webcrawl/APGTE/Book-5/tex/Ch-055.md.tex

\hypertarget{chapter-37-accessory}{%
\section{Chapter 37: Accessory}\label{chapter-37-accessory}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``To keep a friend, avoid sharing these three: coin, cup and
crown.''}

-- Nicaean saying
\end{quote}

Three times now I'd come to Liesse bearing a sword.

Once to take it with the Fifteenth at my back, to smother the last
embers of rebellion in my time and bury the Lone Swordsman. Again with
my father for only company, sneaking in through darkness and death to
quell the terrible madness of Akua Sahelian. The city that had once been
the thriving heart of southern Callow had been ravaged and ruined years
before today, and being ripped from Creation then cast down atop tall
peaks had done nothing to mend that state. The sight of the crown jewel
of the south reduced to this still had my blood boiling even now. When
the Fifteenth had taken Liesse it'd been a sprawl of broad avenues
covered in flowers and trees, a beauty in stone pale and tan that seemed
at times like it was half churches half mansions. There was nothing of
that left now. The third of the city that'd been outside the old walls,
mostly tanners and dyers and the poor, had fallen right off when
Diabolist raised the city into the sky. The blood and sorcery that'd
followed still resonated in this place, the trees were long dead and the
slender towers of the basilicas petulantly snapped. Liesse still
thrummed with death: it was like a cloying scent in the air, a strange
heartbeat coursing through its broken streets. And at the end of the
road, in what had once been the Ducal Palace, some fresh madness was
blooming. Masego awaited in the ancient hall of the Dukes of Liesse,
turned fortress and ritual heart by the Diabolist.

I did not have to look far to see the first touches of his work. In the
eldritch sky above us sorcery had been shaped in a great working, like
colossal panes of bronze glass. It brought to my mind a telescope, for
it was like a collection of increasingly larger glass lenses pointed
outwards. Whatever sight they were meant for I was not certain, but on
the surface of the panes I saw the barren storm-wracked wasteland of
below. Compelling as the sorcery was to watch, I had no time to spare
for contemplation of it. I was, it was becoming increasingly clear, far
from alone in the streets of Liesse. From the moment I'd stepped out of
the dark there'd been the weight of eyes on my back, and the tension had
only thickened in the moments that followed. What had once been known as
the City of Swans was now the City of Ash and Dust, and it was through
the stuff of it that my boots scuffed as I began limping forward.
Lingering here would serve no purpose: none of the others would emerge
where I had. There would be need to stitch back together our little band
before it was wielded against our common foe. Passing through the wreck
of what had once been a guild hall, its walls broken so thoroughly that
all that remained upright was low ornate pillars of plastered marble, I
heard the whispers of an ambush about to be sprung. I caught sight of
them, I thought, too easily. A scuttling creature of red-brown fur with
long iron claws had been revealed in the shade where it hid, a ray of
light playing off a cloud above us laying it bare.

It was devil. I'd even fought this kind before, at the Battle of
Marchford and even the ambush that preceded it. At least as clever as a
child, and capable of speech in the Dark Tongue as well as some of
Creation's languages. My discussions with the foremost diabolist of our
age had since made it plain to me that these were lesser servants, as
far as the Praesi saw it, but still commonly used for their wits and
ease of binding. And their numbers: the \emph{bonsam}, as their kind was
called, were thrown at enemies not as lone individuals but in packs. My
advance slowed by a pillar, and I caught a glint of iron in the carpet
of ash that filled this gutted guildhall.

``This doesn't end well for you,'' I called out in Mthethwa. ``Flee now
and I will not pursue.''

In bursts they came out of the thick layers of ash where they'd lain
waiting, and others leapt down from the nearby rooftops where they'd
been watching me. In the heartbeat that followed, I counted seven. Four
on the ground, dark-eyed and wild and coming at me split evenly from the
sides. Three above, two who'd been huddling in mangled bell tower and
the one I'd caught first pressing down its body in the hollow of a
parapet. It came laughably easy to me. My hand, by happenstance, was
already near where I wanted it to be -- all I needed to do was let the
Night pour through and flick my wrist. By happenstance still, all I
would need to elude half my attackers was slip around the pillar I'd
reached, and my foot was already halfway there. It was like Creation
wanted me to slaughter them, and do so almost effortlessly.

``I gave fair warning,'' I said, wrist already moving.

Two of those leaping were, as I pivoted around the pillar, for a moment
perfectly lined up. The fine needle of Night I'd sent burst through the
flesh and fur of the first like it'd been filled with munitions, and the
last of the impact ate halfway through the head of the devil behind it.
Two of the \emph{bonsam} on the ground were now on the wrong side of the
pillar to strike at me, and began to turn, while the other pair found
I'd smoothly flanked them. They had long enough for their eyes to widen
in surprise before with a flick of the wrist in the opposite direction I
let loose a second sliver of Night: slight tendrils of smoke that
slipped through their nostrils, and they dropped in the instant that
followed. It'd turned acid inside their bodies, and melted what there
was to melt. The sequence continued, almost dreamlike, with the third
leaper landing atop the pillar to my side, two-sided claws scraping at
the stone. My hand fell on the side of my staff, as if carried by my
last flick, and at the very moment where its weight was drawing back
from the landing the tip of my staff struck its chest. It toppled, I
knew without even looking, on top of the other two who'd been trying to
go around the pillar. With another languid step I finished my way around
the pillar, arriving to the sight of two devils snarling at the third as
they tried to push it off their side. It was the one who'd fallen that
looked at me, letting out a shriek when it saw I'd raised my hand.

I snapped my fingers.

A droplet of Night formed in the middle of the three, and from it a
razor-thin pulse emanated. It cut through the heads of the two
\emph{bonsam} on the ground, and through the waist of the one I'd nudged
down. They were all three dead before I could bring my staff down to
lean on, and I breathed out slowly. The whole scuffle had taken the span
of perhaps five breaths, and required me to call on so little Night I'd
not even noticed any strain.

``So this is what it's like,'' I murmured. ``Having a story like wind in
your sail.''

It was even more insultingly leisurely than I'd assumed it would be. How
could any hero lose a fight, when Creation conspired a hundred
coincidences to give them an edge? I mastered that burgeoning
irritation, for it was one of the uglier parts of my inheritance, and
set it aside. There was no point in whining about the opposition's
arsenal when instead I could be figuring out ways to use their tools
more frequently. There'd be time for that later, though. For now I
needed to find the others, which ought not to be too difficult if
providence was willing to lend a hand for once. I resumed my advance
into the deeper city, treading different shades of ruin as I did. Some
the work of devils, some of wights, some of the soldiers who'd once
taken Liesse in my name. I did not encounter any more of the
\emph{bonsam}, though once or twice I caught shadows looming on rooftops
or watching through the cracks of walls. None approached, though it
seemed that courtesy was not being extended to others: I heard a great
crack in the distance, and watched with a wince one of the seven
basilicas of Liesse toppled inwards. Well, that was as much of a sign I
was going to get I supposed. I put some spring to my step and headed
towards the collapse. It couldn't have been more than two alleys of
walking until I ran into where my waiting companion had emerged from the
aborted crucible: there was a neat line of dead jackal-headed devils,
all nine of them cut cleanly through at the waist by the same blow. I
glanced at the way the corpses had fallen, and let out a reluctantly
impressed whistle when I realized they must have been walking in a file
when the Saint of Swords had struck and she'd killed the lot of them
before they could even turn. That this was Laurence de Montfort's work
there could be no doubt.

She'd cut off enough my limbs I'd acquired an eye for the look of it.

Though not particularly enthused by who it was that I'd found first, I
quickened my limp a little more still. If nothing else, the Saint's
company should make getting around this devil-infested city
significantly easier. Not safer, of course, because there was no
guarantee that she wouldn't decide now was the time to clean up a loose
end like me, but certainly \emph{easier}. It wasn't all difficult to
follow the path she'd walked, since she'd sown corpses seemingly ever
step of the damned way. It was like there was something about her that
attracted the devils like flies, because by the third time I turned a
corner only to find a pile of at least twenty dead or dismembered devils
-- the limbs everywhere made it harder to count -- I was forced to
conceded this couldn't possibly just be a string of bad luck. By the
fifth mess of corpses I ran into it wasn't just ironhooks and
jackalheads I was looking at, but higher breeds that Wasteland
diabolists had used for war in years past. \emph{Walin-falme}, the
leather-winged devils that had been a favourite of binding-inclined
Dread Emperors and Akua's own choice of troops for the Folly, and
\emph{akalibsa.} The latter had been prized by Taghreb tribes, Aisha has
once told me, for their raids on their Soninke neighbours to the north.
Given that the fanged devils bore rough armour of stone and iron
weapons, I could see why. Not that it'd stopped the Saint from
slaughtering them.

I would be more or less true to say I saw the fighting before I heard
it: further into the city, I saw swarms of walin-falme and smaller
gargoyle-like hairy creatures swarming down towards the same plaza. When
I got closer the baying of the hound-like \emph{akalibsa} told me that
the Saint was very much under siege, and I grit my teeth as I picked up
the pace. Hurrying through a house that looked like some whimsical giant
had slapped it down before leaving, I came upon the collapsed basilica
and saw that I'd strained my bad leg for no reason at all. There must
have been, I thought, easily two hundred devils in the city square I
could see past the fallen basilica. The Saint of Swords was alone, and
nonchalantly tearing through a the force like it was made of paper.

Pale tabard spinning around her like she was a dancer, the old woman
moved among her opponents like the wind. On the ground the scythed
through the \emph{bondam} and the \emph{akalibsa} like it was sport,
smoothly using them as shields against each other as she carved through
necks and limbs with unerring precision. The Saint of Swords only put
weight behind her blows when the winged devils came for her, the wind
left by explosive strength of her strikes sucking them like birds in a
storm. I saw her, with my own eyes, cut the air and leap up onto that
mark only to kick up and catch a \emph{walin-falme} in the face, use it
as pedestal to twist and carve through the skull of another devil and
catch a third one by the throat -- she tossed it, casually, against the
cut she'd made in the air and it was severed in two halves by the
impact. In the heartbeat that followed that insanity she ripped free her
longsword and leapt back down into the swarm below, never once having
hesitated or broken stride. \emph{Merciless Gods}, I thought. \emph{She
might as well be a meat grinder.} As I walked through the rubble of the
basilica, a shadow was cast ahead of me by the \emph{walin-falme} who'd
thought to take me by surprise and I flicked a wrist backwards without
turning. The slithering rope of Night caught it by the neck and
tightened before turning to black flame. A charred head and corpse
landed behind me a moment later, but I would not be so easily
distracted. I suspected that the Saint could keep at this all day
without tiring -- I'd yet to feel from her more than the occasional
flicker of Name power -- but devils kept pouring in and there was no end
in sight.

We needed to move this along before we got bogged down, and I might as
well get two birds with one stone. I supposed I could have reached deep
into the Night and unleashed a large working that would have slain many
and scattered the rest, but I was disinclined to waste power so early in
the fight. Especially when there were more\ldots{} creative solutions to
be had. I left the Saint to her slaughter and crouched against the
ground with a pained wince, leg throbbing. Holding onto my staff with
tight lips, I ran a hand through the ash and black dust that covered the
stone. I closed my eyes, let out a slow breath and let the Night fill my
veins. As I'd thought, as I'd felt, there was still power in this place.
Deaths by the thousands, as the alchemies of Still Water sunk into
innocents and a spark of magic set that corruption ablaze. Other great
sorceries as well, Akua's own works of grand hubris and what Masego had
made of this place since snatching it from its Callowan cradle. There
were echoes here, and they were not gentle ones. Eyes fluttering open, I
swept aside enough of the filth that I could lay my naked palm against
what had once been the stone floor of the basilica.

``I saw the birth of you,'' I murmured. ``Heard the reverb, even then,
though I did not yet have ways to heed it. I do now, though.''

I let the Night bridge the gap, felt the wailing held within swell with
anger, and gasped as my chest tightened.

``Sing for me,'' I whispered.

And though I had failed them I was still their queen, anointed in the
halls of the Fairfaxes and the fields of war, so sang for me they did.
To my ears it felt like a muted buzzing, at first, something so large
and deafening my ears could not truly fathom it. But as the first
heartbeat passed, a wave of something eldritch filled me and I tasted of
the nature of it. Rage, unbridled and strident and blind: wights killed
and killing. But the echo went deeper, to what I had sought. The terror
of the inevitable, the helplessness of doom already sown and coming. The
shivering moment where the greatest evil of our age had been committed
by a woman now in my service. I partook of it, and let the city sing
that chorus. It would not last long, I thought as I withdrew my palm and
wearily rose to my feet. Maybe thirty heartbeats, and the further away
the less keenly it would be felt. But here, now? Even as Laurence de
Montfort stood unmoved among a whirlwind of devils, the flock of bound
creatures \emph{scattered}. Fled to the winds, taken by panic and rage
that they were not truly able to understand. I'd spared the Saint as
much of this as I could, but in truth I'd doubted she would be affected.
And, I saw as she calmly turned to watch me, I'd been right. There was
no waver in her eyes, no weight on her shoulders. Like water off a
duck's back the tumultuous rage and fear of over a hundred thousand
souls rolled over her and found nothing to hold on to.

``Black Queen,'' the Saint of Swords greeted me. ``Finally. Where are
the others?''

``Heading this way, I'd wager,'' I said, limping up to her.

I kept some distance. Enough that, if she chose to strike, I'd have long
enough to be aware of the blow. That ought to be enough, given my
preparations, though in matters like this nothing was ever certain. Much
less when it came to a heroine as old and ridiculously lethal as the
Saint.

``After that trick you just pulled, there'll be more than blade fodder
headed our way,'' the old woman said, then spat to the side. ``Might as
well have raised a banner for everyone to see.''

``It'll get the Grey Pilgrim here, as least,'' I said. ``Perhaps the
others as well.''

Laurence's eyes narrowed.

``Whatever sharpest killer the Enemy's got as well,'' she said. ``But
you did that on purpose, didn't you?''

I did not deny it, since it was true.

``I've had to assault that palace once before,'' I said, gesturing at
the looming structure in the distance. ``And that was when it was just
the Diabolist that put up wards and traps. We don't want to have to
fight whatever monster's waiting while in there, you can trust me on
that.''

``I don't even trust you to breathe,'' the Saint curtly said. ``But the
decision's not entirely senseless.''

``You sweet talker, Laurence,'' I deadpanned. ``Stop, you'll make me
blush.''

She eyed me up and down, though there was nothing suggestive about the
assessment taking place. That was the gaze, I thought, of someone
deciding how it'd be easiest to kill me when the time came and was
rather looking forward to getting around to it.

``What did he offer you, in there?'' the old woman brusquely asked.

My jaw clenched. Did I want to have that conversation with Laurence de
Montfort, of all people? No, I did not. On the other hand, there were
risks to dismissing her question. I studied her carefully. If I refused,
would she take that as me confession to collusion with the Dead King and
strike? I honestly wasn't sure. And unless I wanted to risk a fight
anyway, I couldn't hesitate much longer than this.

``A hundred year truce,'' I finally said. ``For the lands he's already
taken. You?''

If I was going to answer, so was she. The Saint smiled unpleasantly.

``Never even showed up,'' she said. ``It got dark, I got impatient and
cut my way out. So much for your test, Foundling. Didn't figure it
\emph{all} out, it looks like. I wonder what else you're wrong about.''

I hummed, cocking my head as I listened to the last echoes of the song
I'd asked for. I could follow the\ldots{} tide of it, with a little
effort, and it was telling me interesting things. For one, it parted
around the Ducal Palace like a tide around rocks. The end of our journey
most definitely awaited there. There was, however, another hole in the
city. Much smaller, but unlike the palace instead of being exempt it was
violently repelling the song. And that small presence was not far ahead
of us, coming in our direction.

``Not about the monster, I'll tell you that for certain,'' I said.
``We're about to have a guest, Saint.''

Her gaze sharpened.

``Then move ahead,'' she said. ``I will not have you at my back, Black
Queen.''

``Why?'' I frowned. ``I'm not the one who's a walking domain. I can't --
wait, are you implying I'd stab you in the back?''

She sneered, which was answer enough.

``Seriously?'' I said. ``Are you incapable of being halfway reasonable
without someone holding your hand? I've had more cordial conversations
with godsdamned angels, Laurence. \emph{Angels}. Let that sink in.''

I did not see it until it was too late. My mistake, growing irritated
enough most my attention had been on the Saint instead of where it
should be. My heart quickened and I felt goosebumps crawl along my skin
as I saw a single-edge blade of bronze swinging for my eyes. It had been
a mistake, I realized, to assume that the song would allow me to
accurately keep track of the enemy. Then there was a flash of radiant
Light, and the creature that'd been about to take my life was shot out
by the impact like a ballista bolt. I blinked out the blindness,
absent-mindedly noting that the enemy had been thrown straight through
two houses and a sculpture of Jehan the Wise before stopping.

``We appear to have flushed out the enemy,'' Tariq said, lowering his
crooked staff.

``Thanks for that,'' I croaked out.

He dipped his head in acknowledgement. My heart was beating wildly and
my fingers felt faint. Gods, but it'd been a while since I'd come that
close to dying -- without anything like Winter to get me through it. I'd
almost forgotten what it felt like. I fell in with the Pilgrim, the two
of us advancing to join the Saint. Her eyes were on the plume of dust
and ash where the enemy had been thrown, and together the three of us
looked upon the silhouette that emerged. Utterly pristine even after
being thrown, its bare feet padded across the ashen ground. It wore
nothing but a loose long-sleeved shirt of white satin, with trousers of
the same, and its extended arm held out the bronze blade at a horizontal
angle. It was not human, I thought, and I knew that without needing to
study it in greater detail because I'd encountered it before.

``Well now, as I live and breathe,'' the Saint said. ``That looks to me
like an elf.''

``Bestowed, too,'' the Pilgrim added.

``It's called the Spellblade,'' I calmly said. ``And it's one of the
Dead King's own Revenants.''

I felt the weight of the other two's attention, though neither looked
away from our enemy, and the unspoken question that went with it.

``In Keter I tried to destroy it, with Hierophant and Thief,'' I said.

``And?'' Tariq calmly asked.

``I landed about one good hit that whole fight, for which it vaporized
half my body,'' I replied. ``We ran as soon as we could. It's nasty in
the elf way, and it can makes blades out spells as well. This is going
to be a ride, I can tell you that much..''

``Good,'' Laurence de Montfort said, smiling a wolf's smile as she began
advancing. ``Then this ought to be decent practice for Dead King.''