
the orc himself took operational command, but Proceran movement on the
other side of the border had smothered that notion in the crib. Cordelia
Hasenbach might rule over a mongrel nation, but Akua had to give her
this: she was a fair hand at the Great Game. With One-Eye and his men
remaining to prevent an invasion by the Principate, command had fallen
to Marshal Ranker in Denier -- who'd also had to decline, as the Duchy
of Daoine had declared full mobilization of the Watch and refused to
give any explanation.

That left General Istrid with seniority, and she'd stripped Summerholm
of its garrison before marching south to muster all she could north of
Vale. As a crowning irony the single largest army in Callow, the
Fifteenth under General Juniper, was forced in a defensive position at
Marchford and unable to participate. The gate into Arcadia could not be
left undefended: the Winter Court might just decide to establish a
beachhead of their own, and not even Praes could withstand the pressure
of two Courts running rampant. Until Foundling reappeared, her people
were paralyzed. It had been most amusing to see everything Squire had
built over the last year collapse the moment she was gone, Diabolist had
to admit. Upon hearing word of Squire's disappearance into Arcadia the
Praesi among the Ruling Council had swiftly struck a deal with the Guild
of Assassins and seized power in Laure before declaring martial law
across Callow -- a move greeted with widespread rioting in the cities.

Best of all, when the usurpers had first accessed the treasury they'd
found absolutely nothing: the Guild of Thieves had already emptied it in
full, and to add insult to injury taken a tithe of a tenth from every
Imperial Governor's own funds. Callow had descended into utter anarchy
and in the chaos Akua's own hands were freer than ever before\emph{.}
She held the only remaining stronghold in the south, her workforce had
swelled with refugees and until Summer was dealt with she was
essentially untouchable no matter what she did. The Empire could not
afford for her to rise in rebellion, not with this many wolves at the
gate. The situation, Diabolist thought, had fallen into her lap like a
gift from the Gods Below. The dark-skinned woman strode the smouldering
battlefield where her forces had prevailed not an hour past, Fasili
trailing her dutifully. He'd been in command for the engagement, the
largest one her army had waged so far.

``Fewer than two hundred casualties, Lady Diabolist,'' the other
aristocrat said. ``The revolving wards were a success: all their
heavyweights focused on breaking them rather than firing mass magic at
our troops.''

The conversation would be a very different one if the new wards had
failed, Akua thought. There'd been a Count among the catches of the day,
and if one of those had decided to decimate her ranks she'd have lost at
least a fifth of her soldiers. What the fae of Summer lacked in
subtlety, they more than made up in destructive power. The very reason
that her mages had been instructed to capture instead of kill, at it
happened.

``I want their corpses raised by nightfall,'' she ordered. ``Form a
separate unit from the unded, under a cadre of necromancers. I expect
their ranks will swell before this is over.''

``It will be as you say,'' the other Soninke nodded.

``As for the wards, I've been told one of them was fractured,'' the
Diabolist said. ``We'll need to refine the concept.''

``Your First Mage is already designing improvements,'' Fasili replied.
``We won a great victory today, my lady. Fae with titles of this
magnitude are hard to kill, much less subdue.''

The Diabolist's lips quirked the slightest bit at the words. Fasili
would take it as approval of his flattery, but the truth was different:
it had been a very long time since any Praesi had a First Mage. The
title had fallen out of favour when the Name of Warlock emerged: being
the most powerful of a High Lord's spellcasters had been judged to be
meaningless when there was the greater accolade of a Name to be claimed.
Her revival of the title had been for largely personal reasons, though
she did approve of the tribute to ancient custom.

``The Count of Golden Harvest,'' she said slowly, savouring the title.

``And two Baronesses,'' Fasili added with a vicious smile.

Fewer than a hundred fae without court titles had also been caught,
though they paled in importance compared to the other three. They would
be useful fodder, true enough, but for some rituals quality was required
over quantity. Leaving behind the sea of tents her soldiers were setting
up for he night, the two of them made their way to the wide flat plain
to the side of where the battle had taken place. There were four massive
wards in place there, her mages milling around them like busy little
bees. The largest held all the lower-ranked fae, shackled in iron and
badly beaten. Though much weaker than the titled fae, their number alone
was enough to make them dangerous: a hundred and fifty mages maintained
the ward in rotating shifts to ensure no concerted attempt could be made
to break the glowing sigils hanging in the air that kept them prisoner.
The other three wards were not so heavily manned: they held one of the
high-ranked nobles individually each of them under three times three
bindings, all interlocked and reinforcing each other.

It was around the wards imprisoning the Count of Golden Harvest that a
greying Soninke with a closely-cropped beard was kneeling, fingers
dancing nimbly across a set of runes floating in the air. Akua studied
them curiously: High Arcana, all of them, yet she did not recognize all
of them. She was not surprised. Brilliant she might be, but she was
still young and Dumisai of Aksum had spent a lifetime plumbing the
depths of sorcery. A moment later the runes rearranged themselves before
disappearing as a hum of power came form the ward surrounding the Count.
The fae grunted in pain, drawing interest from the mage close to him.

``Is it physically painful to have more than nine tenths of your power
restrained?'' he asked in Mtethwa.

``I will see you made ash for this insolence, sorcerer,'' the Count of
Golden Harvest hissed.

``Your threats are of no academic value, creature,'' the man noted.
``This is most unproductive.''

``First Mage,'' Fasili interrupted, his head dipping in respect.

The sorcerer jerked in surprise, only then realizing he had company
behind him. He smiled at Akua's right hand man hesitantly.

``Good evening,'' he began, then trailed off. ``\ldots{} You.''

``Lord Fasili Mirembe,'' Akua provided, too well-practiced to be openly
amused..

``Yes,'' he said. ``That.''

``Papa,'' the Diabolist greeted warmly as her father rose to his feet.

``Mpanzi,'' the older man smiled. ``Lord Warlock's research appears to
be accurate. From what I've seen fae are made of the same matter than
Arcadia itself -- there is no difference at a fundamental level between
one of them and, say, a stone taken from there.''

``How \emph{dare} you,'' the Count said angrily.

Her father absent-mindedly waved a hand and a gag of blue runes appeared
in the fae's mouth, stuffing it shut.

``Your ritual is prepared, before I forget,'' he said. ``Very good
materials you've secured. Conversion rates for fae will be much higher
than with human sacrifices.''

``That will be all, Lord Fasili,'' Akua said, half-turning towards him.

``By your leave, Lady Diabolist,'' the other Soninke bowed.

He cast an irritated glance at Papa before leaving, but there was no
true heat there. Her father's absolute lack of ambition in matters of
authority made him the opposite of a rival and her known fondness for
him meant he was too costly to retaliate against for a slight as minor
as the one he'd been handed. No doubt an officer would be on the
receiving end of Fasili's irritation before the night was over. One of
the drow, most likely. They found it difficult to take orders from a
man, even if that man had given his allegiance to a woman, and Praesi
highborn did not have much tolerance for insoburdination.

``He seems a very reliable young man,'' Papa said, watching him walk
away.

\emph{He would have you dead within an hour if given leave}, Akua
thought. Her father had spent his entire adult life under the distant,
if vicious, protection of Mother: he'd never had to develop the kind of
nose for enmity that most powerful Praesi mages needed to survive. His
judgement in these matters was\ldots{} lacking. In most people Akua
would have considered this a crippling flaw, but in truth she preferred
him like this. Unaware of the dangers lurking around him, able to do
what he loved without worry. She could keep him safe from the
scavengers. Diabolist had made it very clear to her subjects that
Dumisai of Aksum was not to be touched: feeding a scheming minor noble
to a swarm of imps in full view of her court had made that point very
thoroughly.

``He has his uses,'' Akua conceded.

Papa nodded, already visibly bored with the avenue of conversation.

``With today's lot you've almost two hundred of the lesser fae,'' he
said. ``That should be enough for a Lesser Breach.''

The term was fairly technical, and few aside from Praesi mages would
have known its meaning. Diabolism was, at its heart, a branch of magic
concerned with the summoning, binding and contracting of devils. And
demons, of course, though resorting lightly to such creatures was the
path to fates worse than death. Her people had practiced this kind of
sorcery since days predating the Miezan occupation and while it had
originally been a means for a single practitioner to gain power or
knowledge, under the Empire it had become developed as a tool of war.
Dread Empress Triumphant -- may she never return -- was widely held as
the greatest diabolist to ever live, above even the Dead King. She'd
summoned and bound entire legions of devils, put demons at their head
and her bindings had been so well-crafted they had held for centuries
after her demise. To raise an entire hosts of devils, as she had, means
other than summoning them one at a time had to be used: the amount of
wasted time and power would otherwise be massive.

The method to get around this was called a Breach: a portal into one of
the Hells would be opened, with a mass binding woven into it. Any devil
crossing into Creation would be subject to said binding, allowing for a
degree of control -- though a much looser one than if the binding had
been designed for a specific entity instead. Convention divided Breaches
between the Lesser and the Greater. Akua herself had used a Lesser
Breach at Liesse when deploying her army of devils until the mages of
the Fifteenth shut it down, fuelling it with the lives of the Stygian
slaves. A Lesser Breach was temporary and unstable by nature, impossible
to maintain for long. A Greater Breach was a different matter entirely,
and only one had occurred in all of Calernian history: the Dead King's
ritual in Keter, which had opened a permanent and stable portal into one
of the Hells. Little progress had been made since then in understanding
exactly how the Greater Breach had been made, though Diabolist had come
to understand some part of it.

``More fuel would be preferable, but I don't have the time to spare,''
Akua said. ``I'll have to do with limited numbers and make second Breach
when we've the fae for it.''

``You'd get more meat for the expense if you went lower than the
Thirtieth Hell,'' Papa pointed out. ``As it is a seventh of that power
goes into the Due.''

``Foundling made it very clear during the Rebellion that a well-trained
army will tear through anything lower than the Thirtieth, given time to
prepare,'' Diabolist replied. ``The Summer Court is in a league above
what her forces were back then. If I want the devils to survive the
first engagement, I can't use \emph{chumaili} or \emph{kichabwa}.''

Her father hummed, mulling it over.

``Well, you won't get many \emph{walin-falme} but you can be sure they
won't die easy,'' he said.

The term meant \emph{imperial guard}, in an archaic dialect of Mtethwa.
The devils were old favourites of Tyrants seeking to invade Callow,
preferred to more bestial breeds for their above average intelligence
and ability to use forged armaments. They were also noted for their
resistance to fire, though it was difficult to model how effective it
would be against fae flame. Their leathery skin and deformed bat wings
had many mages speculating Dread Emperor Sorcerous had used them as
breeding stock to create the much larger winged monsters that were used
to access higher levels of the Tower, and would allow them to answer fae
flight on the battlefield. It was a shame, truly, that she would not get
more than four hundred of them from the Lesser Breach. Their inaptitude
for tactical thinking was perhaps their greatest weakness, and the
reason they usually served under the command of the Black Knight of the
era. Akua lacked such a commander however, which was why it had been so
important to capture the high-ranked fae. The Lesser Breach could wait
until the prisoners had been brought back to Liesse, but Diabolist
intended to summon her officers tonight.

``The Count first,'' she said.

``For the best,'' Papa agreed. ``He'll be the most exhausting.''

The two of them strode into the ward keeping the Count of Golden Harvest
contained, the thick and heavy magic washing over their skin. Her father
flicked his wrist and the gag in the fae aristocrat's mouth dissolved.

``You court your doom, mortals,'' he said harshly. ``My Queen will have
vengeance for what happened today.''

``There is a theory by a very clever man,'' Papa said, entirely ignoring
the threat,, ``that fae can die in truth.''

``Your ignorance rivals only your arrogance, sorcerer,'' the Count
sneered.

``Slitting your throat returns you to Arcadia, to be born again,'' her
father continued. ``But, ah, fae are made of power are they not?''

``We are Summer incarnate,'' the creature smiled. ``You will all burn
under the sun.''

``Yes, power incarnate,'' the greying man said admiringly. ``What
happens, then, if this power is \emph{used up}?''

``No mere insect can undo the workings of the Gods,'' the fae said.

``I do not believe,'' Diabolist said, ``that we have been introduced.''

The Count glanced at her with contempt.

``I know what you are, cursed one,'' he spat. ``Defeat is carved into
the bones of your kind.''

``My name,'' she said, ``is Akua Sahelian. I am a villain.''

``The pale imitation of an ancient enemy,'' the fae mocked.

``Oh yes,'' Diabolist agreed softly. ``That is exactly what I am.
\emph{The Enemy}, they call us in the West. I am the last of a line
unbroken since time immemorial. My kind has usurped the mantle of gods,
stolen secrets from beyond Creation and turned kingdoms into sea. I am
Praesi of the old blood, fae. You should kneel in awe.''

``You are the dying ember of a fire long gone,'' the Count sneered.
``Soon to be put out by the might of Summer.''

``You think you know \emph{might}?'' Akua laughed. ``I will turn your
blood to smoke. I will feed the horrors that crush your bones with the
sound of your screams. The hearts of your children will raise my
fortresses to the sky and make my ships sail on solid ground. You may
have been godlings in your wretched home, but you've stepped down from
that pedestal -- and down here, we bleed the likes of you over altars.
Your poor, misbegotten creature. You actually believe you have a
chance.''

Her Name pulsed beneath her skin even as her eyes turned cold.

``But you're in Creation now, Count. Here be monsters.''

The Count smirked.

``Do you seek to frighten me, child? Summer does not know fear.''

Akua slowly unsheathed her knife, resting the wickedly sharp edge on the
side of the fae's throat. He looked into her eyes, undaunted. Diabolist
smiled.

``No, not yet,'' she murmured. ``But I will \emph{teach} you.''