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\hypertarget{chapter-78-trenchant}{%
\section{Chapter 78: Trenchant}\label{chapter-78-trenchant}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``The great candour in ruling Praes is that, if you make a
mistake, assassination attempts will follow. Unfortunately if you do not
make a mistake assassination attempts will also follow, which admittedly
makes it difficult to tell if a mistake was in fact made.''}

-- Dread Emperor Pernicious, the Imperiled
\end{quote}

There were protests, though only from Hasenbach's side as by now mine
knew better, but those words might as well have been wind for the weight
they carried. They were more out of principle than conviction anyway, I
suspected: Princess Rozala dawn well knew that if I was moved to
violence little short of a band of heroes could put me down. Spite and
impulse would only carry me so far, though, so I did not enter the
labyrinth of luxury that awaited outside the small hall. A knuckle
rapped against the glass doors along with a sliver of Night slithering
through the lock had them popping open without trouble, and beyond lay a
pretty little balcony overlooking a winter garden. My boots sounded
crisply against the thin layer of snow as I walked out into the cold,
knowing the First Prince would not be far behind me. The coolness of the
air was pleasant against my face, and as this little corner was windless
the cold felt rather mild -- more like a refreshing swim in the Silver
Lake than winter's hard bite.

Hasenbach followed along, her limp barely noticeable on the move, and I
noted she seemed rather unmoved by the cold. \emph{Lycaonese}, I
reminded myself. Compared to the brutal winters of her far northern
home, this must hardly be noticeable at all. The railing was an elegant
thing of stone, sculpted to seem like vines and the detail of the work
was only made more pleasant to the eye by the touch of frost. Disdaining
the stone benches set in little alcoves to the sides of the doors, I
came to lean against it and cast a curious look down into the garden.

``I'm surprised you didn't get that leg fixed,'' I said.

``I did,'' Cordelia Hasenbach replied, slowly moving to stand by me.

She was too well-bred to lean against a snow-dusted railing while
wearing a nice dress, apparently, or maybe just to do so in front of a
foreign ruler. Regardless, standing that ramrod straight must be Hells
on her leg.

``Not mage-healing, though that's hardly surprising,'' I said, eyeing
the way she was standing. ``Priest work, then. They'll have fixed the
bone and flesh but it'll still feel raw for a few more days. Hasn't the
Grey Pilgrim offered to see to it? He's a notch above what I've seen
even the finest priest-healers do.''

``I will not accept so much as the dust of a copper more from the
Peregrine than I must,'' the blue-eyed woman said, tone frosty.

I almost asked to the source of that open enmity, given that Tariq might
have been after my neck for a while but he'd been standing in Cordelia's
corner for as long as I'd known him, but it didn't take much digging to
put the finger on it by myself. In order to capture Black, the Pilgrim
had seeded a plague in a town by the shores of Lake Artoise -- it'd
taken a full legion detachment, true, but that entire town too. Wiping
out Proceran towns was one thing when a villain did it, but it must have
cut to the bone coming from a servant of Above. Especially one it was
essentially diplomatically impossible to touch at the moment.

``Fair enough,'' I conceded.

``I could ask the same of yours,'' the First Prince of Procer said. ``I
am told you are high in the council of dark powers. Such a boon would be
but a small favour, no?''

``If I'd paid harsher prices for my first mistakes, I might have better
learned from them,'' I said. ``There's nothing free, not even for
villains. Some costs are just subtler than others.''

``Then I shudder to think what the likes of the Hidden Horror have
paid,'' Cordelia said.

I breathed out, itching for the pipe I'd not thought to bring. Neither
parade nor tea were well-matched to wakeleaf, at least not when paired
with the presence of the First Prince of Procer.

``All of Sephirah, for one,'' I said. ``And quiet things too, I'd
imagine. After all a dead thing cannot heal, cannot grow. Every wound on
his power forever remains.''

The Lycaonese princess' face was cool as she studied me, though more
distant than adverse.

``Sephirah?'' she asked.

``What the Kingdom of the Dead was called, before ruin took it,'' I
said. ``Keter was the greatest of its cities and the Dead King himself
its last king.''

``There are legends among my people,'' Cordelia acknowledged, ``though
they speak not of this Sephirah but instead of the Thirteen Kings and
the Time of Wolves. You are well-learned in the beginnings of the Enemy,
it seems. Does the Tower share such dangerous lore freely?''

``I learned it in Arcadia,'' I replied, ``walking the echoes of that
dead realm. I learned much, during my march to Keter.''

``Your Jacks have seeded rumours with skill as to the purpose of that
journey,'' Cordelia said, and it was not a compliment. ``Selfless of
you, to seek to break the Tower's schemes even if you failed.''

I drummed my fingers against the snowy railing, eyes trailing the
winding circles of primroses and jasmines filled with purple pansies.
The patterns were oddly soothing to look at.

``Hannoven,'' I said. ``Cleves and Hainaut. That was my offer. I
intended to warn you some months in advance, so that you could evacuate
the principalities.''

``And so the gathering armies of the Tenth Crusade hurried north instead
of trying your borders again,'' she said, tone mild.

``The entire point of the exercise,'' I admitted. ``I didn't quite grasp
what it was I was dealing with, not yet. The entire journey was a trap
anyway. Malicia had been in talks with Keter for months, I was being
used to start a bidding war.''

``With lives and lands in my charge as the currency,'' Hasenbach coldly
said.

``The counter-offer was the entire northern third of Procer and Callow
having to claim the eastern border principalities on its own,'' I said.
``I had Malicia's host bodies assassinated -- twice -- but it wasn't
enough.''

``And do you expect that excuses the rest?'' the First Prince said, eyes
hard.

``Are you sure you want to start a conversation with \emph{me} about
lives and lands being used as currency, Cordelia Hasenbach?'' I replied,
lips quirking into a smile just as hard as her gaze.

``It was a monstrous thing, what you set out to do,'' Hasenbach replied,
unmoved.

She wasn't mincing her words, and I could respect the honesty of it at
least. Coming from the woman who'd put me in the corner where I'd begun
to take hard measures, though, that only went so far.

``Monstrous?'' I mused. ``I suppose it was. But then so was your refusal
to entertain peace even on egregiously favourable terms when I
repeatedly offered it. Not even for moral reasons, but simply because it
was \emph{politically inconvenient} for you. Does my wearing a black
cloak somehow make my atrocities worse than yours? As I recall, only one
of us actually went through with it and it's not the villain.''

Her body was tightly wound as a spring, though not as a warrior's would
be -- it was the mark of emotions mastered I was looking at, not
violence in the making.

``I do not say this to create strife between us,'' Hasenbach said, voice
forcefully calm. ``Yet you must understand that the truth you tried to
\emph{barter away} part of the Principate nary a year ago is not to be
taken lightly.''

Probably shouldn't tell her I'd once tried to bribe Rumena into
treachery with another chunk of it then, even if it'd been a jest.

``I didn't expect it would be,'' I frankly replied. ``But I'd rather you
hear it from me than have it revealed as some dark secret.''

As for Praes' involvement in the coup that'd nearly unseated and killer
her, what the Circle of Thorns had told her was factually correct:
Scribe had helped shape the early plot but later set out to crush
Malicia's continuation of it at the order of the Carrion Lord. I saw no
need to tell her more than that, especially not while my own teacher was
still being kept in the dark.

``So now that we're being all nice and honest,'' I said, ``anything
you'd care to tell me?''

We could have kept on arguing about this, I knew and so did she, but
there was no gain in it for either of us. I very much doubted she'd
forgive what I had admitted to anytime soon, much less forget, but then
I wasn't interested in the \emph{forgiveness} of Cordelia Hasenbach.
That she was worthy of admiration in some ways did not mean I no longer
remembered why it had come to this. Me with my hands ever redder, Procer
dancing ever closer to annihilation. None of it was truly behind us, and
perhaps never would be, but neither of us were inclined to chase the
stag off the cliff. And so we moved on, however grudgingly. Now the boot
was on the other foot, though, and it was time for her to unwrap her own
dirty little secrets -- some of which I knew, and more that I suspected.

``I funded the Truebloods, through intermediaries,'' Cordelia
reluctantly said. ``High Lady Tasia Sahelian in particular, as the
Empress' foremost rival.''

It'd been a long time since I'd been so utterly taken by surprise. It
made sense, I thought. Procer was wealthy, Praes infamously prone to
backstabbing its way into civil wars and there was harsh irony in giving
Malicia a taste of her own medicine after the way she'd meddled in the
Proceran civil war. My fingers clenched hard against the stone, though,
not because of any of that. It was a smaller, slighter branch splitting
from what I'd just been told.

``You bankrolled the Doom of Liesse,'' I said, tone perfectly mild.

``Not knowingly, or directly,'' she said. ``Yet that is not untrue.''

I could kill her in the blink of an eye, I thought. No need for anything
elegant or skillful, I could just pour so much Night in her body that
the skin sloughed off and the bones melted and \emph{her head fucking
popped off}. Akua Sahelian had been the architect of that folly, and she
would even that ledger in time. So would Dread Empress Malicia, for
having allowed the madness and even helped it along. But now it seemed
that even the Warden of the West had put coin to the butchery of my
people, \emph{good Proceran silver} turned into a wound on the south
that'd last century and a city so broken that not even being the heart
of a newborn Court had mended its ruin. She'd not known. It did not
absolve her, but she had not known. Hasenbach stirred, and I knew deep
as I knew my own breath that if she opened her mouth to compared her
funding the Folly to a pact I'd never made with Keter, Sve Noc bless my
hand if she did I would rip out her fucking tongue and she could crawl
on her knees to Tariq to have it put back on.

``You already know of my involvement in the Liesse Rebellion, I take
it,'' she said.

I breathed out slowly and mastered myself. Rage I could allow myself to
feel later, if I decided it was still warranted. But I'd come
dangerously close to allowing my control to slip, just then. It
genuinely might have, in other circumstances, which was why this
conversation was needed in the first place. I would have been much, much
worse to hear it after an insulting Proceran blunder and revealed by the
Tyrant's cruelly taunting voice.

``I am,'' I said. ``Your intentions in that I will not speak to, yet
though that rebellion might have had your coin and your puppet-candidate
to kingship it was not fought for you purposes. I'll call it a clean
slate.''

Duke Gaston of Liesse might have been the figurehead all gathered
around, but it'd been the Countess of Marchford and the Lone Swordsman
who'd done the bloody work of the uprising. Neither had been in the
First Prince's service, or all that well inclined towards her. Gaston
Caen had been a pretext, not a motive, and regardless none if it would
have come to pass if I'd not spared William's life in Summerholm that
fateful night. Still, for all I would not quibble over the Liesse
Rebellion I was less pleased about what Cordelia \emph{was} keeping
silence over.

``Once silent is reluctance, or mistake,'' I said. ``Twice is a lie of
omission.''

``I own an empire's worth of secrets, Black Queen,'' the First Prince
said. ``And so very few of them are fair to behold.''

Which might just be true but was no more an answer for it.

``Lake Artoise,'' I flatly said.

``A weapon to wield against the Enemy,'' Hasenbach reluctantly. ``Should
all else fail.''

My eyes narrowed. It'd been in the lake, what she was talking about,
because even though Vivienne's people had failed to penetrate Proceran
operations there they'd at least confirmed there'd been ships and
dredging involved. The Order of the Red Lion as well, and in numbers too
great for them to be a mere scrying relay. But if she had in her hands a
weapon that could give the Dead King pause -- which it actually
wouldn't, from what I knew of the King of Death, but that was besides
the point -- then Procer was not in so dire a situation as she'd
implied. \emph{Unless it's not functional}, I thought. \emph{Unless she
needs to build something or arrange rituals.}

``There's consequences to using armaments like those,'' I said. ``And I
don't mean in a moral sense, either. High stakes and a single point of
failure are to Named like honey to flies. Heroes moreso than villains,
but even they get to have the wind in their sails sometimes.''

``It is not something I would use lightly,'' the First Prince said. ``Or
at all, if I can avoid it.''

``But you won't burn it until the Dead King's been driven back either,''
I grunted. ``You've read the Accords, Hasenbach. Ensuring no one ever
has their hands on a lever that opens a Greater Breach of brutalizes the
souls of an entire city is exactly what they're \emph{for}.''

``And should the Liesse Accords be signed and enforced, I will gladly
let you destroy every last trace of that weapon,'' the blonde princess
replied. ``Yet until Keter has been sealed or the Dead King destroyed, I
cannot justify tossing away the sole tool at my disposal that could
possibly turn the tide.''

Frustration spiked in me, but she was not being unreasonable. I'd been
raised in the shade of a royal palace built from stones taken from a
flying fortress brought down, taught from the moment I'd had a Name that
massive rituals and grand artefacts always failed in the end, and still
I'd sided with Malicia near the end of the Folly. The dead were already
dead, I'd thought, and if from that tragedy peace could be forged then
I'd shoulder the hatred of my own people and do what I must. It would
have been, I now recognize, a terrible mistake. My father's handling of
the situation remained singularly botched but given the Intercessor's
involvement that was perhaps not entirely his fault. Cordelia Hasenbach
was not Named, did not come from a people who held them in high esteem
or deeply studied their lore. And while she might have matched wits with
Malicia for years with more than a few successes to her name, it had
been a very different sort of game. I could not be angry at her making a
mistake I had also made while laden with advantages she was not.

``Having a weapon like that carries risks in ways you have not been
taught to understand,'' I said, forcing patience. ``Especially in a
situation thick with Named, like any war with Keter will be. This isn't
won with a flying fortress, Hasenbach, it's won with a coalition binding
the east and west.''

``And I will do everything in my power to see that coalition assembled
and bound by treaties,'' the First Prince said. ``Yet I cannot disarm
when those alliances are still wind, no ink has touched the parchment
for treaties and the Dead mass to the north in numbers beyond reason.''

``When Callow joins the Grand Alliance,'' I said, ``and the Accords
begin accruing signatories; will you then agree to torching whatever the
Hells you dredged up?''

I'd be willing to cough up the goblinfire myself, if that was what it
took. And still she hesitated.

``Merciless Gods,'' I said. ``What is it that you even got your hands
on? Tell me it's not a Hell Egg, Hasenbach. It'd be utter lunacy to send
a demon after the great mage ever born to Calernia, dead or not.''

``It is not,'' the blue-eyed royal stiffly replied. ``I will speak no
more to the nature of it, save that it holds no truck with Below.''

It was probably an angel, then, I grimly thought. Some not-corpse like
the one the Lone Swordsman had leaned on in Liesse to bring down
Contrition, and later Diabolist to create her gate-maker. The Choirs
were forever fixed, the way Masego told it, so there could be no such
thing as an angel's corpse -- or at least there'd been no real precedent
for it, and not for lack of Praesi trying -- but one's death would still
leave marks. And something to use, if you knew how. It'd still need a
hero though, I suspected, or at least a massive number of priests
capable of using Light. One was easier for the First Prince of Procer to
get her hands on, especially now that the House of Light's leadership
had been discredited and was likely undergoing a through purge. Who
would dare argue with Hasenbach now, if she gave priests orders? \emph{I
need to speak with Masego}, I grimly thought. I wasn't even sure what
such a weapon would do, practically speaking. Would the Choir it had
belonged to change the effect? Contrition had been the writ of corpse
and Named both, when the Hashmallim were called down at First Liesse.

So what would happen if the corpse was from one of the Ophanim or the
Seraphim? Somehow I doubted it would be as simple as calling down a
great storm of Light on the enemy. This was a mistake, no matter how I
looked at it, but then if there was one thing that today had made very
clear it was that Cordelia Hasenbach was afraid. She was afraid enough
for the Principate that she'd knelt to a woman she considered a brutal
murderous warlord to beg for help, and a few moments of private
conversation on a balcony weren't going to magically fix this. It was
frustrating as Hells, considering that not so long ago she'd been on her
knees begging for my help, but throwing around ultimatums on the first
day of talks wasn't going to accomplish anything -- save maybe mark me
as exactly the kind of tyrant they'd all feared I would be. And still
part of me was quietly furious at the notion that I'd have to allow a
mistake to keep going right under my eyes because it would be too
heavy-handed of me to force the issue. It was not a coincidence, I'd
admit, that so much of Black's teachings still resonated with me.

No matter what Vivienne said, Below was always going to be the banner I
raised. There wasn't enough give in me for it to be any other way. If I
couldn't push without blowing on the house of cards that the Accords
still was, then I'd have to try pulling instead. Time to start showing
the cards I'd been hiding up my sleeve.

``You don't believe we can win this war conventionally,'' I said. ``Yet
we can, Hasenbach. I have made pact with the Kingdom Under.''

``The resumption of arms sales will help, though Procer will need to
borrow heavily to afford them,'' the First Prince acknowledged.

``That's part of it,'' I said. ``More practical is that I have oaths the
Kingdom Under will launch offensives on every front to seize all
underground territory of the Dead King if a sufficient force is gathered
to war against him above.''

Cordelia Hasenbach went still.

``In addition,'' I continued, ``arrangements have been made as to the
supply of armaments and foodstuffs. Any force engaged in warfare against
Keter will see steel provided at two tenths of the usual price, and
foodstuffs at cost. Loans offers will be extended to the Principate,
though I'm afraid they refused to do the same for the Dominion. Too
likely to be unable to repay, I'm told.''

``You do not jest,'' the First Prince croaked, sounding dry-mouthed.

``I wouldn't take the loans, they offer pretty cutthroat terms,'' I
said. ``We might be able to strongarm Mercantis instead, if the entire
coalition brings pressure. They live and die on trade, and we have
everybody but the League at the table.''

``The dwarves would use us as their own fantassins,'' Cordelia realized,
eyes narrowing. ``Tying down the forces of the Hidden Horror
above-ground as they strike below. Only we would emerge in their debt
instead of owed.''

I didn't deny it, as it was essentially true.

``If their advance is successful all the way to Keter, a siege of the
city becomes feasible,'' I told her. ``Our supply lines would be
underground and untouchable, so long as we have the coin. I'd we willing
to endorse the creation of a Grand Alliance treasury for the duration of
the war against the Dead King, and to provide grain for your
principalities from Callow granaries on loan -- with interest on the
value of the goods, I'm not a saint.''

``The Kingdom Under would not make such offers without a prince, Black
Queen,'' the blue-eyed princess said. ``What did you offer in return?''

``The Everdark,'' I said.

The bluntness of the answer took her aback.

``I believed you to be allied with the drow,'' the First Prince said,
grown wary.

``I am,'' I said. ``This was done in the name of their goddesses, the
bargain struck with the dwarf Named known as the Herald of the Deeps.''

``They have submitted to the Kingdom Under?'' Cordelia asked.

I almost laughed at that.

``No, they have not,'' I replied, smiling thinly. ``The Everdark is
\emph{empty}.''

Cordelia Hasenbach was not slow of wits, and so she understood the
implication quick enough.

``They are marching against the Kingdom of the Dead,'' she said, almost
breathlessly.

``All of them,'' I agreed. ``The entire Empire Ever Dark is marching on
the Dead King's back, led by Sve Noc themselves, and I believe he still
has \emph{no idea}.''