webcrawl/APGTE/Book-4/tex/Ch-112.md.tex

\hypertarget{chapter-82-thrice-dead}{%
\section{Chapter 82: Thrice Dead}\label{chapter-82-thrice-dead}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``Now, luck it always turns. Nothing you can do about that. But
that's the trick, you see -- wait long enough, and it turns all the way
around.''}

-- Dread Emperor Irritant I, the Oddly Successful
\end{quote}

The matron would be asleep by now, she'd hit the brandy pretty hard at
dinner: this was as good an opportunity I'd get. I closed the book and
snuffed out the stolen candle, ignoring Lydia's theatrical sigh of
vindication. I wasn't sure whether she really had so delicate a
constitution she couldn't handle a bit of light when she was trying to
sleep or whether it was just our shared dislike coming to the fore, but
I could hardly care less. She'd leaned not to rat me out after I smeared
her sheets with fish guts, if all I had to deal with was a little
attitude I'd cope. I passed an affectionate hand over the worn cover of
Serapin's `The Licerian Wars' and shoved it under my pillow, brushing
away the few wax droppings on my sheets from the candle before stowing
it away under my bed. One of my predecessors at the Laure House for
Tragically Orphaned Girls had pried open room between the straw mattress
and the wooden frame that was just large enough for it to fit. I slipped
on my shoes and snuck out of the room, careful to close the door slowly
enough the hinge wouldn't squeak.

The orphanage was dark -- every lantern and candle snuffed out the
moment the matron went to sleep, to cut on costs -- but I knew my way
well. It wasn't the first time I snuck out after curfew, though
technically speaking I wouldn't even been leaving the House for long.
The front door was locked, but only the youngest girls in here didn't
know you could force the lock if you pushed at the right angle. I
slipped into the street quiet as a mouse, closing the door behind me.
I'd taken me a while to figure out how to get up to the roof, though
it'd been made much easier after some stall merchant began putting up
her folded stall next to the wall. She paid the matron coppers for it,
which was a good deal as far as everyone was concerned. I suspected she
might be less sanguine about the whole thing if she knew I regularly
used her stall as a makeshift ladder. The tricky part was the leap to
the left, where I had to catch the jutting masonry or hit the pavement
after a hard fall. I turned out lucky tonight, catching it on first try
even if my sweaty palms threatened to have me slip loose.

I hoisted myself over the edge of the roof with desperate haste, moist
fingers scrabbling over the rough tiles as I rolled like a sack of
cabbage until I was no longer at risk of falling. I remained there a
moment, heart beating all too quickly, until I wiped my palms on my
trousers and rose into a crouch. No point in standing tall -- well,
relatively speaking -- until it was time. I headed towards the back of
the orphanage, since that street wasn't as busy. Not that Laure was
after dark, these days. The city guard in this part of the city had
started grabbing people out after sunset and putting them in a cell
overnight for their own `safety'. It was an open secret a few silvers
would get you out of the situation, which made the whole affair yet
another tax in everything but name. Angry as the thought made me, Mazus
and his cronies were far beyond my reach. And not why I was out tonight,
regardless. I made it to the edge and stood up, clenching my fists.
Gods, I was already shaking. I felt sick in my stomach and my legs were
jelly. It wasn't even that tall a drop, I knew, and still somehow it
felt like a knife at my throat.

``Your hands are trembling.''

I yelped and jumped, would have fallen if the woman who'd spoken hadn't
caught my wrist at the last moment. Whoever she was she was tall and
slender, though in the dark I couldn't make out much of her face.
Nothing, really, save for the eyes. A pale blue, almost silvery.

``I'm not a thief,'' I hastily told the stranger. ``I live here!''

``So I assumed,'' the woman replied, and dragged me out of danger before
withdrawing a few steps.

Shit, if this got out to the matron I was going to get it. Already I'd
been caught trading essays with Julie, two strikes the same week would
have my buttocks tanned for an hour.

``I don't think you're supposed to be up here either,'' I said. ``So
let's just call this a wash for the both us, right? I'll go, you'll go.
Ships in the night.''

``More ironic an offer than you know,'' the stranger replied. ``Sate my
curiosity first. You are obviously terrified of heights. Why do you seek
out the edge?''

I grimaced.

``Look, it's not exactly illegal to do this,'' I defensively replied.

Maybe. I wasn't sure, and asking would have raised suspicions.

``I care little for such things,'' the woman said. ``You were asked a
question, Catherine Foundling.''

Oh, this was bad. She knew my fucking name. It wasn't like there were a
lot of Deoraithe bastards in the House if she'd been intending on
tattling, but that she actually knew my name was a bad sign all around.
My teeth clenched and I reluctantly gave ground.

``It's not about standing,'' I said. ``It's about how long I can make
myself stay.''

``Yet your fear has not ended, has it?''

I shook my head.

``Maybe I'll always be afraid of it,'' I said. ``But that's not what
matters. Every time I come, I stay a little longer.''

``It gets easier?'' the woman curiously asked.

``No,'' I murmured. ``But I get better at handling it. And one day I'll
get good enough it won't matter if I'm afraid.''

There was a long moment of silence between us.

``Nature is not so easily overcome,'' the stranger finally said.

I snorted.

``We're people, aren't we?'' I said. ``Not beasts. We can learn. It's
just hard and unpleasant and never as clear-cut as we'd like.''

``But will you?'' the stranger asked.

---

Kilian was asleep. The public celebration after the Battle of Liesse had
been subdued: there were too many dead people in the city for it to be
otherwise. Heiress' devils had slain hundreds before a shouted
technicality had turned them irrelevant. Still, in the camps outside the
city the Fifteenth had raucously feasted its latest victory. My evening
with my lover had been a different sort of celebration, though. I'd died
today, and that had lent an urgency to our bedplay that was harsher than
our usual fare. She'd understood, though, that it was as much about
being alive as it was about pleasure. Kilian knew me better than most,
and in ways not even my closest friends did. Still, after she fell
asleep I'd remained restless. I padded barefoot away from our bed and
poured myself a cup of Vale summer wine, the sweet taste filling my
mouth. I nursed the same glass for the better part of an hour, seated by
the window. The night was warm, for this time of the year, and in the
distance I could see the campfires of my legion. The candles lit
suddenly, and that was my only warning Kilian had awakened. She sat up
in the bed, face shrouded by shadows and her body only half-covered by
the sheets.

``Still awake?'' she asked.

``Can't seem to close my eyes,'' I admitted. ``I didn't mean to wake
you.''

``These things happen,'' she languidly shrugged.

For a moment, in the penumbra of the room, I thought her eyes were pale
blue. It must have been a trick of the light.

``You died today,'' Kilian continued quietly. ``A little restlessness is
to be expected.''

``All part of the plan,'' I ruefully said. ``Try as I might, I couldn't
find another way through.''

``There were risks,'' she said. ``If you had not succeeded as taking
your resurrection from the Choir, there would have been no salvation.''

``But I did,'' I replied, uneasily.

It had occurred to me that I'd not so much gamble with my life as thrown
it away and then gambled on a resurrection. Recklessness ran in my
veins, and in the heat of the moment it had all felt right, but in the
cold light of the aftermath I was beginning to grasp how close I'd come
to disaster.

``If you hadn't,'' Kilian softly asked, ``would it have been worth it?''

I looked at her, blinking in surprise.

``If I'd failed?'' I mused. ``William would have turned us into
Hashmallim puppets or Heiress would have killed everyone in the city.
There was no room for mistakes.''

``I misspoke,'' my lover said. ``If it had all worked save for the
resurrection, would that have been a fair price?''

It was, I thought, a sharp question but not an unworthy one. I'd schemed
this with the notion in mind that I should be breathing by the end of
it, but there would be fights ahead where I might not have that luxury.
If the price for this had been that I'd disappear or return as some
undead abomination, would I still have taken the bargain?

``There's about a hundred thousand people in Liesse,'' I eventually
said. ``More, with the soldiers that came to defend it. They'd be dead
or worse, if I didn't take the bargain anyway.''

``Cities can be rebuilt,'' Kilian said. ``Fresh children are born with
every heartbeat.''

``But I only live once, is that it?'' I smiled, looking out the window.
``I appreciate the sentiment, I really do, but if all I wanted was to
live I'd be a tradeswoman in Laure. Not the Squire.''

``There is a middle ground,'' my lover chided, ``between sacrifice and
obscurity.''

``By taking up the knife, I signed away that kind of thinking,'' I
honestly replied. ``The power's not the point, Kilian, it's just a way
to handle the responsibilities. To take it but ignore why I did in the
first place would make all of this meaningless.''

``A fair price, then,'' Kilian mused, eyes hooded.

``Oh, the opposite of fair,'' I softly disagreed. ``One life against a
hundred thousand? That's a steal, by any account.''

``I do wonder,'' she said, and I caught the glimmer of silver in her
eyes, ``how many times a blade can go through the crucible before
breaking.''

---

``Victory should taste better than this,'' I said.

Akua's Folly lay before us in all its raging horror. Masego had warded
the surroundings, but there was no hiding the mass of wights still
haunting the ruins of Liesse. The bottle of aragh in my hand was no
comfort, but at least it was \emph{something}. Anything was better than
stillness of the cold I'd used to forge myself anew. I held it up for
Hakram to take, but he shook his head. He was impossibly hard to make it
out in the dark of night, shrouded in a way my fae sight should have
ignored. I was still new to this, though. There might be a trick to it.
That I sometimes thought his eyes to be blue was evidence enough either
the liquor had struck deep or I was using my not-eyes wrong.

``Two bottles are enough, I think,'' the orc mildly said.

``A hundred wouldn't be,'' I shrugged. ``But two will have to do.
Ratface only has so many on hand, and it will be weeks before we reach a
city.''

``We lingered here longer than I expected,'' Hakram agreed. ``I would
have thought the morning after your conversation with the Carrion Lord
would see us march.''

``There are still so many things to do,'' I said. ``And it's only the
start, isn't it?''

``You have the power to make changes now,'' the orc said. ``Real
changes. Necessary ones.''

``Do I?'' I said. ``I could drown bastion in ice with a snap of my
fingers, but what does that accomplish? So few of our problems can be
solved with strength.''

``Yet without it, we would have no right to change anything at all,''
Adjutant said.

``It's a pretty song,'' I said. ``But it rings false. Having a mantle
isn't power, Hakram. It's just a bigger hammer. Gods, I was taught by a
man claiming only a speck of what I hold and he terrorized half the
continent for decades.''

``You are not him,'' the orc shrugged.

``No,'' I agreed in a murmur. ``No I am not. He would have been appalled
by the amount of shortcuts we're going to take.''

``Results-''

``Will have diminishing returns,'' I interrupted. ``We don't have the
foundation. That's the part that will fuck us. And it's too late to
raise it, so we'll have to rely on strength to keep it all together.
That makes us fragile in a way I can do nothing about.''

``I do not understand your meaning,'' the orc admitted.

I passed a hand through my hair, except Masego had told me it wasn't
really hair anymore.

``The east and the west,'' I said. ``Procer and Praes. The people at the
top, they're not there just because they can swing a sword real hard,
are they? Malicia and Black won their civil war, but they haven't been
knifed since because they have \emph{support}. That's where their power
springs from. Cordelia Hasenbach has troubles with her princes, sure,
but she's also got a coalition behind her. The weight of customs and
laws. Legitimacy, in a word. They all rose up the hard way.''

``So did we,'' Adjutant replied, cocking his head to the side with eerie
grace.

I snorted.

``Who's behind us, Hakram?'' I said ``A handful of Callowan nobles,
half-heartedly and for lack of better options. Our army. Malicia will
turn on us son enough, and Black's in the wind. We took too many
shortcuts.''

``Your reputation has weight with the people,'' the orc said.

``That's not stable,'' I said. ``Because if a Fairfax makes an unpopular
decision, they're still a Fairfax. There's unrest, but it holds
together. I'm a godsdamned warlord. I mean, Hasenbach outright told me
didn't she? No one wants to deal with me because I'm essentially a
Callowan Dread Empress in their eyes. This is the very thing that'll
come around to bite us after the Battle of the Camps: if fear and force
and reputation are the pillars of my reign, the moment one of them comes
tumbling down it all follows. And instead of recognizing that, admitting
my limitations, I'll double down and head for \emph{Keter} of all
places.''

``Tyrants are rulers as well, Catherine,'' Hakram reminded me.

``And tyranny is the best I can manage, isn't it?'' I said.
``Well-meaning, but still that. The thing is, by now I know I'm not good
at this. I could barely handle the Ruling Council when it was stacked in
my favour with Black standing behind me. And still a month from now I'm
going to put on a crown.''

Hakram looked surprised at my words, for some reason.

``You would surrender authority entirely, then?'' he asked.

``I should never have been queen,'' I said. ``At most a temporary regent
while looking for a better candidate. There are things I'm good at, but
ruling isn't one of them. I should have put my effort to those instead
and left the crown to someone suited for it.''

``And what it is that you're good at, if not this?'' Hakram pressed.

``Breaking things,'' I said. ``Facing the monsters so that the real work
can take place behind me. I should have talked with Cordelia, I-''

My fingers clenched around the bottle.

``- I \emph{haven't} talked with Cordelia at all,'' I said. ``Not yet.''

``No,'' Hakram said in someone else's voice, ``you had not.''

---

There were some who might have called this a triumph.

It'd been a victory beyond my rights to expect, anyway. Legions of enemy
drow, some of the finest Mighty in the Everdark and even the two-faced
goddess herself: they had come, and they had died. Great Strycht had
died with them, along with too many drow to count. How many of the
corpses down below belonged to nisi, I wondered? There were too many
dead for most of them to be Mighty, or even dzulu. The way I'd killed
Sve Noc\ldots{} I frowned, unable to remember the details. I must still
be digesting the Night, it would take some time before my mind was in
order again. Still, the aftermath was clear enough. Streaks of Winter
still running wild through a city older than the kingdom of my birth,
warbands of roving blue-eyed dead led by my expanded Peerage stamping
down the last of the resistance. I had exactly what I'd come for, didn't
I? An entire race made into an army, or close enough. All it had taken
was massacre upon massacre upon massacre. If there was any justice in
the world my hands would dyed scarlet red, but when had justice last
made itself heard? No, down here there was only us -- and justice was
whatever we said it was.

Archer's steps were light, but not so light that I did not hear or
recognize them. Her gait was well-known to me. She stood at the edge by
my side, not deigning to sit with her legs dangling in the void like I
did. To think I'd been afraid of heights, once. Now I could grow wings
with the slightest exertion of will -- and there would be more tricks,
when the whole of the Night was known to me. Millennia of slaughter in
the dark, every ugly parcel made my own. I'd gained more than mere
troops by coming to the Everdark.

``Still brooding, I see,'' Indrani said.

I did not turn to meet her gaze.

``Contemplating consequences,'' I said. ``This was no small thing we did
today.''

``That's always the way,'' Indrani dismissed. ``There's only one
question that matters -- now what?''

``Now they take the oaths,'' I said. ``The Mighty, anyway. I'm still
debating how many of the dzulu should.''

``And we go home,'' she wistfully said.

``No,'' I replied, shaking my head. ``I made them my responsibility,
`Drani. All of them. I can't just take my army and leave the rest to die
by dwarf.''

``They can't go to Callow, Catherine,'' Indrani said. ``It would end the
kingdom to have that many foreign settlers.''

``That was never the plan,'' I snorted. ``Gods, Callow? It can barely
even tolerate Praesi and greenskins that fought three campaigns to
defend it. No, they need a home of their own.''

``Where?'' Archer asked, and I raised an eyebrow at her voice.

It had echoed strangely. There were old magics in this place I had
barely begun to understand -- and perhaps never would.

``If we leave them in the mountains above this, they'll starve,'' I
said. ``You saw how they feed themselves -- they need lakes, they need
fields.''

``The Principate of Pracer,'' Indrani said. ``That'll be difficult. How
much of it could you even take, reasonably?''

``Are you drunk already?'' I frowned. ``Procer, you tart. And that's a
recipe for disaster, anyway. They'd be in constant war with the
surviving princes, assuming the additional chaos doesn't just collapse
the place and allow the Dead King to roll through it. No, there's only
one place that can really work. If we play it right, we can even get
most the continent to back us in the war.''

``Praes,'' Archer guessed.

``Keter,'' I contradicted. ``The Kingdom of the Dead.''

There was a heartbeat of silence.

``That was in poor taste,'' Indrani said.

``Think for a moment,'' I said. ``Neshamah just declared war on every
Good nation on this continent. Even if the Grand Alliance could beat him
-- which, to be honest, I have my doubts about -- Procer pretty much
ends as a nation from the beating it'll take in the process. And even if
they do drive him back, as long as he's not \emph{permanently} dead what
was accomplished? He'll have lost a few dead heroes, a few undead
armies. Nothing he can't grow back given long enough. But this? It
offers Cordelia another way. A long-term solution.''

I breathed out slowly.

``If the drow settle in the Kingdom of the Dead, they can be the lid on
the bottle of awful that is the Dead King,'' I said. ``With the oaths,
Procer doesn't have to worry about invasion from the fresh Evil nation
at its northern border. And if the drow thrive? All the better. A
stronger cork means Neshamah will never be able to get out. Sold like
this, if we come to the Grand Alliance when they've grown desperate?
They'll sign. Or they'll split, because I don't see the First Prince
throwing away half her country no matter what her allies say.''

``It is a blighted, poisonous wasteland,'' Indrani said.

``We have Hierophant,'' I flatly said. ``And the same mages that burned
a fucking pass through the Whitecaps. The whole priesthood of the west,
too. Hells, we do this the right way we might even get most the heroes
on board. There have to be a few of them that aren't useless at
everything but killing. We can make the place livable, there's no doubt.
Besides, we camped up north and the land there was fine. It's mostly the
south and centre that are poisonous.''

``But first we go to war,'' Archer said.

``As little as we can,'' I said. ``We gate in, bring Black home no
matter what he's up to or wants -- this is too delicate a situation to
let him meddle. Then I go to Hasenbach with the Accords and the
settlement plan. I'd rather not twist her arm if I can avoid, but I'll
sack cities if I have to. And after that, we make war on the King of
Death. All the continent, if we can manage it, against Neshamah.''

``Ambitious,'' Indrani mused.

I paused and turned.

``You're not Archer,'' I said. ``She would have gotten bored halfway
through that.''

``No,'' Andronike said. ``We are not.''

The two of them were standing at the edge, looking down at my\ldots{}
dream? Was I dreaming? I couldn't remember going to sleep. The last
thing I could remember, actually, was --
\emph{Ibreathedmydesperatelastbreathclawingatthedark}. I shivered. Night
had fallen.

``Am I dead?'' I softly asked.

``At the threshold,'' Komena said. ``Not quite through.''

``Then this was my last conversation,'' I said. ``Would have mouthed off
more if I'd known.''

``Are you not going to beg?'' Andronike said.

I laughed.

``Again?'' I said. ``The first time didn't work, why would the second?''

``The nerezim are on the march,'' Komena said. ``You struck bargain with
them.''

``I did,'' I agreed. ``Not that the oath would hold me anymore. We saw
to that.''

``They cannot be defeated in battle,'' the younger Sve Noc said. ``We
have seen this. They have\ldots{} grown in the years since our last
wars. Beyond even our ability.''

``Scary talk, coming from a goddess,'' I murmured.

``And how would you meet this threat, Catherine Foundling?'' Andronike
asked.

I blinked.

``Me?'' I said. ``Who would you care what I think? You two rapscallions
eviscerate me and took my stuff without too much trouble, give or take a
few pleas.''

``You have proved to possess a form of low cunning,'' Komena said.

``I'm dying, you know,'' I chided. ``You could at least be nice about
it.''

``You evade,'' Andronike said. ``Cease.''

I waved a careless hand.

``Send an envoy to them,'' I said. ``My read on their whole invasion
thing is that they're not really interested in your holdings so much as
they are in you not being there to trouble their backs. It's the Dead
King they want bottled up.''

Two pairs of silvery blue eyes remained fixed on me.

``Make a pact,'' I said. ``They give you long enough to evacuate,
supplies to survive upstairs for a few months, and in exchange you go
after the Kingdom of the Dead. Given that kind of an opportunity, they
might even make a grab for the underground of Keter.''

``They have not proved amenable to peace offerings before,'' Andronike
said. ``Attempts were made, I assure you.''

``Because they can't settle the entire rim around the Kingdom of the
Dead if there's a chance their lines will collapse because you hit their
back,'' I pointed out. ``If you go upstairs and southwest, not only is
that threat gone but you've become their first line of defence against
the Serenity. I don't care how much they hate you, they'll \emph{want}
to take that deal.''

They kept staring at me in silence.

``Dangerous,'' Andronike said.

``Bold,'' Komena disagreed. ``Unorthodox\emph{.} She was right, heart of
my heart. We have grown stiff.''

``And it will get worse,'' her sister murmured.

I rose to my feet.

``I take it this the end, then,'' I said, looking up at the darkness
above us. ``Will you make it painless?''

``You should know better by now,'' Komena idly said, circling around me.

``We have a use for you, Catherine Foundling,'' Andronike continued,
from the other side.

``If we are to return to the Burning Lands, we will need a guide.''

``A herald.''

``An anchor.''

``You offered an act of faith, Losara,'' Sve Noc smiled. ``It did not go
unheard.''

Their eyes burned pale blue, almost silver.

``Rise, first among the priesthood of Night, and \textbf{wake up}.''

---

I opened my eyes, shivering with pain and gloriously mortal.