webcrawl/APGTE/Book-3/tex/Ch-103.md.tex

\hypertarget{chapter-68-coda}{%
\section{Chapter 68: Coda}\label{chapter-68-coda}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``Here, have a butter knife. Let it not be said I do not tend to
the needs of my beloved subjects.''}

-- Dread Emperor Revenant, having dinner with an enemy
\end{quote}

It was a pretty room, for an abattoir. As usual, Diabolist had indulged
in a décor that was halfway between an overly ornate brothel and a
cult's secret altar. The walls were pure bas-relief of pale grey marble,
and even as my body obeyed instructions not my own I caught glimpses of
what they displayed. Hells, twenty-one layers of them forming
progressively smaller circles centred around the pedestal in the centre
of I tall. Braziers of blood-red flame cast flickering shadows that
seemed to make the reliefs of the devils move just out of sight, but my
attention rested squarely on the man hanging in the air. Above a raised
pedestal Black was held up by golden bindings on his wrists and ankles
that had him spread-eagle and incapable of moving anything but his neck,
which he craned at an angle to watch us coming in.

``You're late,'' he told me, bluntly ignoring Akua.

Diabolist tittered amusedly. She was like a cat playing with a mouse,
savouring the struggle before the inevitable kill.

``You may speak, Catherine,'' she said, flicking her wrist.

I licked my lips, a rush of pleasure at getting back control of even
just a part of my face spoiled only by the knowledge that she could take
it back at a whim.

``She bound my Name,'' I said. ``I don't control my body.''

Black had lost his helmet, at some point, and his face was bruised. His
armour had been stripped as well, and that sight was foreign to me.
Beyond the cuts and scrapes I knew mattered nothing to a villain as old
and set in his self-image as my teacher -- they would be gone soon
enough, leaving not even scars -- it was seeing him without the shell of
steel that discomforted me. It made him look vulnerable. But his eyes
were sharp as ever, and his pale green gaze turned to study Diabolist
with disdain.

``Temporary enslavement, truly?'' he said. ``I expected better of Tasia
Sahelian's daughter.''

That drew blood, I saw with a smirk. There was a heartbeat of frozen
fury in Akua's eyes before she schooled herself into a blank mask.

``You killed barely a tenth of the soldiers I assigned to your capture,
Lord Black,'' Diabolist replied. ``Today is a day for disappointments,
it seems.''

Black seemed amused, and utterly unconcerned about the fact that he was
trussed up like a pig for me to slaughter. That would have given me hope
if I didn't know for a fact he would behave exactly like this even if he
had no last card up his sleeve.

``Arcadia was a mistake,'' he told me, returning to ignoring Akua. ``You
won a greater comparative advantage in capacity, but in Arcadia
narrative matters most of all. You lacked the necessary weight to win,
Catherine. In the future, consult further than Hierophant. His lack of
interest in stories is a glaring weakness.''

If I could frown at that, I would have. He knew for a sure I'd consulted
others when planning this out: he'd been one of them.

``This is almost touching,'' Diabolist drawled. ``Fatherly Amadeus,
advising his pupil to the end. Mother made you out to be much less
sentimental.''

My teacher raised an eyebrow.

``Adults are talking,'' he told her. ``We can return to your wasteful
little tantrum afterwards.''

``Perhaps a reminder of your current situation is in order,'' Akua
mildly said.

Her wrist flicked and the bindings stretched out. A series of sharp pops
signalled his joints had given under the pressure.

``I've had worse sparring with Sabah,'' he noted, face betraying not so
much as a flicker of discomfort.

``It's already a cloudy day, Black,'' I said. ``Strop trying to make it
rain.''

Green eyes turned to me.

``There is wisdom in moderation,'' he conceded.

Shit, there went my sudden hope. He'd given the correct answer to our
identity key. Cloudy and rain were an inquiry, wisdom and moderation a
confirmation. There shouldn't be anyone else who knew the key. I tried
to look at Diabolist but found I could not, my movement restricted. As
good as an assurance she'd been looking at me.

``Why so quiet, Akua?'' Black said. ``Come now, if there is moment to
gloat now is it.''

Diabolist slowly crossed the room until she stood by his side, her face
remaining in a pleasant façade.

``This is not personal, Carrion Lord,'' she said.

``Of course it is,'' the pale-skinned man smiled. ``You've sold your
people the lie this is about the old ways and the new, but we both know
otherwise. You're not a mere reactionary. I stand for the order that has
been keeping you contained for decades, and through my death you gain
clear skies.''

``You have served Praes well,'' Diabolist said. ``And in this final act
will serve it still. You may leave the stage knowing your labour will
not go to waste.''

``You,'' Black said, ``are the \emph{incarnation} of waste. Of every
destructive instinct that must be carved out or repurposed lest we ever
reach old ends through old means. Your accolades are as worthless as
every single thing you've ever said and done. They will pass, and be
forgotten. We will all be better for it.''

``Empty defiance,'' Akua said. ``A lesser end than you deserve, but that
choice was not mine to make. Ill-done nonetheless. I will spare you
further disgrace.''

My hand moved and unsheathed my sword, the sound of steel bared ringing
too loudly in the room.

``Do you still believe it,'' I asked suddenly. ``That it's cowardice?''

His gaze moved back to me, and what I saw there had my blood pounding
against my ears. There was no fight in him.

``Proceed, child,'' he told Diabolist. ``Play out this farce to the
end.''

She hesitated, in that moment. With her attention flagging I got the
opportunity to watch her, and what I saw had my lips quirking. She was
hesitating because she could not believe, deep down, that anyone would
be unafraid of death. \emph{Because you are}, I thought. \emph{So very,
very afraid.} Some ancient Alban king had once said that a man only
began to live when he had something worthy dying for. I'd never really
believed that, myself. If you really believed in something, you owed
that belief that it be seen through to the bitter end. But Akua? Akua
believed only in herself. She could not conceive of any victory that did
not involve her breathing at the end, and applying that belief to Black
she was being shaken by his indifference. Wondering if he had some last
trick to save his own hide. The hesitation passed after she looked at
the walls around us, at the runes hidden in the bas-relief, and reminded
herself of the strength of her defences.

``Farewell, Carrion Lord,'' Akua said. ``Die knowing that the torch you
now pass will cast a shadow on all of Creation.''

``Uninspired,'' Black judged.

The sword went through his stomach. I'd not guided the blow, and it
seemed his words had irked Diabolist enough she'd chosen to give him a
slow death instead of a quick one. He gurgled and twitched as the
dark-skinned woman stalked at my side. Laying a hand on my shoulder she
leaned close to my ear.

``How does it feel,'' she asked in a murmur, ``to reach the dawn of what
you were meant to be?''

I wasn't the one to answer. A laugh came ripping out of a throat that
was patched together from half a dozen voices, hoarse and soft but all
whispering.

``Akua Sahelian,'' the thing kept in bindings said, ``Diabolist.''

Even as it bled out, slowly crawling to death, its skin was flaking off.
Beneath the appearance of my teacher was a middle-aged Soninke of the
same build. Then it was a young Taghreb woman. Every blink had a
different face to it, and the longer I watched the less I could remember
about any of them. Akua stepped away from me like she'd been burned.

``Assassin,'' she said. ``No, a fake. You are in Procer, I know it. The
Prince of Orne died choking on his own correspondence.''

\emph{Ah}, I thought as an old detail finally clicked into place. It'd
always niggled at me, that Black's favourite executioner would have a
signature. His little ironic deaths. Wasn't half the point of having a
skilled assassin that the enemy never knew you'd killed one of their own
at all? The point of a signature, I grasped, was that people recognized
it. Watched out for it\emph{. It's like the Eyes of the Empire}, I
thought. The deadly hidden in the obvious. \emph{How many people has
Assassin killed over the years that had perfectly natural accidents no
one ever thought to question?} Then it sunk in that the fucking Assassin
knew the identity key I shared with Black, and my blood ran cold. Even
knowing it had been a measured risk on his part, the fact that at any
time in the last year I might have been talking with this monster
instead of mine and never known it was sobering.

``You die nonetheless,'' Diabolist sneered.

``A hundred times before,'' Assassin said in that voice was not a voice.
``A hundred times more.''

Akua's hand whipped up, a spear of black flames formed and tearing
through the other's villains guts in moments.

``Where is your father, child?'' the Assassin said. ``The Carrion Lord
sends his regards.''

And then it laughed, laughed until there was too little left of it for
even that. Ashes fell in clumps on the ground until the hellflame
devoured even that. Diabolist was shaken, I saw. That I could see it at
all was telling, because I could now move my neck. And wiggled the
fingers of my free hand, however slightly. The binding was not perfect.

``Did you know?'' she hissed, wheeling on me.

I rasped out a laugh.

``All according to plan,'' I lied.

Or perhaps not. Just not \emph{my} plan. Diabolist mastered her anger
but there was more than that I saw in her eyes. Fear, fear spreading
with every pump of her heart. The realization that she was no longer in
control. I relished it, fed on it. She strode to the wall and slapped
down her palm on it, the reliefs shifting to leave a smoothly polished
circle as she spoke in the mage tongue. The cadence I recognized, if not
the words. She was scrying. The surface of the stone rippled and lights
swam into focus until an image was formed, and at the heart of the
circle pale green eyes met Akua's gaze.

``Good evening, Diabolist,'' the Black Knight said, and cut off her
father's ear.

I'd never seen the man before, though I knew his name from intelligence
reports. Dumisai of Aksum. He'd apparently abandoned her mother's side
to join her shortly after she became governess of Liesse. The scrying
stone shifted, revealing a windowless room filled with hacked corpses
and my teacher standing in the middle of it with Dumisai kneeling at his
feet. Hands bound, his body a collection of swelling bruises. He
screamed when Black's sword cut through his ear, shaking as blood
spewed. Akua let out a raw sound, before she went cold.

``A hostage,'' Diabolist said. ``You should know better.''

Black, not bothering to reply, flicked his wrist and cut off the
remaining ear. The man screamed again, louder.

``Mpanzi,'' he hoarsely said. ``Do not flinch, this is-``

Akua's breath was steady, her face still as a pond when she interrupted.
She looked at Black.

``You intend to negotiate, evidently,'' she stated.

``Still alive, Catherine?'' my teacher asked.

``Feeling cautiously optimistic about it too,'' I replied. ``No thanks
to you.''

``He is \emph{bleeding}, Black Knight,'' Akua said coldly. ``He is of no
use to you dead. Your trick won you a small victory, but do not overplay
your hand.''

The pale man's lips quirked ever so slightly.

``I cannot claim that trick to be mine,'' he demurred. ``The Wandering
Bard taught me a hard lesson in Nicae, about weight and the shifting of
it. I expect she will rue that, before my days are done.''

``Your demands?'' Diabolist asked.

``Three questions, answered truly,'' Black said. ``If this is done, I
will spare your father. At even the suspicion of a lie, I will kill him
immediately.''

I had to force myself not to glare. Questions? \emph{Really}? Now of all
times?

``And what guarantee do I have you will hold up your part of the
bargain?'' Akua said.

``You'll have no oath from me, child,'' he said. ``I give you my word.
Take it or leave it.''

My hands rose and I felt the cold touch of steel against my neck.

``I could kill your apprentice with a single word,'' Diabolist said.

``That has been attempted before,'' Black said. ``To the woe of all
involved. By all means, see where it takes you. It's been a long day, I
could use a laugh.''

Though I appreciated the pat on the back, I was currently lacking a
fucking angel to swindle so I really wished he hadn't just said that.
Akua felt desperate, at the edge of the precipice. That was a dangerous
place for her kind of villain to be.

``Three questions,'' Diabolist said. ``Answered truly.''

My hand came down and the blade with it, but that meant nothing. She
could do the same without lifting a finger at any time.

``You acquired a great many ritual objects to build this device,'' Black
said. ``Were any bought through the Closed Circle in Mercantis?''

Diabolist looked at him for a long time.

``Yes,'' she said.

For a second my teacher looked very, very old. Exhausted down to his
bones. But it was gone as quick as it had come, leaving me to wonder if
I'd imagined the whole thing.

``What contact have you had with the Wandering Bard, envoys thereof or
affiliates bearing messages for her?'' Black asked.

\emph{That} got my attention. I'd been under the impression that the
Bard had been meddling down south, too busy to put her hand to the chaos
in Callow. That he would even ask this implied he was not so certain as
that as I'd believed.

``We had a single conversation in the hills beyond Marchford,'' Akua
said. ``That was our only point of contact, to my knowledge.''

If anything, that reply seem to had him get warier. Shit. Another thing
to watch out for, though. I couldn't see an angle for her to play in
this mess, but that was always what fucked you wasn't it? The knife you
didn't see coming.

``The cylinder around your throat has a soul bound within,'' Black said.
``Whose is it?''

Diabolist's lips thinned and she hesitated. Cold steel tightened against
the back of her father's neck. I felt it on my back, between my shoulder
blades. Discretely I made a thumbs down, and tapped the side of my leg
once. Then a thumb up, and tapped the side of my leg twice. It was gone.
Then it came back once, twice. Another piece fell into place. Soon, now.

``A newborn child's,'' she finally said.

He turned to me.

``Her contingency, Catherine,'' he told me. ``A blank slate with her
mind woven in, meant to eventually possess that same child's body if she
dies. You will have to destroy it.''

``I'm a little tied up at the moment, Black,'' I said irritated, then
winced at the accidental pun.

``Your questions were answered,'' Diabolist said. ``You gave you word.''

``So I did,'' Black agreed, and the blade left the man's neck. ``Move
along, Dumisai.''

It swung down but no blood was spilled: the bindings on the mages's
hands were cut instead. There was a flicker of surprise in the eyes of
both father and daughter, and in that moment of surprise the binding
slackened further. \emph{Patience, Cat}, I cautioned myself. The mage
trembling got to his feet and my teacher sheathed his sword.

``Do you know why grand designs like yours always fail?'' he asked Akua.

``You have lost your leverage, Carrion Lord,'' she coldly replied.
``Your life will soon follow.''

``Because they're \emph{loud},'' he continued. ``You light a beacon that
no one can miss. The lasting victories are always the quiet ones.
Farewell, Akua Sahelian. You were warned.''

Dumisai of Aksum opened a door, and the moment freedom was open to him a
volley of crossbow bolts thudded into his face. Black's word had been
kept, to the letter. He'd spared the man. No promise had been made about
any sappers that might be waiting outside. I felt the blow ripple
through her, through the binding, and finally I tapped the side of my
leg twice.

``\emph{You},'' Diabolist screamed, the hatred in her eyes was poison
but she was looking in the wrong direction and she had been made to play
the wrong game since she first scried.

It was going to cost her.

``Surprise,'' Thief rasped, and stole the binding.

She came into sight, wounded and burned but gloriously still alive, and
the world slowed as the sequence I'd been awaiting began. Diabolist
turned and barked in the mage tongue in the same movement. Vivienne
recoiled as if she'd been slapped, gritting her teeth. I closed my eyes,
part of me knowing exactly what was about to unfold. Akua would wrest
the binding back from her and seek to shackle me again, to kill Thief
and then Black. Even as I ran my finger down that line the rest of me
turned inwards, to the scaffolding Hierophant had fashioned around my
soul. It was meant to prevent from collapsing on myself because of the
power I'd stolen from Winter, I knew. The best effort of a
once-in-a-century brilliant mind to keep me alive and whole. That'd been
the mistake. It was, as he'd warned me, the leash Diabolist used to bind
me. But the error ran deeper, because for all the horrors at his
fingertips Masego was a fundamentally kind boy. He'd tried to keep me
unbroken. Shield me from pain, from hunger, from the many prices the
decisions I'd made had laid at my feet but had since gone unpaid. There
it was, I thought. My pivot. I'd awaited some dilemma that would have my
conscience or my heart bleeding, but oh that wasn't the kind of story
I'd made was it?

No.~For all that I'd lashed myself with guilt when the mood took me, it
had always been others paying the price. My people, my soldiers, my
friends. My teachers. Again and again they bled so that I would not, and
the arrogance of that had seeped into my bones as over that sea of
corpses I set my throne. It had made me believe I was owed victory, deep
down. Perhaps even that I deserved it. And now Creation was forcing my
eyes open and making me watch what I had wrought, whispering that I had
a choice. I could roll the dice once more, with a laugh in my throat and
a sneer on my lips, throw my challenge and my pride in the face of
Diabolist and bet on a victory that heaped yet another ruin to the pile.
There was a chance of triumph, glinting at the end of that path. I had
Thief and years of treading the knife's edge, hatred enough to surpass
Akua's own. If I risked it all in the moment before she bound me again,
I could avoid the reckoning once more. Or I could give answer. I had
stood before a tribunal of merciless angels once, but this judgement was
a deeper thing. It was a settling of accounts in full, the surrender of
all the safeties I'd been given without earning them. Just my choices
and their consequences, whatever those might be. It would not be pretty.
It would not be as easily set aside as a doubt in the dark of night or a
death snatched back by trickery. All I had to do was to\ldots{} lean in.

A single heartbeat passed. Thief lost the binding, and I made my choice.
In matters of self-mutilation, I had few rivals. In my mind's eye I
looked up the scaffolding Hierophant had built and I \emph{ripped it
off}.

Diabolist's binding found me but there was no purchase, because Winter
was no longer a thing tamed. It ran wild through my veins, through my
Name, and a scream ripped its way out of me. My blood was red ice, my
bones snapped and beyond it all my heart beat once -- and ceased. There
was a world within that I owned, and it was bereft of stars and moon
because in the depths of that darkness even those had been smothered by
frost. It did not kill me. No, in a way that would have been a mercy and
my mantle knew no such thing. What I had of life was a last gasp, the
desperate clawing of death's rattle as the whole world was buried around
me. Bleak. That was the word, and now I understood the meaning of it in
full. Winter had taken it all and left nothing behind that would warm
me, no refuge to reassure me that I was still Catherine Foundling. Even
my Name was stripped bare, its power dimmed and dull. I had no aspect
left but one, and that one was gone far beyond what an aspect should be.
Squire, I thought, but the name rang hollow. Tied to me only by the
barest thread. Transition loomed ahead, patiently awaiting the right
fulcrum.

``Oh \emph{fuck},'' Thief whispered.

I turned to watch Diabolist, feeling the warmth and fear wafting off her
fragile frame. So very mortal, for all her arrogance.

``Your trial I have cheated,'' I said. ``And suffered defeat for that
crooked passing.''

``\textbf{Call},'' Akua Sahelian said.

A bundle of power inside her unfolded under my patient eye and I flicked
my wrist. Ice spread through it, cracks spreading as she flinched. Ah, I
thought. Devoured but not gone. The corpse of her aspect I took for my
own, let the winds and the snow bury it. It would await my purposes
there.

``Vivienne,'' I said, and when I spoke her name she shivered.

I did not, though the sheer act of voicing it had felt like I was
stroking her cheek. A true name, freely given. There was power in this.

``Stand aside,'' I said. ``It is time for me to end this.''

She mutely nodded, backing away as Diabolist wreathed herself in Summer
flame. Cold crept across the room, the air going still and the stone
growing cool. I did not need to will it. It happened.

``The pivot I snatched from your grasp,'' I told Akua. ``And so you no
longer have hold over me.''

I felt her will scrabbling against my own, trying to seize the threads
of Winter, but all she could touch was the summit of the glacier. It was
beyond her ability to move.

``What are you?'' Akua Sahelian gasped.

``The monster,'' I said. ``The one you should have bound
\emph{tighter}.''

I limped slightly as I advanced, an old wound once erased but now made
anew. The Gods did enjoy their little ironies. I read it in the way she
moved, that shifted. How she was going to wield the fire. It only took
the slightest of adjustments to let it pass me. Was this how it felt, to
have the weight of Creation behind you? How novel. Diabolist backed a
way but I touched her chest over her heart, ever so slightly, and there
was a quiet snap. Her expression went still, and I buried my arm through
her chest up to the elbow.

``I'll be seeing you soon,'' I told her as she died. ``I still have an
oath to keep.''