webcrawl/APGTE/Book-4/tex/Ch-055.md.tex

\hypertarget{chapter-40-viviennes-plan}{%
\section{Chapter 40: Vivienne's Plan}\label{chapter-40-viviennes-plan}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``A battle is, in my experience, a handful of hours where one of
two generals proceeds to destroy his own army while the other simply
happens to be there.''}

-- Prince Fernando of Salamans
\end{quote}

For anyone to come up with the underlying principles of the Threefold
Reflection and to then decide someone should live in there required an
impressive amount of dementia, so in a sense it made sense that Neshamah
had built the damned thing. I'd seen drawing of the pyramids that could
be found in northern Praes -- Wolof, in particular, was known for them
-- but this one was of a decidedly different bent. Stone instead of mud,
for a start, but where the Soninke works tended to be broad and gently
sloped this one was tall and unpleasantly angular. I suspected if the
monuments were going to have anything in common, it was the amount of
bodies buried beneath them. Akua had been vague about the rituals that
still took place by the city she'd once been in line to inherit, but
Masego had been disturbingly informative about the most infamous
atrocities associated with the place. It took a particular kind of
people to decide it was a going idea to sacrifice a few thousand people
to make something called a `plague cauldron'. The only reason I was
pretty sure Diabolist had never been taken down there to murder puppies
as a kid was that after the whole `murder your childhood friend' party
it'd feel like a bit of a let-down.

I pulled the Mantle of Woe closer around my shoulders after running a
metaphysical finger down the chain binding Akua. Still pulled taut.
Wherever she was, it wasn't anywhere close. After Hakram informed us we
were meant to split the group in two to take different doors -- the
western gate for Masego and I, while it was the southern one for him --
we'd wasted no time dawdling around. A trail of smoke going up into the
sky of Keter made it plain that our work there had not been discreet,
which I assumed to be the point. Hierophant was not in a chatty mood as
we passed through the colonnades surrounding the pyramid proper at a
brisk pace. Whether it was our piecemeal fiasco of a plan or the loss of
an eye that had him in a tiff I didn't know, but either way I couldn't
blame him. There was much I despised about what I'd become through
Winter, but I would feel\ldots{} naked without the eldritch senses of my
constructed body. I'd come to take what they told me for granted:
tasting heat and fear, hearing beyond that even of a Named. That muted
sense I had of the intents of others, which straddled the line between
sorcerous boon and a flood of details put together I would never have
noticed without Winter. All that, and I was only a bastard child of
Arcadia.

No wonder the fae had reputation for exquisite machinations, if they had
all these senses and more: it was like being the only person in a
pitch-black room that could see in the dark.

``Our gate,'' Hierophant said, breaking our stretch of silence.

I nodded slowly. It'd been too much to hope, I supposed, that it would
be wide open for us. Instead the two slabs of sun-drenched stone
remained tightly shut, which was admittedly something of a problem.

``I'm guessing hammering through isn't an option,'' I half-guessed.

``We have no hammer,'' Masego reminded me gently. ``And even should we
employ sorcery, it would be loud and difficult to open this through
force.''

Figured. It wasn't like the Dead King bothered to build on anything but
titanic scale.

``Maybe there's a magic word,'' I suggested.

The dark-skinned man inclined his head in concession.

``Neshamah,'' he tried.

Nothing. Yeah, I supposed it would be a little like a Callowan wizard
using `revenge' as the key to a magic door. There probably \emph{had}
been at least one that embarrassingly lame in the past, but it wasn't
common practice.

``Could you-`` I began, but he raised his hand.

``Quiet,'' he murmured.

His brow creased, and after a moment he traced a rune against his
temple. A dot of light came out, and in a streak came before the both of
us. It changed into an illusionary card, the Eight of Wands, and on the
projection a few words in Old Miezan were written. I winced. I'd never
paid as close attention as I should to those lessons -- I'd had a deal
with another girl where I traded her translations for my history essays
-- and I was horribly rusty besides.

``Translation?'' I asked.

``Sparrow,'' Masego said. ``And I am instructing myself to remove the
third rune from your artefact.''

``That's skipping one,'' I noted. ``Last time was the first.''

``It occurs to me,'' Hierophant, ``that the confusion here might be the
purpose instead of a mistake.''

Yeah, I'd come to that conclusion myself a while back. I wouldn't work
off anything this messy and complex if I had a feasible alternative,
which once more took me back to the soothsaying Revenant awaiting us
inside: the Skein. I was starting to get the impression we were not
playing shatranj with the oracle so much as tossing handfuls of pebbles
at the board and hoping one ended up tipping over the king.

``That aside,'' I said. ``Did you engrave a card into your own head?''

``Several,'' Masego replied. ``It seems wiser than keeping them at hand,
where they could be witnessed. Aunt Eudokia always told me that treason
is the one thing one should leave no paper trail for.''

That might be true, but it didn't make him any less of a show-off.

``All right, Zeze,'' I said. ``Magic fingers it is.''

With a put-upon sigh he rested his palm against the back of my head and-

--

\emph{``The palace isn't a maze,'' Vivienne said, elbows on the table.
``Not in the traditional sense. There's a chamber at the centre with a
guiding artefact.''}

\emph{Akua got it before any of us, which did not strike me as odd.
Masego might boast a broader base of sorcerous knowledge, but these kind
of traps were as milk and honey to Praesi highborn.}

\emph{``Three palaces, reflections in overlap,'' she said. ``The
artefact is able to decide which threshold connects to which across the
span entire.''}

\emph{``It looks like three wheels on a stick,'' the other Callowan
said. ``With pieces of twine hanging through, tying places together.''}

\emph{The look on Masego's face at the revelation was pure avarice.
Godsdamnit. His mild magpie tendencies when it came to artefacts had
only increased since we'd technically robbed the Sahelians of their most
precious artefact. In our defence, Akua had been in the box and it'd
been just lying there. Finders keepers, right?}

\emph{``You found the room at the centre,'' Hakram said, cutting at the
heart of the matter.}

\emph{Vivienne nodded.}

\emph{``More accurately, I was allowed to,'' she said.}

\emph{``You ran into the guarding Revenant,'' I guessed.}

\emph{``He's called the Skein,'' the dark-haired woman said. ``And
before getting deeper into that, I have a few questions for our foreign
experts. What can you tell me about ratlings?''}

\emph{Indrani set down her cup, looking interested for the first time in
a while.}

\emph{``The species?'' she said. ``Nothing too deep. Lycaonese call them
`the Plague' because they never stop being hungry. Just like a disease,
they'll wipe out everything even if it starves them down the line.''}

\emph{``Said hunger has been speculated to be caused by their unusual
physiology,'' Masego added. ``They never cease growing. They are birthed
as bipedal rodents smaller than humans, and have no theoretical check on
how large they can be save for each other. The Chain of Hunger is so
named because ratlings will promptly devour each other when there are no
other sources of immediate sustenance. Father believes the entire
species is a kind of strange Demiurgian phenomenon of unknown
purpose.''}

\emph{My eyes turned to Akua, who'd been standing a little outside of
the Woe's circle this entire time.}

\emph{``Wolofite records agree with the Lord Warlock,'' she said.
``There are scrolls dating back to Triumphant's campaign in the region
that speak of a time in the life of their kind called the
`metamorphosis', where ratlings will transition from bipedal beings of
observed sapience into the animalistic large creatures called the
Ancient Ones. The few of those beings that manage to consume enough
quickly enough while in that state are speculated to undergo a second
metamorphosis into the elusive Horned Lords of lore.''}

\emph{``Those Horned Lords,'' Vivienne said. ``Back on two feet, about
sixty feet high, antler-like pairs spouting from the head, capable of
human speech?''}

\emph{``That's how the the Lady described them,'' Indrani slowly said.
``Save for the antlers.''}

\emph{``Well,'' Vivienne smiled ruefully. ``We have something of a
problem, then.''}

--

``- Burning Hells,'' I exhaled. ``Horned Lord, Hierophant. There's one
of those with seer powers sitting pretty in the middle of the pyramid
just waiting to fuck with us through a maze-making control artefact.''

``A ratling?'' Masego mused. ``Unusual. I suppose the Kingdom of the
Dead does have a border with their kind. Do you have the magic word for
the gates?''

I sighed.

``Apparently that wasn't judged a high priority,'' I said. ``What had
you reaching for the card, anyway? Any help coming from there?''

``I was instructed not to tell,'' Hierophant replied absent-mindedly.
``I suppose attempting to jostle the wards open is in order, lacking
alternative.''

``That's feasible?'' I asked.

``Quickly?'' he said. ``No.~But a few hours of protracted study should
do the trick. It won't take more than half a day.''

``We're in a bit of a hurry,'' I said. ``\ldots{} I think.''

``This is not the kind of miracle I am proficient with, Catherine,'' he
replied peevishly.

Bickering would have been a nice way to let off the steam, but a notion
reached the surface of my mind, quicksilver-swift.

``Sparrow,'' I spoke at the gate.

The heartbeat of silence that followed echoed with unspoken mockery. Ah,
well, it'd been worth a try.

``Sparrow,'' Masego said as well, only in Ashkaran.

Without a sound, the stone slabs withdrew into the threshold.

``I would have thought of that eventually,'' I said, not the defensive
in the slightest.

``I note you did not give a precise time limit for that statement,'' the
one-eyed mage said.

If I stepped on his foot going into the Threefold Reflection, well, no
one could prove it wasn't an accident.

---

I'd considered it a safe assumption that the creepy dimensionally
layered murder pyramid would look like a dusty crypt inside, but
apparently I'd done the Dead King disservice: it was actually pretty
pleasant in here. Sunlight, fresh air, and the decorations were both
tasteful and welcoming. The unfortunate part was that `here' was
becoming a vaguer term every time we turned a corner of passed a door.

``Left,'' Hierophant decided.

``We literally just took a right,'' I said.

``In another palace, yes,'' Masego agreed. ``This is\ldots{} not that
one.''

After spending a solid sixty heartbeats in awe of the fact that it was
natural sunlight and not torches or magelights that lit up the entrance
hall of the Threefold Reflection -- I'd checked out for most of the
ensuing mutterings about `fixed temporal sliver' and `redistribution
arrays' -- he'd gotten his shit together and begun to serve as my
personal navigator. Since the entire place was a madman's nightmare of
wards and thresholds, it was possible for him to follow along the
metaphorical dotted lines of the wards and get a bare bones idea of the
layout of the palace. Took him a little bit and required concentration,
but it was reliable. Unfortunately, it was also useless: the image he
got from that trick was only a single layer of the reflection, which
meant the moment we left that layer we were lost again. And he couldn't
see the whole pyramid with that trick, either, which had bitten us in
the ass swiftly. We were probably past the outer reaches of the palace,
but the gates we'd come in through were nowhere in sight. Which went
some way in explaining why it'd been so easy to get in, I supposed.

It was inside the palace that the Skein would find us easiest to
contain. So why had we wandered in blindly? This was Hakram's plan we
were following, and as far as I could see it could only end in failure.
More than that, we were wasting precious time. Malicia and her minions
might already be out of the pyramid for all I knew.

``This isn't getting us anywhere,'' I said, then winced at the
accidental pun.

I looked up at the ceiling.

``Skein, right?'' I said. ``I'm assuming you're listening, because let's
be honest -- if \emph{I} were in your place, I'd want a good look at the
people I was screwing with. Don't suppose we could cut out the whole
maze thing and have a civilized conversation instead?''

No answer.

``Cat,'' Masego said quietly.

He was gesturing towards a door we'd passed earlier, and my brow rose.
The room behind that threshold -- a cosy little antechamber with
fainting couches -- had gone dark. An invitation? Only one way to find
out. I made sure Hierophant was right next to me when I passed the
threshold, as I had this entire time. The last thing I wanted was to get
separated from my erstwhile navigator. My reflexes were quick, but not
quite quick enough not to fall. Winter came eagerly when called and a
platform of ice formed beneath my feet, though I almost slid off it when
I had to bend over to catch Masego by the scruff of the neck.

``Impressive workmanship,'' Hierophant noted, lone eye looking down
through his own body.

I glanced as well, and forced myself to count up to ten in silence. A
spike pit. And actual fucking pit filled with sharp metal spikes. There
were even faded skeletons at the bottom, which was really the spine in
the wine as far as I was concerned. It wasn't like they hadn't had
literal centuries to clean that up, I just knew they'd left them there
as a statement.

``A simple no would have sufficed,'' I complained, looking upwards.

There was solid ground on the other side of the pit, and with a careful
flex of my legs I leapt up here. No threshold there, at least. Jumping
from pit to pit would have been a bit much even by fucking Keteran
standards. I dropped Masego back on his feet fairly awkwardly, given
that I was holding him by the neck and he had a few feet on me.

``Quiet bubble,'' I ordered.

The ward went up, and we tried to position ourselves in a way that would
make it difficult to read our lips. Changed to speaking Kharsum as well,
it wasn't nearly as well known as Lower Miezan or the other Imperial
languages.

``This isn't working,'' I told Hierophant. ``We need a change of
tactics. Your source that you can't talk about, can they be any help?''

``I assume they already would have intervened if they could,'' Masego
said.

Was that implying the conversation went only one way, or was I reading
too much into it? That was the pain in this plan -- well, one of them --
I never could be sure whether I was supposed to try to figure out
something or not. I shifted on my feet, though not because of what he'd
said. His silence ward wasn't the same he'd used when we were inside the
Silent Palace, it had no physical component to it. Not that it had
helped in the slightest against the Thief of Stars that we knew of. It
wasn't a sound so much as a moving of air that I caught, a difference in
pressure. My hand snapped out and I caught a wriggling form by throat as
I smoothly unsheathed my sword.

``Morning, Catherine,'' Vivienne said, snapping into sight.

I dropped her with a sigh.

``I could have stabbed you, Thief,'' I said.

``My aspect is the only reason we managed to run into each other,'' she
said. ``He shunts me off at will otherwise. If I remain hidden in his
vision of the future, he cannot predict where I am. It is no absolute.
The rest of the gambit was presuming you'd irritate the Skein enough for
him to send you here eventually.''

I raised an eyebrow at both things being implied -- first, that Hide
could ward her from whatever means the Skein used to see us. Second,
that she'd \emph{expected} us to end up here.

``This was planned,'' I said.

``Sparrow,'' she replied in Kharsum. ``Owl done, we on my tack now.''

Her hold on the language was bare bones, but Hakram had taught her
enough we could have a functional conversation. My eyes narrowed. The
second card had the word \emph{Lark} written on the back, without an
explanation. I'd taken it to mean an adventure or a bit of fun, because
Past Catherine had a terrible sense of humour, but it was also a kind of
bird wasn't it? Owl didn't ring a bell in the slightest, but it might be
there were at least three plans unfolding. And Vivienne had told us we
were now on `her tack'. \emph{Skein. Prophecy by spun thread.} \emph{One
set of eyes}. Were we\ldots{} Gods, that would mean building at least
three interconnected towers. The sheer complexity of that -- we did have
Akua, though. Who was still missing. And the first rune-bound memory had
me considering the need for a touchstone, which might very well be her.
It was a good thing I almost never got headaches these days, I decided.

``Where do we go from here?'' I asked. ``Your aspect can't cover all
three of us.''

``Not need to,'' Vivienne smiled thinly. ``We hunted Malicia presently.
Now by, the Skein have her on way out here.''

``By now,'' I corrected.

She rolled her eyes.

``He can still move us between the layers so we never run into her,'' I
said.

``Before answer. Object limits has,'' she said. ``Can not bridge same
layer. Can not go nowhere.''

``How do you know this?'' Masego asked.

``Skein,'' she said. ``Flaw. Single speaker, must. Memory back.''

\emph{Monologue}, I thought. She'd met the ratling before, that much I'd
already suspected, but this explained quite a bit. He must have been a
villain while alive. Which still begged the question of why the Dead
King had put someone in charge of the Threefold Reflection he had to
know would give us a solution to the riddle if pressed. He could have
put a hero instead, and they might not have been as skilled at using the
artefact but they wouldn't have \emph{talked} either. It felt like he
was willingly giving us an opportunity to kill Malicia if we were sharp
enough, and while that fit with my suspicions this was a test it also
had me wary. Guessing at the Hidden Horror's motives was a dangerous
game at the best of times, which these were most definitely not.

``That's useful and all, but how do we find Malicia through the
shunts?'' I asked.

``No go layer,'' she smiled. ``Centre artefact. I saw.''

She tapped Masego's belly.

``Extract,'' she said.

And she tapped mine.

``Gate,'' she continued. ``No inside. Cold iron protect. Close.''

I frowned.

``Then why didn't we gate directly from the Silent Palace?'' I asked.

``You can't thread through different pieces of fabric,'' Masego said.
``I would presume that chamber to be removed from Creation. This layer,
however, is directly connected.''

Then why hadn't we done that the moment we entered the pyramid? Why
leave a necessary piece of information, the location of the central
chamber, solely in the hand of -- I winced at the sudden spike of pain
from my forehead.

``Second rune is flaring,'' Hierophant murmured.

So we hadn't. Masego and I had just never thought of it, and Vivienne
being here was a contingency. She must have entered through a place that
guaranteed she'd be here to wait for us -- evidently she'd found it the
first time she came here, she must have moved the exact same way. What
if the Skein had never sent us here and we'd never thought of it? Mhm.
There might be other contingencies, then. Hakram was now unaccounted for
as well as the other two. And I still had a card encased. Fine, then,
maybe we'd been surprisingly cautious in our recklessness. I clenched my
fingers and reached for Winter.

Time to pay the Skein a visit.